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Youngjae stood by the open window, feeling the chilly breeze drift in from the backyard. Like every other first day of autumn, the day began with the grass still damp from last night’s rain. The crisp air carried the warm scent of cinnamon and baked apples. Patches of sunlight danced across the kitchen floor as the sheer curtain shifted lightly. Footsteps sounded from the hallway, followed by a muffled voice that became clearer as someone approached the kitchen. Minho appeared in the doorway with his usual suit: neatly pressed white shirt and dark tie under his long black coat. The small silver family pin on his lapel caught the morning light as he moved.
“No, I want white lilies.” His voice lost its usual softness this morning, sounding a little bit sterner as he spoke on the phone.
Youngjae assumed the florist had offered his father something else. Minho shot a look in Youngjae’s direction. One thing about him was that his anger and frustration could only be detected in his tone, never within his expression. Even now, as Youngjae watched him, Minho remained perfectly calm.
“If you send me white roses, I will expect a full refund, and I assure you, this will be the last time I do business with you.”
Youngjae smiled. Today was the day of the family tradition. His father would close the mortuary for a week at the beginning of the season. Around the entrance, there would be flower arrangements of white lilies and blue hydrangeas. He had always thought the combination was way too colorful for a place so morbid, but his father had insisted on it for as long as he could remember. Every year, the same flowers, without fail.
“Great, I’ll wait for the lilies.” Minho ended the call and placed his phone on the dining table. He checked the watch on his wrist, muttering something under his breath before looking toward the window as if he were waiting for someone.
“You can sense him too, don’t you?” Youngjae whispered, turning his head in the same direction. They both looked toward the cemetery gate, visible from the kitchen window.
Minho didn’t answer. His eyes remained fixed on the iron gate, his expression was unusually still. A weak smile tugged at the corners of Youngjae’s lips. Of course his father knew, he had been waiting for Dohoon too. He knew his father had always been fond of Dohoon like his own son. All the flower arrangements, the baked pies, and candied apples. All the special treatments prepared every year for Dohoon who came back as faithfully as the season itself. He would run through the cemetery gate in that loose, over-sized white shirt. The sleeves were always too long, nearly reaching the tips of his fingers. His pants were a muted, almost faded white, different from the brighter shade of his shirt. To Youngjae, Dohoon always looked strangely surreal against the autumn grass, as though he came out of some half-remembered daydream.
“I’ll wait for him outside.” Youngjae headed to the screen door and into the backyard. The air felt colder than earlier as he stepped outside. He watched the iron gate again, only to realize Dohoon was already standing there. Youngjae hadn’t even noticed he had arrived. Youngjae smiled. Typical of Dohoon, he thought.
Dohoon walked down the cemetery path at an easy pace, his slouching socks pulled over his ankles. The clothes seemed oddly untouched by the damp weather. “Good morning,” he greeted Youngjae with a smile.
Youngjae didn’t bother to return the greeting, he simply threw his arms around Dohoon for a hug. He rested his chin on Dohoon’s shoulder, breathing in the clean scent of freshly laundered clothes from the young man.
“You smell like apple pie.” Dohoon gave Youngjae a pat on his back.
“Dad baked an apple pie for you—I mean, us.”
Dohoon smiled. “How very nice of him.”
Youngjae took a step back from the hug, his arms remained loosely around Dohoon’s neck. “He likes you.”
Dohoon only laughed softly, as though he hadn’t noticed how the air around them seemed to grow colder. “I’ll greet him later.” His gaze wandered over Youngjae’s shoulder, resting at the distance for a moment before returning to Youngjae. “Do you like the flower arrangement?”
Youngjae lowered his arms to his side. For a moment, he thought about the phone call his father had that morning. The florist clearly had gotten something wrong because his father sounded so irritated. He glanced toward the front entrance where the flowers would be arranged later. Had he misunderstood the conversation? “You already knew about them?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Youngjae smiled. Of course Dohoon would know. He was part of the tradition after all.
“Do you want to take a walk with me?”
Youngjae nodded. Before he quite realized where they were going, his hand had found Dohoon’s. Their feet walked toward the cemetery gate. He couldn’t have said why he led Dohoon to that direction. There were plenty of places they could have gone—the lake, the park, the town center, anywhere else—but somehow, this path felt familiar, like the only place they were supposed to be.
The iron gate stood slightly ajar. Youngjae reached for it but Dohoon pushed it open first and stepped inside, so Youngjae followed behind. They both paused for a moment, taking in the familiar sight. The cemetery had been there for as long as either of them could remember, changing with seasons but never losing the feeling of home.
In the cold of winter, the cemetery felt most like it truly was: a burial ground. Snow gathered up along the paths and the tombs stood silent with the bare branches loomed overhead like crooked fingers clawing at the sky. Spring was a little warmer, the warmest a cemetery could be, anyway. Wildflowers grew thickly around the gate, small flowers sprouted between the graves. Most families came to visit around this time, leaving flowers on their loved ones’ graves. Surely it was the most vibrant. Then came summer, and the cemetery felt strangely alive, somehow different from the season before it. Thick green canopies spread over the graves, as if offering the dead shade from the hottest days. The relentless buzz of cicadas filled the sunny days, sometimes sounding almost like voices among the graves. And then autumn, Youngjae’s favorite among all seasons, when the cemetery seemed caught in limbo between life and death. The air grew cooler, the days felt shorter, and everything seemed to settle into a comfortable kind of silence. He remembered how much he loved the feeling of leaves crunching under his bare feet as he walked between the graves.
“What’s that statue again?” Dohoon’s voice pulled Youngjae back out of his reverie. The question sounded peculiarly familiar to him, like he’d heard those exact words before. “Is it dove?”
