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Umbrellas—like white rice—are a staple of Chinese livelihood.

They come of a long-lasting cycle. That is—that in the fall, winter, and the few weeks of spring Beijing is granted before the heat waves come crashing down, their suffocating warmth lapping at a defensive fog of 24/7 AC, it rains. The kind that howls and seeps, full-bodied force knocking on windowpane like an angry neighbor about to file a noise complaint.

In the summer it burns. The city is hit by the ghostly impression of swelter and sunlight, an egg yolk swimming behind sizzling dust. Hands made fans recycle sticky air over sweat-slick skin; 1-kuai street-side popsicles double as ice packs, sugar and ice and everything nice.

In the summer—in the summer it burns, it rains and it floods. Umbrellas up no matter what. Keep the UV and the wet out.

(The summer Jaehyun meets Sicheng, a dam cracks somewhere in the pit of his chest. There is nothing to wedge in place to keep out that flood. It starts a gush, falling heavy, quick and it becomes a waterfall of want and this, breathless and lo—)

“It wasn’t thundering when I came in,” the boy is telling Jaehyun. He stares forlornly at the Uniqlo behind him as if it will imbue him with the secrets of China’s extensive meteorological phenomenons.

Jaehyun adjusts the umbrella he has placed in between them before getting a good look at his new companion. His face is slender and his lips pouty, a shade of glossy baby pink men considerably weaker than Jaehyun might find distracting to converse face-to-face with. Jaehyun, of course, remains passively unaffected. Instead he chooses to focus on—oh, okay. So even his eyes are pretty. In the moment, soft locks of dyed hazel fall haphazardly around pools of glinting onyx and Jaehyun can’t help but wonder how the strands would feel traced beneath his fingers. He swallows, throat dry.

“Good thing I was here,” Jaehyun manages. He hadn’t meant to butt in in the first place, but—the rain is unrelenting, and the kid had just looked so lost. Right time, right place, he justifies.

The boy smiles. “You’re right,” he says, before biting his lip. “Thank you, um…?”

“Zaixuan,” Jaehyun responds. He holds a hand out, and the boy jostles them in his haste to return the handshake.

“I’m Sicheng! Dong Sicheng. Listen, I—I really appreciate your help, but you don’t have to bother walking with me from here.” He slips his hand off the handle of their shared umbrella and gestures down the street, where people have crowded the Sanlitun sidewalks—truly the sharpest-dressed cluster of Adidas-bag-holding shoppers Jaehyun has ever seen. “I’ll just catch a taxi.”

“Are you really going to wait out there in this weather?” Jaehyun asks, making a face. As if to prove his point, a roll of thunder rips its way across the city skyline and startles Sicheng into Jaehyun’s side. “Look, you won’t get a taxi for half an hour with everyone trying to. I really don’t mind walking you to the metro station, if you want? I was headed there anyway.”

“Would you really?” Sicheng wonders. His smile brightens imperceptibly when Jaehyun nods in affirmation, hand sheepishly snaking its way back. If he’s being honest, Jaehyun can’t help but find something wondrously intimate about their shared space: suspended but alive, a dome of motion beneath the weighted drag of rainshower gravitating toward cold cobble and grey space.

He’s drawn to this in ways he couldn’t have expected.

As they make quick business of their walk toward the Tuanjiehu metro station, Sicheng becomes increasingly more chatty. It’s as though the boy who weighed each word with calculated care is slowly drifting away, his filter stomped to dust along the length of their slippery trail to reveal an excitable persona lying in reach.

“Say,” he ventures. “Zaixuan…is that your real name? You seem kind of foreign.”

Jaehyun nods. “Yeah, my Korean name is actually Jaehyun. I’m from Seoul, but my family moved to Beijing a few years ago.”

“Ah! I see.” Sicheng nods in earnest, as though the pieces in his mind are finally beginning to fall into place. “So that’s why your Chinese is so good, huh. Do you go to international school?”

“No, I go to No.4,” Jaehyun admits. “But it’s the international campus, so kind of.” He wonders what Sicheng must think of that: whether he now assumes Jaehyun’s parents are just rich and trying to pay his way into American university, which is what most people think of students at the campus.

But Sicheng just repeats, “No. 4?” and begins to bow elaborately, or as elaborately as his free space will allow, mouth quirked in half-teasing awe. “I’m not worthy!”

Jaehyun laughs. “It is not like that.”

Sicheng shrugs, eyes light. “If you say so,” he sing-songs, and at that they make their way down the station stairs and toward the metro platform, falling into a shallow, comfortable silence.

“Wait,” Sicheng says. They’re standing across each other on the train, hands clasped around the pole in front of them. “My stop is coming up, but—uh, before I go.”

“Hm?”

“Do you have WeChat?” he asks. His voice is timid, but the question must clearly be rhetorical; in fact, Jaehyun proceeds to watch with genuine fascination as Sicheng deftly plucks his phone out in offer, eyes never leaving Jaehyun’s even once. “Save yourself under your Korean name for me, please,” he adds. An afterthought.

Sicheng’s eyes are wide and pliant with every word spoken. His voice carries out lightly pleading in a way Jaehyun can’t help but find—really fucking cute, shit. Sicheng’s fingers uncurl and curl in front of him, rhythmic. A staccato beat against sleek metal to rival the thump thump of Jaehyun’s own chest.

Really—given the buzz that has settled under his skin, is now causing his fingers a near impalpable shake—Jaehyun accepts the object with what he considers to be remarkable grace. It’s sweet of Sicheng to want to make that effort, he concludes. It could be construed as…presumptuous, maybe? But Sicheng is pleasant and open and he knows where the intent lies. Smiling, Jaehyun adds himself before realizing that Sicheng doesn’t have a Korean keyboard installed, so he just goes to the alias bar and types in Jaehyun~~ with pinyin instead.

