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Stella Mia, "My Star”

Three-Quarter Portrait by Edwards Martin

c. 1806—08 

20cm x 35cm Pencil sketch on parchment 

On loan from the Gallerie dell’ Accademia 

An illustration of a boy, the lines of his body imitated by the twisting bedsheets. His face is little more than angles, framed by messy hair, but the artist has given his one very specific feature: seven small freckles in a band across his cheeks. 

Found in Edwards’ 1806-8 notebook, is thought by some to be the inspiration for his later masterpiece The Muse. While the model’s pose and the work’s medium are different, the number and placement of the freckles is conspicuous enough for many to speculate on the model’s enduring importance in Edwards’ work. 

Estimated Value: $267,000

Somewhere in Venice, Italy 

July 29, 1806 

Juhoon wakes to sunlight and silk sheets. 

His limbs feel heavy. The kind of heaviness that comes with too much sun, and too much sleep. 

It is ungodly hot in Venice, hotter than it ever was back in Seoul. 

The window is open, but even the faint breeze from outside or the silk bedding isn’t enough to dissipate the stifling heat. It is only morning, and sweat is already forming. He dreads the thought of lunchtime as he drags himself awake, and sees Martin perched at the foot of the bed. 

He is just as beautiful in daylight, sun-kissed and strong, but he is struck less by his lovely features, and more by the strange calm of the moment. 

In the mornings, Juhoon is used to apologies, confusion, the aftermath of forgetting. They are sometimes painful, and always awkward. 

But Martin seems utterly unfazed. 

He doesn’t remember him, of course, that much is obvious—but his presence there, this stranger in his bed, doesn’t seem to bother him. His attention is focused solely on the sketchpad balanced on his knee, the charcoal skating gracefully across the paper. It is only when his gaze flicks back up to him, and then down to the paper again, that he realizes he is drawing him. 

Juhoon makes no move to cover himself, to reach for the slip cast off on the chair, or the thin robe at the foot of the bed. Juhoon hasn’t been shy about his body in a long time. Indeed, he has come to enjoy being admired. Perhaps it is the natural abandon that comes with time, or perhaps it is the constancy of his shape, or perhaps it is the liberation that comes with knowing his spectators won’t remember. 

There is a freedom, after all, in being forgotten. 

And yet, Martin is still drawing, the motions swift and easy. 

“What are you doing?” Juhoon asks gently, and Martin tears his gaze from the parchment. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “The way you looked. I had to capture it.” 

Juhoon frowns, begins to rise, but Martin lets out a stifled sound and says, “Not yet,” and it takes all his strength to stay there, on the bed, hands tangled in the sheets until he sighs and sets the work aside, eyes glazed with the afterglow unique to artists. 

“Can I see?” Juhoon asks in the melodic Italian he has learned. 

“It’s not finished," Martin says, even as he offers him the pad. 

Juhoon stares at the drawing. The marks are easy, imprecise, a quick study by a talented hand. His face is barely drawn, almost abstract in the gestures of light and shadow. 

It is him—and it is not him. 

An image, distorted by the filter of someone else’s style. But he can see himself in it. From the curve of his cheek to the shape of his shoulders, the sleep-mussed hair and the charcoal dots scattered across his face. Seven freckles charted out like stars. 

Juhoon brushes the charcoal toward the bottom edge of the page, where his limbs dissolve into the linens of the bed, feeling it smudge against his skin. 

But when he lifts his hand away, his thumb is stained, and the line is clean. He has not left a mark. And yet, he has. He has impressed himself upon Martin, and he has impressed him upon the page. 

“Do you like it?” Martin asks. 

“I love it,” Juhoon murmurs, resisting the urge to tear the drawing from the pad, to take it with him. Every inch of him wants to have it, to keep it, to stare at the image like Narcissus in the pond. But if he takes it now, then it will find a way to disappear, or it will belong to him, and him alone, and then it will be as good as lost, forgotten. 

If this version of Martin keeps the picture, he will forget the source, but not the sketch itself. Perhaps he will turn to it when he is gone, and wonder at the boy sprawled across his sheets, and even if he thinks it the product of some drunken revel, some fever dream, his image will still be there, charcoal on parchment, a palimpsest beneath a finished work. 

It will be real, and so will he. 

So Juhoon studies the drawing, grateful for the prism of his memory, and hands it back to him. He rises, reaching for his clothes. 

“Did we have a good time?” Martin asks. “I can’t remember anything from last night.” 

“Neither can I,” he lies. 

“Well then,” Martin says with a rakish grin. “It must have been a very good time.” 

Martin kisses his bare shoulder, and his pulse flutters, body warming with the memory of the night before. He is a stranger to him now, but Martin has the easy passion of an artist enamored with his newest subject. It would be simple enough to stay, to start again, enjoy his company another day—but his thoughts are still on the drawing, the meaning of those lines, the weight of them. 

“I should go,” Juhoon says, leaning in to kiss him one last time. “Try to remember me.” 

He laughs, the sound breezy and light as he pulls him close, leaves ghosts of charcoal fingers on his skin. “How could I possibly forget someone like you?”

“You have stars.”

Manhattan, New York City 

January 10, 2034, A Year and a Half Before the Deal

2:48am

Night settles over Juhoon as he crosses the Brooklyn Bridge. 

The promise of spring has retreated like a tide, replaced again by a damp winter chill, and he pulls his jacket close, breath fogging as he starts the long stretch up the length of Manhattan. 

It would be easy enough to take the subway, but Juhoon has never liked being underground, where the air is close and stale, the tunnels too much like tombs. Being trapped, buried alive, these are the things that scare you when you cannot die. Besides, he doesn’t mind walking, knows the strength of his own limbs, relishes the kind of tired he used to dread. 

Still, it’s late, and his cheeks are numb, his legs weary, by the time he reaches 432 Park Avenue on Fifty-sixth. 

A man in a trim gray coat holds the door, and his skin tingles at the sudden flush of central heat as he steps into 432 Park Avenue’s marble lobby. He is already dreaming of a hot shower and a soft bed, already moving toward the open elevator, when the man behind the desk rises from his seat. 

“Can I help you?” he says.

“I’m here to see Martin,” Juhoon says, without slowing. “twenty-third floor.” 

The man frowns. “He isn’t in.” 

“Even better,” he says, stepping into the elevator. 

“Sir,” he calls, starting after him, “you can’t just—” but the doors are already closing. He knows he will not make it, is already turning back toward the desk, reaching for the phone to call security, and that is the last thing he sees before the doors slide shut between them. Perhaps he will get the phone to his ear, even begin to dial before the thought slips from his mind, and then he will look down at the receiver in his hand and wonder what he was thinking, apologize profusely to the voice on the line before sinking back into his seat. 

The apartment belongs to Edwards Martin. 

They had met at a coffee shop downtown a couple months ago. The seats were all taken when he came over, wisps of blond escaping the hem of a winter hat, glasses fogging from the cold. That day Juhoon was Jason, and before he’d even introduced himself, Martin had asked if he could share his table, saw that he was reading Colette’s Chimi, and managed a few lines of broken, blushing French. He sat, and soon easy smiles gave way to easy conversation. Funny, how some people take an age to warm up, and others simply walk into every room as if it’s home. 

Martin was like that, instantly likable. 

When he asked, he said that he was a poet (an easy lie, no one ever asked for proof anyway), and he told him he makes music, and he nursed him coffee for as long as he could, but eventually him cup was empty, and so was his, and new customers were circling, buzzard-like, in search of chairs, but when he began to rise, he’d felt that old familiar sadness. 

And then Martin asked if he liked ice cream, and even though it was January, the ground outside slicked with ice and paving salt, Juhoon said he did, and this time when they stood, they stood together. 

Now he types the six-digit code into the keypad on his door and steps inside. 

The lights come on, revealing pale wood floors, and clean marble counters, lush curtains and furniture that still looks unused. A high-backed chair. A cream sofa. A table neatly stacked with vinyl records. 

He unzips his boots, steps out of them beside the door, and pads barefoot through the apartment, tossing his jacket over the arm of a chair. In the kitchen, he pours himself a glass of merlot, finds a block of Gruyére in a fridge drawer and a box of gourmet crackers in the cupboard, carries his makeshift picnic into the living room, the city unfolding beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. Canvases piled like dominoes in the corner.

Juhoon sifts through his records, puts on a pressing of Billie Holiday, and retreats to the cream sofa, knees tucked up beneath him as he eats. 

He would love a place like this. A place of his own. A bed molded to his body. A wardrobe full of clothes. A home, decorated with markers of the life he’s lived, the material evidence of memory. But he cannot seem to hold on to anything for long. 

It is not as though he hasn’t tried. 

Over the years, he’s collected books, hoarded art away in chests and locked them there. But no matter what he does, things always go missing. They vanish, one by one, or all at once, stolen by some strange circumstance, or simply time. 

Juhoon shudders, upsetting his glass, and drops of red wine splash over the rim, landing like blood on the cream sofa. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t spring to his feet to fetch club soda and a towel. He simply watches as the stain soaks in, and through, and disappears. As if it was never there. 

As if he was never there. 

Juhoon rises, and goes to run himself a bath, soaks away the city grime with scented oil, scrubs himself clean with hundred-dollar soap. 

When everything slips through your fingers, you learn to savor the feel of nice things against your palm. 

He settles back into the tub, and sighs, breathing in a mist of lavender and mint.

Manhattan, New York City 

January 10, 1934, 101 Years Before the Deal

6:53am

Juhoon wakes up on the sofa. 

He lies there, perfectly still, tries to hold time like a breath in his chest; as if he can keep the clock from ticking forward, keep the boy one room away from waking. 

He knows, of course, that he can’t. Knows that he’ll forget. They always do. 

It isn’t his fault—it is never their faults. 

The boy’s passed out, and he watches the slow rise and fall of his shoulders from the door that’s slightly ajar, the place where his blonde hair hugs the nape of his neck, the scar along his ribs. Details long memorized. 

His name is Martin, like all the previous ones from the past.

In the last month, Juhoon has been Jason, Jackson, Jerry—but two nights ago, when he was Jerome, and they were closing down a late-night café after one of his gigs, Martin said that he was in love with a boy named Jason—he simply hadn’t met him yet. 

So now, Juhoon is Jason. 

Martin begins to stir, and he feels the old familiar ache in his chest as he stretches, but doesn’t wake, not yet. His lips parted in sleep, blonde hair shadowing his eyes, dark lashes against fair cheeks. 

It’s morning now, in another city, another century, the bright sunlight cutting through the curtains, and Martin shifts again, rising up through the surface of sleep. And the boy who is—was—Jason holds his breath again as he tries to imagine a version of this day where he wakes, and sees him, and remembers. 

Where he smiles, and strokes his cheek, and says, “Good morning.” 

But it won’t happen like that, and he doesn’t want to see the familiar vacant expression, doesn’t want to watch as the boy tries to fill in the gaps where memories of him should be, witness as he pulls together his composure into practiced nonchalance. The boy has seen that performance often enough, knows the motions by heart, so instead he slides from the bed and pads barefoot out into the living room. 

He catches his reflection in the hall mirror and notices what everyone notices: the seven freckles, scattered like a band of stars across his nose and cheeks. 

His own private constellation. 

He leans forward and fogs the glass with his breath. Draws his fingertip through the cloud as he tries to write his name. J—u— 

But he only gets as far as that before the letters dissolve. It’s not the medium—no matter how he tries to say his name, no matter how he tries to tell his story. And he has tried, in pencil, in ink, in paint, in blood. 

Kim. 

Juhoon.

It is no use. 

The letters crumble, or fade. The sounds die in his throat. 

His fingers fall away from the glass and he turns, surveying the living room. 

This version of Martin is a musician, and the signs of his art are everywhere. 

In the instruments that lean against the walls. In the scribbled lines and notes scattered on tables—bars of half-remembered melodies mixed in with grocery lists and weekly to-do’s. But here and there, another hand—the flowers he’s started keeping on the kitchen sill, though he can’t remember when the habit started. The book on Rilke he doesn’t remember buying. The things that last, even when memories don’t. 

Martin is a slow riser, so Juhoon makes himself tea—he doesn’t drink it, but it’s already there, in his cupboard, a tin of loose Ceylon, and a box of silk pouches. A relic of a late-night trip to the grocery store, two boys wandering the aisles, hand in hand, because they couldn’t sleep. Because he hadn’t been willing to let the night end. Wasn’t ready to let go. 

He lifts the mug, inhales the scent as memories waft up to meet it. 

A park in London. A patio in Prague. A tea room in Edinburgh. 

The past, drawn like a silk sheet over the present. 

It’s a cold morning in New York, the windows fogged with frost, so he pulls a blanket from the back of the couch and wraps it around his shoulders. A guitar case takes up one end of the sofa, and Martin’s cat takes up the other, so he perches on the piano bench instead. 

The cat, named Mars, looks at him as he blows on his tea. 

He wonders if the cat remembers. 

His hands are warmer now, and he sets the mug on top of the piano and slides the cover up off the keys, stretches his fingers, and starts to play as softly as possible. In the bedroom, he can hear Martin stirring, and every inch of him, from skeleton to skin, tightens in dread. 

This is the hardest part. 

Juhoon could have left—should have left—slipped out when he was still asleep, when their morning was still an extension of their night, a moment trapped in amber. 

But it is too late now, so he closes his eyes and continues to play, keeps his head down as he hears his footsteps underneath the notes, keeps his fingers moving when he feels him in the doorway. 

He’ll stand there, taking in the scene, trying to piece together the timeline of last night, how it could have gone astray, when he could have met a boy and then taken him home, if he could have had too much drink, why he doesn’t remember any of it. 

But he knows that Martin won’t interrupt him as long as he’s playing, so he savors the music for several more seconds before forcing himself to trail off, look up, pretend he doesn’t notice the confusion on his face. 

“Morning,” Juhoon says, his voice cheerful, and his accent, once from Seoul, now so faint that he hardly hears it. 

“Uh, good morning,” Martin responds, running a hand through his hair, and to his credit, he looks the way he always does—a little dazed, and surprised to see a pretty boy sitting in his living room wearing nothing but a pair of underwear and his favorite band T-shirt beneath the blanket. 

“Jason,” he says, supplying the name he can’t find, because it isn’t there. “It’s okay,” he says, “if you don’t remember.” 

Martin blushes, and nudges Mars out of the way as he sinks onto the couch cushions. “I’m sorry...this isn’t like me. I’m not that kind of guy.” 

He smiles. “That makes the both of us.” 

Martin smiles, too, then, and it’s a line of light breaking the shadows of his face. He nods at the piano, and he wants him to say something like, “I didn’t know you could play,” but instead Martin says, “You’re really good,” and he is—it’s amazing what you can learn when you have the time. 

