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“Are you two fighting?”
“No,” Nicholas and Euijoo lie at the same time. Yudai gives them both an unimpressed look.
“You can’t fight during a camping trip. My rule,” says Yudai, clapping them both on the shoulder with a pointedly friendly smile. “So wrap it up, boys, or burn it all away at the campfire tonight!”
“Okay,” says Euijoo, and then instantly evacuates from Nicholas’s immediate vicinity.
Euijoo has been acting strange the entire few weeks leading up to the trip.
It’s not like Nicholas always knows what’s wrong with his best friend of over four years, but at this point he can usually make a well-educated guess. These days, it’s usually work-related stress or something his distant relative messaged him that he can’t get out of his head.
The go-to solution is a classic boys night out—which means walking to the park with Nicholas’s lovably ugly chihuahua Edamame, visiting their favorite café afterwards (a place called Hicaru’s, because the owner always gives Edamame a cup of cream), and then going home to watch a movie they’ve seen a million times again (if they get successfully tipsy, Euijoo cries). A perfect sequence of events.
A week ago when Nicholas suggested this normally foolproof solution, Euijoo had just said something evasive like, “I’ll be a bit busy this week since I’m taking off work for the camping trip.”
This is not why they’re fighting. For the record, Nicholas took this very well and even stepped up to do some of the household chores like a fantastic, phenomenal best friend would.
So maybe Euijoo has always done the majority of the household chores for the several consecutive years they’ve been roommates, but Nicholas makes him toast once in a while. It’s obviously even.
In any case, the Thing Nicholas Can’t Stop Thinking About happened only a day before the camping trip their friend group has been planning for months. Nicholas had attempted laundry. He had then attempted again (he’d pressed the wrong buttons the first time around).
He was fairly proud of himself once he’d finished folding both of their clothes, Euijoo’s included (there’s nothing weird about folding your best friend’s boxers and briefs at all, it’s the least of what he’d do for him, really). With an armful of clothes and Edamame trailing behind him, he’d made his way to Euijoo’s bedroom, very much expecting to be met with that stupidly sweet open-mouthed smile Euijoo does when he’s simultaneously pleased and surprised.
“Hey, I’m coming in,” Nicholas called. There was no answer. He pushed in the door with his foot and found the room empty, bed neatly made, curtains open to let the light in. The desk caught his eye merely because it was the messiest part of the room.
He tried not to linger, he really did, but in the process of setting the pile of clothes down on Euijoo’s bed he’d glimpsed his own name.
There, written in the very top right corner of the journal laid open on his desk, was Nicholas’s name, albeit in its Korean spelling. “To Nicholas…”
And, well, the journal was open for once. Never in their long and chaotic friendship has Nicholas ever seen the inside of this little brown journal—it’s a little frightening and scandalous and therefore that much more tantalizing. The exact feeling he gets when Euijoo steps out of the bathroom freshly showered and there’s so much more skin on show than he ever usually allows, and Nicholas has to pretend like he isn’t using the shit out of his peripheral view to gawk.
And maybe a journal entry isn’t the same as a half-naked best friend you’re a little bit obsessed with, but apparently it’s just as riveting. He gets lost in it. He doesn’t even finish reading it, how can he? It’s devastating.
It sort of ruins his life. Afterwards, he has to shut himself in his room and curl up into himself, and not even Edamame eagerly snuggling into his arms can quiet the storm in his chest.
The morning of the camping trip was the real fight. They’d started bickering about something incredibly small, like which snacks to pack, he doesn’t even remember, and then it had ballooned once they’d started the drive there, and inevitably Nicholas said the wrong thing.
It had gone something like:
“Okay, are you gonna tell me what’s wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You’re upset.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Okay. I had a bad dream.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
And then Nicholas had snapped out of sleep-deprived frustration and said, “Either you think I’m stupid or you’re seriously acting like a twelve-year-old over a nightmare—”
Of course he’d regretted it immediately after, but the damage had already been done. Euijoo just white-knuckled the wheel and closed himself off completely, in the exact way that Nicholas hates and fears, and then there was nothing that he could say or do to make him open up again.
It’s a bit of a wrench in the group’s plans to have a relaxed time, so they’ve both been trying their best to act normal. Nicholas is pretty shit at it.