He feels hair tickling at his forehead as he types: clearly Sicheng, crowding in with interest. Jaehyun looks up at the same time he does. The boy grins, the corners of his lips a slow unveiling of theater curtains. Pushing themselves up and away to reveal something sparkling underneath.

“Jaehyun!” Sicheng repeats, delighted. It’s a little off, but there’s spirit and that’s what counts. He stands up and adjusts the strap of his messenger bag right as they notice their train grinding to a halt. Then he slips away with a rushed goodbye, waving hand drifting along like a ghost through the heavy bustle of metro station rush hour.

Jaehyun watches him go. The start of summer unfurls warm in his chest.

The next day the sky startles blue. For once the smog remains nothing but a mere parenthesis, flattened away by yesterday’s generous rainshowers. Jaehyun wakes to sunlight shoving its way through his 5th-story window, the streaks dissipating into a shower of illuminating white-gold that hits his eyes like pinpricks and forces them to open. An insolent impatience for an already-shifting day.

Beijing’s morning light is the kind that bounds you awake. The city sleeps late, and it wakes early.

Late July has finally hit. This summer will be Jaehyun’s first in Beijing ever since they relocated from Connecticut, and that had been years ago—right at the start of middle school. With his final year of high school ahead of him, his parents had wanted him to stay.

“This is your last chance to really think about the future,” His father tells him, time and time again. His brows furrow when he does so, expression dark and serious. He tells Jaehyun over morning bowls of rice, over his laptop as he types out confidential business reports. Over dinner, pausing to chew on pieces of pork, as if Jaehyun hadn’t heard him the first, and the second and the tenth time. “I just don’t want you getting distracted. You can see your friends next summer, when you have nothing to do before college starts.”

So that had been that.

Jaehyun pushes himself up and checks his phone. 1 unopened WeChat notification.

With that, Jaehyun finally gives in to the need of starting his day, limbs lazy with summertime lethargy as he moves toward the bathroom. He’s reveling in the cool touch of his cleanser rubbing away a mask of sleep-induced grime that had been repugnantly determined to cling to his face when his phone pings in quick succession.

He locks his phone just as Sicheng sends him another message—“Let me find you a link to the info!!! :)”—and smiles at his reflection in the dingy bathroom mirror. Jaehyun must look stupid this way—grin threatening to split, heart jackrabbiting onto the constraints of his ribcage with a feeling that can only be described as painfully-adolescent excitement. A part of him wonders: how can you have only known someone for less than a day and already feel this? This cautious interest, the desire simmering in your gut? The truth is that this, regardless of what it might eventually become, is still far from anything huge. Jaehyun knows that.

But what it is is a feeling. The seedling of it materializing from within the landscape in his chest, its vines twisting, twisting, twisting.

Jaehyun runs his toothbrush under the faucet. The water gurgles as it slides down the drain, and with it he feels some tension slip away. At face value, Sicheng is just someone new. Realistically, Jaehyun should be spending the summer going through Physics textbooks and appeasing his father’s unspoken expectations, waiting for his high school friends to return from their expensive vacations across scenic mountaintops while he stews at his desk. But—

He could also chase this feeling.

It bubbles out. Summer calls. These are the ways teenagers live.

The day before Sicheng’s showcase, Sicheng sends Jaehyun the address as reminder and a vague reassurance that his friend, a to-be second year named Qian Kun, would be able to find him before the show began.

Jaehyun has been at the venue for three whole minutes when someone taps on his shoulder.

“Jaehyun?”

The boy in front of him is pretty tall, even by Jaehyun’s standards, and his features seem—wise, for lack of better descriptor. Definitely the air of a university student, he decides. “Yeah,” he says. His hand rubs a nervous pattern at the back of his neck. “Qian Kun, right? Sicheng said his friend would find me.”

Qian Kun laughs at that. “Yep, that would be me. The friend. I was told cute Korean boy, black hair, around my height.” As demonstration of Jaehyun’s approximate stature, Qian Kun holds a palm perpendicular his temple and shifts it side-to-side. “His words exactly. It was pretty easy to figure that was you.”

“Oh, well—” he begins, rather stupidly. It’s decidedly embarrassing, but he finds himself defenseless to his double-take at Sicheng’s apparent description of him. Cute?, his mind screams. Sicheng thinks he’s cute? Then, as though to quell the rising tide of emotion in his gut, Jaehyun purses his lips and avoids Qian Kun’s eye with a firm stubbornness, knowing full well that the boy is probably smirking at his wordlessness.

He’s still recovering from his momentary lapse of speech when Jaehyun begins to see what Qian Kun had meant. A quick look around and it’s already noticeable that most everyone else at the venue is family: a lot of young children holding celebratory bouquets and well-dressed parents looking fit for the opera. Not very many boys their age to begin with, “cute Korean” ones aside.

Jaehyun snaps his head back to catch Qian Kun quietly appraising him, and he can’t help but blush.

“Anyway,” Qian Kun begins, thankfully taking mercy on him. “Let’s get to our seats.”

Sicheng is a dancer, Jaehyun knows. And—well, that’s really about it. A dancer at a prestigious dance academy. He’d been vague about the details of his training and specialization and the performance concepts, wanting Jaehyun to experience it in full at his showcase.

So really, when Jaehyun takes his seat he isn't sure what he’s meant to expect. The truth is that anyone can say they like to dance. Jaehyun also enjoys dancing, but in the way all high school boys “enjoy” it. By this he means: stuttered hip twists and awkward head banging, stepping on toes during slow dances and arms flailing hopelessly out of sync.

That whole shebang.

But when the curtains open and the performances begin, when Sicheng finally makes his first appearance—eyes lined with black and hair pushed back—he does none of this. Instead he follows the beat like a ripple; lets each fading note suspend at his fingertips, paints a quiet hush in the wake of each elaborate trail. The music drifts and shifts and it is nothing more than a mere extension of himself, or is it himself an extension of the music? In the movement springs a language of its own, and Jaehyun finds that either or, it doesn’t matter. The details lose themselves in translation.