“Thanks,” he says, running his fingertips across the keys. 

Martin is restless now, escaping to the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asks, shuffling through the cupboards. 

“I found tea.” 

He starts to play a different song. Nothing intricate, just a strain of notes. The beginnings of something. He finds the melody, takes it up, lets it slip between his fingers as Martin ducks back into the room, a steaming cup in his hands. 

“What was that?” he asks, eyes brightening in that way unique to artists—writers, painters, musicians, anyone prone to moments of inspiration. “It sounded familiar...” 

A shrug. “You played it for me last night.” 

It isn’t a lie, not exactly. He did play it for him. After he showed Martin. 

“I did?” he says, brow furrowing. He’s already setting the coffee aside, reaching for a pencil and a notepad off the nearest table. “God—I must have been drunk.” 

He shakes his head as he says it; Martin’s never been one of those songwriters who prefer to work under the influence. 

“Do you remember more?” he asks, turning through the pad. He starts playing again, leading him through the notes. He doesn’t know it, but he’s been working on this song for weeks. Well, they have. 

Together. 

He smiles a little as he plays on. This is the grass between the nettles. A safe place to step. He can’t leave his own mark, but if he’s careful, he can give the mark to someone else. Nothing concrete, of course, but inspiration rarely is. 

Martin’s got the guitar up now, balanced on one knee, and he follows his lead, murmuring to himself. That this is good, this is different, this is something. 

Glancing up, he looks at him and just stares with his head tilted, “Has anyone ever told you that you have stars.”

Juhoon stops playing, and gets to his feet. 

“I should go.” 

The melody falls apart on the strings as Martin looks up. “What? But I don’t even know you.” 

“Exactly,” he says, heading for the bedroom to collect his clothes. 

“But I want to know you,” Martin says, setting down the guitar and trailing him through the apartment, and this is the moment when none of it feels fair, the only time he feels the wave of frustration threatening to break. Because he has spent weeks getting to know him. And he has spent hours forgetting him. “Slow down.” 

He hates this part. He shouldn’t have lingered. Should have been out of sight as well as out of mind, but there’s always that nagging hope that this time, it will be different, that this time, he will remember. 

“Where's the rush?” asks Martin. “At least let me make you breakfast.” 

But he’s too tired to play the game again so soon, and so he lies instead, says there’s something he has to do, and doesn’t let himself stop moving, because if he does, he knows he won’t have the strength to start again, and the cycle will spin on, the affair beginning in the morning instead of at night. 

But it won’t be any easier when it ends, and if he has to start over, he’d rather be a meet-cute at a bar than the unremembered aftermath of a one-night stand. 

It won’t matter, in a moment, anyways. 

“Jason, wait,” Martin says, catching his hand. He fumbles for the right words, and then gives up, starts again. “I have a gig tonight, at the Alloway. You should come. It’s over on...” 

He knows where it is, of course. That is where they met for the first time, and the fifth, and the ninth. And when he agrees to come, his smile is dazzling. It always is. 

“Promise?” Martin asks. 

“Promise.” 

“See you there,” Juhoon says, the words full of hope as he turns and steps through the door. He looks back, and says, “Don’t forget me in the meantime.” 

An old habit. A superstition. A plea. 

Martin shakes his head. “How could I forget someone like you?” 

He smiles, as if it’s just a joke. 

But Juhoon knows, as he forces himself down the stairs, that it’s already happening—knows that by the time he closes the door, he’ll be forgotten.

Manhattan, New York City 

January 10, 1934

10:32pm

It’s dark by the time Juhoon gets to the Alloway—one of those places that seems to relish its status as a dive bar, a reputation tarnished by the fact it’s become a favorite among headliners who want that Brooklyn feel. 

A handful of people mill around on the curb, smoking, chatting, waiting for friends, and Juhoon lingers among them a moment. He bums a cigarette, just to have something to do, resisting the easy draw of the door for as long as he can, that tipping sense of the familiar, déjà vu. 

He knows this road. 

Knows where it leads. 

Inside, the Alloway is shaped like a bottle of whisky, the narrow stem of the entry, the dark wooden bar widening to a room of tables and chairs. He takes a seat at the counter. The man on his left buys him a drink, and he lets him. 

“Let me guess,” says the man. “A rosé?” 

And he thinks of ordering whisky just to see the surprise on his face, but that was never his drink; he’s always gone for sweet. 

“Champagne.” 

He orders, and they make small talk until he gets a call, and steps away, promising to be right back. He knows he won’t, is grateful for it as he sips his drink and waits for Martin to go onstage. 

He takes a seat, one knee up to steady his guitar, and flashes that bashful smile, almost apologetic. He hasn’t learned yet how to take up space, but he’s sure he will. He looks out at the small crowd before he starts to play, and Juhoon closes his eyes and lets himself vanish into the music. He plays a few covers. One of his own. And then, this. 

The first chords float through the Alloway, and Juhoon is back in Martin’s apartment. He is sitting at the piano, coaxing out notes, and he is there, beside him, fingers folded over his. 

It is coming together now, words wrapped over melody. It is becoming his. It is like a tree, taking root. He will remember, on his own; not him, of course—not him, but this. Their song. 

It ends, the music replaced by applause, and Martin sidles up to the bar, orders a Jack and Coke because they’ll give it to him for free, and somewhere between the first sip and the third he sees him, and smiles, and for an instant Juhoon thinks—hopes, even now—that he remembers something, because he looks at him as if he knows him, but the truth is simply that he wants to; attraction can look an awful lot like recognition in the wrong light. 

“Sorry,” Martin says, head ducking the way it does whenever he’s embarrassed. The way it did that morning when he found him in his living room. 

Someone brushes Juhoon’s shoulder as they reach past him for the bar door. He blinks, and the dream falls away. 

He has not gone in. he is still standing on the street, the cigarette burned away to nothing between his fingers. 

A man holds open the door. “You coming in?” 

Juhoon shakes his head, and forces himself to step back, away from the door, and the bar, and the boy about to take the stage. “Not tonight,” he says. 

Manhattan, New York City

February 8, 2034, A Year and a Half Before the Deal

11:15pm

Juhoon scoops lo mein into his mouth as his legs carry him through the city back to 432 Park Avenue. He dumps the empty carton in a trash can on the corner and reaches the building entrance just as a man is coming out. He smiles at him, and he smiles back and holds the door. 

Inside, he beelines towards the elevator. He remembers when he and Martin stumbled home, the two a tangle of limbs on the stairs. Martin’s lips pressed beneath his jaw, fingers sliding beneath the waistband of his jeans. 

It was, for Martin, a rare impulsive moment. 

Like clockwork, the man behind the desk rises from his seat. 

“Can I help you?” he says.

“I'm here to see Martin,” he says. “twenty-third floor.” 

The man frowns. “He left two hours ago.” 

It’s quiet up here—not silent, that is a thing he’s yet to find in a city, a thing he is beginning to think lost amid the weeds of the old world—but as quiet as it gets in this part of Manhattan. It is a living quiet, full of distant shouts and car horns and stereo bass reduced to an ambient static. 

A low concrete wall surrounds the roof, and Juhoon lets himself lean forward against it, resting his elbows and looking out until the building falls away, and all he can see is the lights of Manhattan, tracing patterns against the vast and starless sky. 

Juhoon misses stars. 

He met another version of Martin, back in ’65, and when he told him that, he drove him an hour outside of L.A., just to see them. The way his face glowed with pride when he pulled over in the dark and pointed up. Juhoon had craned his head and looked at the meager offering, the spare string of lights across the sky, and felt something in him sag. A heavy sadness, like loss. And for the first time in a century, he longed for Seoul. For home. For a place where the stars were so bright they formed a river, a stream of silver and purple light against the dark. 

He looks up now, over the rooftops, and wonders if, after all this time, the darkness is still watching. Even though it has been so long. Even though he told him once that he doesn’t keep track of every life, pointed out that the world was big and full of souls, and he had far more to occupy himself than thoughts of him. 

The rooftop door crashes open behind him, and a handful of people stumble out. 

Two guys.

And Martin. 

Wrapped in a white sweater and gray sweatpants, his body like a brushstroke, long and lean and bright against the backdrop of the darkened roof. His hair is longer now, wild and blonde. Callouses line the juncture of his fingertips, and Juhoon wonders, almost absently, what he’s working on. 

The other two move in a huddle of noise across the roof, one of the guys in the middle of a story, but Martin lags behind a step, head tipped back to savor the crisp night air, and Juhoon wishes he had something else to stare at. 

An anchor to keep him from falling into the easy gravity of the other boy’s orbit. 

He does, of course. 

The Odyssey. 

Juhoon is about to bury his gaze in the book, when Martin’s eyes dip down from the sky and find his own. He smiles, and for an instant, it is August again, and they are laughing over beers on a bar patio, Juhoon lifting the hair off his neck to calm the flush of summer heat. Martin leaning in to blow on his skin. It is September, and they are in his unmade bed, their fingers tangled in the sheets and with each other as Juhoon’s mouth traces the warmth between Martin’s legs. 

Juhoon’s heart slams in his chest as the boy peels away from him group and casually wanders over. “Sorry for crashing your peace.” 

“I don’t mind,” says Juhoon, forcing his gaze out, as if studying the city, even though Martin always made him feel like a sunflower, unconsciously angling toward the other boy’s light. 

“These days, everyone’s looking down,” muses Martin. “It’s nice to see someone looking up.” 

Time slides. It’s the same thing Martin said the first time they met. And the sixth. And the tenth. 

Martin has an artist’s eye, present, searching, the kind that studies their subject and sees something more than shapes. 

Juhoon turns away, waits for the sound of retreating steps, but instead, he hears the snap of a lighter, and then Martin is beside him, a blonde curl dancing at the edge of his sight. He gives in, glances over. 

“Could I steal one of those?” he asks, nodding at the cigarette. 

Martin smiles. “You could. But you don’t need to.” he draws another from the box and hands it over, along with a neon blue lighter. Juhoon takes them, tucks the cigarette between his lips and drags his thumb along the starter. Luckily the breeze is up, and he has an excuse, watching the flame as it goes out. 

“Here.” 

Martin steps closer, his shoulder brushing Juhoon’s as he steps in to block the wind. He smells like the chocolate-chip cookies that his neighbor bakes whenever he’s stressed, like the lavender soap he uses, the coconut conditioner he leaves in his hair at night. 

Juhoon has never loved the taste of tobacco, but the smoke warms his chest, and it gives him something to do with his hands, a thing to focus on besides Martin. 

They are so close, breaths fogging the same bit of air, and then Martin reaches out and touches one of the freckles on Juhoon’s right cheek, the way he did the first time they met, a gesture so simple and still so intimate. 

“You have stars,” he says, and Juhoon’s chest tightens, twists again. 

He has to fight the urge to close the gap, to run his palm along the long slope of Martin’s neck, to let it rest against the nape, where Juhoon knows it fits so well. They stand in silence, blowing out clouds of pale smoke, the other two laughing and shouting at their backs, until one of the guys—Seonghyeon?—calls Martin over, and just like that, he is slipping away, back across the roof. Juhoon fights the urge to tighten his grip, instead of letting go again. 

But he does. 

Leans against the low wall and listens to them talk, about life, about getting old, about bucket lists and bad decisions, and then one of the boys says, “Shit, we’re gonna be late.” And just like that, beers get finished, cigarettes put out, and the group of them drifts back toward the rooftop door, all three retreating like a tide. 

Martin is the last to go. 

He slows, glances over his shoulder, flashing a last smile at Juhoon before he ducks inside, and Juhoon knows he could catch him if he runs, could beat the closing door. 

He doesn’t move. 

The metal bangs shut. 

Being forgotten, he thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. 

If no one heard it, did it actually happen? 

If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist? 

Juhoon stubs the cigarette out on the brick ledge, and turns him back on the skyline, makes his way to the broken chairs and the cooler wedged between them. He finds a single beer floating amid the half-frozen melt and twists off the cap, sinking onto the least-damaged lawn chair. 

It is not so cold tonight, and he is too tired to go looking for another bed. The glow of the fairy lights is just enough to see by, and Juhoon stretches out in the lawn chair, and opens The Odyssey, and reads of strange lands, and monsters, and men who can’t ever go home, until the cold lulls him to sleep. 

A Rooftop, Somewhere in Manhattan, New York City

February 9, 2034, A Year and a Half Before the Deal

7:34am

Juhoon wakes up to someone touching his cheek. 

The gesture is so gentle, at first he thinks he must be dreaming, but then he opens his eyes, and sees the fairy lights on the roof, sees Martin crouched beside the lawn chair, a worried crease across his forehead. His hair has been set free, a mane of wild blonde curls around his face. 

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he says, tucking a cigarette back into its box, unlit. 

Juhoon shivers and sits up, pulling the jacket tight around him. It’s a cold, cloudy morning, the sky a stretch of sunless white. He didn’t mean to sleep this long, this late. Not that he has anywhere to be, but it certainly seemed like a better idea last night, when he could feel his fingers. 

The Odyssey has fallen off his lap. It lies facedown on the ground, the cover slick with morning dew. He reaches to pick it up, does his best to dust the jacket off, smooth the pages where they got bent, or smudged. 

“It’s freezing out here,” says Martin, pulling Juhoon to his feet. “Come on.” 

Martin always talks like that, statements in place of questions, imperatives that sound like invitations. He pulls Juhoon toward the rooftop door, and Juhoon is too cold to protest, simply trails Martin down the stairs to his apartment, pretending he doesn’t know the way. 

The door swings open onto madness. 

The hall, the bedroom, the kitchen are all stuffed full of art and equipment. Only the room at the back of the apartment is spacious and bare. No sofa or tables there, nothing but two large windows, an easel, and a stool. 

“This is where I do my living,” Martin said, when he first brought Juhoon home. 

And Juhoon chuckles, “I can tell.” 

He’s crammed everything he owns into three-quarters of the space, just to preserve the peace and quiet of the fourth. His friend offered him a studio space at an insane deal, but it felt cold, he said, and he needs warmth to paint. 

“Sorry,” says Martin, stepping around a canvas, over a box. “It’s a bit cluttered right now.” 

Juhoon has never seen it any other way. he would love to see what Martin is working on, but instead Juhoon forces himself to follow the boy around and over and through the mess into the kitchen. Martin snaps on the coffeemaker, and Juhoon’s eyes slide over the space, marking the changes. A new purple vase. A stack of half-read books, a postcard from Italy. The collection of mugs, some sprouting clean brushes, and always growing. 

“You paint,” he says, nodding at the stack of canvases leaning against the stove. 