“Nicho, can you give me a hand over here?” Fuma grunts, the pole in his hands slipping from the grommet of the tent he’s hovering it over.
Nicholas wipes the sweat from his brow with the hem of his tank top before making his way over. Most of the sunlight beating down on them has been somewhat mollified by the mass of clouds gathering overhead, but they’ve been setting up all their tents for over half an hour now.
“Let’s just rent a cabin next time,” Nicholas huffs, kneeling to help maneuver the pole into the correct position so Fuma can link it to the framework.
Fuma just says something good-natured like, “Ah, where’s the fun in that,” but Nicholas is too busy staring off in the vague direction of Euijoo, who is helping with the campfire, to answer.
And then out of nowhere, Fuma says in a lower, softer tone, “You know, sometimes it’s okay to push.”
Nicholas snaps his eyes up. Fuma keeps his eyes on his work.
“He’s like a— a turtle,” he ends up mumbling, biting into his own cheek at the stupidity of it. “He retreats to this, like, shell I can’t reach sometimes.”
Fuma makes a considering hum. “Even with Pokemon you have to push little by little,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean you don’t push at all. You have to catch them all somehow.”
A beat. “What,” says Nicholas flatly. “Did you just compare Euijoo to a Pokemon?”
Something uncharacteristically weird happens with Fuma’s eyebrows (he’s maybe trying to wiggle them), which means he’s trying to cheer Nicholas up. Somehow it sort of works, and he feels better by the time the sun starts to set and washes the camping grounds in sweet darkness.
The pit in his stomach returns when they’re gathered around the campfire after dinner.
“Alright, who’s up first?” Maki rubs his hands together like a fly.
“Does your family really do this every year?” asks Harua doubtfully.
“Yeah, man, it’s a tradition! We started out burning shit like childhood keepsakes, but apparently that’s bad for the environment.”
Fifteen minutes before this, each of them scribbled letters—(Maki had said, “You can write it to your future self, your mom, the president, whatever works for you.”)—onto small pieces of ripped notebook paper.
Now, each of them stand in the darkness only lit up by the blazing, swaying fire and the starlight above them, the little notes clutched in their fingers.
“I’ll go first,” Nicholas says.
He’d addressed it to someone, written three words, all in Mandarin, and then folded it into such a tiny square he could fit it underneath his very nicely painted fingernail, courtesy of Harua.
The group whoops as he approaches the fire, licks his lips in the sudden dry heat, and throws it in overhand for a bit of dramatics. The others follow one by one (Jo’s piece of paper is suspiciously big, which can only mean that he made a drawing instead).
When it’s Euijoo’s turn, he pulls out a very familiar looking little brown journal. Nicholas’s heart stops.
“Wow, as expected Euijoo-hyung came prepared!” Yuma says, and someone laughs goodnaturedly, but the voices blur with every step Euijoo takes. His face is blank and yet determined, and there’s something inexplicably sad about the slight furrow of his brow.
Nicholas thinks about the journal entry he’d read, the one addressed to him.
"I don’t think I can ever show this to you."
“Nicho, what are you—”
He rushes in just as the notebook is dropped from the great height of Euijoo’s hand.
“Nicho! Don’t! ”
But he’s already jumping forward, towards the fire.
His life is made up of lots of moments like this: the leap into heat, the near-death flicker of warmth. The painful tendrils of it engulfing his palms and yet leaving him, somehow, in one piece when he inevitably pulls away.
“What the fuck, Nicholas!” someone exclaims, but Nicholas is too busy on his knees, frantically patting the journal all around to make sure it hasn’t been damaged too severely.
There’s more commotion around him, but when he looks up it’s to Euijoo’s stricken face, close and pale in the moonlight. His hand is on Nicholas’s wrist, frozen, like he’d instinctively rushed to check on him even though they’re technically still fighting.
“Ah, Nicho’s just a true environmentalist, everybody!” Yudai announces, waving his phone around. “I just looked it up and apparently burning anything can be bad for the environment.”
Jo turns to Nicholas with an openly sincere expression that literally takes him out of it for a second, and then says, “Thank you, Nicholas-kun. I also care about the environment.”
Through the thin veil of hysteria Nicholas replies, “Uh. Sure. No problem.”
