Chapter Text
- Suho -
Suho’s grandmother dies four days after he wakes up. Complications from a sudden stroke she’d endured two weeks earlier, he’s told. By the time he’s out of bed to see her, two days after waking, she can no longer speak. Instead, she pets his head as he sobs, leaving tears and snot all over the covers of her hospital bed, and smiles for him.
He can’t stay out of bed for long, but on the fourth day, his nurses move him to a gurney and wheel him in to lie next to her. That night, they fall asleep side by side while he tells her about the meal he’ll treat her to when they’re better, and Suho wakes to an empty room.
It’s his first time being sangju. He was too young last time, for his parents, but he remembers enough. He tries not to think about how it was Halmeoni who had done it then. It’s one of his earliest memories, the way she had cooked enough to feed several dozen guests. The smell of warming sesame oil and simmering yukgaejang wafting through the apartment. He doesn’t remember much of the actual funeral, just the way his grandmother had fed him and smiled for him then, too.
He does his best for her. Picks a plot, cooks enough for her friends and any distant cousins of cousins who might show, and he stays awake through the night before. It’s old-fashioned, and it probably doesn’t do his head any good, but it feels right.
On the actual day, roughly ten people show. Mostly women from church and their husbands, plus a woman who Suho comes to know as Halmeoni’s Go partner. They all lean down to where Suho sits in his wheelchair, and pat his head or his cheek and tell him how much they’ve heard about him, how they’ve been praying for his recovery, how thrilled they are to see that he’s out of his hospital bed. He thanks each of them in turn, bowing as low as he can in gratitude that they were there for Halmeoni while he couldn’t be. It’s a debt he doesn’t know how to repay.
It’s not until several days later that he finds out about the house. There’s a transfer of deed that sits waiting for him in their mailbox when he’s discharged, alone and older and aching. It tells him about the small single-family home in the south that’s fallen into his possession. There are some additional details that he skims, a legal representative to call with questions, and what to do if he wants to forfeit ownership.
It’s a surprise to him. No matter how hard he thinks back to his childhood, he doesn’t remember a home anywhere else. He might’ve visited it with his parents when he was young, but there are no pictures that he’s seen, and there’s no one to ask. Suho manages to look up the place and spends half a day looking at the few pictures available on real estate sites. It’s near the water, with a low roof and a tall fence that looks like it might protect what was once a garden. It doesn’t take him long to make the choice.
It’s been four months now, and being down here feels right. It’s different; people speak with accents and the air is brinier, but the pace is good for him, slower. He gets fewer stares, too. The seaside’s always collecting broken people.
They’re in the thick of monsoon season now. It’s never-ending in this part of the country, and the humidity sticks around for ages. This morning, there’s that heaviness in the air that promises a storm, Suho’s leg aches, and his head feels sour with the change in air pressure. He gets out of bed and swallows his meds, heating up some rice from yesterday and eating it with canned tuna so he doesn’t get hungry later. He’s too slow this morning to cook anything else.
He’s otherwise pretty good at it. Cooking. He likes it, thinks he might have been good at it before, too. There are certain tasks that come easily, chopping carrots and rolling perilla leaves to cut into fine strips are second nature to him now, even with the shake in his hands. He can’t say for sure, but he likes to imagine Halmeoni teaching him, spending hours over Gimjang showing him the right mix of pear and gochujang to make the slurry.
When Suho first woke up, his doctors had eased him into some truths. You’ve been in a coma. It’s been two years. Your grandmother, she isn’t doing too well these days. They’d been focused on getting his body up and moving, and helping him get to Halmeoni’s bedside. It wasn’t until a week or two later that they’d started getting concerned about his memory loss.
By this point, we’d expect to see some improvement. Can you tell us anything about your year prior to the accident? No. He couldn’t. The days turned into weeks and then months, and still there was emptiness where there should be memories of early mornings at Byeoksan and late nights doing delivery. It felt like a shroud covering that part of his life. It was unsettling to be so fundamentally changed by something and to remember none of it.
He’d agonized over it for the first few weeks. He spent afternoons wandering around his old school grounds in the heat like a ghost. His phone was lost, and with it any hope of digging at clues from his socials or texts.
He spent more than a few nights kicking at the wood paneling in their old apartment until his bad leg gave out, then switching to pulling at his hair like he might suddenly pull loose a thread that would give him his old life back. He got drunk and smashed the bottle, cleaned up the glass, and cursed when it gave him a small cut, his hands not quite stable enough for the task yet.