“I do,” says Martin, a smile breaking over his face. “Abstracts, mostly. Nonsense art. But it’s not really nonsense, it’s just—other people paint what they see. I paint what I feel. Maybe it’s confusing, swapping one sense for another, but there’s beauty in the transmutation.” 

Martin pours two cups of coffee, one mug green, as shallow and wide as a bowl, the other tall and blue. “Cats or dogs?” he asks, instead of “green or blue,” even though there are no dogs or cats on either of them, and Juhoon says, “cats,” and Martin hands him the tall blue cup without any explanation. 

Their fingers brush, and they are standing closer than he realized, close enough for Juhoon to see the streaks of green in the hazel of Martin’s eyes, close enough for Martin to count the freckles on his face. 

“You have stars,” he says. 

And it’s déja vu. He wills himself to pull away, to leave, to spare himself the insanity of repetition and reflection. Instead, Juhoon wraps his hands around the cup and takes a long sip. The first note is strong and bitter, but the second is rich and sweet. 

He sighs with pleasure, and Martin flashes him a brilliant grin. “Good, right?” he says. “The secret is—” 

Cacao nibs. 

“Cacao nibs,” says Martin, taking a long sip from his cup, which Juhoon is convinced now is really a bowl. He drapes himself over the counter, head bowed over the coffee as if it were an offering. 

“You look like a wilted flower,” teases Juhoon. 

Martin shakes his head. “Sorry. I never asked your name.” 

This is one of the things he loves about Martin, one of the first things he ever noticed. Martin lives and loves with such an open heart, shares the kind of warmth most reserve only for the closest people in their lives. Reasons come second to needs. He took him in, he warmed him up, before he thought to ask his name. 

“Johan,” says Juhoon, because it is the closest he can get. 

“Johan,” he repeats, “I’m Martin.” 

“Hello, Martin,” he says, as if tasting the name for the first time. 

“So,” says the other boy, as if the question only just occurred to him. “What were you doing up there on the roof?” 

“Oh,” says Juhoon with a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep up there. I don’t even remember sitting down on the lawn chair. I must have been more tired than I thought. I just moved in, twenty-third floor, and I don’t think I’m used to all the noise. I couldn’t sleep, finally gave up and went up there to get some fresh air and watch the sun rise over the city.” 

The lie rolls out so easily, the way paved with practice. 

“We’re neighbors!” says Martin. “You know,” he adds, setting his empty cup aside, “I’d love to paint you sometime.” 

And Juhoon fights the urge to say, You already have, so many times. 

“I mean, it wouldn’t look like you,” Martin rambles on, heading into the hall. Juhoon follows, watches him stop and run his fingers over a stack of canvases, turning through them as if they were records in a vinyl shop. 

“I’ve got this whole series I’m working on,” he says, “of people as skies.” 

A dull pang echoes through Juhoon’s chest, and it’s six months ago, and they are lying in bed, Martin’s fingers tracing the freckles on his cheeks, his touch as light and steady as a brush. 

“You know,” he’d said, “they say people are like snowflakes, each one unique, but I think they’re more like skies. Some are cloudy, some are stormy, some are clear, but no two are ever quite the same.” 

“And what kind of sky am I?” Juhoon had asked then, and Martin had stared at him, unblinking, and then brightened, and it was the kind of brightening he had seen with a hundred artists, a hundred times, the glow of inspiration, as if someone switched on a light beneath their skin. And Martin, suddenly animated, wound to life, sprang from the bed, taking Juhoon with him into the living room. 

An hour of sitting on the hardwood floor, wrapped in only a blanket, listening to the murmur and scrape of Martin mixing paint, the hiss of the brush on the canvas, and then it was done, and when Juhoon came around to look at it, what he saw was the night sky. Not the night sky as anyone else would have painted it. Bold streaks of charcoal, and black, and thin splashes of middle gray, the paint so thick it rose up from the canvas. And flecked across the surface, a handful of silver dots. They looked almost accidental, like spatter from a brush, but there were exactly seven of them, small and distant and wide apart as stars. 

Martin’s voice draws him back to the kitchen.

“I wish I could show you my favorite piece,” he’s saying now. “It was the first in the series. I call it One Forgotten Night. I sold it to this collector on the Lower East Side. Still, it’s hard, letting go of the art. I know I have to—that whole starving artist thing is overrated—but I miss it every day.” 

His voice dips softer. 

“The crazy thing is, every one of the pieces in that series is modeled after someone. Friends, people here in the building, strangers I found on the street. I remember all of them. But I can’t for the life of me remember who he was.” 

Juhoon swallows. “You think it was a boy?” 

“Yeah. I do. It just had this energy.” 

“Maybe you just dreamed him.” 

“Maybe,” says Martin. “I’ve never been good at remembering dreams. But you know...” he trails off, staring at Juhoon the way he did that night in bed, beginning to glow. “You remind me of that piece.” he puts a hand over his face. “God, that sounds like the worst pickup line in the world. I’m sorry. I’m going to take a shower.” 

“I should get going,” says Juhoon. “Thanks for the coffee.” 

Martin bites his lip. “Do you have to?” 

No, he doesn’t. Juhoon knows he could follow Martin right into the shower, wrap himself in a towel, and sit on the living room floor and see what kind of painting Martin would make of him today. He could. He could. He could fall into this moment forever, but he knows there is no future in it. Only an infinite number of presents, and he has lived as many of those with Martin as he can bear. 

“Sorry,” he says, chest aching, but Martin only shrugs. 

“We’ll see each other again,” he says with so much faith. “After all, we’re neighbors now.” 

Juhoon manages a pale shadow of a smile. “That’s right.” 

Martin walks him to the door, and with every step, Juhoon resists the urge to look back. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” says Martin. 

“I won’t,” promises Juhoon, as the door swings shut. He sighs, leaning back against it, listens to Martin’s footsteps retreating down the cluttered hall, before he forces himself up, and forward, and away.

En Route to Berlin, Germany 

July 3, 2035, After the Deal

The glasses rattle faintly on the table as the train rolls through the German countryside. Juhoon sits in the dining car, sipping his coffee and staring out the window, marveling at the speed with which the world goes past. 

Humans are capable of such wondrous things. Of cruelty, and war, but also art and invention. He will think this again and again over the years, when bombs are dropped, and buildings felled, when terror consumes whole countries. But also when the first images are impressed on film, when planes rise into the air, when movies go from black-and-white to color. 

Juhoon is amazed. 

He will always be amazed. 

Lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t hear the conductor until he is beside him, one hand coming to rest lightly on his shoulder. 

“Your ticket, please.” 

Juhoon smiles. “Of course.” 

He looks down at the table, pretends to shuffle through his purse. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, rising, “I must have left it in my room.” 

It is not the first time they have done this dance, but it is the first time the porter has decided to follow him, trailing like a shadow as he makes his way toward a car he does not have, for a ticket that he never bought. 

Juhoon quickens his pace, hoping to put a door between them, but it is no use, the conductor is with him every step, and so he slows, and stops before a door that leads to a room that is certainly not his, hoping that at least it will be empty. 

It is not. 

As he reaches for the handle, it escapes, sliding open onto a dim compartment, an elegant man in a slickback leaning in the doorway, blonde hair drawn back like ink against his temples. 

Relief rolls through him. 

“Mr. Edwards,” says the conductor, straightening.

One eyebrow raised, Martin takes one look at him, then at the conductor behind him, takes a hint, and with a glint in his eye, “There you are, darling,” he says in a voice as smooth and rich as summer honey. His eyes slide from him to the conductor. “Thank you for bringing him back,” he says, a sly smile on his lips.

Juhoon manages a smile of his own, cloyingly sweet. 

Drawing a slip of paper from the pocket of his coat. Martin signs a hefty check and draws Juhoon close. “What a forgetful little thing.” 

He bristles, but holds his tongue, leans instead into the weight of him. 

The conductor surveys the slip, and bowing deeply, wishes them a pleasant night, and the moment he is gone he pulls away from Martin. 

“Why the hell would you do that?” 

Martin takes a long look at him, “You remind me of someone.”

Juhoon stares back at him, eyes hopeful.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have stars?”

He takes him to the steps of a pillared opera house, Martin stands beside him, a gray scarf around his collar, eyes dancing beneath the brim of a silk top hat. 

The evening bustles with movement, men and women climbing the steps arm in arm to see the show. He learns that it is Wagner, it is Tristan und Isolde, though these things mean nothing to him yet. he does not know it is the height of his career. he does not know it has become his masterpiece. But he can taste the promise, like sugar in the air, as they pass through a lobby of marble columns and painted arches, and into a concert hall of velvet and gold. 

Martin rests a hand on the small of his back, guiding him forward to the front of a balcony, a low box with a perfect view of the stage. 

It begins with music. 

The rising tension of a symphony, notes like waves: rolling through the hall, crashing against the walls. The inversion of a storm against a ship. 

And then, the arrival of Tristan. Of Isolde. 

Their voices larger than the stage. 

He has heard musicals, of course, heard symphonies and plays, voices so pure they bring him to tears. But he has never heard anything like this.

The way they sing. The scope and scale of their emotions. 

The desperate passion in their movements. The raw power of their joy, and pain. 

He wants to bottle this feeling, to carry it with him through the dark. 

It will be years before he hears a record of this symphony and turns the volume up until it hurts, surrounds himself with sound, though it will never be the same as this. 

Right now, he is thinking only of the music, the symphony, the story. He is drawn back to the stage by the anguish in a note. By the tangle of limbs in an embrace, by the look of lovers on the stage. 

He leans forward, breathes the opera in until it aches inside his chest. 

The curtain falls on the first act, and Juhoon is on his feet, ringing with applause. 

It is a long play, and yet, it is over too soon. 

Hours, gone in moments. Juhoon wishes he could stay, tucked in this seat, and start the opera again, fold himself between the lovers and their tragedy, lose himself in the beauty of their voices. But he is on his feet in seconds, not even turning to say goodbye. Because if he stays any longer, he wouldn’t want to leave.

He doesn’t notice Martin calling after him.

This version of Martin will also forget him anyway.

Manhattan, New York City

August 18, 2035, A Month After Berlin

The Alloway is busier today. 

Martin is sitting by the bar, half-listening to the barista ramble about his secret affairs.

Juhoon studies him, the habit like thumbing through a book. So he’s a musician, he realizes. It’s deja vu, and he’s reminded of the version of Martin from 1934. The same face, with the same profession, in the same place, like a cruel joke.

His blonde hair tumbles forward into his eyes, unruly, untamable. He pushes it back, but in seconds it has fallen forward again, making him look younger than he is. 

He has the kind of face, he thinks, that can’t keep secrets well. 

There is a short queue, so Juhoon hangs back in the corner. He raps his nails along the high-top table, and a few moments later an orange cat pokes itself out from somewhere. He pets him absently, and waits for the crowd to thin from three, to two, to one. 

Martin notices him, lingering nearby, and something like recognition crosses his face, too fast for even him to read, before his attention flicks back to the window. 

“And for you, lovely?” the bartender says.

“A Rosé,” he says, all practiced charm.

As soon as he gives him the drink. The bartender makes his way to the back of the bar, into another room. Without paying, Juhoon walks away with the drink.

Two seats away from him, Martin stares at him. He lifts a questioning brow. “Are you serious right now?” 

Stopping in his tracks, Juhoon just stares at him, drink forgotten.

He rocks back on his heels. “You are.” 

Juhoon falters, thrown off by the edge in his voice.

“You can’t just take it without paying for it.” Martin chides.

Juhoon straightens. “Well, obviously,” he says, a little indignant. “But it’s just one drink.” 

Martin’s gaze hardens, the flat regard of a door slammed shut. “So you're leaving just like that?” Martin scoffs. "You never change." 

A rock drops inside Juhoon's chest. “What?” 

“I remember you.” 

Three words, large enough to tip the world. 

I remember you. 

Juhoon lurches as if struck, about to fall. He tries to right himself. “No you don’t,” he says firmly. 

His eyes narrow. “Yes. I do. You’re the opera boy. Who steals a glass of Rosé anyway? And then you have the nerve to act all innocent.” 

Juhoon closes his eyes, vision swimming. 

He doesn’t understand. That was a month ago. He should have forgotten him.

He can’t— 

“Now look,” he says, “I think you better go.” 

Juhoon opens his eyes, and sees Martin pointing to the door. His feet won’t move. They refuse to carry him away from those three words. 

I remember you. 

It’s been years. 

Hundreds? And no one has said those words, no one has ever, ever remembered. He wants to grab him by the sleeve, wants to pull him forward, wants to know why, how, what is so special about today. 

He grips the counter, feels like he might faint. Martin’s eyes soften, just a fraction. 

“Please,” he says under his breath. “Just go.” 

He tries. 

He can’t. 

Juhoon gets as far as the open door, the four short steps from the shop to the street, before something in him gives. 

He slumps into the lip at the top of the stairs, puts his head in his hands, feels like he might cry, or laugh, but instead, he stares back through the beveled glass insert of the Alloway door. He watches Martin every time he comes into the frame. He cannot tear his eyes away. 

I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you.

I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you.

I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you. I remember you— 

“What are you doing?” 

Juhoon blinks, and sees Martin standing in the open doorway, arms crossed. The sun has shifted lower in the sky, the light going thin. 

“Waiting for you,” Juhoon says, cringing as soon as he says it. “I wanted to apologize,” he continues. 

“It’s fine,” Martin says curtly. 

“No, it’s not,” Juhoon says, rising to his feet. “Let me buy you a coffee.” 

“You don’t have to do that.” 

“I insist. As an apology.” 

“I’m busy.” 

“Please.” 

And it must be something in the way he says it, the sheer mix of hope and need, the obvious fact it means more than a book, more than a sorry, that makes the boy look him in the eyes, makes him realize that he hadn’t really, not until now. There's something strange, searching in his gaze, but whatever he sees when he looks at him, it changes his mind. 

“One coffee,” Martin says. “And you’re still banned from the Alloway.” 

Juhoon feels the air rush back into his lungs. “Deal.” 

Somewhere in Manhattan, New York City 

August 18, 2035 

Juhoon lingers on the Alloway steps an hour until it closes. 

Martin locks up, and turns to see him sitting there, and Juhoon braces again for the blankness in his gaze, the confirmation that their earlier encounter was only some strange glitch, a slipped stitch in the centuries of his curse. 

But when he looks at him, he knows him. He is certain he knows him. 

His brows go up, as if he’s surprised that he’s still there. But his annoyance has given way to something else—something that confuses him even more. It’s less hostile than suspicion, more guarded than relief, and it is still wonderful, because of the knowledge in it. Not a first meeting, but a second—or rather, a third—and for once he is not the only one who knows. 