“I’ll go put Neosporin on his hands,” Euijoo cuts in out of nowhere, and then he’s pulling on the wrist in his grasp. Nicholas follows him to one of the tents in a hollowed out daze.
It looks like Euijoo has already set his things up in one of the tent’s corners. He switches the single camping lantern on and rummages through his backpack while Nicholas crumples onto the floor with a long exhale.
“What were you thinking,” says Euijoo tightly, still speaking in Japanese, which means they’re still fighting. He turns back around with an ominously cute-looking Chiikawa pouch in hand.
“What the hell is that,” Nicholas can’t help but point and laugh. His hands have started to tingle.
Euijoo makes a frustrated noise and then pushes Nicholas’s hands into his own lap. The Chiikawa pouch is apparently a makeshift first-aid kit, because of course it is, and looks suspiciously like something Harua gifted him. From inside Chiikawa, he pulls out a small bottle of what looks to be aloe vera gel.
Nicholas makes a huffing sound. “It didn’t even burn me,” he says, even though his hands do feel precariously raw. “You’re overreacting.”
Euijoo doesn’t even respond to this obvious provocation. Silently, face impassive, he smooths the gel across Nicholas’s palms. His hands are so gentle, and yet surprisingly without hesitation at the skin-to-skin contact. Hysterically, Nicholas thinks, our hands know one another; they’re not strangers.
“Are you going to tell me why you did that?” Euijoo asks. His voice has gotten somewhat softer, though there’s still a note of tension in it.
Nicholas rolls his head to the side so he doesn’t have to look him in the face. With the dim glow of the lantern lighting up his face from below, Euijoo sort of looks like an angel that’s here to take Nicholas’s undeserving body to heaven, or possibly hell.
“Promise me you won’t be mad,” he mumbles in a rush. Euijoo’s just massaging his palms with his own smooth, slender fingers now.
He sighs. “What did you do now?” he replies, but his brow has softened.
“So, you know that time I did the laundry? I went into your room to drop it off, and I swear, I didn’t mean to look, but you— well, you’d left your journal open on your desk—”
Euijoo’s hands freeze. They’re still holding Nicholas’s, and when he tries to squirm away from that gaze, they hold fast.
“You read my diary?” he asks, dangerously quiet.
“I’m sorry, Juju, please, listen—”
Euijoo turns his face into the darkness for a breath. When his face returns to the light he doesn’t look angry. Frankly, he looks scared.
Nicholas swallows the pain down his throat and blurts, “I saw my name, and… I’m the worst, I know, but I wanted to know what you think of me. And fuck, you’ve been so distant all week, I thought I’d done something.”
He’d been torturing himself the entire week about it actually, turning every last interaction he’d had with Euijoo over and over in his head, wondering why he’d suddenly started avoiding him. He’d really tried to wait him out, wait for an answer, but, really. Euijoo never tells him anything.
“You don’t tell me anything,” Nicholas says, trying desperately to keep any bitterness out of voice. His knee starts to jump. His hands are still in the cool aloe-covered embrace of Euijoo’s hands. “I’m not saying I’m entitled to everything, Euijoo. But—you wrote it yourself, if I’m, I’m your ‘special person’—” Euijoo’s eyes widen. “—then you’re mine, ten times over, a hundred times over. So of course I’d want to know if you’re okay.”
“Nicho,” says Euijoo, like it’s scraping his throat on the way out.
“You wrote that you realized something, and then you chose to completely avoid me about it?!” He’s starting to run out of breath, but he continues, “Am I that— Am I so…so terrible that you can’t even imagine it with me, lo—”
“No, Nicho, stop,” Euijoo interrupts, squeezing his eyes shut. His hands clamp over Nicholas’s. Nicholas stops.
Outside, the others have started to sing a camping song together, a few of them clearly drunk. The sounds of their friends laughing clearly comfort them both, because Euijoo’s hands loosen after a length of time.
“Remember when I applied to almost any company I could a few months ago?” Euijoo says now, voice muted.
“Yes,” Nicholas replies in an equally hushed voice, sitting up.