He moved to Changwon and ignored the dusty furniture and taped-up boxes that littered the property and drank some more. And after a month of spending nights eating takeout and emptying Terra bottles on the floor of the dimly lit kitchen, he ran out of money.
It’s sheer luck that he finds Hanjan Coffee, then.
One night, while he’s lounging outside of a CU, munching on ramen and sausages, a light flickers on in the building across the street. It’s a small one-story, with walls that are dingy underneath bright white paint that was hastily plastered on.
A man comes into view shortly after carrying a Coupang box, and Suho watches as the guy pulls out wiring, pliers, and a plastic sign. He does his best putting up the strips of neon, but he’s clearly tried to save a few bucks on the thing; it’s not even really assembled, just a mass of tubing and lights. After he nearly brains himself tipping over on the step stool, Suho sighs and packs up his stuff, jogging over to the cafe.
He knocks on the door, lightly to avoid incident, but the guy still spooks. He’s got wide eyes under thick-rimmed glasses, and hair that’s slightly too long for good maintenance. Suho waves at him with a smile.
The man comes over to the front door, unlocking it and cracking it just an inch.
“Hello there,” he says. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed right now.”
Suho greets him back. “Actually, I was across the street just now and thought you could use a hand. Mine are a little shaky, but,” he looks past the man at the way the tubing hangs on the wall, haphazardly, “I could spot you?”
The man looks surprised, but grateful. “Oh! Sure, sure, come on in, kid!”
Together, it takes them about 15 minutes to get the sign in working order. The letters are a little off, and Suho has to Papago the word ‘americano’ for spelling more than once, but it’s not bad. While they work, Suho learns that the man’s name is Choi Bomin. He took over the building when the hair salon that had been here went out of business, and now he’s the proud owner of the cheapest cafe within 10 minutes of the beach. Choi Bomin is nice and overly concerned with appealing to others. More than once, he asks Suho to call him hyung.
He looks proud when they’re finished, and though Suho doesn’t say it, he feels proud too. It’s good to do things with his hands again, take on a task and accomplish it, work through the logistics of making something work.
“Thanks, kid,” Bomin says while they’re stood back looking at the glowing sign. “That would’ve taken me hours without you.” He claps a hand on Suho’s shoulder. “Take whatever you want from the cooler, as a thanks.”
Suho nods back, but- “Are you ever looking for help around here?”
“Hm?”
“I mean,” Suho smiles, charming, but humble, “I’m sort of in between work. I was in an accident and just got back on my feet, so to speak. Any chance you’re hiring?”
It’s been a few months since then, and Suho’s worked at Hanjan nearly every day since. He likes the consistency, and the customers are kind. It’s the kind of low-pressure job that he needed to get his feet wet again. Bomin has a big heart, and Suho feels oddly protective of him, despite the guy being roughly 20 years older than him. He’s the kind of nice that other people like to take advantage of, so Suho keeps his eye on him.
When Suho gets to work today, Bomin’s carrying a large box by himself from the back entrance, and his arms look about 30 seconds from giving out on him.
“Hey, boss, let me help!” Suho calls in greeting.
“Oh, Suho-yah! Thanks!” Bomin slides his hands back to let Suho grab the front half of the box. “Up to the front,” he adds, nodding with his head.
“Opening go okay?” Suho asks as they unpack the cartons of oat milk within the box. The first hour here can get busy for one person to handle on their own.
“It went fine,” Bomin says, waving away any concern. “You think you can cover up here for me for a bit? Sunmi’s got daycare this morning, I want to see her off.”
Choi Bomin and his wife had their first and only child 5 years ago, a little girl. Bomin spoils her endlessly, from what Suho can tell.
“I got it,” Suho confirms. It’s 10 AM already, most of the working crowd is at the office, so there shouldn’t be another rush for at least an hour or so.
In fact, it ends up being so dull with the rain that the day drags on in endless boredom. He could count the number of customers they get on two hands, and the only notable thing that happens is when a foreigner comes in looking lost as he stares at the menu, and Suho has to stumble through an explanation in English.
He spends the rest of his downtime scrolling on his phone in between chores and staring out the window at businessmen running to catch the bus or ajummas picking through the small produce stands lining the sidewalks.
By the time he leaves, after 5, the rain has stopped. It drips from the trees as he heads to the small dosirak place near his house. He grabs a container with bossam and plenty of radish and stretches his muscles on his walk to the beach.