“Well?” he says, holding out his hand, not for him to take, but for him to lead the way, and he does. They walk a few blocks in awkward silence, Juhoon stealing glances that tell him nothing but the line of his nose, the angle of his jaw. 

He looks just like he did, all those years ago. He has a starved look, wolfish and lean, tall enough to stand out even in New York City, he hunches his shoulders as if to make himself shorter, smaller, less obtrusive. Perhaps, in the right clothes, perhaps, with the right air, perhaps, perhaps; but the longer he looks at him, the stronger the resemblance to all those other Martins in the past. 

And yet. 

There is something about him that keeps catching his attention, snagging it the way a nail snags a sweater. 

Twice Martin catches Juhoon looking at him, and frowns. 

Once Juhoon catches him stealing his own glance, and smiles. 

At the coffee shop, he tells him to grab a table while he buys the drinks, and he hesitates, as if torn between the urge to pay and the fear of being poisoned, before retreating to a corner booth. He orders him a latte. 

“Three eighty,” says the girl behind the counter. 

Juhoon cringes at the cost. He pulls a few bills from his pocket, the last of what he took from the unaware people on the streets of fifth avenue. He doesn’t have the cash for two drinks, and he can’t just walk out with them, because there’s a boy waiting. And he remembers. 

Juhoon glances toward the table, where he sits, arms folded, staring out the window. 

“Jason!” calls the barista. 

“Jason!” 

Juhoon startles, realizing that means him. 

“Jason?” Martin says when he sits down.

No, he thinks. “Yeah,” he says. “And you’re...” 

Martin, he thinks just before he says it. 

“Martin.” It fits him, like a coat. The bleached hair, the steady gaze attached to piercing eyes. He has known several Martins, in London, Paris, Boston, and L.A., but he is not like any of them. 

Martin's gaze drops to the table, his cup, his empty hands. “You didn’t get anything.” 

He waves it away. “I’m not really thirsty,” he lies. 

“It feels weird.” 

“Why?” Juhoon shrugs. “I said I’d buy you a coffee. Besides,” he hesitates, “I lost my wallet. I didn’t have enough for two.” 

Martin frowns. “Is that why you stole the Rosé?” 

“I didn’t steal it. And I said I’m sorry.” 

“Did you?” 

“With the coffee.” 

“Speaking of,” Martin says, standing. “How do you take it?” 

“What?” 

“The coffee. I can’t sit here and drink alone, it makes me feel like an asshole.” 

He smiles. “Hot chocolate. Dark.” 

Those brows quirk up again. He walks away to order, says something that makes the barista laugh and lean forward, like a flower drawn to the sun. He returns with a second cup and a croissant, and sets them both in front of him before taking his seat, and now they are uneven again. Balance tipped, restored, and tipped again, and it is the kind of game he’s played a hundred times, a sparring match made of small gestures, the stranger smiling across the table. 

But this is not his stranger, and he is not smiling. 

“So,” says Martin, “what was all that today, with the Rosé?” 

Juhoon wraps his hands around the coffee cup, pausing. “I didn’t think you’d remember me.” 

The question rattles like loose change in his chest, like pebbles in a porcelain bowl; it shakes inside him, threatening to spill out. 

How did you remember? How? How? 

He tilts his head a bit, "I guess you made an impression.” 

An impression. 

An impression is like a mark. 

Juhoon runs his fingers through the foam on his hot chocolate, watches the milk smooth again in his wake. Martin doesn’t notice, but he noticed him, he remembered. 

What is happening? 

“So,” he says, but the sentence goes nowhere. 

“So,” Juhoon echoes, because he cannot say what he wants. “Tell me about yourself.” he says instead.

Who are you? Why are you? What is happening? How do you remember?

Martin bites his lip and says, “Not much to tell.” 

“Did you always want to be a musician?" 

Martin’s face turns wistful. “I’m not sure it’s the job that people dream of, but I like it.” He’s lifting the latte to his mouth when someone shuffles past, knocking against his chair. Martin rights the cup in time, but the man begins to apologize. And doesn’t stop. 

“Hey, I’m so sorry.” His face twists with guilt. 

“It’s fine.” 

“Did I make you spill?” asks the man with genuine concern. 

“Nope,” says Martin. “You’re good.” 

If he registers the man’s intensity, he gives no sign. His focus stays firmly on Juhoon, as if he can will the man away. 

“That was weird,” Juhoon says, when he’s finally gone. 

Martin only shrugs. “Accidents happen.” 

That’s—that isn’t what he meant. But the thoughts are passing trains, and he can’t afford to be derailed. 

“So,” he says, “the Alloway. Do you stay there all the time?” 

Martin shakes his head. “No. But I mean, it might as well be my second home, but it belongs to a woman named Meredith, she spends most of her time on cruises. What about you? What do you do when you’re not stealing glasses of Rosé?” 

Juhoon weighs the question, the many possible answers, all of them lies, and settles for something closer to the truth. 

“I'm a talent scout,” he lies. “Music, mostly, but also art.” 

Martin’s face hardens. “You should meet my friend.” 

“Oh?” asks Juhoon, wishing he’d lied. “Is he an artist?” 

“I think he’d say he fosters art, that it’s a type of artist, maybe. He likes to”—he makes a flourish with his hands—‘“nurture the raw potential, shape the narrative of the creative future.” 

Juhoon thinks he would like to meet his friend, but he doesn’t say it. 

“Do you have siblings?” he asks. 

He shakes his head, tearing a corner off the croissant because he hasn’t touched it, and his stomach’s growling. 

“Lucky,” Martin says. 

“Lonely,” he counters. 

Juhoon looks at him, and there it is again, that strange intensity, and maybe it’s just that so few people make eye contact in the city, but he can’t shake the feeling that Martin's looking for something in his face. 

“What is it?” he asks, and he starts to say one thing, but changes course. 

“Your freckles-you look like you have stars.” 

Juhoon smiles. “I’ve heard. My own little constellation. It’s the first thing everyone sees.” 

Martin shifts in his seat. “What do you see,” he says, “when you look at me?” 

His voice is light enough, but there is something in the question, a weight, like a stone buried in a snowball. He’s been waiting to ask. The answer matters. 

“I see a boy with blonde hair and kind eyes and an open face.” 

Martin stares at him, really stares at him, and frowns a little. “Is that all?” 

“Of course not,” he says. “But I don’t know you yet.” 

“Yet,” he echoes, and there’s something like a smile in his voice. 

He purses his lips, considers him again. 

For a moment, they are the only silent spot in the bustling café. 

Live long enough, and you learn how to read a person. To ease them open like a book, some passages underlined and others hidden between the lines. 

Juhoon scans his face, the slight furrow where his brows go in and up, the set of his lips, the way he rubs one palm as if working out an ache, even as he leans forward, and in, his attention wholly on him. 

“I see someone who cares,” Juhoon says slowly. “Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.” 

Martin stares at him, all the humor gone out of his face, and he knows he’s gotten too close to the truth. 

Juhoon laughs nervously, and the sound rushes back in around them. “Sorry,” he says, shaking his head. “Too deep. I probably should have just said you were good-looking.” 

Martin’s mouth quirks, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “At least you think I’m good-looking.” 

“What about me?” he asks, trying to break the sudden tension. 

But for the first time, Martin won’t look him in the eyes. “I’ve never been good at reading people.” He nudges the cup away, and stands, and Juhoon thinks he’s ruined it. He’s leaving. 

But then Martin looks down at him and says, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” 

And the air rushes back into his lungs. 

“Always,” he says. 

And this time, when he holds out his hand, he knows he’s inviting him to take it.

Manhattan, New York City 

August 18, 2035

He follows Martin to a bar that’s too crowded, too loud. 

All the bars in Brooklyn are like that, too little space for too many bodies, and the Merchant is apparently no exception, even on a Thursday. Juhoon and Martin are crammed into a narrow patio out back, bundled together under an awning, but he still has to lean in to hear his voice over the noise. 

“Where are you from?” Juhoon starts. 

“Ottawa. Canada. You?” 

“Seoul,” he says. The words ache a little in his throat. 

“You’re Korean? I mean, I knew that much—but, you don’t have an accent.” 

“I moved around.” 

They are sharing an order of fries and a pair of happy-hour beers. Juhoon wishes he could go back in and fetch them some proper drinks, but he’s already told him the lie about the wallet, and he doesn’t want to pull any more tricks, not after the Rose. 

Plus, he’s afraid. 

Afraid to let him walk away. 

Afraid to let him out of sight. 

Whatever this is, a blip, a mistake, a beautiful dream, or a piece of impossible luck, he’s afraid to let it go. Let this version of Martin go. Because he remembers him. He remembers him.

One wrong step, and he’ll wake up. One wrong step, and the thread will snap, the curse will shudder back into place, and it will be over, and Martin will be gone, and he will be alone again. 

He forces himself back into the present. Enjoy it while it lasts. It cannot last. But right here, right now— 

“Penny for your thoughts,” he calls over the crowd. 

He smiles. “I can’t wait for summer.” It’s not a lie. It has been a long, damp spring, and he is tired of being cold. Summer means hot days, and nights where the light lingers. Summer means another year alive. Another year without— 

“If you could have one thing,” cuts in Martin, “what would it be?” 

He studies him, squinting at him as if he’s a book, not a person; something to be read. He stares back at him like he’s a ghost. A miracle. An impossible thing. 

You, he thinks, but he lifts his empty glass and says, “Another beer.” 

Juhoon can account for every second of his life, but that night, with Martin, the moments seem to bleed together. Time slides by as they bounce from bar to bar, happy hour giving way to dinner and then to late-night drinks, and every time they hit the point where the evening splits, and one road leads their separate ways and the other carries on ahead, they choose the second road. 

They stay together, each waiting for the other to say “It’s getting late” or “I should be going,” or “See you around.” There is some unspoken pact, an unwillingness to sever whatever this is, and he knows why he’s afraid to break the thread, but he wonders about Martin. Wonders at the loneliness he sees behind his eyes. Wonders at the way the waiters and the bartenders and the other patrons look at him, the warmth he doesn’t seem to notice. 

And then it is almost midnight, and they are eating cheap pizza, walking side by side through the first warm night of spring, as the clouds stretch overhead, low and lit by the moon. 

He looks up, and so does Martin, and for a moment, only a moment, he looks overwhelmingly, unbearably sad. 

“I miss the stars,” Martin says. 

“So do I,” Juhoon says, and his gaze drops back to him, and he smiles. 

Who are you?

His eyes have gone glassy, and the way he says “who” almost sounds like a “how”, less a question of how he’s doing and more a question of how he’s here, and he wants to ask him the same thing, but he has a good reason, and he’s just a little drunk. 

And simply, perfectly, normal. 

But he can’t be normal. 

Because normal people don’t remember him. 

They’ve reached the subway. Martin stops, “This is me.” 

Martin's hand slips free of his, and there it is, that old familiar fear, of endings, of something giving way to nothing, of moments unwritten and memories erased. He doesn’t want the night to end. 

Doesn’t want the spell to break. Doesn’t— 

“I want to see you again,” says Martin. 

The hope fills him chest until it hurts. Juhoon’s heard those words a hundred times, but for the first time, they feel real. Possible.

“I want you to see me again, too.” 

Martin smiles, the kind of smile that takes over an entire face. 

He pulls out his cell, and Juhoon’s heart sinks. He tells him that his phone is broken, when the truth is, he’s never needed one before. Even if he had someone to call, he could not call them. His fingers would slip uselessly over the screen. He has no e-mail, either, no way to send a message of any kind, thanks to the whole thou-shalt-not-write part of his curse. 

“I didn’t know you could exist these days without one.” 

“Old-fashioned,” he says. 

Martin offers to come by his place the next day. Where does he live? And it feels as if the universe is mocking him now. 

“I'm staying at a friend's place while they’re out of town,” he lies. “Why don’t I meet you at the Alloway?” 

Martin nods. “The Alloway, then,” he says, backing away. 

“Saturday?” 

“Saturday.” 

“Don’t go disappearing.” 

Juhoon laughs, a small, brittle thing. And then he’s walking away, he’s got a foot down the first step, and the panic grips him. 

“Wait,” he says, calling him back. “I need to tell you something.” 

“Oh god,” Martin groans. “You have a boyfriend.” 

“No.” 

“You’re in the CIA and you leave for a top-secret mission tomorrow.” 

Juhoon laughs. “God, no.” 

“You’re—” 

“My real name isn’t Jason.” 

Martin pulls back, confused. “... okay.” 

He doesn’t know if he can say it, if the curse will let him, but he has to try. “I didn’t tell you my real name because, well—it’s complicated. But I like you, and I want you to know—to hear it from me.” 

Martin straightens, sobering. “Well then, what is it?” 

“Its J—” The sound lodges, for just a second, the stiffness of a muscle long since fallen to disuse. A rusty cog. And then—it scrapes free. 

“Jju.” he swallows, hard. “My name’s Jju.” 

It hangs in the air between them. 

And then Martin smiles. “Well, okay,” he says.

“Goodnight, Jju.” 

As simple as that.

One syllable falling from a tongue. 

And it’s the best sound he’s ever heard. He wants to throw his arms around Martin, wants to hear it again, and again, the impossible word filling him like air, making him feel solid. 

Real. 

“Goodnight, Martin,” Juhoon says, willing him to turn and go, because he doesn’t think he can bring himself to turn away from him. 

He stands there, rooted to the spot at the top of the subway steps until he’s out of sight, holds him breath and waits to feel the thread snap, the world shudder back into shape, waits for the fear and the loss and the knowledge that it was just a fluke, a cosmic error, a mistake, that it is over now, that it will never happen again. 

But he doesn’t feel any of those things. 

All he feels is joy, and hope. 

The evening is quiet, and he is alone, but for once it is not the same as being lonely. 

Goodnight, Jju, Martin said, and Juhoon cannot help but wonder if he has somehow broken the spell. 

He smiles, and whispers to himself. “Goodnight, J—” 

But the curse closes around his throat, the name lodging there, as it always has. 

And yet. 

And yet. 

Goodnight, Jju. 

Somehow, impossibly, Martin has found a way in. 

Somehow, he remembers him. 

How? How? The question thuds with the drum of his heart, but in this moment, Juhoon does not care. 

In this moment, he is holding to the sound of his name, his real name, on someone else’s tongue, and it is enough, it is enough, it is enough.

Manhattan, New York City 

August 18, 2035 That same night

Martin walks home alone through the dark. 

Jju, he thinks, turning the name over in his mouth. Jju, who looked at him and saw a boy with blonde hair, kind eyes, and an open face. 

Nothing more. And nothing else. 

