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Once, Jaekwan had fallen particularly sick with a bad fever that caused him to miss three days of work at the Bureau.
Choi, who often deigned to appear without warning, had shown up at his doorstep yet again, a plastic bag of medicine in hand. Even behind that thin screen, the sounds he brought travelled far: the silvery crinkle of plastic and foil scraping together, a quiet sound that announced him at the door even before he’d hammered his presence into it.
It was funny how all of Jaekwan’s neighbours knew Choi as that handsome young officer, instead of that handsome noise-maker. In hindsight, it made sense: objectively Choi was a good-looking man, if you were the type to look; the kind that easily drew the eye in for a second glance. Jaekwan had grown used to it over time, but even he knew that surely there must have been a moment before when he’d been younger still, when he’d looked and looked and got caught looking too long without meaning to.
Sleep-smeared and sick with a migraine that throbbed at his temples and squeezed down the back of his neck, Jaekwan felt his appreciation thinning. His eyes watered as the pain had rippled outward—settling, mostly, behind his jaw, which only tensed further when he opened the door and saw who was standing there.
Of course.
“Jaekwan-ah, you should lose that frown on your face,” Choi had tutted, wagging his index finger in that strange side-to-side motion, almost hypnotically slow. He lifted the plastic bag, shaking it again. “Aren’t you glad your senior and junior came here to take care of you?”
Only then, after catching the word—junior—had he noticed Soleum behind him, hovering awkwardly, his dark eyes wide and open behind his thin wireframe glasses. Caught by surprise, like a wandering stray dragged in by the scuff of his neck. And then, near-automatically, as if catching Jaekwan’s eye had softened something in him, he offered a quiet smile and a small nod.
“Hello,” Soleum greeted, shoulders relaxing; unfolding slowly, warming up. "Can we come in?"
***
I don’t understand. Why now, all of a sudden? —
Why not? You should come fishing. With me. Us. —
(A pause.) The crease between Jaekwan’s brow deepens, his mouth opening instinctively, ready to argue.
Choi interrupts him first.
It’ll be fun. —
(Turning to Soleum.) Grapes. (Softer.) You know you don’t have to say yes. You don't—you don't have to do anything you don’t want to. —
But I’ve already bought the tickets for all of us. The weather’s supposed to be nice. —
Soleum's mouth gapes. The voice that follows is trembling, maybe shy, perhaps incredulous.
Even in winter? —
Jaekwan almost laughs. He doesn't, not out loud. This whole conversation is absurd, he thinks.
Still, Choi's eyes are warm and fond, his lips quirking slightly.
Well, I wouldn’t know. Both of you should come and find out. —
There is a season for everything, Jaekwan thinks. In spring, the peach and plum blossoms bloom along Hanok walls in the historical streets. Summer brings the cicadas, and the blue swallowtail butterflies that dart between floating rice paddies. In autumn, the vibrant reds and golds of maple leaves, the small buds of chrysanthemums, just beginning to open. And in the early days of winter: the wild quiet settling in around them, the slow growing of old pine and green bamboo, the tiny shoots pushing up through the snow, green against white.
“I think," Soleum says, breaking the silence. There’s a soft pink flush spreading across his fingertips; his hands must be freezing. "It’s still a bit too cold for fishing.”
Jaekwan turns, faces him, reaches out. He's right.
“So I may have been wrong,” Choi admits, his speech slow and deliberate. “But we can always come back next summer.”
(All of us together, the unspoken words.)
***
If you were to ask Jaekwan about the sort of memories he had, growing up, he might have paused. A silence would stretch, too-soft and too-loud all at once, until he asked you, what it was that you had really wanted to know.
He wasn't one to share much about himself much, but it hadn't been because he had come from a bad childhood. Rather the contrary: he had a perfectly normal childhood with perfectly average parents, and grew up, like most other kids in his neighbourhood, in an ordinary home filled with an even more ordinary love. There had been little lacking, little wanting, even after the passing of those parents. He’d moved on easier than most, not because there was little feeling there, but because he understood, fundamentally: that some things returned, like the seasons; while other things left, and never came back.
There hadn’t been much to grieve: he’d simply been a child and then not. Like the delicate fractals of winter frost, everything else had just settled into place around him.
Still, there must have been a moment, quiet and unspectacular like almost everything else in his life, when Jaekwan, still leaning against the edge of the doorframe, had looked at Choi and Soleum, the two of them standing there, and thought: Maybe this is the kind of life I want to return to.