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Gyuvin loves the flurry of rush that meets him at the airport. The muffled rolling of wheels dragged along carpet, the jingling chime of airport announcements, and the fruity scent his nose immediately detects as mangoes.
“Hanbin hyung, I want to get one of those.”
He’s lagging a few feet behind Hanbin already, stopping in front of one of those overpriced cafe stands meant to trap tourists, and apparently dessert addicts who skipped dinner.
Turning back to catch the beguiled look on Gyuvin’s face, Hanbin’s stress melts and gives in to a little smile. “You go ahead and get it, I’ll make my way to the gate myself.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
Hanbin shakes his head, adjusting the bag sat on his shoulder. Gyuvin considers for a moment.
“Okay, take care and have fun in Tokyo!”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Flight NH107 for Tokyo, Haneda will close boarding doors shortly.”
Hanbin moves quickly to his gate, Gyuvin is already distracted by the idea of dessert. It turns out to be the best slice of mango cake he has ever tasted, he just wished Hanbin had time to enjoy it together with him before his flight. Doesn’t matter, he can convince the manager to let them stop here the next time they fly.
“Hao hyung, I found this really nice cafe at the airport!”
When Gyuvin unlocks the door to their apartment, it’s already about nine at night and Hao is sitting at the kitchen table, freshly damp hair sticking out in weird angles.
“You went to the airport with Hanbin right?” Gyuvin nods. Hao would have been there himself if his schedule didn’t bound his hands. The three of them made it a point to accompany each other to flights whenever possible—started by Hao. Despite Gyuvin’s suspicion that it might have been his cover up to kiss Hanbin goodbye at airports, it kind of stuck.
Flying had inarguably become such a norm for them that Gyuvin barely noticed the utter silence of the room he had felt so sharply at the start. What did suck though, was that now the odds on who had to go the laundry was split by two instead of three.
“가위, 바위, 보!” Hao threw rock, Gyuvin threw scissors and the chance to spend the rest of his evening lazing on his bed. Instead, it’s traded with the chore of tackling the mountainous pile of dirty clothes. Among them, he spots Hanbin’s favourite jacket and trousers. Did Hanbin even bring enough clothes with him? He had just started the load with washing powder thrown in when Hao called him.
“Gyuvin-ah!” Hao shouts. “Gyuvin!”
It’s over the loud humming of the washing machine and he barely hears his own name the second time around but Hao is already poking his head in.
“What flight was Hanbin on?”
“What?”
“What flight was Hanbin on?”
Hao’s question is clipped and panicky, the brusque movement in which he shoves his phone at Gyuvin planting an uncomfortably wriggly feeling in Gyuvin’s gut that he tried to ignore.
It only pokes deeper as his eyes flit across the article. Flight NH107 to Tokyo, Haneda.
“I’m not sure,” his throat is dry, tightened into a croak which almost chokes his semi-lie. Hanbin can’t be on that flight. He can’t be on that flight which crashed.
“It’s okay, I’ll just try to find out just in case,” Hao’s eyes are blinking fast, voice coated with false, stilted calm. “It’s okay.”
Neither of them address the dread that’s already pulling them beneath the surface. Doesn't matter, because they’ll laugh over their fear later when Hanbin is back.
Gyuvin is confident he doesn’t need any further confirmation of Hanbin coming back, his room’s door is tightly shut and locked before Hao’s call can even go through to the other end.
Half an hour ago: Missed Call from “sunghanbitna ♡”
He doesn’t even try to call back. Hanbin probably forgot the brand of the face mask Gyuvin wanted him to buy, he’ll reply in the morning in case Hanbin is busy checking into his hotel now.
What was the name of that hotel again? It’s a fancy one, sponsored by the music event Hanbin is going to emcee tomorrow. He searches it up, the rooms look breathtakingly grand. He’s going to complain to Hanbin about not taking him along to share his luxurious suite.
There’s a series of rapid knocks at his door. “Hanbin was on that flight.” What was Hao talking about, of course he was. Hanbin had an emcee job tomorrow.
“Gyuvin? They don’t know any details yet, everything is unsure and I don’t know if he’s okay…” Hao’s voice is wobbly. Gyuvin can hear the shaky breathing outside his door for almost a whole minute before he finally leaves, really leaves because the front door slams shut.
Angry tears well to his eyes, why did he leave?