Youngjae glanced at the little dove atop the nearest tomb. “Yes, that’s a dove. It’s flying upward, so it symbolizes the soul ascending to heaven. But Dad said doves might hold different meanings depending on their positions. The one over there—” he pointed at the willow tree, “—has broken wings. I think it belongs to the baby of our mayor. Such a young age.”
“You knew a lot.”
“Dad told me a lot of things about the cemetery, about burials. I eavesdropped on the people who came to visit too.” Youngjae let out a shy laugh, his gaze drifting into the distance. There was something wistful in his expression, as though he were holding those memories close. “They always had so many stories to tell. I think it’s beautiful, you know? Even when their loved ones are gone, their stories live on. Don’t you think so?”
Dohoon had been watching Youngjae for a while before he realized he was smiling. When their eyes met, his expression softened with unmistakable affection. “I agree. It’s beautiful. What’s your favorite story?”
The smile on Youngjae’s face grew wider. He gestured for Dohoon to follow him deeper into the cemetery, looking eager to tell him his favorite story. “There is this grave that never looks dead.”
“Because of flowers?”
Youngjae turned to Dohoon with an amused smile on his face. He stopped beside one of the graves, a key carved into the stone. A bouquet of flowers rested beside it, no longer fresh but still recent enough to suggest that someone had left it only three or four days ago. “This is the lady from the tea-house. Remember her? The one who smells like—”
“—peppermint tea with honey.”
Youngjae watched Dohoon’s face. The pale sunlight made his features seemed softer, almost unreal—a boy from a dream, Youngjae would have called him like that. The gentleness in his eyes and the sweetness of his smile stirred something deep in Youngjae’s chest, a strange ache that almost felt like longing. He nodded, repeating peppermint tea with honey in a whisper.
“I still have the peppermint oil you gave me for my headaches. I don’t get them much anymore, but I still keep it. It still reminds me of you,” Dohoon continued.
Something sank heavily in the pit of Youngjae’s stomach. He was relieved to know Dohoon no longer suffered from headaches, yet an inexplicable gloom settled over him. Youngjae reached up and touched Dohoon’s cheek, “I am happy you don’t get headaches anymore.”
“Thank you for taking care of me,” Dohoon said sincerely, his voice carrying softly through the stillness of the cemetery.
“Can I tell you more stories?” The words came out from his mouth before Youngjae had a chance to think about them, and for some reason, his own question startled him. He didn’t know why he had asked it like that, as though he were afraid his time might be up anytime soon.
“I will be happy to listen to all of your stories.”
So Youngjae led Dohoon to another part of the cemetery, pointing toward a large tomb. An open book was carved into the stone, its worn edges seemed softened by years of weather and rain. Youngjae moved between the graves, approaching the large tomb before resting a hand against its weathered surface. “Books can represent a lot of things—much like doves before. Some might indicate that the person was religious, while others might simply suggest they were someone who loved to read. A closed book might signify a completed life, a fulfilling one and that the person died happy—or so I hope. But this one, with its pages left open, might mean that their story was cut short or—”
Dohoon watched Youngjae from a short distance away, still standing and waiting on the main path. He hadn’t followed Youngjae to walk between the graves and Youngjae wondered why. He waved from his spot, “I can hear you.”
Can he really hear me? Youngjae stared at Dohoon, his fingers mindlessly tracing the edge of the stone. The thought felt bizarre. Dohoon was farther away than he realized, yet his voice carried to Youngjae as clearly as if he were standing right beside him. Youngjae glanced around the cemetery, nothing moved except the leaves trembling in the wind.
“I can’t walk there. The graves are too close together,” Dohoon explained when Youngjae returned to his side.
Youngjae looked back over his shoulder. The path did seem narrower from here. Maybe they had always been like that. Or maybe he remembered it differently. The thought brought back an old tale his father used to tell him about the cemetery changing its layout at night, the paths shifting and the graves moving while everyone slept. Youngjae had always taken it for another local superstition, the sort of things adults told children to keep them from wandering into the cemetery alone—something that won’t work on him. Still, as he looked at the narrow path behind him, he couldn’t help wondering if there had ever been a little truth to it.
“What are you looking at?” Dohoon asked.
Youngjae turned to him as they continued to walk. “I was just wondering if the paths always have been narrow.”
Dohoon looked over his shoulder once, then back at Youngjae. For a brief moment, something unreadable crossed his face. “Maybe they have.”
Youngjae frowned. “That’s not very helpful.”
A soft laugh came from Dohoon. “Youngjae, you are the one who knows this cemetery better than I do.”
Obviously, Youngjae couldn't help but take it as compliment, a little pride warming his chest. He was about to come back with cheekier reply when something caught his attention, bringing him to a halt. The tombstone in front of him was beautiful, unlike any others around it. There was no name engraved on it, only a rose carved into the stone, its petals caught in partial bloom where a name or date of death should have been. A weeping angel rested atop the headstone, its bowed head and folded wings giving it an air of suffocating sorrow. Youngjae stared at it for a while. There was something uncanny about the grave, the familiarity of it made him want to cry. His eyes traced the half-bloomed rose, then the angel. He wondered who it belonged to. Then his gaze drifted back toward the man behind him. Dohoon stood there. His white clothes seemed glowing beneath the pale autumn sunlight. He looked almost … ethereal, the light catching around his head like a halo. What an angel. For a moment, Youngjae could only stare. There was something about the sight that made his chest ache, yet he couldn’t understand why.
A man in a long black coat stood several meters away, watching them. Minho wore a solemn expression, though Youngjae couldn’t tell whether he was looking at them or the grave behind them. There was something strange in his father’s expression, a mixture of fondness and sadness that he couldn’t quite place.
“It will rain soon. Come inside.”