He watches Sicheng’s fingers twist and curl, rapt. Follows the line of his back as his legs trace a fluid circle in the air, lean muscle ablaze under dramatic stage light. This Sicheng, he knows, is not the shy boy Jaehyun had met outside of Uniqlo: the shy boy with cheeks dusted rose and words low. This is the Sicheng who had steadily flowered on their walk back together, and in the messages they have begun to exchange. The Sicheng who will spam stickers to convey the emotions he feels so strongly (there is a language, even, to his liberal placement of 哈哈哈~s), an opening book willing to spill heart given the right audience.

This Sicheng is that and more. Ten times the focus, the detail and the passion.

“He’s good, isn’t he?” Qian Kun comments once they’re outside again.

“He—yeah. Yeah, wow.” Jaehyun sucks in a breath. “How long has he been training?”

“Since middle school.” Qian Kun looks fond, the way an older brother would. “By the way, how do you know Sicheng?”

“Well…” How does one go about describing their first meeting, anyway? It wasn’t in the most conventional ways, but Jaehyun doesn’t find it that odd or anything. “I met him at the mall once.” It just… kind of sounds it. When he puts it that way. “We started talking after that, I guess.”

The way the other boy stares so openly, Jaehyun gets the same nervous feeling one might when trying to gain approval from a significant other’s father. He thinks, anyway. In all his teenage years, Jung Jaehyun has never actually successfully wooed anyone to the point of meeting their parents, but he figures it imaginable.

“Qian Kun-ge!” hollers a voice to their right. They turn in unison to where Sicheng is exiting the stage doors. As Sicheng catches sight of Jaehyun standing there his mouth shifts into a wide beam, face coloring with pleasant surprise. “Jaehyun! You actually came!”

“What?” Jaehyun demands. “Did you really think I wouldn’t?”

Sicheng’s eyes crinkle with mirth. “I’m just kidding! I knew, I knew.” He pats Jaehyun’s arm reassuringly. “Did you like the show?”

Qian Kun snorts. “Yeah, he looked lik—”

“Yes,” Jaehyun rushes, when he decides he doesn’t like the direction this is going in. “You were amazing. Really. I’m sorry I didn’t, uh, think to bring flowers or anything. If I had known—”

“It’s fine!” Sicheng flaps a hand. “I don’t have space or use for flowers, to tell you the truth.”

In his post-show state, Jaehyun thinks, Sicheng looks completely loosened. Shoulders relaxed and hair catching gentle gleams of crisp moonlight. Jaehyun can’t help but take a second to admire the nonchalance in his posture. He wants to—to—he doesn’t know, tell Sicheng how he’d stolen his breath away? Tell him how Jaehyun wished it was just the two of them so he could offer him something, offer him a hug or reverent words of congratulations without feeling self-conscious under Qian Kun’s protective gaze burning hot on his back?

He’s standing there, a little stiff despite his best efforts, when Sicheng suddenly straightens and claps his hands. The same shy smile Jaehyun has grown so fond of has found its way back home. “Hey, so. It’s getting pretty late and I’m super hungry. Dinner?”

“Oh, my parents…” Sicheng shrugs a shoulder. “They only got to see me perform once. It was my second year here.” No way of or reason for traveling so far north when their jobs kept them so busy, they had reasoned, as Sicheng puts it. “They visit when they can, though. Generally one of us will travel during New Year’s.”

Even though Jaehyun sometimes wishes, he really doesn’t think he could live without his parents. And it's probably also because he's a foreigner, but Jaehyun hadn't even known Sicheng wasn't from Beijing until now; it’s the way Sicheng seems to so seamlessly fit into the rush and pull of Beijing’s unique urban briskness. At risk of sounding too corny, it amazes him that Sicheng has been here so long and so alone without losing any of his bright wit and innocence.

He doesn’t say as much, obviously, because he knows restraint.

Qian Kun sips at his soup and looks at Jaehyun over the rim of his bowl, pausing in consideration. “So,” he says, setting his bowl down again. “What about you, Jaehyun?”

“Huh?”

“Like, what are you planning on studying? What are you doing with your life right now?”

Jesus Christ, does he sound like Jaehyun’s father.

“I’m… studying.” Smooth, Jaehyun. “And I’ll probably major in business because my dad wants me to, but I’m still—still deciding.” He can’t help the bitterness in his tone, so he coughs a laugh and adds, “I have time, anyway.”

Sicheng had originally looked apologetic at Qian Kun’s brazenness, but he sits up at that. “Oh!” he says. “Are you going to stay in China for university?”

“Uh…” Jaehyun pauses. It’s not that he hasn’t thought of it. Rather, it’s more that he and his father alike have thought of it excessively, and it feels like too much of a sensitive topic to broach over 15-kuai beef noodle soup. “I don’t know yet. I like Beijing, but I have to be—realistic. About things.” He’s just quoting his father now and he hates it, really, truly hates it, but Jaehyun would much rather discuss this with Sicheng privately. Especially when “this” remains something he can barely begin comprehending himself.

“I get it,” Sicheng returns, agreeable. Stable. He flashes the smile again, and it is at once an apology, a reassurance and a way of thanks. Thank you for being here, he says in between the spaces. For taking the time to watch me perform. When his parents couldn’t, provinces away.

Jaehyun’s hands cradle his bowl, palms cozy from the emanating heat. There should be more things in between them, he thinks: language and culture, circumstance and interest. Only—here they are. Sitting across each other, feet by feet and hands by hands, elbows knocking on the same wooden table, just a knowing silence living in the distance. So Jaehyun returns a smile and it says, thank you for being this for me, not caring that neither of them know what “this” is, yet.

It’s a feeling he’s accustomed to by now, anyway.

“Listen, Qian Kun-ge. I know I haven’t known him that long, but I swear there’s this connection. It’s like—”

“Like he always understands what you actually mean to say, I know,” the other boy repeats, exasperated. “And I know this because you haven’t shut up about your handsome Korean boyfriend for the past two weeks.”