Gyuvin unloads the laundry, making everything into three neat piles, folding and flattening every crease on the last of Hanbin’s trousers–the one he always wore–before putting it in his closet. Now he’ll have clean clothes to wear when he comes back. Then Gyuvin sleeps, one of the two nights before Hanbin comes back.
The sun’s shine woke him up the next morning, he was supposed to be training already. When he walks out to the living room in gym clothes, seven tear streaked faces stare at him.
“Gyuvin-ah—” Matthew is the first to speak. Or at least Gyuvin thinks it’s Matthew, his head is already turned away, hands unlocking the door.
“Leave him”–another voice, cold and nasal, Hao’s–“he obviously doesn’t care enough if he can sleep peacefully at night not knowing if Hanbin was dead.”
Gyuvin tunes out everything, the ringing of his phone, his own laboured breathing as he pulls heavier and heavier weights. There’s only one voice he wants to hear. By the time Gunwook finds him in the gym, his world is muffled through his own ears.
“Hanbin hyung died in the plane crash last night.” Gunwook’s words are a mixture of chokes and sobs, his eyes that close against tears are lined with red rims. Gyuvin’s arm is automated, placing itself on Gunwook’s shoulder. It’s a distant touch, leaving awkward space between them.
When one of them finally speaks, it’s Gunwook again.
“Are you okay?”
Of course Gyuvin is okay, why wouldn’t he be? Hanbin said he would be back before Gyuvin would know it.
That night before he sleeps, he opens his phone to texts from almost all his bandmates. He skips all of it and goes to his text thread with Hanbin.
24 hours ago: Missed Call from “sunghanbitna ♡”
He refreshes. Nothing changes, not that time or the other eighty times he tries after that.
Jiwoong’s worry frowns over him like a stubborn cloud. He comes over at seven in the morning to follow Gyuvin to the gym and nags at him to not overwork himself.
“I bought jajangmyeon for you, come and eat.”
By the time it’s dinner and Jiwoong is reminding him to eat, Gyuvin can feel the weight in his voice. He's more than filling his own shoes, he's trying hard to step into someone else's. Gyuvin wants to tell him to stop, because there is no gap to fill, Hanbin is coming back.
He’s supposed to come back.
2 days ago: Missed Call from “sunghanbitna ♡”
Hanbin doesn’t come back today.
His return flight status says arrived, why isn’t he here?
He isn’t here anymore.
The dam he had painstakenly built over the two days only takes a few seconds to shatter. Shards of it all cut him in his head, his heart and his soul. Fresh pain roars over the dull ache as he sobs on Jiwoong’s shoulder, his whole body jerking.
Everything hurts with such a burning intensity that Gyuvin thinks it would be easier to cut a knife through his chest and let everything out there.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye, hyung.”
“Neither did I.”
When Gyuvin was five and thought his mother would disappear forever if she left the room, she left him with a t-shirt to hug to stop him from crying.
Now Gyuvin curls around a blue button down Hanbin had left hanging in his room, smelling of warm, fading cologne. Except this time, there really was no one to pat his head when he fell asleep, no one coming back for him.
He cries his heart out into the shirt that does nothing to mask the stinging soreness of loss and waits for exhaustion or sleep to take it away, whichever arrived first.
2 weeks ago: Missed Call from “sunghanbitna ♡”
Hanbin came home today.
Or at least part of him did. Gyuvin doesn’t want to see him because he didn’t come home.
“Kim Gyuvin, will you please fucking wake up?”
It’s the last day of the funeral, Taerae had spent the whole day pounding at Gyuvin’s door. Unlike everyone else, he doesn’t shy away when he hears the sobs ripping through Gyuvin’s body. He doesn’t accept grief as Gyuvin’s excuse.
“You’re not going to miss your best friend’s funeral just because you’re too scared to face his death, I won’t let you.”
Taerae gives Gyuvin a chance to respond, but there’s nothing except the same stifled sobs.
“Because you’ll regret it, and I don’t think you want another of those on your list.”
It’s a desperate dig, one that Gyuvin can feel clawing in his chest, drawing blood he feels he needs to choke out. But the lock clicks open anyway, because the ghost that is guilt haunts him too much already.