A cold gust blows, and he pulls his coat close, and looks up at the starless sky. 

And smiles.

Brooklyn, New York City 

After so many years, Juhoon thought he’d come to terms with time. 

He thought he’d made peace with it—or that they’d found a way to coexist—not friends by any means, but at least no longer enemies. 

And yet, the time between Thursday night and Saturday afternoon is merciless, every second doled out with the care of an old woman counting pennies to pay for bread. The minutes inflate around him, an ocean of undrinkable time between now and then, between here and the Alloway, between him and Martin. 

He’s spent the last two nights at a place in Prospect Park, a cozy two-bedroom with a bay window belonging to Gerard, a children’s book writer he met one winter. A king-size bed, a pile of blankets, the soft hypnotic tick of the radiator, and still he could not sleep. Could not do anything but count and wait, and wish that he had said tomorrow, had only to bear one day instead of two. 

For years he’s managed to suffer time, but now, now there is a present and a future, now there is something waiting ahead, now he cannot wait to see the look on Martin’s face, to hear his name on his lips. 

Juhoon showers until the water goes cold, dries and styles his hair three different ways, sits on the kitchen island tossing kernels of cereal up into the air, trying to catch them on his tongue, as the clock on the wall inches forward from 10:13am. to 10:14am. Juhoon groans. He isn’t supposed to meet Martin until 5:00pm. And time is slowing a little more with every minute, and he thinks he might lose his mind. 

It has been so long since he felt this kind of boredom, the stir-crazy inability to focus, and it takes him all morning to realize he isn’t bored at all. 

He’s nervous. 

Nervous, like tomorrow, a word for things that have not happened yet. A word for futures, when for so long all he’s had are presents. 

Juhoon isn’t used to being nervous. 

There's no reason to be when you are always alone, when any awkward moment can be erased by a closed door, an instant apart, and every meeting is a fresh start. A clean slate. 

The clock reaches 11:00am, and he decides he cannot stay inside. 

He sweeps up the few fallen pieces of leftover cereal, sets the apartment back the way he found it, and heads out into the late Brooklyn morning. Flits between boutiques, desperate for distraction, assembling a new outfit because for once, the one he has on right now won’t do. It is, after all, the same one he wore before. 

“Before”—another word that’s lost its shape. 

Juhoon picks out acid wash jeans and a pair of black Chelsea boots with a low heel, a slim-fit v-neck top with a plunging neckline, and shrugs the leather jacket over the top, even though it doesn’t match. It’s still the one piece he cannot bear to leave. 

Juhoon lets an enthusiastic girl in a makeup store sit him down on a stool and spend an hour applying various highlighters, liners, shades. When it’s over, the face in the mirror is pretty, but wrong, the warm hue of his eyes cooled by the soft smoky shadow around them, his skin too smooth, the freckles hidden by a matte foundation. 

Martin’s voice rises up like fog against the reflection. 

You have stars. 

Juhoon sends the girl off in search of coral lipstick, and the moment he’s alone, Juhoon wipes the foundation away. 

Somehow, he manages to shave off hours until it is 4:00pm, but he is outside the Alloway now, buzzing with hope and fear. So he forces himself to circle the block, to count the paving stones, to memorize each and every shop front until it’s 4:45pm. and he cannot bear it anymore. 

Four short steps. One open door. 

And a single, leaden fear. 

What if? 

What if they spent too long apart? 

What if the cracks have filled back in, the curse sealed around him once again? 

What if it was just a fluke? A cruel joke? 

What if what if what if— 

Juhoon holds his breath, opens the door, and steps in. 

But Martin isn’t there—instead there is someone else behind the bar. 

It is the boy. The one from the rooftop. Now he leans against the high-top table of the bar, paging through a large book full of glossy photos. 

The boy is strikingly pretty, in a striped gray long sleeve slouching off one shoulder. He looks up at the sound of the bell. 

“Yes?” 

Juhoon falters, knocked off-balance by a vertigo of want and fear. “I’m looking for Martin.” He says.

The boy stares at him, studying him— 

Then a familiar voice comes from the back. 

“Hyeon, do you think this looks...” Martin rounds the corner, smoothing his shirt, and trails off when he sees Juhoon. For an instant, a fraction of a fraction of a moment, he thinks it is over. That he has forgotten, and he is alone again, the thin spell made days before snipped like a stray thread. 

But then Martin smiles, and says, “You’re early.” 

And Juhoon is dizzy with air, with hope, with light. He still remembers. He remembers me. He remembers me.

“Sorry,” Juhoon says, a little breathless. A lot.

“Don’t be. I see you’ve met Seonghyeon. Hyeon, this is Jju.” 

He loves the way Martin says his name. 

Jju. Juhoon almost giggles on the spot, giddy with excitement.

Jju. Jju. Jju. 

“It’s like déjà vu,” says Seonghyeon, shaking his head. “You ever meet someone for the first time, but you’re sure you’ve seen them before?” 

Juhoon almost laughs. “Yes.” 

“I’ve already fed Mars,” says Martin, talking to Seonghyeon as he shrugs on his coat. “Don’t sprinkle any more catnip.” Martin turns to Juhoon with a sheepish grin. “You ready to go?” 

They’re halfway to the door when Seonghyeon snaps his fingers. “Baroque,” he says. “Or maybe Neoclassical.” 

Juhoon stares back, confused. “The art periods?” 

The other boy nods. “I have this theory that every face belongs to one. A time. A school.” 

“Hyeon is a post-grad,” interjects Martin. “Art history, in case you couldn’t tell.” 

“Martin here is obviously pure Romanticism. Our friend Keonho is Postmodern—the avant-garde, of course, not minimalism. But you...” 

He taps a finger to his lips. “There's something timeless about you.” 

Rolling his eyes, “Stop flirting with my date,” says Martin. 

Date. The word thrills through him. A date is something made, something planned; not a chance of opportunity, but time set aside at one point for another, a moment in the future. 

“Have fun!” calls Seonghyeon cheerfully. “Don’t stay out too late.” 

Martin rolls his eyes. “Bye, Hyeon,” he says, holding the door. 

“You owe me,” he adds. 

Juhoon smiles as he follows him up onto the street. He aches with longing, wonders what it would feel like to know someone that well, for the knowing to go both ways. Wonders if they could have a joke like that, he and Martin. If they can know each other long enough. 

It is a cold evening, and they walk side by side, not intertwined but elbows brushing, each leaning a little into the other’s warmth. Juhoon marvels at it, this boy beside him, his nose burrowed down into the scarf around his throat. Marvels at the slight difference in his manner, the smallest shift in ease. 

Days ago, he was a stranger to him, and now, he is not, and he is learning him at the same rate he is learning him, and it is still the beginning, it is still so new, but they have moved one step along the road between unknown and familiar. A step he has never been allowed to take with anyone. 

And yet. 

Here he is, with this boy. 

Who are you? He thinks as Martin’s glasses fog with steam. He catches him looking, and winks. 

“Where are we going?” Juhoon asks when they reach the subway, and Martin looks at him and smiles, a shy, lopsided grin. 

“It’s a surprise,” he answers as they descend the steps. 

They take the G train to Greenpoint, backtrack half a block to a nondescript storefront, a neon WASH AND FOLD sign in the window. Martin holds the door, and Juhoon steps through. He looks around at the washing machines, the white-noise hum of the rinse cycle, the shudder of the spin. 

“It’s a laundromat,” he says. 

But Martin’s eyes go bright with mischief. “It’s a speakeasy.” 

A memory lurches through him at the word, and he is in Chicago, nearly a century ago, jazz circling like smoke in the underground bar, the air heavy with the scent of gin and cigars, the rattle of glasses, the open secret of it all. 

Martin is holding open the door at the back of the laundromat, and he’s met by the neon lights and electronic chime of an arcade game. Pinball, to be precise. The machines line the walls, crammed side by side to make room for the tables and stools, the wooden bar. 

Juhoon stares around, bemused. It is not a speakeasy at all, not in the strictest sense. It is simply one thing hidden behind another. A palimpsest in reverse. 

“Well?” he asks with a sheepish grin. “What do you think?” 

Juhoon feels himself smiling back, dizzy with relief. “I love it.” 

“All right,” he says, producing a bag of quarters from one pocket. “Ready to lose?” 

It’s early, but the place is far from empty. 

Martin leads him to the corner, where he claims a pair of vintage machines, and balances a tower of quarters on each. He holds his breath as he inserts the first coin, braces for the inevitable clink of it rolling back into the dish at the bottom. But it goes in, and the game springs to life, emitting a cheerful cacophony of color and sound. 

Juhoon exhales, a mixture of delight and relief. 

Perhaps he is anonymous, the act as faceless as a theft. Perhaps, but in the moment, he doesn’t care. 

He pulls back the lever, and plays. 

“How are you so good at pinball?” Martin demands as he racks up points. 

Juhoon isn’t sure. The truth is, he’s never played before, and it’s taken him a few times to get the hang of the game, but now he’s found his stride. 

“I’m a fast learner,” he says, just before the ball slips between his paddles. 

“HIGH SCORE!” announces the game in a mechanical drone. 

“Well done,” calls Martin over the noise. “Better own your victory.” 

The screen flashes, waiting for him to enter his name. Juhoon hesitates. 

“Like this,” Martin says, showing him how to toggle the red box between the letters. He steps aside, but when he tries, the cursor doesn’t move. The light just flashes over the letter J, mocking. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, backing away, but Martin steps in. 

“New machines, vintage problems.” He bumps it with his hip, and the square goes solid around the J, “there we go.” 

Martin's about to step aside, but Juhoon catches his arm. “Enter my name while I grab the next round.” 

It’s easier now that the place is full. He swipes a couple of beers from the edge of the counter, weaves back through the crowd before the bartender even turns around. And when he returns, drinks in hand, the first things he sees are the letters, flashing in bright red on the screen. 

Joo. 

“I didn’t know how to spell your name,” he says. 

And it’s wrong, but it doesn’t even matter; nothing matters but those three letters, glowing back at him, almost like a stamp, a signature. 

“Swap,” says Martin, hands resting on his hips as he guides him over to his machine. “Let’s see if I can beat that score.” He holds his breath and hopes that no one ever will. 

They play until they run out of quarters and beer, until the place is too crowded for comfort, until they truly can’t hear each other over the ring and clash of the games and the shouts of the other people, and then they spill out of the dark arcade. They go back through the too-bright laundromat, and then out onto the street, still bubbling with energy. 

It’s dark out now, the sky overhead a low canopy of dense gray clouds, promising rain, and Martin shoves his hands in his pockets, looks up and down the street. “What now?” 

“You want me to choose?” 

“This is an equal opportunity date,” Martin says, rocking from heel to toe. “I provided the first chapter. It’s your turn.” 

Juhoon hums to himself, looking around, summoning a mental picture of the neighborhood. 

“Good thing I found my wallet,” he says, patting his pocket. He didn't, of course, but he did liberate a few twenties from the illustrator’s kitchen drawer before he left that morning. Judging by the recent profile of him in The Times, and the reported size of his latest book deal, Gerard won’t miss it. 

“This way.” Juhoon takes off down the sidewalk. 

“How far are we going?” Martin asks fifteen minutes later, when they’re still walking. 

“I thought you were a New Yorker,” he teases. 

But Martin's strides are long enough to match Juhoon's speed, and five minutes later they round the corner, and there it is. The Nitehawk cinema in Prospect Park lights up the darkening street, white bulbs tracing patterns on the brick façade, the word CINEMA picked out in red neon light across its front. 

Juhoon has been to every movie theater in Brooklyn, the massive multiplexes with their stadium seats and the indie gems with worn-out sofas, has witnessed every mixture of new releases and nostalgia. 

And the Nitehawk is one of his favorites. 

He scans the board, buys two tickets to a showing of North by Northwest, since Martin says he’s never seen it, then takes his hand and leads them down the hall into the dark. 

There are little tables between each seat with plastic menus and slips of paper to write your order on. He’s never been able to order anything, of course—the pencil marks dissolve, the waiter forgets about him as soon as he is out of sight—so he leans in to watch Martin fill out their card, thrilled by the simple potential of the act. 

The previews ramble on as the seats fill up around them, and Martin takes his hand, their fingers lacing together like links in a chain.

Juhoon glances over at him, painted in the low theater light. Blonde hair. High cheekbones. The cupid’s bow of his mouth. 

It is hardly the first time he’s seen Martin’s features echoed in a human face. He’s seen many versions of Martin.

But this one’s by far his favorite.

“You’re staring,” whispers Martin under the sound of the previews. 

Juhoon blinks. “Sorry.” he shakes his head. “You look like someone I used to know.” 

“Someone you liked, I hope.” 

“Not really.” He shoots him a look of mock affront, and Juhoon almost laughs. “It was more complicated than that.” 

“Love, then?” 

He looks down, and his delivery is slower, less emphatic. “He was very nice to look at.” 

Martin laughs as the lights dim, and the movie starts. 

A different waiter appears, crouching low as he delivers their food, and he plucks fries from the plate one by one, sinking into the comfort of the film. He glances over to see if Martin’ enjoying himself, but he’s not even looking at the screen. His face, all energy and light an hour before, is a rictus of tension. One knee bounces restlessly. 

He leans in, whispers. “You don’t like it?” 

Martin flashes a hollow smile. “It’s fine,” he says, shifting in his seat. “Just a little slow.” 

It’s by Hitchcock, of course it’s slow. He wants to say, but instead he whispers, “It’s worth it, I promise.” 

Martin twists toward him, brow folding. “You’ve already seen it?” 

Of course Juhoon has seen it. 

First, in 1959, at a theater in Los Angeles, and then in the ’70s, a double feature with his last film, Family Plot, and then again, a few years back, right in Greenwich Village, during a retrospective. Hitchcock has a way of being resurrected, fed back into the cinema system at regular intervals. 

“Yeah,” Juhoon whispers back. “But I don’t mind.” 

Martin says nothing, but he clearly does mind. His knee goes back to bouncing, and a few minutes later he’s up and out of the seat, walking out into the lobby. 

“Martin,” he calls, confused. “What is it? What’s wrong?” 

He catches up with him as he throws open the theater door and steps out onto the curb. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I needed some air.” 

But that’s obviously not it. He’s pacing. 

“Talk to me, please.” Juhoon says.

His steps slow, and Martin looks at him. Really looks at him, “I just wish you’d told me.” 

“Told you what?” 

“That you’d already seen it.” 

“But you hadn’t,” Juhoon says. “And I didn’t mind seeing it again. I like seeing things again.” 

“Well, I don’t,” he snaps, and then deflates. “I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your problem.” He runs his hands through his hair. “I just—” He shakes his head, and turns to look at him, eyes glassy in the dark. “Do you ever feel like you’re running out of time?” 