“It’s not—he’s not my boyfriend!”

Qian Kun hums noncommittally on the other side of the line. “Okay. But you wish he was.”

Sicheng huffs. A part of him is acutely relieved no one can see him right now, since they would definitely catch the red spreading across his face. He brings his hands to cup at his cheeks and squishes them together in resignation.

It shouldn’t be a big deal. Only...to Sicheng it kind of is, because—dance is a busy profession. He doesn’t have the time for feelings, as it is.

“It’s okay to have a crush,” Qian Kun coos. His tone has changed now that he’s caught wind of Sicheng’s sulkiness. “I like him, anyway. I was just giving him shit because—”

“Because you’re an asshole,” Sicheng asserts.

“Well, okay. That. But also because I care about you! And you deserve the best! And I think what you need is more friends.”

“I totally have friends!”

Sicheng can practically hear the eye roll. It is, most assuredly, absolutely mutual. “Half your friends are literally 14-year-old girls.”

“They like me,” he retorts, indignant. “They say I give good guidance and admire my experience.”

It’s not completely true, anyway; there is a solid amount of boys his age at the academy. Sicheng is even vaguely close with a few of them. But this doesn’t stop Qian Kun from rattling on, resolute.

“...I think it would do you good to have a friend whose life doesn’t revolve around someone’s dancing experience. And who isn’t physically capable of imitating the shape of a pretzel. Like, you know. A normal human being.”

“Isn’t that what I have you for?”

“Sicheng. I’m trying to be a supportive human being here.” Qian Kun sighs. “I know, I know it’s hard for you because you don’t have a lot of people to connect with and your family is far away, but I’m proud of you. I want you to have people who appreciate you. So take a chance, is what I’m going for here. And—you’re allowed to have feelings. You’re a teenage boy who dances. Not a monk.”

“Thank you, ge.” Sicheng can hear the care in his voice, and they both know Sicheng appreciates the words, stilted or not. “That was very heartfelt. Please don’t exhaust yourself.”

“Brat!”

Sicheng is getting ready for bed one night when Jaehyun messages him. They’ve stayed up pretty late chatting about light nothings before, their favorite bands and which movies they’d like to watch, so it’s nothing unusual.

Still, it isn’t that common for Jaehyun to vent to him; he doesn’t like making people worry, he says, so Sicheng furrows his brow a little.

Sicheng bites his lip. He doesn’t want to press, but he can tell something is eating at Jaehyun. He isn’t one to pry unwarranted though, so he just sends a quick, Okay. Good night, Jaehyun! Then, without putting much thought into it, he types out <3 <3 and presses send.

It’s… flirty. Maybe too much so. They’ve been bordering on something for weeks now—each of them taking cautious steps, but far from any leaps—and he doesn’t know how to approach the topic. But a few seconds later his phone alerts him of a message, and when he looks at the app he lets out a small sigh of relief.

Jaehyun is too much for his heart, he swears.

“I’ve actually never hung out in Wangjing before,” Sicheng says when Jaehyun greets him by the gate of his apartment complex.

“I like it,” Jaehyun tells him. “Most of the neighborhood kids go to the Korean school nearby, or to the international schools in Shunyi. Sometimes I think it’s like having a little pocket of home with me.”

“Do you still consider it home? Seoul, I mean.”

Jaehyun laces his hands behind his back and stretches, humming contemplatively. “Well—in a way. In a way, yes. Most of me knows that Beijing is my home now, and that it has been for a while. Like, I honestly don’t think I would want to go back to Seoul for the city itself, you know? It’s more that there are these pieces of culture that complete me—the imported kimchi from the Korean grocery store, the lao tai tai who speak Korean and make lunch with my mom, the restaurants that actually have menus in my first language. I guess I’m young enough to have adapted somewhat, and my dad is kept busy with his job, but it’s nice to think that it at least makes my mom feel less lonely.”

“It’s about the community.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly it.”

“I think I get it.” Sicheng smiles, but the gesture is saturated with nostalgia. “How it’s home, but not really? Sometimes that’s what Zhejiang feels like for me, too.” He finds himself reminiscing on some of his favorite memories during the quiet that extends along their trip up the stairs and past Jaehyun’s apartment door, eventually coming to a halt so that he can toe off his Nikes in exchange for baby pink Hello Kitty sandals. (“Those are our only spares, sorry,” Jaehyun says with a wince. Sicheng just laughs.)

“Well, this is my room.” Jaehyun sweeps a hand in show. “I actually did a lot of my studying early today, so if you want we can watch a movie now, or something.”

Sicheng takes note of the textbooks stacked high on Jaehyun’s desk, eyes determined to absorb every little detail of the one space most irrefutably Jaehyun’s. Pillowy sheets strewn aside haphazardly, a potted plant by the windowsill, book shelves packed full with old children’s books and Korean and English titles Sicheng can’t even begin to decipher. A textbook and notebook sit open at his desk, eraser shavings curled across lined paper. “You’re a hard worker,” Sicheng comments.

The bashfulness on Jaehyun’s face can really only be described as endearing. (His boyish looks certainly don’t help either, Sicheng’s brain senselessly informs him.) “I mean, I—I have to. To get into a good school. It’s what my parents want from me.” Jaehyun settles himself down on his bed and shrugs. “I’m not naturally a genius, but I’m not really enough of a work horse to make up for it either. I’m kind of just… you know. I have friends who don’t care to study because their parents make too much money and they just want to play League all day, but I also have friends who think 12 hours a day won’t cut it.”

“And you’re in between all that?”

“I guess, yeah. I just—my dad asks, and I do. Or tells, more like.”

Sicheng chews at his lip. “It sounds like he cares, even if he’s overbearing.”

