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Seokjin watched the flow of the river outside the window of his family’s new house. It moved at a steady pace, but the currents looked strong. If he watched for long enough, he felt like it was carrying parts of him away.
He went to go find a piece of paper, a pen and, an empty glass bottle. Then he started to write down whatever he felt. Whatever he wanted the river to carry away with it.
―
Namjoon liked to be up before the sun rose. Not because he was an early riser―he detested the mornings where had no choice but to get up early. It was because he felt there was something significant about watching the world around him come out of darkness.
He often snuck outside while his family slept and went for a walk along the river bank. It was calming. It cleared his head. On his walk one particular morning, he found something washed up on the edge. It looked like a bottle, painted pink, and when he bent to pick it up, he found that there was something inside.
He thought of all the movies he ever saw that had glass bottles with messages inside of them. This couldn’t possibly be that. He opened the bottle and shook it. What fell out was a rolled-up note. Maybe the person that wrote this had seen all those movies, too.
Moved in today. Mom looks so happy. Tired, but happy.
Almost everything is unpacked. We ate ramen on the floor. Old Mom would never let us eat on the floor, forget eating ramen in the first place. I cooked it though, so obviously it evoked a gourmet, high class feel.
You’re a pretty river. But that “log” I saw is totally a monster, isn’t it! If not, then why was it staring at me? Huh?!
I’m calling it the log Ness monster. You don’t know this, yet, but I am the master of hilarity.
Namjoon smiled. Log ness monster like Loch Ness. His eyes ached from straining so hard to catch all the words. He didn’t have his glasses on, but he kept reading.
I’m pretty tired. But that’s okay, mom’s been tired for longer.
I think you’ll be good for us. I don’t know how I know. Or, probably, I don’t, but I hope you will be.
I’m gonna go now. Catch you later.
(get it? because fishing...I am art. okay, bye for real)
Namjoon looked up from the note and upriver, to where he could see houses along the edge. He smiled and tucked the note into his pajama pockets, throwing the bottle away when he got home.
The next time he found another note, several months had passed. After that first time, Namjoon took to wearing his glasses on his early morning walks, just in case he found a note to read on his way. He’d waited for a while, feeling futile thrills every time he saw something even a little oddly colored drifting in the water.
But months had passed, and now it was winter. Namjoon walked quickly along the edge of the bank, wanting to get home before he literally dropped dead from cold. He’d almost forgotten about that first note, almost forgot that he’d kept it, that he'd waited for more. But as he made his way back home that February, he saw something under the surface of the frozen water. It was pink.
Namjoon tried not to get too excited as he looked for a big enough stick to effectively break the surface of the ice with. The bottle was close enough that he didn’t need to step too far out to reach it, and when he fished it out with his hands, he got his gloves wet; ice immediately freezing the bones of his fingers.
He didn’t read it until he got home, when he was curled up in warm sheets and the numbness had left his body.
Nobody ever teaches you about shaving your pubes. We all have them, and I hate that I can’t just be like “yeah man, I just nicked myself shaving my pubes today.” You know? Maybe I don’t have the right friends to be talking about this with. When will I make pube friendly friends.
Namjoon had no idea what was going on. He didn’t think girls even thought about things like pubic hair. He was a little embarrassed to be reading about this, actually.
Starting college in the fall. Everyone is finally off my back about what I’m going to do with my future, but I’m only stalling because I have no idea. Still tired. I haven’t really stopped being tired. It’s annoying, really. I sleep every day, but it’s never enough. The more I sleep, the more tired I become. Maybe I should be a professional cat. Just sleep for 200 years.
Gotta go, the water for the pasta is done boiling. I’m running out of nail polish to paint these bottles with, but honestly??? Pink for life. Pink for president.
I can’t think of any river puns today. Pee you later.
(people pee in rivers, right? ...i’m so sorry about that if it’s true.)
He looked over at the bottle. So it was nail polish. No wonder the color hadn't come off even after being underwater for however long it had been. As Namjoon put the note away, tucking it in between the pages of the book that the first one was in, he pictured a girl with long hair and pink nails who lived up river and liked to cook. It complimented him; he had short hair and he liked to eat.
The next note he found was in May.
Literally the only reason I like cherry blossom season is because all the flowers are pink.
Also my favorite scenes in shoujo are when people confess under cherry blossom trees.
..."Why are you bringing up confessions," you ask? It's because I finally confessed to him. Let’s call him Boy.
Namjoon already didn't like him, whoever he was.
As you know, I’m going away to college. And I wanted to tell Boy how I felt before I left in case there was a chance for us to be together. I wanted to know once and for all, you know? I didn’t want to regret not telling him.