Juhoon blinks and it is hundreds of years ago again.

“I don’t mean in that normal, time flies way,” Martin’s saying. “I mean feeling like it's surging by so fast, and you try to reach out and grab it, you try to hold on, but it just keeps rushing away. And every second, there’s a little less time, and a little less air, and sometimes when I’m sitting still, I start to think about it, and when I think about it, I can’t breathe. I have to get up. I have to move.” 

Martin has his arms wrapped around himself, fingers digging into his ribs. 

It’s been a long time since Juhoon felt that kind of urgency, but he remembers it well, remembers the fear, so heavy he thought it might crush him. 

Blink and half your life is gone. 

I do not want to die as I’ve lived. 

Born and buried in the same ten-meter plot. 

Juhoon reaches out and grabs his arm. “Come on,” he says, pulling him down the street. “Let’s go.” 

“Where?” Martin asks, and his hand drops to his and holds on tight. 

“To find you something new.” 

Underground, Brooklyn, New York City 

August 18, 2035

Juhoon leads Martin down the street and around the corner to a nondescript steel door plastered with old posters. A man loiters next to it, chain-smoking and scrolling through pictures on his phone. 

“Jupiter,” he says, unprompted, and the man straightens, and pushes open the door, exposing a narrow platform, and a set of stairs that drops down out of sight. 

“Welcome to the Fourth Rail.” 

Martin shoots him a wary look, but Juhoon grabs his hand and pulls him through. He twists, looking back as the door swings shut. “There is no fourth rail,” he says, and Juhoon flashes him a grin. 

“Exactly.” 

This is what he loves about a city like New York. It is so full of hidden chambers, infinite doors leading into infinite rooms, and if you have the time, you can find so many of them. Some he’s found by accident, others in the course of this or that adventure. He keeps them tucked away, like slips of paper between the pages of his book. 

One stairwell leads to another, the second wider, made of stone. The ceiling arches overhead, plaster giving way to rock, and then tile, the tunnel lit only by a series of electric lanterns, but they’re spaced far enough apart that they do little to actually break the dark. A breadcrumb trail, just enough to see by, which is why Juhoon has the pleasure of seeing Martin’s expression when he realizes where they are. 

The New York City Subway has nearly five hundred active stations, but the number of abandoned tunnels remains a matter of contention. Some of them are open to the public, both monuments to the past and nods to the unfinished future. Some are little more than closed tracks tucked between functioning lines. 

And then some are secrets. 

“Jju...” murmurs Martin, but he holds up a finger, tilts his head. Listening. 

The music starts as an echo, a distant thrum, as much a feeling as a sound. It rises with every downward step, seems to fill the air around them, first a hum, and then a pulse, and then, at last, a beat. 

Ahead the tunnel is bricked up, marked only by the white slash of an arrow to the left. Around the corner, the music grows. One more dead end, one more turn and— 

Sound crashes over them. 

The whole tunnel vibrates with the force of the bass, the reverb of chords against stone. Spotlights pulse blue-white, a strobe reducing the hidden club to still frames; a writhing crowd, bodies bouncing to the beat; a pair of musicians wielding matching electric guitars on a concrete stage; a row of bartenders caught mid-pour. 

The tunnel walls are tiled gray and white, wide bands that wrap in arches overhead, bend down again like ribs, as if they are in the belly of some great, forgotten beast, the rhythm pulsing through its heart. 

The Fourth Rail is primal, heady. 

Juhoon found the tunnel on his own. Years ago, he showed it to the musician-turned-manager looking for a venue. Later that night, he even suggested the name, their heads bent over a cocktail napkin. His pen marks. his idea. He's sure he woke up the next day with a hangover and the first stirrings of the Fourth Rail. Six months later, he saw the guy standing outside the steel doors. Saw the logo they’d designed, a more polished version, tucked beneath the peeling posters, and felt the now-familiar thrill of whispering something into the world and watching it become real. 

Juhoon pulls Martin toward the makeshift bar. 

It’s simple, the tunnel wall divided into three behind a wide slab of pale stone that serves as a pouring surface. The options are vodka, bourbon, or tequila, and a bartender stands, waiting, before each. 

Juhoon orders for them. Two vodkas. 

The transaction happens in silence—there is no point trying to shout over the wall of sound. A series of fingers held up, a ten laid on the bar. The bartender—a slender guy with bright blue eyeshadow—pours two shots, and spreads his hands like a dealer laying down cards. 

Martin lifts his glass and Juhoon raises his too and their mouths move together, but the sounds are swallowed up, the clink of their shots nothing but a small vibration through his fingers. 

The vodka hits his stomach like a match, heat blossoming behind his ribs. 

They set the empty glasses back on the bar, and Juhoon’s already pulling Martin toward the crush of bodies by the stage when the guy behind the bar reaches out and catches Martin’s wrist. 

The bartender smiles, produces a third shot glass, and pours again. He presses his hands to his chest in the universal gesture for it’s on me. 

They drink, and there is the heat again, spreading from his chest to his limbs, and there is Martin’s hand in his, moving into the crowd. 

Up above it may be early spring, but down here it is late summer, humid and heavy. The music is liquid, the air thick as syrup as they plunge into the tangled limbs. The tunnel is bricked up behind the stage, making a world of reverb, a place where sound bends back, redoubles, every note carried, thinning, without trailing off entirely. The guitarists play a complicated riff in perfect unison, adding to the echo chamber effect, churning the waters of the crowd. 

And then a girl steps into the spotlight. 

A teenage sprite in a black baby doll dress and combat boots. Her white-blond hair is piled on his head, done up in twin buns, the ends spiking like a crown. The only color is the slash of her red lips, and the rainbow drawn like a mask across her eyes. The guitarists quicken, fingers flying over strings. The air shakes, the beat thumps through skin and muscle and bone. 

And the girl begins to sing. 

Her voice is a wail, a banshee’s call if a banshee ever screamed in tune. The syllables bleed together, the consonants blur, and Juhoon finds himself leaning in, eager to hear the words. But they draw back, slip under the beat, fold into the feral energy of the Fourth Rail. 

The guitars play their hypnotic chorus. 

The girl seems almost like a puppet, pulled along by the strings. 

Martin, with his head tipped back, and sweat sliding down his cheeks like tears. For an instant he looks impossibly, immeasurably sad, and he remembers the pain in his voice when he spoke of losing time. 

But then he looks at him and smiles, and it’s gone, a trick of the lights, and he wonders who and how and where he came from, knows it is all too good to be true, but in this moment, he is simply glad he’s there. 

He closes his eyes, lets himself fall into the rhythm of the beat, and he is in Berlin, Mexico City, Madrid, and he is right here, right now, with him. 

They dance until their limbs ache. 

Until sweat paints their skin, and the air becomes too thick to breathe. 

Until there’s a lull in the beat, and another silent conversation passed between them like a spark. 

Until Juhoon draws him back toward the bar and the tunnel, back the way they came, but the flow of traffic is a one-way street, the stairs and the steel door only lead in. 

Until Juhoon cocks his head the other way, to a dark arch set in the tunnel wall near the stage, leads him up the narrow stairs, the music fading a little more with every upward step, ears buzzing with the white noise left in its wake. 

Until they spill out into the cool night, filling their lungs with fresh air. 

And the first clear sound Juhoon hears is his laughter. 

Martin turns toward him, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, intoxicated in a way that has less to do with the vodka than with the power of the Fourth Rail. 

He is still laughing when the storm starts. 

A crack of thunder, and seconds later, the rain comes down. Not a drizzle—not even the sparse warming drops that soon give way to a steady rain—but the sudden sheet fall of a downpour. The kind of rain that hits you like a wall, soaks you through in seconds. 

Juhoon gasps at the sudden shock of cold. 

They are ten feet from the nearest awning, but neither of them runs for cover. 

He smiles up into the rain, lets the water kiss his skin. 

Martin looks at him, and Juhoon looks back, and then he spreads his arms as if to welcome the storm, his chest heaving. Water clings to his lashes, slides down his face, rinsing the club from his clothes, and Juhoon thinks, for a moment, that he looks young. 

Human. 

Alive. 

He pulls Martin toward him, relishes the press of his body, warm against the cold. He runs his hand through his hair and for the first time it stays back, exposing the sharp lines of his face, the hungry hollows of his jaw, his eyes, a brighter shade of brown than he has seen them yet. 

“Jju,” Martin breathes, and the sound sends sparks across his skin, and when he kisses him, he tastes like salt, and summer. But it feels too much like a punctuation mark, and he isn’t ready for the night to end, so he kisses him back, deeper, turns the period into a question, into an answer. 

And then they are running, not for shelter, but the train. 

They stumble into his apartment, wet clothes clinging to their skin. 

They are a tangle of limbs in the hallway, unable to get close enough. He pulls the glasses from his face, tosses them onto a nearby chair, shrugs out of his coat, the leather sticking to his skin. And then they are kissing again. Desperate, hungry, wild, as his fingers run over his ribs, hook in the front of his jeans. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, and in answer he pulls his mouth to his, guides his hands to the buttons of his shirt as his finds his belt. He presses him back against the wall, and says his name, and it feels like lightning through his limbs.

Here, now, he is finally Juhoon. 

“Say it again,” he pleads. 

“Say what?” Martin murmurs. 

“My name.” 

Martin smiles. 

“Jju,” he whispers against his throat. 

“Jju,” the kisses trail over his collar. 

“Jju,” his stomach. 

“Jju,” his hips. 

Martin’s mouth finds the heat between his legs, and Juhoon’s fingers tangle in blonde hair, his back arching up with pleasure. Time shudders, slides out of focus. He retraces his steps, kisses him again, and then he is on top of him, pressing him down into the bed. 

When it is over, he collapses, breathless, into the sheets beside him, sweat and rain chilling on his skin. Martin folds around him, pulls him back into the circle of his warmth, and he can feel his heart slowing through his ribs, a metronome easing back into its measure. 

The room goes quiet, marked only by the steady rain beyond the windows, the drowsy aftermath of passion, and soon he can feel him drifting down toward sleep. 

Juhoon looks up at the ceiling. 

“Please don’t forget,” he says softly, the words half prayer, half plea. 

Martin’ arms tighten, a body surfacing from sleep. “Hm? Forget what?” he murmurs, already sinking again. 

And Juhoon waits for his breath to steady before he whispers the word to the dark. A single tear escaping.

“Me.”

Manhattan, New York City 

August 19, 2035

Juhoon wakes to the smell of toast browning, the sizzle of butter hitting a hot skillet. The bed is empty beside him, the door almost closed, but he can hear Martin moving in the kitchen beneath the soft burble of Elliot Smith. The room is cool, and the bed is warm, and he holds his breath and tries to hold the moment with it, the way he has a thousand times, clutching the past to the present, and warding off the future, the fall. 

But today is different. 

Because he remembers. 

He throws off the blankets, scavenges the bedroom floor, looking for his clothes, but there’s no sign of the rain-soaked jeans or shirt, just the familiar leather jacket draped over a chair. Juhoon finds a robe beneath and wraps it around him, buries his nose in the collar. It is worn and soft, smells like clean cotton and fabric softener and the faint hint of coconut shampoo. 

He pads barefoot into the kitchen as Martin pours coffee from a French press. 

He looks up, and smiles. “Good morning.” 

Two small words that move the world. 

Not “I’m sorry”. Not “I don’t remember”. Not “I must have been drunk”. 

Just good morning. 

“I put your clothes in the dryer,” he says. “They should be done soon. Grab yourself a mug.” 

Most people have a shelf of cups. Martin has a wall. They hang from hooks on a mounted rack, five across and seven down. Some of them are patterned and some of them are plain and no two are the same. 

“I’m not sure you have enough mugs.” 

Martin casts him a sidelong look. He has a way of almost smiling. It’s like light behind a curtain, the edge of the sun behind clouds, more a promise than an actual thing, but the warmth shines through. 

“It was a thing, in my family,” he says. “No matter who came over for coffee, they could choose the one that spoke to them that day.” 

I know. Juhoon thinks.

His own cup sits on the counter, charcoal gray, the inside coated in something that looks like liquid silver. A storm cloud and its lining. Juhoon studies the wall, trying to make him choice. he reaches for a large porcelain cup with small blue leaves, weighs it in him palm before he notices another. He's about to put it back when Martin stops him. 

“Sorry, all selections are final,” he says, scraping butter over toast. “You'll have to try again tomorrow.” 

Tomorrow. The word swells a little in his chest. 

Martin pours, and Juhoon leans his elbows on the counter, wraps his hands around the steaming cup, inhales the bittersweet scent. For a second, only a second, he is back in Seoul, hat pulled down in the corner of the café. That is how memories are for him, past rising into present, a palimpsest held up to the light. 

How many times has Juhoon dreamed of this? 

Of hot coffee and buttered toast, of sunlight streaming through the windows, of new days that aren’t fresh starts, none of the awkward silence of strangers, of a boy or a girl, elbows on the counter across from him, the simple comfort of a night remembered. 

“You must really love breakfast,” says Martin, and he realizes he is beaming down at his food. 

“It’s my favorite meal,” he answers, spearing a bite of eggs. 

But as he eats, the hope begins to thin. 

Juhoon is not a fool. Whatever this is, he knows it will not last. He has lived too long to think it chance, been cursed too long to think it fate. 

He has begun to wonder if it is a trap. 

Some new way to torment him. 

That one day, he will forget again. 

But if it is not a trap, then what? An accident? A stroke of luck? Perhaps he has gone mad. It would not be the first time. 

Maybe none of it is real. 

And yet, there is his hand on his, there is the soft scent of him on the robe, there is the sound of his name, drawing him back. 

“Where did you go?” Martin asks, and he spears another bite of food and holds it up between them. 

“If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life,” Juhoon says, “what would it be?” 

“Pizza,” Martin answers without missing a beat. “Pineapple pizza. You?” 

Juhoon ponders. A life is a very long time. “Ramen,” he answers soberly, and Martin nods, and silence settles over them, less awkward than shy. Nervous laughter in between stolen glances, two strangers who are no longer strangers but know so little of each other. 

“If you could live somewhere with only one season,” asks Martin, “what would it be?” 

“Spring,” Juhoon says, “when everything is new.” 

“Fall,” Martin says, “when everything is fading.” 

They have both chosen seams, those ragged lines where things are neither here nor there, but balanced on the brink. And Juhoon wonders, half to himself, “Would you rather feel nothing or everything?” 

A shadow crosses Martin’s face, and he falters, looks down at his unfinished food and then to the clock on the wall. 

“Shit. I’ve got to get to the Alloway.” He straightens, dropping his plate in the sink. The last question goes unanswered. 