“For sure,” Jaehyun laughs. “It’s in his nature to worry about these things. I think all parents do. But—you know how you were asking about university the night of your showcase? The thing is, my dad really wants me to go to America or—one of these top three schools in Korea. He’s a Yonsei graduate, so it’s a big deal to him. The only other thing that can compare is another SKY school or an Ivy League.”

Sicheng swallows against his will. It shouldn’t, but it hurts to remember that these months they’d thought to themselves aren’t fully theirs; are temporary in the face of bigger futures and broadening expectations. He doesn’t want to imagine Jaehyun stepping out of Beijing and out of China. Squeezing his way past this expansive land and onto foreign waters.

“Do you want to leave China?” He asks. Again.

"No,” Jaehyun breathes. “That’s the thing. Somewhere along the way I guess this city became a part of me, irreparably. I don’t…want to leave this.” His heart twinges. Don’t want to leave this. This, this, and you, he imagines. “There’s nothing wrong with going to school here, anyway. I’ve done a lot of research on it. Chinese is a valuable language for Koreans to know in this economy, so it’s not like I’m disadvantaging myself. I just wish he could understand that.”

Sicheng is quiet for a few moments as he mulls his words over. He sits next to Jaehyun on his bed and gently presses their shoulders together in comfort. “Have you told him all of this?”

“We’ve discussed it a little bit,” Jaehyun mumbles. “But he’s always so frustrating about it. I guess I’ve never really told him all of my reasoning, no.”

“I think…” Sicheng begins, careful. “I think maybe you should try again, and really lay out all your points. I know it hurts that he doesn’t want to listen to you, and it hurts that he thinks he can decide everything that’s good for you, but sometimes you just have to be persistent. Just… keep going at it. And he’s your only dad, and he’s trying, even if he’s—you know. I don’t know him, but from what you’ve told me he isn’t. Genuinely terrible, right?”

“No, no. He really does care. Just sometimes doesn’t know how to show it.”

“There you go. And for the record, I’d really like you to stay, too.”

Jaehyun grins at him, natural and automatic. Even as he turns from Sicheng to grab his laptop, says, “Okay, let’s watch something now,” he can’t keep the smile off his face, like he’s fighting off the same emotion Sicheng knows well and true.

Suddenly it is startlingly clear to Sicheng that he is really, truly overwhelmingly head over heels in love with Jung Jaehyun.

It’s okay, he tells himself. He’s just a teenage boy who dances. A teenage boy who somehow came across Jaehyun, bright and loving Jaehyun with so much more to his heart than Sicheng thinks he even knows. Just a teenage boy who loves another teenage boy.

Not a monk.

Honestly, watching the light that catches in Jaehyun’s eyes when he smiles, the careful shadow filling into the smooth crevices of his two persistent dimples, Sicheng is pretty glad for it.

The same night Jaehyun’s parents ask Sicheng to join them for dinner: BBQ, at a restaurant a block or two away. Against his better judgment, Sicheng lets Jaehyun feed him pieces of samgyeopsal because it’s his favorite (only because, he tells himself). In between bites of the savory, sizzling meat, the fat that dissipates on his tongue leaving only a faint memory of dewy drops seeping from cool lettuce wrap, Sicheng can’t help but think of his grandmother still in Wenzhou. How she would cook tomato and egg soup and scoop Sicheng eager spoonfuls, her hands shaking with age around the handles of the pot as she set it down with the careful determination of a grandmother who wanted to see her only grandson fed. He misses watching his grandparents prepare steaming rice and dongpo pork and bamboo shoots. Misses watching them at the kitchen as they carved ripe peach after peach into abundant slices—told him to eat eat eat—only satisfied when the juice started trickling sticky down his chin, body warm with the weight of fresh-cut fruit.

It is the quintessential language between child and parent and grandparent, when the generation gap has seeped into the cracks. The food—the food, it stays.

He leans back and watches as Jaehyun laughs at something his mother says, face alive under the subdued lighting of their hole-in-the-wall dining choice. It turns out Jaehyun’s father is really as gruffly reserved as Sicheng had expected, but he isn’t totally cold or surly or anything; occasionally he’ll smile this protective, familial kind of smile, and Sicheng finds Jaehyun in the laughter lines.

His heart twinges a little bit at that. Sicheng knows that Jaehyun’s family isn’t perfect; that he’s still struggling to come to terms with his father’s demands of him. But Sicheng wishes he could have this, sometimes. To share a meal with his parents. To share… this laughter, and this love, and more than just a dream that has left him alone since he turned twelve and a middle-aged woman with a steady face told him there was a future waiting for him in Beijing.

Jaehyun takes note of his silence and tilts his head in question. Sicheng smiles in reassurance and presses a hand against Jaehyun’s beneath the table, secretive. An invitation.

“I like your family,” Sicheng whispers. “I haven’t had this. In a long time.”

His chest squeezes when Jaehyun’s fingers curl around his. His palm is soft, smooth against the callouses left on Sicheng’s by years of strenuous barre work. The slide feels right.

“Thank you,” Jaehyun tells him. Then, ”I want you to have this, too.”

Sicheng smiles. Caught in the moment, neither of them notice Jaehyun’s father watching pensively to the side.

“Jaehyunnn. My friends took me out drinking.”

Jaehyun is sitting at his desk when Sicheng calls. He rubs at his eyes, vision bleary; it isn’t that late, but he’s especially spent from a day of studying, running errands, and then even more studying. “Where are you?” he asks.

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere in Sanlitun.” Sicheng’s voice filters through the phone speaker all tinny, a little soft and slow from the alcohol. So he’s that kind of drunk, Jaehyun thinks.

“Sicheng,” he ventures. “Why did you call me? Aren’t you hanging out with your friends?”

“Yeah, but I miss you! Jaehyun, Jaehyun. Listen. They’re going to take me back to my apartment soon. Can you please visit me?”

“I—Sicheng, I really don’t know if that’s such a good id—”

“Please, just. To hang out with me! I live alone right now. What if I… what if… I throw up or something. In my sleep. And die. I can give you directions, I took the metro to your place once so I remember.”