I told him I liked him. I wanted to die the whole time I was telling him.
And...
(drumrolls…..)
He kissed me! It was GREAT!! He told me he liked me back!! I don’t know if we’re gonna start dating now, or how that would work. But I definitely like boys and I definitely like him.
I hope I wasn’t too terrible at kissing. I haven’t had a lot of practice.
Though I TOTALLY wouldn’t mind practicing with Boy ifyouknowwhatimean.
P.S: getting better at shaving my pubes. I'm practically a pro.
In a weird sort of way, he was happy for her. And her pubic hair. Namjoon pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows at himself while he put the letter away. He certainly never thought he’d be thinking those thoughts in that sequence ever in his life.
The next note he found was three weeks later. The timing was a little unusual, so Namjoon couldn’t help feeling apprehensive before he started reading it. Maybe she was in trouble.
So Boy and I aren’t going to be dating. I’m sad, but...also relieved. I wasn’t so sure how it was going to work, either.
Instead, I've asked him to teach me how to fuck.
Namjoon’s head jerked away from the note in surprise. He...didn’t imagine her to be a crass person. Definitely not someone who would use the word "fuck" so casually.
Every time he kisses my neck, I feel like I’m going to die? So I have to know what that’s all about. He really likes it when I―
Namjoon put his hand up to his face in embarrassment, accidentally picturing all the dirty ways the end of that sentence could play out. He peeked between his fingers to keep reading.
―nibble his earlobe.
Oh, okay. He removed his hand from his face and chided himself for being a pervert.
I like it when he nibbles mine, too. Maybe earlobes are like the master key to getting into every living person’s pants?
Goals for the summer: become the master of earlobes. And also prepare myself for college.
I don’t want to go. I know that I don’t want to go, but if I don’t, then all the pressure and the questions will start again and I don’t have any answers for them.
Mood: wet and slightly afraid
Over the summer, Namjoon found more and more notes, each one more explicit than the last. It became clear that while he might be a pervert, he was certainly now less experienced than this boy.
He'd figured out that the writer was a boy along the way. It awoke something he didn't want to yet name inside of him. He'd read one of these notes once before bed and had ended up having a wet dream about it the following night. He'd often had dreams about an anonymous face and pink nail polish, about grabbing for short hair, but that one was by far the most embarrassing.
When August came, Namjoon dreaded the day that he would find the last note. And when he did, it took him a couple of days to work up the courage to read it.
Hi.
I go away next week. I’m not sure I’m ever going to come back.
This summer was fun. I learned a lot about myself.
Four years is a long time. I wonder what kind of person I’ll be by then? I can’t really afford to come visit mom as many times as I would like to. But thank god for video calls. I’ll try to send her whatever extra money I make, but she says she’ll be okay. I’ll stop trying to help when I believe her.
Thanks for listening to me. It’s been a tiny bit magical.
I wonder if I’ll ever end up telling anyone about this? About throwing secret stories into a river? Maybe. Maybe it’ll be an embarrassing memory of something I did when I was younger. Or maybe I’ll remember this moment as one of the best in my life.
You’ll be the river of freedom. But just between you and me, okay?
Namjoon felt something twist in his stomach.
And Log Ness, obviously. Tell her I love her.
To my grown up self: don’t be embarrassed about this. It was fun.
Namjoon looked up when he was finished reading the note. Reread it to find clues about what this boy looked like. Maybe the spelling of his name in the beginning of each paragraph. Or a different type of secret code in there or something. But there was nothing. He folded it up and placed it on his desk.
The bottles probably took a while to float down to him. Anywhere between a day to a month. Probably not longer, or the nail polish would have washed off of those first bottles. He went outside and started walking upwards along the river bank. Hoped to catch someone wearing some type of pink. Maybe leaving a house, maybe carrying suitcases.
But he found nothing.
Several years later…
Namjoon shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The music was as loud as could be expected of a party like this, but he couldn’t have any drinks because he’d agreed to be designated driver for his wasted ass friends. He had a book in the shoulder bag he'd dumped under the kitchen counter. He could read in this chaos, he'd done it before, but all the bodies constantly bumping into him kept unraveling his focus and he wasn't even focusing on anything.
He put his phone away after checking the time again. It felt like he’d done that for the millionth time tonight. He was reconsidering the book when he felt a body plop down next to him on the couch. When he turned, all he saw were some full, incredible looking lips on a face flushed pink.
“What?” The guy said after he caught Namjoon staring for too long. Namjoon shook his head. “Don’t even think about it. I may have some really nice blowjob lips, but I don’t do amateurs.”
“How do you know I’m an amateur?” Namjoon had to shout a little to be heard.