“I should go home,” says Juhoon, rising too. “Get changed. Do some work.” 

There is no home, of course, no clothes, no job. But he is playing the part of a normal boy, a boy who gets to have a normal life and wake up to good mornings instead of who are yous. 

Martin finishes his coffee in a single gulp. “You said you’re a scout. How do you go about finding talent?” he asks, and Juhoon almost forgets that he told him that he was a scout. 

“You keep your eyes open,” he says, rounding the counter. 

But Martin catches his hand. 

“I want to see you again.” Martin says.

“I want you to see me again,” Juhoon echoes. 

“Still no phone?” 

Juhoon shakes his head, and Martin raps his fingers for a moment, thinking. “There’s a food truck rally in Prospect Park. Meet you there at six?” 

Juhoon smiles. “It’s a date.” he pulls the robe close. “Mind if I take a shower before I go?” 

Martin kisses him. “Of course. Just let yourself out.” 

He smiles. “I will.” 

Martin leaves, the front door swinging shut behind him, but for once, the sound doesn’t make his stomach drop. It’s just a door. Not a period. An ellipsis. A to-be-continued. 

He takes a long, hot shower, wraps his hair in a towel, and wanders through the apartment, noticing all the familiar things he’s seen before. 

Martin’s apartment is just this side of messy, cluttered in the way so many New York places are, too little space to live and breathe. It’s also littered with the remains of abandoned hobbies. A cabinet of oil paints, the brushes gone stale and stiff in a stained cup. Microphones and wires and electric guitars and a range of equipment he doesn’t really understand. 

He reaches the cameras. 

A row of them stare down at him from a shelf, their lenses large and wide and black. 

Vintage, he thinks, though the word has never held much weight. 

He was there when cameras were hulking tripod beasts, the photographers hidden beneath a heavy drape. He was there for the invention of black-and-white film, and then color, there when still frames became videos, when analog became digital, and whole stories could be stored in the palm of a hand. 

He runs his fingers across the camera bodies, like carapace shells, feels dust beneath him touch. But there are photographs everywhere. 

On the walls, propped on side tables, and sitting in the corner, waiting to be hung. There is one of Seonghyeon in an art gallery, a silhouette against the brightly lit space. 

One of Seonghyeon and Martin, tangled together, his gaze up, and his head down, each caught in the beginning of a laugh. One of a boy that Juhoon guesses must be Keonho. Seonghyeon was right; he looks like he walked out of a party in Andy Warhol’s loft. The crowd behind him is a blur of bodies, but Keonho is in focus, mid-laugh, purple glitter tracing his cheekbones, plumes of green along his nose, gold at his temples. 

Another photo, in the hall. Here, the three of them sit on a sofa, Seonghyeon in the middle, Keonho’s legs stretched across his lap, and Martin on the other side, chin resting lazily on his hand. 

And across the hall, its opposite. A posed family portrait, stiff against the candids. Again Martin sits on the edge of the sofa, but more upright, and this time placed beside someone who is clearly his sister. The girl, with pin-straight black hair, eyes dancing behind a pair of cat-eye frames, the model of the mother resting a hand on his shoulder. A man, older, sterner, nearly identical to Martin. 

Martin stares back at Juhoon, from the photos he’s in, and the ones he clearly took. He can feel him, the artist in the frame. He could stay there, studying these pictures, trying to find the truth of him in them, the secret, the answer to the question going around and around in his head. 

Who are you? Why do you remember me?

But all he sees is someone sad, lost, searching. 

He turns his attention to the books. 

Martin’s own collection is eclectic, spilling across surfaces in every room. A shelf in the living room, a narrower one in the hall, a stack beside his bed, another on the coffee table. Comics stacked over a pile of textbooks with titles like Reviewing the Covenant and Christian Theology for the Postmodern Age. There are novels, biographies, paperbacks and hardcovers mixed together, some old and fraying, others brand new. Bookmarks jut up from the pages, marking a dozen unfinished reads. 

His fingers drift down the spines, hovers on a squat gold book. A History of the World in 100 Objects. he wonders if you can distill a person’s life, let alone human civilization, to a list of things, wonders if that’s a valid way to measure worth at all, not by the lives touched, but the things left behind. He tries to build his own list. A History of Kim Juhoon. 

His face, ghosted in a hundred works of art. His melodies at the heart of a hundred songs. Ideas taking root, growing wild, the seeds unseen. 

Juhoon continues through the apartment, idle curiosity giving way to a more purposeful search. He is looking for clues, searching for something, anything, to explain the anomaly that is Edwards Martin.

A laptop sits on the coffee table. It boots without a password prompt, but when Juhoon brushes his thumb across the trackpad, the cursor doesn’t move. He taps the keys absently, but nothing happens. 

Over time, technology changes. 

Yet, the curse stays the same. 

Except it doesn’t. 

It hasn’t—not entirely. 

So he goes from room to room, searching for clues to the question he cannot seem to answer. 

Who are you? 

In the medicine cabinet, a handful of prescriptions line the shelf, their names clogged with consonants. Beside them, a vial of pink pills marked with only a Post-it—a tiny, hand-drawn umbrella. 

In the bedroom, another bookshelf, a stack of notebooks in various shapes and sizes. 

He turns through, but all of them are blank. 

On the windowsill, another, older photo—of Martin and Keonho. In this one, they are tangled, Keonho’s face pressed against Martin’s, his forehead resting on Martin’s temple. There's something intimate about the pose, the way Keonho’s eyes are almost closed, the way Martin’s hand cradles the back of his head, as if holding him up, or holding him close. The serene curve on Keonho’s mouth. Happy. Home. 

By the bed, an old-fashioned watch sits on the side table. It has no minute hand, and the hour points just past six, even though the clock on the wall reads 9:32am. Weird. He holds it to his ear, but the battery must be dead. 

And then, in the top drawer, a handkerchief, dotted with blood. Juhoon shivers, wonders who this version of Martin was before he met him, what happened to put him in his path. 

“Who are you, really?” he whispers to the empty room. 

He wraps the ring in the stained kerchief and returns it to its spot, sliding the drawer shut. 

Later that morning.

“I take it back,” Juhoon says. “If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be these fries. Yum.” 

Martin laughs and steals a few from the cone in his hand as they wait in line for gyros. The food trucks form a colorful stripe along Flatbush, crowds of people queuing for lobster rolls and grilled cheese, banh mi and kebabs. There's even a line for ice-cream sandwiches, even though the warmth has dropped out of the air, promising a crisp, cold night. Juhoon’s glad he picked up a hat and scarf, traded his Chelsea boots for calf-high boots, even as he leans into the warmth of Martin’s arms, until there’s a break in the falafel queue, and he ducks away to get in line. 

Juhoon watches him step up to the counter window and order, watches the boy working the truck as he leans forward, elbows on the sill, watches them talk, Martin nodding solemnly, almost bored. The line is growing behind him, but the boy doesn’t seem to notice. He's not smiling exactly; if anything, he looks on the verge of tears as he reaches out and takes his hand, squeezes it. 

“Next!” 

Juhoon blinks, gets to the front of his own line, spends the last of his stolen cash on a lamb gyro and a blueberry soda, finds himself wishing for the first time in a while that he had a credit card, or more to his name than the clothes on him back and the change in him pocket. Wishes that things didn’t seem to slip through his fingers like sand, that he could have a thing without stealing it first. 

“You’re looking at that sandwich like it broke your heart.” 

Juhoon looks up at Martin, cracks a smile. “It looks so good,” he says. “I’m just thinking of how sad I’ll be when it’s gone.” 

Martin sighs in mock lament. “The worst part of every meal is when it ends.” 

They take their spoils and stake out a slope of grass just inside the park, a pool of quickly thinning light. Martin adds the falafel and an order of dumplings to his gyro and fries, and they share, trading bites like cards in a game of gin. 

Martin reaches for the falafel, and Juhoon remembers the boy in the window. 

“What was that about?” he asks. “Back there at the truck, the boy working, he looked like he was about to cry. Do you know him?” 

Martin shakes his head. “He said I reminded him of his ex.” 

Juhoon stares at him. It isn’t a lie, he doesn’t think, but it’s not entirely the truth, either. There's something he isn’t saying, but he doesn’t know how to ask. He spears a dumpling and pops it in his mouth. 

Food is one of the best things about being alive. 

Not just food. Good food. There is a chasm between sustenance and satisfaction, and while he spent the better part of three hundred years eating to stave off the pangs of hunger, he has spent the last fifty delighting in the discovery of flavor. So much of life becomes routine, but food is like music, like art, replete with the promise of something new. 

He wipes the grease from his fingers and lies back in the grass beside Martin, feeling wonderfully full. He knows it will not last. That fullness is like everything else in his life. It always wears away too soon. But here, and now, he feels perfect. 

He closes his eyes, and smiles, and thinks he could stay here all night,  despite the growing cold, let the dusk give way to dark, burrow against Martin and hope for stars. 

A bright chime sounds in his coat pocket. 

Martin answers. “Hyeon,” he starts, and then abruptly sits up. Juhoon can only hear half the call, but he can guess at the rest. 

“No, of course I didn’t forget. I know, I’m late, I’m sorry. I’m on my way. Yeah, I remember.” 

Martin hangs up, puts his head in his hands. 

“Seonghyeon’s having a dinner party. And I was meant to bring dessert.” 

He looks back at the food trucks, as if one of them might hold the answer, looks at the sky, which has gone from dusk to dim, runs his hands through his hair, lets out a soft and muttered stream of cursing. But there’s no time to wallow now, not when he is late. “Come on,” says Juhoon, pulling him to his feet. “I know a place.” 

The best bakery in Brooklyn has no sign. 

Marked by only a butter yellow awning, a narrow glass window between two broad brick storefronts, it belongs to a man named Eunjin. Every morning before dawn, he arrives, and begins the slow assembly of his art. Apple tarts, the fruit sliced thin as paper, and operas, the tops dusted with cocoa, and petit fours coated in marzipan and small, piped roses. 

The shop is closed now, but he can see the shadow of its owner as he moves through the kitchen at its back, and Juhoon raps his knuckles on the glass door, and waits. 

“Are you sure about this?” asks Martin as the shape shuffles forward, cracks the door. 

“We are closed,” he says, in a heavy accent, and Juhoon slips from English into Korean as he explains he is a friend of Ella’s, and the man softens at the mention of his daughter’s name, softens more at the sound of his native tongue, and he understands. He can speak German, Italian, Spanish, Swiss, but this is different.

It’s home. 

“For Ella,” he answers, opening the door, “anything.” 

Inside the small shop, New York falls away, and it is pure Seoul, the taste of sugar and butter still in the air. The cases are mostly empty now, only a handful of the beautiful creations lingering on the shelves, bright and sparse as wildflowers in a barren field. 

Juhoon does know Ella, though the girl does not, of course, know him. He knows Eunjin, the owner, as well, visits this shop the way someone else might visit a photograph, or linger on a memory. 

Martin hovers a few steps behind as Juhoon and Eunjin make small talk, each contented by the brief respite of the other’s language, and the patissier places each of the remaining pastries in a pink box, and hands them to him. 

And when he offers to pay, wondering if he can afford the cost, Eunjin shakes his head, and thanks him for the taste of home, and he wishes him good night, and back on the curb, Martin stares at him as if he’s performed a magic act, some strange and wondrous feat. 

He pulls Juhoon into the circle of his arms. 

“You are amazing,” Martin says, and Juhoon blushes, having never had an audience. 

“Here,” Juhoon says, pressing the pastry box into his hands. “Enjoy the party.” 

Martin’s smile falls. His forehead rucks up like a carpet. “Why don’t you come with me?” 

And he doesn’t know how to say I can’t when there is no explaining why, when he was ready to spend all night with him. 

So Juhoon says, “I shouldn’t,” and Martin says, “Please,” and he knows it is such a terrible idea, that he cannot hold the secret of his curse aloft over so many heads, knows he cannot keep him to himself, that this is all a game of borrowed time. 

But this is how you walk to the end of the world. 

This is how you live forever. 

Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone. 

So he says yes. 

They walk, arm in arm, as the evening goes from cool to cold. 

“Is there anything I should know?” Juhoon asks. “About your friends?” 

Martin frowns, thinking. “Well, Keonho’s a performer. He’s really good, but he can be a little... difficult?” He exhales a hard breath. “We were together, back in college.” 

“But it didn’t work out?” 

Martin laughs, but the breath is shallow. “No. He dumped me. But look, it was ages ago. We’re friends now, nothing more.” He shakes his head, as if clearing it. “Then there’s Seonghyeon, you met him. He’s great. He’s getting his PhD, and he lives with a guy named James.” 

“Are they dating?” 

Martin snorts. “God no. James is straight. And so is he... I think. I don’t actually know, it’s been the topic of speculation. But Hyeon will probably invite whoever he’s dating now—it’s kind of a pendulum swing. Oh, and don’t ask about the Professor.” Juhoon looks at him, wondering, and he explains. “Hyeon had a thing, a few years ago, with a Columbia professor. He was in love, but he was married, and it all fell apart.” 

Juhoon repeats the names to himself, and Martin smiles. 

“It’s not a test,” he says. “You can’t fail.” 

Juhoon wishes he were right. 

Martin winds a little tighter at his side. He hesitates, exhales. “There’s something else you should know,” he says at last, “about me.” 

His heart stutters in his chest as he braces for a confession, a reluctant truth, some explanation for this, for them. But Martin only looks up at the starless night and says, “There was a boy.” 

A boy. It does not answer anything. 

He thinks of the bloody handkerchief in Martin’s room.

“What happened?” 

“I proposed, and he said no.” 

It is true, he thinks, some version of it. But Juhoon is beginning to realize how good Martin is at skirting lies while leaving truths half-told. 

“We all have battle scars,” he says. “People in our past.” 

“You too?” he asks, and for a moment, he’s back in Seoul. 

“Yeah,” he says softly. And then, gently probing, “And we all have secrets, too.” 

He looks at him, and he can see it swimming in his eyes, the thing he will not say.

Tell me, he thinks. Whatever it is. Tell me.

But Martin doesn’t. 

They reach Seonghyeon’s building in silence, and he buzzes them in, and as they climb the stairs he turns his thoughts to the party, and thinks, perhaps, it will be okay. 

Perhaps, they will remember him, at the end of this evening. 

Perhaps, if he is with him— 

Perhaps— 

But then the door opens, and Seonghyeon stands there, oven mitts on hips, voices spilling through the apartment behind him as he says, “Martin Edwards, you are so incredibly late, that better be dessert.” And Martin holds out the pastry box as if it were a shield, but as Seonghyeon plucks the box from his hands, he looks past him. “And who’s this?” 