When he’s at the funeral hall, he doesn’t need to blur out the picture at the altar because his eyes do it for him. It isn’t enough though, because even from the fuzzy figure he can tell the exact picture they used, the genuine brilliant smile that is a tad bit too wide for ID photos.
It was for Gyuvin, because he had made some teasing joke behind the camera. He finds himself grasping in his mind to remember the joke he had told Hanbin. Pointless, because remembering the joke will never bring back that smile anymore.
When he chokes, he doesn’t know if it’s because of the welling sorrow or the musky incense but it’s suffocating. He needs to leave.
“So that’s it? You’re going to leave without saying your last goodbye to him?” Gyuvin doesn’t see Hao leave his seat beside Yujin, but he hears the voice behind him when he steps out into the hallway.
Goodbye. It’s just one word, and maybe, just maybe if it had left his mouth that day when they parted for the last, he wouldn’t hate himself so much.
He leans against the wall, the rough flock wallpaper scraping his bare skin. Looking in Hao’s eyes pulls a new wave of tears out of him, because he sees his own reflection of tortured agony in them. He lost his best friend, Hao lost his boyfriend, both of them lost the right to say a proper goodbye to someone they loved.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“You know, I don’t understand.” Hao is shaking his head at his answer, hysterical ferocity seizing him. “You were lucky enough to be the last to see him, you had the chance—”
“It’s because I had the chance, and I didn’t.”
His words are a messy blubber and he’s full on weeping now. He barely registers Hao’s arm around his shuddering shoulders, the addition of tears that wasn’t his. When they finally stop flowing, it’s only because their eyes can’t keep up with their grief—the pain doesn’t ebb.
“I can’t go a single moment without replaying it all back, if I had just gone with him to the gate, if I had just said goodbye, maybe even a wave…”
Hao’s expression doesn’t shift, the energy drained and spirit broken. He doesn’t tell Gyuvin that it’s “okay”, because he wished someone had bid farewell to Hanbin, even if he hadn’t been the one to do it. They both did.
“He would want you to live without regrets.”
Without regrets was a tall order. Gyuvin could barely live as it is, his life is tainted by the one unsaid word.
Regret is a pool that doesn’t run dry. He feels it when a call chimes, when he sees the mango cake Ricky got him for his birthday.
The only time he doesn’t feel it is when he swallows the pills.
Because if Hanbin wasn’t going to come back to him, at least he can go to Hanbin instead.
1 month ago: Missed Call from “sunghanbitna ♡”
“Hanbin hyung?”
Everything is bleary and a foggy haze, but Gyuvin’s heart has no space for fear as everything engulfs him.
“Gyuvinnie, why are you here?”
He can’t see the being behind the voice, but it doesn’t matter, because all he needs is words.
“You never came back, I missed you.” Missing doesn’t even begin to describe the layers of longing and emptiness. “So, so much.”
There's a faint chuckle, the one that Gyuvin also missed. “I did too, I’m glad you were at the airport with me.”
“But it wasn’t enough, I didn’t treasure it.” If he had known it was his last moment with Hanbin, he would have rewritten everything. Still, it wouldn’t have been enough time, they were supposed to have years together, Gyuvin was supposed to have a lifetime to repay Hanbin.
“Will you do me a favour?”
“Anything.” And Gyuvin meant it, he would pluck the moon out from among the stars if it was what Hanbin wanted.
“Take care of everyone else for me, will you?” Hanbin’s voice is a bittersweet caress of love and resignation. “That includes yourself.”
“I don’t want to, I want to stay here with you,” Gyuvin is already battling the pull of life.
“Please.”
He owed Hanbin, if this was the only way to repay him… he stops fighting it. Someone reaches out to hug him and he leans into the touch.
“Goodbye, my gang-aji.”
“Goodbye, Hanbin hyung.”
The word finally leaves his lips after a month of waiting, and just in time before the hospital spins into view.
Calling “sunghanbitna♡”…
The silence at the other end is dead. No swish of static or breath, but Gyuvin’s words break the quiet.
“Thank you, Hanbin hyung for everything, for guiding me with patience, for laughing with me, for scolding me and loving me.”
Gyuvin blinks away a few tears, he didn’t want the goodbye to come.
“And… I’ll see you again.”
Nothing changed, the world kept spinning without Hanbin. But Gyuvin’s glad he said it anyway, because nothing could rob him of wishing this farewell.
Not time, not distance and definitely not death.