“It’s written all over you.” He looked him up and down. “With some mentoring, you could probably get really good. You’ve got some nice blowjob lips yourself.”
Namjoon flushed. Felt his face burn hotter as he said, “And are you gonna be my mentor?”
The guy looked at him with renewed interest; like he hadn’t been expecting him to say something like that. He shrugged, but Namjoon didn't feel like it was entirely casual. “Sure. It’s how I learned.”
Something stirred in the back of Namjoon’s mind. But the guy was straddling him and he kissed him like...well, he didn’t kiss like an amateur. And he wasn't drunk. Namjoon gave in to the kiss.
It was only as he was nibbling on Namjoon's earlobe that he thought to ask. “Who mentored you?” Holy shit, he was kissing down his neck.
The guy replied but Namjoon couldn’t hear him. The kissing was making him a little dizzy and the music was starting to make his head hurt. He made to get up and took a hold of the guy's hand to head toward literally any other room where it wasn’t blaring as loudly. They ended up in the kitchen and the guy pressed him into a corner. Namjoon had ony a moment to take in just how pretty he was before he went back to kissing him.
“Hey, uh―” Namjoon swallowed as he started nibbling his earlobe again. “Um, I couldn’t hear you back there―” Fuck, their erections were brushing. “W-what did you say about your mentor?”
The guy removed his mouth from Namjoon’s jaw. His lips were red and swollen and god, Namjoon had no fucking idea why he was wasting time on anything other than allowing him to kiss him.
“You...sure are hung up on this mentor thing.”
“Most people don’t have sex mentors.”
“He wasn’t literally my sex mentor, he just taught me a thing or two about what I know today.”
“And? Who was he?”
“Just some punk that I liked back home.” The guy started kissing down his throat and Namjoon let himself be pressed to the wall again. He started praying for mercy. “Nothing happened beyond that summer, though.”
The guy was tugging at his pants, and that was when Namjoon saw it. Pink nail polish. He grabbed his hands and brought them closer to get a better look.
“Hey...do you not wanna?” the guy asked after a few long moments of silence passed. Namjoon didn't want to believe that it was the boy from the river all those years ago. He had spent too many years hoping any boy he met with pink nail polish on would be him. But something felt fateful about this night. “It’s cool, I don’t mind. You should take things at your own pace―”
"Hey, wait right here, okay? Don't move." He ducked back into the living room and searched frantically for a piece of paper and something to write with. Ducked back into the kitchen after finding a pen and a stack of sticky notes on the coffee table. He shoved them at the guy a little too enthusiastically. "Please write your name for me."
Maybe Namjoon had a crazy look in his eye, or maybe this guy just wanted to be done with him as fast as possible. But he wrote his name without a word and handed it back to him. When Namjoon saw the handwriting, his head came up to stare.
“Seokjin. Did you live by a river around four years ago?”
Seokjin froze. Looked at him with a confused suspicion. “What?” Namjoon waited for him to answer. “Who are you―”
“I did, too. I used to find these pink bottles all the time, with notes in them.” The guy’s eyes widened and Namjoon knew he understood. “The notes used to have a lot of puns in them. It was actually pretty great, I love puns.”
Namjoon had kept them all. He thought it was pretty spectacular to hold pieces of a person’s story in his hands, especially someone he’d never met. As the years went by, he'd wished Seokjin happiness. Peace. He was going to say some of this out loud, but Seokjin looked like he wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in it.
“You found them? You read them? Oh my god.” He ran a hand through his hair. “God, I was so stupid.”
“Hey, look, it’s fine―”
“No, it’s not. I’m pretty sure I talked about pubic hair. ”
“I can give them back to you―”
“You still have them? Oh my god.” The hysteria in his voice was getting worse by the second.
“You said not to be embarrassed.”
“What?”
“In your last note. You said not to be embarrassed of yourself. From back then.” It was a little trippy feeling like the bridge between Seokjin's past and current selves. Like Namjoon had gone forward in time to remind him of something his younger self needed to know. “You said it was fun.”
A few moments passed as Seokjin processed this. Then he seemed to calm. Smiled softly to himself like he was remembering. “I did, huh.”
“You did. I can still give them back to you.”
“Nah.” He straightened. “It’s fine the way it is." He looked over at Namjoon. The heat in his eyes returned, and it was different somehow. And when he stepped in close, Namjoon shivered. "What's your name?"
What a good question. What an excellent question, what was his name? Surely his parents had―“Nmjo―" he cleared his throat. "Namjoon.”
“So, Namjoon.” He moved in until their lips were almost touching. “Do you wanna finish up here?”
Namjoon nodded without a word.