When he was still getting used to life without his grandmother, Suho used to come out here around this time, while everyone was packing up their things to head to dinner and the sky covered the beach in a wash of denim blue. It felt nostalgic, despite being in a new place, like being here meant traveling back in time, to when he might hear halmeoni calling him to come inside at any moment.
Tonight, it’s nearly empty anyway, a product of the weather driving all beachgoers inside during the day, but a few people stroll on the stone path behind the bench he sits at. He’s slowly drinking a soda and trying to place the sound in the back of his head that sounds like clinking cans and a call of jjan! when the sound of a text chirping cuts through from where his phone is buried in his pocket. It’s Wooram, the only other kid who helps out at Hanjan. He’s younger than Suho, still in high school, with the boundless energy and boneheaded ideas to match, but he’s a good kid.
Wooram:
hyung
can you cover me tomorrow?
got busy
Suho sighs out loud. “Kids these days, jeez,” he says to no one.
He gives the message a thumbs up and smiles at the barrage of animated emoticons that come through in response. Suho shoots off a text to let Bomin know as well before deciding to pack it in for the night. The air in Changwon cools off fast, and his body gets cold too easily now. ‘Issues in thermoregulation’ weaseled its way into Suho’s problem list after the accident, right beside difficulty concentrating, tinnitus, chronic leg pain, instability, fine motor impairment, and acute memory loss. He tosses the remains of his dinner, brushes stray clumps of wet sand off his legs, and heads home.
Inside, it’s dark and quiet. The wood creaks a bit in the aftermath of the storm, but it’s a sturdy house. He readies for bed, sets an alarm for tomorrow’s shift, and falls into a dreamless sleep.
- Sieun -
“I got in,” Humin says.
Sieun turns to look at him. He’s staring at his phone screen with wide eyes. Hyuntak and Juntae are watching him too, stunned looks on their faces.
“Wait, let me see,” Hyuntak grabs Humin’s phone, bringing it close to his face, his eyes scanning the email. “He got in,” he says, and holds out the phone for good measure.
“I just said that,” Humin says, snatching his phone back.
“Wow, Baku, congrats!” Juntae says. He’s smiling as wide as he can with a mouth full of food.
“Where?” Sieun asks.
“Kyungnam,” Humin answers. He’s grimacing, caught between a smile and something more anxious.
“It doesn’t matter where,” Hyuntak chimes in, “you got into college, bro, that’s great.” He drops his arm around Humin’s shoulder, jostling him like he does when he makes a basket. Good shot.
“Yeah, but, it’s really far, right?” Humin says.
“Where is it?” Juntae asks.
“Changwon,” Hyuntak answers Juntae, then turns to Humin, “it’s far. But you have to go.” Humin doesn’t look convinced. “What else are you going to do? Hang around Yonsei like a lost puppy while you wait for Sieun to finish classes every day? Come on.”
“Isn’t it more likely that he follows you two to Hongik every day?”
He’s mentioned it nearly every time the subject of college comes up, how great it’ll be to have Hyuntak and Juntae so close by, how they’ll all meet up at the clubs in Hongdae and go to noraebang after. Sieun’s not sure Humin remembers that they’ll need to actually study in university. Though he’s also not entirely convinced that all of Humin’s enthusiasm isn’t a front.
In truth, outside of school, Humin’s hard to track down these days. After Baekjin died, he disappeared on them for a while. They didn’t see him for days on end. He only showed up to meet the bare minimum for attendance for the school not to call his father. And when he did, he looked the way he had when he had joined the Union: tired, dejected, and mind entirely elsewhere. It went on for weeks like that, until Hyuntak found him at the columbarium, staring at the small, square block labeled ‘Na Baekjin.’ Sieun doesn’t know all of the details, but he knows that Hyuntak was scared, finding him like that.
After that, Humin was back at Eunjang every day, and dragging them all to Baku Chicken whenever he lost a bet. But Sieun could still see how sometimes Humin would get lost in thought. The focus of the conversation would drift to Hyuntak or Juntae, and his eyes would glaze over a bit, or his head would drop slightly. It always took a second to pull him back when that happened.
“I am planning on getting an actual job, you know,” Humin protests.
“Mm, I don’t think so,” Hyuntak says. “I think you’re going to college.”
Humin’s eyes trail to the admission notification again. “Maybe,” he says.
“You should.” Three heads turn toward Sieun as he speaks. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Humin holds eye contact with him for a moment. It’s charged. He’s saying you know why. Sieun just looks back, I do. Still.