Jaehyun pauses, hand pressing into his temple. “One second, okay? Let me think about it.” His parents are headed to bed soon, and while this is probably one of Jaehyun’s worst ideas yet, maybe if he’s really, really quiet...? Then, maybe he can make it out.

(It’s not that Jaehyun is an amazing son or anything, but he’s never exactly had any incentive to sneak out before.

The problem is that Sicheng is kind of exactly that.)

He’ll worry over the technicalities of getting back later, Jaehyun decides, when his brain has the energy to concern itself with the worst of the consequences and what excuses will best cover his sorry ass.

“Is an hour okay?” he finally manages.

Sicheng squeals. There’s no other word for it: honest-to-god squeals, a soft drunken noise of excitability. Jaehyun huffs a laugh into the speaker. “Yes! Yes yes yes. I’ll be there. Wait, um, okay—my friend—oh—one second—he’s going to type in the directions for me, okay.” Then his voice goes serious and determined, like he’s trying very much to appear sober and put-together, thank you. “I’m going to hang up now,” he says, and does just that.

Jaehyun sets his phone down on his desk before leaning back in his chair and heaving a low sigh.

This, he realizes, is probably what people call being totally, absolutely whipped.

Sicheng buzzes him in with a broad smile. “You came!” he exclaims. His cheeks are lightly flushed, but to Jaehyun’s relief he doesn’t look entirely smashed or anything.

As far as Jaehyun can tell, anyway.

“Have you been drinking water?” he asks.

A “yeppp,” coupled with a nod of affirmation. Sicheng turns and motions for him to follow, leading them toward his bedroom. His living space is undeniably small; Jaehyun remembers Sicheng once mentioning that his school provides apartments for students scouted from outside Beijing, but even then “apartment” is generous. It’s barely more than a bathroom, half a kitchen, and a bedroom big enough to fit a bunk bed. But the walls are covered with posters—performance snapshots and what must be famous dancers, Jaehyun reckons—and with it one of those cherry blossom wall scrolls and the heap of clothes dispersed across the the floor help give the area character.

“My roommate went home for the summer,” Sicheng explains, when he notices Jaehyun eyeing the bunk bed curiously. He lies down on his bed and beckons Jaehyun over. “Heyyy, Jaehyun. Lie down with me.”

Instead, Jaehyun moves forward and sits cautiously at the edge of his bed. “Sicheng, you’re drunk.”

Sicheng rolls his eyes, insolent. “Just lie down with me, Jaehyun! I’m…. mmm. ‘M sleepy.” His hair is falling over his face, the same soft locks Jaehyun had wanted to run his fingers through all that time ago. He’s cute and beautiful and it hurts. “I have an extra blanket in the closet, if you really need.”

“Okay, okay.” He stands up to retrieve it, and returns to Sicheng burrowing deeper into the sheets. When Jaehyun settles down next to him, the spare blanket in tow, Sicheng rolls over and drapes an arm over Jaehyun’s side. His fingers splay across his middle a little bit, but Jaehyun just finds it casual, comforting. Not as weird as he’d worried.

“Let’s sleep,” Sicheng says. He mumbles something incoherent into his pillow, and Jaehyun takes it as a sign to close his eyes; assumes that Sicheng must be quickly drifting beside him.

Only—

“I like you,” Sicheng whispers suddenly. His fingers press down a little, and he moves his head forward to nuzzle at the nape of Jaehyun’s neck. “Jung. Jae. Hyun. I really, really like you.”

And, oh.

Jaehyun swallows.

“Sorry,” Sicheng adds, when he fails to respond. He wants to, but his brain is abruptly a million different everythings all at once; those five simple words the trigger for this geyser inexplicably expanding in his skull.

I really, really like you. Oh, oh.

“Why—why are you sorry?” he asks.

“Because. I like you. So much.”

Jaehyun shifts to face the bottom of the top bunk. He can eye Sicheng from here, so now he’s not just talking to dark, open space. “That’s—not something to be sorry for, generally.”

“But like…” Sicheng huffs, his grip tightening. “I like you so much I stay up thinking about you. Like, all the time. And tonight I called you because I was drunk and wanted to see you because I just really… like being around you. And now you probably think I’m dumb or something. So ’m sorry.”

Jaehyun places a hand over Sicheng’s, the one Sicheng is still pressing into the thin material of Jaehyun’s t-shirt. “Hey,” he whispers. “I think maybe we should talk about this more tomorrow. But you should know that, that that’s nothing you should apologize for. I’m glad you like being around me. I don’t think this would have worked out so well if you didn’t, right? But… tomorrow. We can figure it all out tomorrow.” He pats Sicheng’s hand in what he hopes is soothing, rather than aggravating.

“Okay,” Sicheng mumbles. Jaehyun closes his eyes. Exhales. “But you know I’m not that drunk anymore, right?”

“Right,” he says.

“Really! I mean it!”

“I believe you, Sicheng,” Jaehyun laughs. “But we should probaa—aa—” he breaks off, attempting to stifle a yawn of impressive proportion. “...bly sleep, now.”

Sicheng giggles. Shuffles closer, so that they’re pressed up against each other save for the blankets between them.

“Good night,” Jaehyun hears Sicheng say before he lets himself succumb to sleep.

“How do you feel?” Jaehyun asks the next morning.

“Kind of like shit, I guess. But I’ll be fine.” They’re still sitting on the bed, Sicheng cross-legged across from him. Sicheng brings a hand to his face in hopes of rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, the clearest remnant of last night’s drunken grogginess. “Listen—I—I want to talk. About yesterday.”

Jaehyun nods, looking convincingly unsurprised. He leans back against the wall like he’s bracing himself. Sicheng thinks he looks oddly small this way, bracketed in by sharp shadow and corner. “Okay. Uh, yeah.”