A corner of Euijoo’s mouth quirks up at that, and then he lets out a long breath. “I never told you, but. I applied to one in America.” Nicholas feels his eyes widen even as Euijoo continues. “There’s a…Silicon Valley startup that wants people fluent in Japanese and Korean. My uncle sent it to me. So I applied, you know, just in case. My family would definitely be proud of a son who could send them American money.”
Nicholas feels his heart fully squeeze its way into his throat. He pulls one of Euijoo’s hands into his, wishes his feelings were tangible things, wishes he could lay them into the cradle of these soft palms.
Instead he has to say it aloud. “Juju,” he says thickly, “you know that I’d want you to go. You know that I wouldn’t hold you back, you have to know.”
Euijoo looks at him, expression unbearably soft even as his shoulders are tense. “I know,” he whispers. “I know.”
“Then why—?”
“Nicho, the dream,” Euijoo says, and then stops, as if his throat can’t manage it. “It was the dream I had.” His eyes flutter. There’s something wet at the tips of them, so Nicholas reaches up to thumb the tears away with his aloe-covered fingers, and then they both laugh—Euijoo chokes on his own, so Nicholas pulls him close, forehead to forehead, and then forehead to shoulder. Holds him through the shaking.
“Juju,” he whispers unsteadily. “Were you really gonna keep this all inside?”
Euijoo doesn’t have to answer. Nicholas knows him.
Maybe Fuma was right about it, the pushing.
Tentatively, he says, “I didn’t read it all the way through,” and then slowly leans both of them down onto the sleeping bag laid out underneath them. “Will you read it to me?” he murmurs. He kisses Euijoo’s forehead, his nose, his chin.
Euijoo spends five minutes in the cradle of Nicholas’s neck before he does.
──────
To Nicholas:
I had a dream that I was you.
I spent the entire day as you: in the morning, you woke up somewhere past ten thirty, fed Edamame, took her on a walk.
It was sunny outside, but breezy, the way you like it—you spent half an hour with Edamame in the park just looking up at the sun filtering in through the trees. You know the ones with the thin trunks and dark green leaves, lined up in a row across from Hicaru’s?
The whole time, Edamame was quieter than usual. You started humming an old lullaby in Mandarin. It’s only familiar to me because of you; Edamame must’ve known it too because she settled in for a nap beside you. You both sat against one of those trees like that, half in the sunlight, half in the shade. You pulled her into your lap so she wouldn’t get the brunt of the heat. In your palms—your broad, steady palms—she felt immeasurably small.
You let her sleep for another half hour. Maybe you dozed off, too: it felt warm and safe enough, and you’ve always been the type to do something like that, like trusting that everyone else in the park would leave you be. I wouldn’t have done it if I were myself. I would’ve liked to stay awake to watch the people around me. You’ll call me paranoid, but I like doing it, watching. Better to watch than be watched.
But because it was you—and you are you—you let yourself close your eyes against the world. And in that brief darkness it was just you and Edamame, you and this thing so small and alive you could feel her heart beating against your fingers.
You and Edamame stopped by Hicaru’s for lunch. You didn’t sit at the table, you know the one; you’d call it “our table” even though it’s never truly been ours. But I’ll agree that it’s a pretty special table. It’s right by a window, but in the far back, so when we used to study together (or at least I’d try to study) it had the perfect mix of natural and indoor lighting.
You took a strawberry latte to-go. The cashier was someone new, a summer hire, so she didn’t offer Edamame a cup of whipped cream like they usually do.
You promised Edamame something at home, but she didn’t answer with her usual yips. Inexplicably you knew that she’d been feeling sad for more than a few days now. I wouldn’t know how to reassure her, but even though you’re the dog person out of the two of us, you didn’t know either. So you just stared down at her for a brief length of time with an odd hole in your chest. And then you walked to Yudai-hyung’s.
Hyung answered the door almost instantly, smiling. It was weird to see him smile like that: like he’d decided you needed to see him smile.
You followed him inside with Edamame, who was happy to see him as always. Hyung said something like, The kids won’t be back until the end of this week. Taki and Harua, you know, they’re doing that camping thing , and you nodded and nodded and nodded. It was strange of you to be so quiet, but for some reason it was like your chest was too constricted to do anything else but breathe. So you sat quietly and let Yudai-hyung ramble about the last time he’d been on a camping trip, when Fuma-hyung had accidentally stepped on one of those heated mosquito coils and burnt his big toe. You made yourself laugh, felt it choke out of your throat.