The Union’s been quiet the last few months, but none of them are entirely convinced that it’s truly dissolved, Humin least of all. Sieun doesn’t know where Humin goes all of the time - when Hyuntak or Juntae gathers them together to see a movie or dribble at the basketball courts near the school, and he’s noticeably absent - but he thinks he might be keeping an eye on things, waiting for signs of movement from Geum Seongje or Baek Dongha.
Eventually, Humin sighs and leans back in his chair. “They want me to go to their student prep day.”
“Oh, that sounds fun!” Juntae pipes up. “When is it?”
“During break,” Humin says.
“That’s perfect!”
Humin whines, throwing his head back in dramatics. “I don’t want to go to boring Changwon alone during summer break.” Quickly, he snaps his head to Hyuntak. “Gotak, go with me.”
“What?” Hyuntak says. “To your college prep day?”
“Yeah!”
“I can’t, we’re traveling for my brother’s tournament. Sorry.” Sieun thinks he doesn’t look sorry at all.
Humin waves him off. “Juntae? Sieun?”
“I’m sorry, Baku,” Juntae says earnestly. “It’s my mother’s birthday, we have plans.”
Humin sighs, says, “Of course, our sweet Juntae, the perfect son,” and Juntae laughs a bit. “Don’t worry, Sieun will go with me, right?” He nudges Sieun with his elbow lightly.
Sieun does not have plans for summer vacation. His parents are both busy, and they wouldn’t have gone anywhere anyhow. Just as well, really. His only plans were to continue revising before classes started up again and going to hagwon. With Suho gone, there wasn’t much left in Seoul for Sieun, outside of his friends.
Sieun had gone by the hospital three weeks after Baekjin died, just as soon as the dust had settled. He’d signed in as usual and walked to Suho’s room, 537. Inside, in Suho’s bed, was a man twice their age. His arm was wrapped in a bandage where it had been amputated, and he was sitting up, talking to a woman and a little boy. He’d smiled at the boy, kissing the top of his head when he jumped up onto the bed to hug him, but Sieun saw the weighted glance he and the woman exchanged.
He’d turned away before getting caught staring into their room, and gone back to the front desk to ask where they’d moved Suho to.
“Ahn Suho?” the nurse said. “I think you’ve got the wrong hospital, kid. We don’t have a patient by that name.”
“I saw him last week,” Sieun explained. “He was in room 537.” His heart had jumped into his throat at that. No one called him, no one said anything. Suho may have died quietly in a corner of SNU Hospital, and Sieun wouldn’t have known at all.
“Ah, I see,” the nurse’s voice had cut through his thoughts. “It looks like he was discharged last week. You’ll have to look for him at home!” she’d added with a smile.
Sieun tries not to think about that day anymore.
He shakes off the stray thought now and looks at Humin, nodding lightly.
“Really?” Humin asks, genuinely surprised. Sieun usually puts up more of a fight for these types of social events. But Changwon has done quite a bit of work in the environmental space, and Sieun can use their time there to visit a few of the leading corporations as a real-life application for his business ethics essay. He’s got the entire semester to complete it, but if he’s going to be dragged to the countryside for one of their only vacations, he might as well put the trip to good use.
“I’ll go,” Sieun says.
“Not fair!” Hyuntak protests. “The first time we convince Sieun to take a trip and the rest of us have to miss out.”
Humin sticks out his tongue in response. The memory that sparks from the childish motion feels like static shock, quick and surprising, but soon forgotten again.
It’s two weeks later that they meet at Seoul Station to catch the KTX. With quarterly grades in and public schools starting the brief summer break, students are flooding the station. Sieun sits outside the Paris Baguette and waits for Humin, preparing his study plan for the week. If he’s missing hagwon for this trip, he might as well try to finish the pages on his own while Humin meets with advisors and wanders around campus.
“Oh, haksaeng!” A booming voice calls out in front of him. “Give up your seat for an old man, won’t you?”
Sieun sighs and meets Humin’s eyes. He’s smiling at his own joke, hands on his hips.
“Hi,” Sieun says.
“Did I keep you waiting long?”
“No, it’s fine.” They still have 24 minutes to catch their train, and they’re a 60-second walk from the platform.
They end up wasting 12 of those minutes wandering a 7/11, and another 4 going to the restroom, but they still bring their bags down the escalator in plenty of time to wait for the train.