“Right,” Sicheng picks up. “Um. First off, I’m sorry I was such a mess last night.”

Jaehyun makes a noise in the back of his throat. “No, no. You weren’t at all,” he assures. “You were fine.”

“Well, I’m still sorry. And—uh—” he bites his cheek. Hesitates. Lets Jaehyun see him for who he is then: a little dazed, a lot insecure.

At the other end of Sicheng’s bed, Jaehyun’s hands fumble anxiously. His throat works, again and again. It’s a gradual build up; his mouth searching for the courage to open, so that he can ask them both the words they most need to hear.

“When you said you liked me.” Finally. “Did you mean it?”

Did he mean it? It’s the right question, but it still makes Sicheng wince. What can he say that won’t make this awkward? That will allow them to go back to what they had before, a relationship unmarred by the complexity of Sicheng’s emotional attachment? He isn’t sure there is anything, if he’s being entirely honest with himself.

It’s that thought that spurs him forward; grants within him an acceptance that settles, bone deep, for where he and Jaehyun have already gone—and where he hopes this can take them.

He looks down at his hands. His palms face up. Did he mean it, he thinks, when he’d confessed the only truth he’d realized this summer?

How can you lie when the certainty has sunk so deep, it rests burrowed beyond skin and flesh and bone?

“Yes,” he whispers. “I did. I do.”

Jaehyun sucks in a breath.

“It’s okay if you don’t like me back,” Sicheng hurries, unsure. His hands slip off his knees to settle awkwardly into the dips of the mattress. “I just—felt that you should know. I’m not going to lie to you about that. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, shit. Fuck, I’m sorry. Don’t apologize,” Jaehyun pleads. Hesitantly he nudges a pinky forward, letting his palm hover over Sicheng’s so that their fingers can fill into the spaces. “I like you, too. A lot.”

It’s like a sunrise, then.

Sicheng’s smile is wide and spectacular and full teeth. He bends forward to rest his forehead at the front of Jaehyun’s shoulder, and against it his closeness becomes something warm and snug. Almost tangible.

“I’ve probably liked you longer, though,” he deadpans. It makes his breath fog onto Jaehyun’s chest.

“What!” Jaehyun laughs. “I don’t remember this becoming a competition!”

Their fingers tighten. Sicheng raises his head back, shoulders still shaking with the force of light giggles, and looks into the inviting curves that so wonderfully constitute Jaehyun’s visage. It is one both smooth and formidable, just oh so sensationally human, work the higher powers must definitely have not so much meticulously carved as unapologetically felt, and lived, and loved.

Realistically, Sicheng knows they have a lot of things to figure out. Like where their futures lie, for one: where Jaehyun will be headed after their last year of high school and what that will mean for them, once met with the closing tale of their youth (and therefore the brightest moments of their lives); of the last few months that will both burn bright and blossom bitter, uncaged and carefree, before eventually entreating farewells to days unburdened under pretense of growing anew.

But for now, they have time.

“We can make this work,” he promises. It might be more for himself than for Jaehyun, but he isn’t sure. “We will. I want us to.”

Jaehyun’s dimples show when he smiles. Sicheng loves it.

“Then let’s,” is all he says.

So maybe Sicheng is stupid and young and completely, totally infatuated.

But oh, how wonderful it is to know that Jung Jaehyun is just like him.

Jaehyun is forced to head home a while later, knowing himself at high risk of facing his parents’ wrath should he return any later. In fact, Jaehyun should have probably been home a long, long time ago, but the determined part of himself pushes past this niggling voice as he walks out the metro stairs.

To both Jaehyun’s dismay and surprise, he nearly sneaks back in without being caught. In fact, he’s just about to call it a victory when his father steps into view between the space that stretches his bedroom door and the living room, expression accusatory.

“Where have you been?” he demands. “Your mother says she checked your room when she woke up and the bed was still made from yesterday.”

“Am I not allowed to make my own bed now?” Jaehyun swallows. “I didn’t go anywhere. I was just—out.”

“Out? Where?”

Jaehyun resists a roll of his eyes. Skittery nerves clamor in his chest. “You know, for a walk. Can I not walk now, too?”

“You went walking at 6 o’clock? In this pollution? Tell me the truth, Jaehyun.” His face is hard lines when he speaks, voice demanding and sturdy. But Jaehyun—doesn’t—can’t tell him. His chest is still full with the promise he gave Sicheng this morning, something too fraught for anyone to know of. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but Jaehyun isn’t infallible; a part of him is positively terrified of anyone finding out, entirely for fear of their reaction.

“I am,” he lies. Through his teeth, head down, eyes to the floor. “I swear.”

“Jaehyun,” his father snaps. “Don’t lie to me.” He throws his hands up then, the perfect picture of parental exasperation. “I don’t understand. Why are you being so damn difficult all of a sudden?”

And there it is: that furrow in his brow. Perplexed as always. This time, maybe even a little bit angry.

“You can’t always go running off and skirting your responsibilities, Jaehyun. Your mother and I aren’t getting any younger, and—we need you to start acting like an adult!”

His voice shakes with something unstable. Something Jaehyun isn’t sure he likes.

“Dad,” he tries.

“Just—why do you keep—keep on lying to to us? And arguing with me? Why can’t you ever just listen to what I’m trying to tell you, huh? Why—”

“Dad!” Jaehyun repeats.

He hadn’t meant to shout, but this time—this time it does the trick. His father stiffens. The silence runs thick.

“Stop,” Jaehyun whispers, subdued. He feels cold all over. “Please.”

The thing is, his father is a serious man: always has been, always will be. But he never, ever raises his voice. Hadn’t even when Jaehyun was a kid who did every stupid kid thing, like knocking over glass vases and getting stuck in trees he’d been told not to climb and staining the expensive dress slacks his parents had bought him for a cousin’s wedding.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbles. Through the incoherency Jaehyun is vaguely aware that tears are forming, hot wetness that prickles at the corners of his eyes. He reaches out without second thought—puts his arms around his dad and tightens, buries his face near the crook of his neck with cheeks damp enough to leave a wet spot. “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to listen.”