Yudai-hyung must’ve caught it, the too-fast swallow, the bad attempt at laughter.
“Nicho,” he said. His big smile became something much more difficult to look at, so you looked down at the table instead. And when he asked, “How are you doing?” it was in that same way, raw and understanding.
You rolled your shoulder, bounced your knee, took your bottom lip in between your teeth. All your nervous habits. You said, “Better. Doing better.” Yudai-hyung didn’t look convinced.
But there were errands to be done.
You dropped Edamame off at home and spent the next few hours here and there in the city. You didn’t take the bus, the one we ride together all the time—for some reason, you did it all on foot. It was a good, sunny and clear day, the kind I’d message you about, even just to remind you to wear sunscreen, but you didn’t look at your phone even once. I’ll admit it was funny to feel hurt by this considering that I know very well you don’t like to text that much anyways. Still, the phone was like a hot brand in your pocket, searing and blazing against your thigh with every passing hour.
By the time I thought it’d burn a hole into your pants, you ripped it out of your pocket and unlocked it with shaking hands. You maneuvered to our chat.
The last three messages were all from you— Look, Juju, this stupid looking plushie reminded me of you hahaha. Hey Juju, what are you doing next Saturday, maybe we can call! Juju, is life in America so busy? I’m glad, you know. Edamame misses you, she wants to say hi lol :)
Your fingers hovered over the keyboard. You took too long standing there, frozen with the phone clamped in your trembling hands, until some old lady pointedly swerved her shopping cart around you to pass by. You unstuck your tongue from the roof of your mouth and carried on.
It was almost completely dark when you started the trip back home. You put wired earphones in, the same ones we share when we take the bus home together, and you tried to muffle the noise of the night traffic around you. The music was still playing when you opened the door to the apartment, the silence of the real world only interrupted by Edamame shuffling up towards you in greeting.
There’s a song that you like, a Korean ballad you showed me once; you’d joked that it was almost as if you’re the native. I remember that song, too, I’ve started listening to it because of you. You set your phone down and played it on full volume while you made yourself instant noodles and only turned it off once you settled onto the couch with your knees drawn up. I would’ve told you not to do that, balancing a bowl of hot soup on your knees, but I wasn’t there and you would’ve done it anyway.
Still, you looked to your left, once, a long time, your jaw clenched. You’d left enough room for me to sit. Edamame jumped up onto my spot instead, but Nicho; you couldn’t look her in the eyes.
You closed your own. You’d put on Ponyo . A silly movie to know by heart, but we’d be able to recognize it with our eyes closed, and so you listened with eyes shut. The cheerful music, the childish laughter, the lines we could both recite from memory—unraveled you.
You never let me see you cry. But because I was you, it was as if the tears were coming from my eyes, the aborted gasps were wracking my chest. It was your hands that set the soup down, but at the same time it was my hands that wrapped around your knees, my forehead that was pressed against the tops of them to muffle the worst of the sobs.
Nichol, I woke crying. That’s a little less surprising, I know. But I’ve never felt that kind of loneliness before, and I don’t think you’ve ever felt it either, at least that deeply. And I’m writing this to you because, well. You’re my closest friend. My special person. It makes sense that seeing you in pain would hurt me, too, and—
I’ve realized something important. I’m less of myself when I’m not with you. But that’s not the important thing: it’s the impossible truth that you—you, the most complete person in the world, the most alive, the most full —you’d somehow also be cleaved in half without me at your side.
How could I ever put you through that?
Nicholas… Yixiang…
I like riding the bus with you. I like when we share earphones and you play sappy songs. I like taking walks in the park with you and Edamame. I like the way you let me put my arm over your shoulders, I like the way your face looks in the sun. I like our table at Hicaru’s, and I like when you take the tangerines off of your fruit tarts to give to me, and I like the way your eyes light up when I try to say thank you in Mandarin. I like your hands, the way you touch me like you’ve known me your whole life, like you wish you had. I like being by your side. I like it all so much it scares me.
Reading this over, I realize this was unnecessarily long and I’m not making any sense. I don’t think I can ever show this to you. If I ever do, would you understand it? Could you?
From,
Euijoo