“This is Jju,” he says. “You met in the Alloway.” 

Seonghyeon rolls his eyes. “Martin, you really don’t have enough friends to be getting us mixed up. Besides,” he says, flashing Juhoon a crooked smile, “I wouldn’t forget a face like yours. There's something... timeless about it.” 

Martin’s frown deepens. “You have met, and that’s exactly what you said.” He looks to Juhoon. “You remember this, don’t you?” 

Juhoon hesitates, caught between the impossible truth and the easier lie, begins to shake his head. “I’m sorry, I—” 

But Juhoon’s saved by the arrival of a boy in a loose tank top, a bold defiance of the chill beyond the windows, and Martin whispers in his ear that this is the boyfriend. The boy kisses Seonghyeon and plucks the box from his hands, and says he cannot find the wine opener, and James appears to take their coats, and usher them through. 

The apartment is a converted loft, one of those open floor plans where the hall runs into the living room and the living room runs into the kitchen, and it is all mercifully free of walls and doors. 

The buzzer rings again, and moments later a boy arrives like a comet crashing through the atmosphere, a bottle of wine in one hand and a scarf in the other. And even though Juhoon has only seen him in photos on Martin’s wall, he knows instantly that this is Keonho. 

He sweeps through the front hallway, kissing Seonghyeon on the cheek, waves at James and hugs the boy, and turns toward Martin, only to notice Juhoon. 

“Who are you?” he says. 

“Don’t be rude,” answers Martin. “This is Jju.” 

“Martin’s date,” adds Seonghyeon, and Juhoon wishes he hadn’t, because the words are like cold water over Keonho’s mood. Martin must see it too, because he takes his hand and says, “He's a talent scout.” 

“Oh?” asks Keonho, rekindling a little. “What kind?” 

“Art. Music. All sorts.” 

He frowns. “Don’t scouts usually specialize in something?” 

Seonghyeon elbows him. “Be nice,” he says, reaching for the wine. 

“Didn’t know I was supposed to bring a date,” he says, following him into the kitchen. 

He pats his shoulder. “You can borrow James.” 

The dining table sits between the sofa and the kitchen counter, and Seonghyeon sets an extra place as Martin opens the first two bottles of wine, and Keonho pours, and James carries a salad to the table and the boy checks the lasagna in the oven and Juhoon stays out of the way. 

He is used to having all of the attention, or none of it. To being the brief but sunlit center of a stranger’s world, or a shadow at its edges. This is different. This is new. 

“Hope you’re all hungry,” says Seonghyeon, setting lasagna and garlic bread in the center of the table. 

Martin grimaces a little at the sight of the pasta, and Juhoon almost laughs, remembering their food truck feast. He is always hungry, the last meal nothing but a memory now, and he gratefully accepts a plate. 

There is a magic to this evening. 

A defiant pleasure in a simple act. 

Juhoon spends the first hour holding his breath, bracing for catastrophe, but somewhere between the salad and the main course, between the first glass and the second, he exhales. Sitting there, between Martin and the boy, between warmth and laughter, he can almost believe that it is real, that he belongs, a normal boy beside a normal boy at a normal dinner party. 

He and Seonghyeon talk about art, and he and James talk about Taiwan, and he and the boy talk about wine, and Martin’s hand finds his knee beneath the table, and it is all so wonderfully simple and warm. He wants to hold the night like a chocolate on his tongue, savor every second before it melts. 

Only Keonho seems unhappy, even though James has been trying to flirt with him all night. He shifts in his seat, a performer in search of a spotlight. He drinks too much, too fast, unable to sit still for more than a few minutes. It is the same restless energy Juhoon saw in Martin, but tonight, he seems perfectly at ease. 

Once, Seonghyeon’s boyfriend goes to the bathroom, and Juhoon thinks that’s it, the domino that tips the rest. And sure enough, when he returns to the table, Juhoon can see the confusion on his face, but it is the kind of embarrassment you cover instead of show, and he says nothing, only shakes his head as if to clear a thought, and smiles, and Juhoon imagines him wondering if he’s had too much to drink, imagines him pulling Seonghyeon aside before dessert and whispering that he cannot remember his name. 

Keonho and their host, meanwhile, are deep in conversation. 

“Hyeonie,” he whines. “Can’t we just—” 

“My party, my rules. When it was your birthday, we went to a sex club in Bushwick.” 

Keonho rolls his eyes. “It was an exhibitionist-themed music venue.” 

“It was a sex club,” Martin and Seonghyeon say at the same time. 

“Wait.” Juhoon leans forward in his seat. “Is it your birthday?” 

“No,” says Seonghyeon emphatically. 

“Hyeon hates birthdays,” explains Martin. “he won’t tell us when his is. The closest we’ve gotten is that it’s in January. Or February. Or December. So any dinner party in the winter could conceivably be the one nearest to his birthday.” 

Seonghyeon sips his wine and shrugs. “I don’t see the point. It’s just a day. Why put all this pressure on it?” 

“So you can get presents, obviously,” says Keonho. 

“I understand,” says Juhoon. “The nicest days are always the ones we don’t plan.” 

Keonho glowers. “What did you say your name was? Jonas?” 

And he goes to correct him, only to feel the letters lodge in his throat. The curse coils tight, strangling the word. 

“It’s Jju,” says Martin. “And you’re being an ass.” 

A nervous current runs across the table, and Seonghyeon’s boyfriend, clearly looking to smooth the energy, cuts into a petit four and says, “This dessert is amazing, Martin.” 

And Martin says, “It was all Jju’s doing.” 

And that is enough to tip Keonho like a glass, and send him spilling over. He shoves up from the table with a rush of breath. 

“I need a smoke.” 

“Not in here,” says Seonghyeon. “Take it to the roof.” 

And Juhoon knows that is the end of this beautiful night, the door slamming shut, because he cannot stop them, and once he’s out of sight— 

James rises. “I could use one, too actually.” 

“You just want to get out of doing dishes," says Seonghyeon, but the two of them are already heading for the door, out of sight and out of mind, and this, he thinks, is midnight, this is how the magic ends, this is how you turn back into a pumpkin. 

“I should go,” he says. 

Seonghyeon tries to convince him to stay, says to not let Keonho get to him, and Juhoon says that it’s not his fault, that it’s been a long day, says thank you for the lovely meal, thank you for the company; and really, he was lucky to get this far, lucky to have this time, this night, this tiny glimpse of normal. 

“Jju, wait,” says Martin, but he kisses him, quick, and slips away, out of the apartment, and down the steps and into the dark. 

He sighs, and slows, his lungs aching in the sudden cold. And despite the doors and walls between them, he can feel the weight of what he left behind, and he wishes he could have stayed, wishes that when Martin had said wait, he had said, Come with me, but he knows it is not fair to make him choose. He is full of roots, while he has only branches. 

And then he hears the steps behind him, and slows, shivers.

“You left so fast,” says Martin. 

“You caught up,” says Juhoon. 

And perhaps he should feel guilty, but he is only grateful. 

He has gotten good at losing things. 

But Martin is still here. 

“Friends are messy sometimes, aren’t they?” 

“Yeah,” he says, even though he has no idea. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, nodding back at the building. “I don’t know what got into him.” 

But Juhoon does. 

Live long enough, and people open up like books. Keonho is a romance novel. A tale of broken hearts. He is so clearly lovesick. 

“You said you were just friends.” 

“We are,” he insists. “I love him like family, I always will. But I don’t—I never...” 

He thinks of the photo, Keonho’s head bowed against Martin’s cheek, thinks of the look on his face when Seonghyeon said he was his date, and wonders how he doesn’t see it. 

“He’s still in love with you.” 

Martin looks away, expression unreadable. “I know,” he says. “But I can’t love him back.” 

Can’t. Not won’t. Not shouldn’t. What is he hiding?

Juhoon looks at Martin, meets him eye to eye. 

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” 

He doesn't know what he expects him to say, what truth could possibly explain his enduring presence, but for a second, when he looks back at him, there is a brief and blinding sadness. 

But then he pulls him close and groans, and says, in a soft and vanquished voice, “I am so full.” 

And Juhoon laughs despite himself. 

It is too cold to stand, and so they walk together through the dark, and he doesn’t even notice they have reached his place until he sees the towering presence of 432 Park Avenue. he is so tired, and he is so warm; he does not want to go, and he does not ask him to.

Manhattan, New York City 

August 20, 2035

Juhoon has woken up a hundred ways. 

To frost forming on his skin, and a sun so hot it should have burned. To empty places, and ones that should have been. To wars raging overhead, and the ocean rocking against the hull. To sirens, and city noise, and silence, and once, a snake coiled by his head. 

But Martin wakes him with kisses. 

He plants them one by one, like flower bulbs, lets them blossom on his skin. Juhoon smiles, and rolls against him, pulls his arms around him like a cloak. 

It is late, and Martin should be at work, but he tells Juhoon the Alloway is closed on Mondays. But Martin can’t possibly know that Juhoon remembers the little wooden sign, the hours next to every day.

The shop is only closed on Thursdays. 

Juhoon doesn't correct him. 

They pull on clothes, and amble down to the corner shop, where Martin buys egg and cheese rolls from the counter and Juhoon wanders to the case in search of juice. 

And that is when he hears the bell. 

That is when he sees a familiar face, as Keonho stumbles in. That is when his heart drops, the way it does when you miss a step, the sudden lurch of a body off-balance. 

Juhoon has gotten good at losing— 

But he isn’t ready. 

And he wants to stop time, to hide, to disappear. 

But for once, he can’t. Keonho sees Martin, and Martin sees him, and they are in a triangle of one-way streets. A comedy of memory and absence and terrible luck as Martin wraps an arm around his waist, and Keonho looks at Juhoon with ice in his eyes and says, “Who’s this?” 

“That’s not funny,” says Martin. “Are you still drunk?” 

Keonho draws back, indignant. “I’m—what? No. I’ve never seen this boy. You never said you met someone.” 

It is a car crash in slow motion, and Juhoon knew it was bound to happen, the inevitable collision of people and place, time and circumstance. 

Martin is an impossible thing, his strange and beautiful oasis. But he is also human, and humans have friends, have families, have a thousand strands tying them to other people. Unlike him, he has never been untethered, never existed in a void. 

So it was inevitable. 

But he still isn’t ready. 

“Fuck’s sake, Keon, you just met him.” 

“Pretty sure I’d remember.” Keonho's eyes darken. “But then again, these days, it’s kind of hard to keep them straight.” 

The space between them collapses as Martin steps in. Juhoon gets there first, catches his hand as it lifts, pulls him back. “Martin, stop.” 

It was such a lovely jar he had kept them in. But the glass is cracking now. The water leaking through. 

Keonho looks at Martin, stunned, betrayed. And he understands. It is not fair. It is never fair. 

“Come on,” he says, squeezing his hand. 

Martin’s attention finally drags toward him. “Please,” he says. “Come with me.” 

They spill out into the street, the morning’s peace forgotten, left behind with the OJ and the sandwiches. 

Martin is shaking with anger. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Keonho can be an ass but that was—” 

Juhoon closes his eyes, sinks back against the wall. “It’s not his fault.” He could salvage this, hold the breaking jar, keep his fingers over the cracks. 

But how long? How long can he keep Martin to himself? How long can he keep him from noticing the curse? 

“I don't think he remembered me.” 

Martin squints, clearly confused. “How could he not?” 

Juhoon hesitates. 

It is easy to be honest when there are no wrong words, because the words don’t stick. When whatever you say belongs to only you. 

But Martin is different, he hears him, he remembers, and suddenly every word is full of weight, honesty such a heavy thing. 

He only has one chance. 

He can lie to him, like he would anyone else, but if he starts, he’ll never be able to stop, and even more than that—he doesn’t want to lie to him. He's waited too long to be heard, seen. 

So Juhoon throws himself into the truth. 

“You know how some people have face blindness? They look at friends, family, people they’ve known their whole lives, and they don’t recognize them?” 

Martin frowns. “In theory, sure...” 

“Well, I have the opposite.” 

“You remember everyone?” 

“No,” says Juhoon. “I mean yes, I do, but that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s that—people forget me. Even if we’ve met a hundred times. They forget.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” 

It doesn’t. Fucking hell, of course it doesn’t. 

“I know,” he says, “but it’s the truth. If we went back in that store right now, Keonho wouldn’t remember. You could introduce me, but the moment I walked away, the moment I was out of sight, he’d forget again.” 

Martin shakes his head. “How? Why?” 

The smallest questions. The biggest answer. 

Because he was a fool. 

Because he was afraid. 

Because he wasn’t careful. 

“Because,” he says, slumping back against the concrete wall. “I’m cursed.” 

Martin stares at him, brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.” 

Juhoon takes a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. And then, because he has decided to tell the truth, that’s what he does. 

“My name is Kim Juhoon. I was born in Seoul in the year 1731.”

It is easy enough to say the words. 

After all, the story has never been the hard part. 

It is a secret he has tried to share so many times, with friends and strangers and anyone who might listen, and every time, he has watched their expressions flatten, their faces go blank, watched the words hang in the air before him like smoke before being blown away. 

But Martin looks at him, and listens. 

Listens as he tells him of living forever, and being forgotten, and giving up. When he finishes, he holds his breath, expecting Martin to blink away the fog, to ask what he was about to say. Instead, his eyes narrow with such peculiar focus, and he realizes, heart racing, that he has heard every word. 

“You made a deal?” Martin says.

There is a detachment in his voice, an unnerving calm. 

And of course, it sounds like madness. Of course, Martin does not believe him. This is how Juhoon loses Martin. Not to memory, but to disbelief. 

And then, out of nowhere, Martin laughs. 

He sags against a bike rack, head in his hand, and laughs, and he thinks he’s gone mad, thinks he’s broken something in him, thinks, even, that he is mocking him. 

But it is not the kind of laughter that follows a joke. It is too manic, too breathless. 

“You made a deal,” he says again. 

He swallows. “Look, I know how it sounds but—” 

“I believe you.” 

Juhoon blinks, suddenly confused. “What?” 

“I believe you,” Martin says again. 

Three small words, as rare as I remember you, and it should be enough—but it’s not. Nothing makes sense, not Martin, not this; it hasn’t since the start and he’s been too afraid to ask, to know, as if knowing would bring the whole dream crashing down, but he can see the cracks in his shoulders, can feel them in his chest. 

Who are you? He wants to ask. Why are you different? How do you remember when no one else can? Why do you believe I made a deal? 

In the end, Juhoon asks only one thing. 

“Why?” 

And Martin’s hands fall away from his face, gaze dead set at Juhoon, his eyes fever bright, and says— 

“I made one, too.”