His dad shakes his head. His own arms snake around Jaehyun, the movement fragile. “No, kid. I—I’m sorry. Tell me, Jaehyun.”

Jaehyun sucks in a breath.

“I’m here. I’ll listen.”

“Dad,” he exhales, again, again, again. It’s like a dam has broken and everything is rushing out, too fast but still not fast enough. “I really don’t want to go to America. And… you say you need me to act like an adult, but you never actually let me make any choices myself. Only I want to! I want to choose to stay here. I want to choose what I get to study, because I don’t think that I should force myself to learn something I don’t care about. And you never get that all this time, I’ve been thinking about these things, too. That it’s not just you, dad. I want to take matters into my own hands because I care about my future. So sometimes all I actually need is for you to just. Listen, dad. Just—listen.” He sighs. Deflates. “Because I swear, I’ve been trying to tell you.”

He finishes off quietly. His energy had trailed away with each word spoken, coiling itself behind the anger pent up inside of him.

“Jaehyun…” he hears, in a voice pained and hushed. Then two hands find his shoulders, and then suddenly he’s being gently pulled away, and then the both of them are opposite each other.

From here, the lines on his dad’s face don’t look so hard anymore. Now they only speak of age and remorse.

“I understand,” says his father. “And... I respect where you’re coming from. I want to honor all your choices, Jaehyun. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. You know—you know I just want you to be successful, right? I guess I recognize now that I may have been misguided in pursuing that.” His face creases with an air of great concentration—as though this conversation were an act of navigation through unclear waters and he a sailor, rising to meet the unsteady tide—before he opens his mouth to begin again. “But I just want to ask for one thing. I still want you to apply to all the schools we discussed, okay? Just—don’t limit yourself, Jaehyun. You have a few months to figure it out, and if when the time comes you’re still entirely sure about where you want to study, I promise I will accept that.”

Jaehyun sniffles a little, against his will. “Okay, yes. Thank you, thank you.”

His father’s arms around him feel like a life raft. They offer Jaehyun something to hold onto; something that buoys him. An unspoken security, even. The weight of it makes Jaehyun feel like a little kid again, and in turn it gives him an unexpected new sense of confidence.

“Also,” he breathes, apologetic. “You were right.”

“Hm?”

“I did lie. I wasn’t out on a walk. I was… actually at my friend Sicheng’s place.”

“The boy we had over for dinner?”

“Yeah. And I’m—I’m pretty sure he’s actually my boyfriend now.”

“Oh,” his father says. Then, “Okay.”

“That’s it?” Jaehyun asks. He’s sure he completely fails to keep the shock off his face.

“Well,” he starts, a little hesitant. “I want to discuss this more later. And I would want to meet him again. But it’s. It’s fine.” He expression betrays a desire to say something more, but in the end he doesn’t—in all truthfulness, probably doesn’t know what he could—and instead just lets Jaehyun absorb for a few moments. Recover.

“I’m sorry,” Jaehyun tells him. He doesn’t even know why he keeps on saying it. He just—needs something to fill in the awkward gaps between them. The ones that he knows still exist despite the odds, when the both of them are pressed so tight together, are on this slow and steady climb toward full (or at least, fuller) understanding. It’ll take a while, he’s sure. But it will be okay.

“Don’t be sorry,” his father says.

Then,

“I’m proud of you. Always.”

When summer break eventually starts coming to a close, Sicheng and Jaehyun become singularly determined to make the most of it. After Jaehyun’s talk with his dad, he’d eventually sat down and told his mom, too. He knows these things can take time. In fact, he’s immensely grateful for how they’ve taken the news so far, even allowing him some lenience and permission to stay over at Sicheng’s more.

(Granted, they probably think that Sicheng lives with his parents, but—Jaehyun isn’t going to be the one to burst that bubble.)

“You’re beautiful,” Jaehyun exhales. They’re lying on Sicheng’s tiny, cramped bottom bunk again. By now Jaehyun has knocked his head on the metal rungs countless times, probably has a perpetual bruise forming on his scalp, but it’s the best arrangement they’ve got.

Unbidden, his eyes travel the length of Sicheng’s face, something catching heavy in his throat. He drinks in the sight of the same eyes that had captivated him their first meeting, down to the pretty flush resting high on his cheekbones, down down down, a perfect complement to the everlasting pink of his parted lips.

“Please don’t say greasy things like that when you’re lying on top of me,” Sicheng retorts. He lolls his head back and closes his eyes, motion lazy, and hums pleasantly. The smooth skin of his neck is bared for Jaehyun—and Jaehyun alone—to reach for. To feel. The knowledge electrifies him.

Jaehyun scoffs, distracted. He isn’t fooling anyone; they both know his brain is too hopeless for wit now, and know exactly where his eyes are fixated. “Shut up,” he tells Sicheng. “I mean it.” Then he raises a finger to trace at Sicheng’s jawline, trailing along the sharp cut. When Sicheng cracks an eye open in scrutiny he travels downward, reveling in the gulp of his Adam’s apple and the lean muscle working in his neck.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he informs him.

Sicheng’s smile softens, like lava run molten.

“Be my guest,” he says.

He tangles his arms around the back of Jaehyun’s neck when Jaehyun leans forward, fingers grabbing insistent at the stretch of his shoulders. Jaehyun starts to pepper kisses at the base of his throat, teasingly making his way up to the song of soft pants escaping his lips. Their eyes meet, and for a moment Jaehyun finds himself truly suspended. He sees the whole world in those eyes and more; sees their love, beating real and alive, sees, this, sees their love as pulse to a music created between themselves. A push pull of two bodies bending as one.

Jaehyun slots his lips over Sicheng’s. It’s a little wet, but it’s perfect. He’s sure of it.