When it arrives, they find their seats easily and settle in. Humin falls asleep nearly immediately, and although his head jostles against the side of the window, he either doesn’t feel it or is tired enough that he sleeps through it. Sieun works on revision for the first hour of the trip and keeps his headphones playing brown noise to foster concentration. He gets through two chapters of Korean history before he finds his eyes drooping as well. He lays his head on the tray in front of him, closing his eyes and taking whatever sleep he can get.
The train’s movement jolts him awake some time later. He turns to see if Humin is still asleep and finds him awake too, typing quickly on his phone. A small frown pulls at his mouth and brow when his phone starts ringing, and he declines it fast before he turns to look at Sieun, startling only slightly when they make eye contact.
“You finally woke up! You were like Sleeping Beauty, I almost gave you a kiss.”
Sieun ignores him and sits up, stretching his arms and neck.
“Who was that?” he asks.
“Hm?” Humin hums. “Oh, nobody. We just left Gyeongju, should be there in a half hour or so.”
Sieun nods. Once they get to Busan they’ve got an hour-long bus ride to the apartment they’re staying in. Changwon is far.
By the time they get to the place that Humin booked, they’re both starving and itching to stretch their legs. They drop their bags in the entryway and head back through the front door to find something to eat.
Fifteen minutes later, they’re seated at a small restaurant, chatting over kimchi jjigae and soda. Humin is chattering away faster than usual. It’s hard for Sieun to keep track of the way he bounces between topics.
“Are you nervous?” he asks when he can get a word in.
“About college?” Humin asks. When Sieun nods, he shrugs. “I guess. Isn’t everybody?”
“I don’t know,” Sieun says. “I’m not.”
School is school is school, he doesn’t say. Eunjang was Byeoksan. He doesn’t really expect Yonsei to be that different.
Humin snorts a laugh. “Of course you’re not, genius. Yonsei is like a school of little Sieuns. You’ll probably make a shitload of friends 30 seconds in by talking about different color coding on your binders.”
“What are you talking about?” Sieun says, exasperated.
“No, but, really,” Humin says. “You’ll be fine. It’s the rest of them that should be worried, I think. They have no idea what’s coming for them.”
Sieun ducks his head. “I’m not going to fight.”
He’s quiet for a minute, and when Sieun looks at him, he’s looking back, assessing. He smiles lightly at Sieun.
“Ah, that’s not what I meant,” he says. “I know you won’t.”
Sieun isn’t under any impression that college will be easier to get through than high school has been. Bullies seem to be everywhere, waiting for someone they can attempt to exert power over in an attempt to gain control, influence. And for all his best efforts, he seems to find himself in their crosshairs more often than not. But he can’t afford to cause trouble, not at Yonsei. He’ll find another way to subdue them, something non-violent.
Beyond that, he hasn’t given much thought to making friends. Friends mostly seem to happen to him. There’s a part of him that thinks he doesn’t really need to make new ones at college; Hyuntak and Juntae will only be an hour away, and Humin will visit, he thinks. But he also knows that for all the work that he puts into studying at Eunjang, it'll be harder at Yonsei. There will be longer classes and assignments that keep him up through the night. Exams will come around more often, and labs will keep him after class.
It does send a prickle of anxiety through him, the idea of his friends forgetting about him while he’s locked away in a dorm room, eyes glued to differentials. He turns his attention back to his food and attempts to dismiss the thought by listening to Humin’s complaints about 'offsides' as the subject drifts yet again to the Tottenham game playing on the TV behind him.
It’s a quick walk back to the studio apartment when they’re done, where the two of them settle in for the night. It’s small, but nice enough for two high school seniors visiting for a long weekend to sleep in. There’s a bed that’s mostly just a mattress on the floor, a couch, a small kitchen table, and a door that Sieun assumes leads to a bathroom. He’s not big on bed-sharing, so he’s glad to find a futon in the closet that will do. Humin thinks it’s a little funny, but seems to shrug it off as one of Sieun’s quirks and tosses his bag on the mattress.
Despite the long day of travel, Sieun lies on the futon for hours that night, listening to Humin’s deep breaths as he sleeps, and trying to shut off his brain enough to rest. It’s always hard for him to sleep in a new place, and the heat here is suffocating. They turned the aircon on full blast as soon as they arrived, but it doesn’t do much. The wood is exacerbating the already stifling humidity here, and even in the absence of sunlight, the close-set walls give the impression of being baked.
Sieun won’t mention it to Humin, but the idea of enduring this for months out of the year seems bothersome. It’s hard to imagine what kind of person would choose this of their own free will.