Beneath the weird, slightly sickly feeling of suspension (in time and, perhaps for Seungkwan, an entirely different world), Seokmin is secretly (and a little guiltily) thrilled for Seungkwan’s company. Over the past few years, since he returned from his military service and settled in this old house alone, he has felt certain loud and colorful parts of his personality slip into the shadows with disuse. He chalked it up to maturing, and even felt vaguely proud about his newfound stoicness and self-sufficiency. He has always wanted to be cool, though he’s not sure if it is supposed to feel like this—like the sea going matte under gray clouds. He’s also not sure that a person can even be cool when they are this alone, with no one to be seen by.
Seungkwan, however, has the uncanny ability to coax Seokmin into the light.
Though he’s seemingly carefree with his words, Seungkwan’s wit sometimes wraps Seokmin up in knots, startling him into brash laughter at the strangest moments. When Seokmin makes a lame comment to keep a conversation going, Seungkwan grabs it and gives it depth, and meaning. He’s serious and genuine about everything, unafraid to admit that he’s afraid to meet the halmeonis Seokmin works with (who adored him, of course), openly delighted about perfecting his first gimbap roll (“I’ve never really cooked for myself,” he admits). Though his insistent honesty is shallow—Seokmin still doesn’t know exactly why Seungkwan would be so nervous around new people or why he’s never cooked, though he has a host of hazy, magical theories—Seokmin can tell that it’s real, and it makes him feel thankful for Seungkwan’s trust, though he’s not sure if gratitude has ever been this thrilling and terrifying.
Two weeks pass, then three. Summer finishes its final pirouette and faints into the arms of autumn.
They go to the mall in Seogwipo, but at home, Seungkwan still wears Seokmin’s shirts, and his sweaters now, too. Some days, he stays home while Seokmin goes out—seated frozen at the low table in the kitchen, his face gray with distant longing. On these days, Seokmin always revisits the fear he felt that first day: What if I come back and he’s gone? What if I come back and he’s still here?
Most of the time, though, he just comes back to a slightly brightened Seungkwan—one who’s made lunch for them to share out on the stoop.
“It’s getting colder,” Seungkwan comments on one such day. Seokmin has to agree. They’re eating jumokbap and cup ramyeon while staring at the ocean, and the salted wind coming in from the water had bitten at his bare arms until he’d gone in to grab a sweatshirt. Slim gray clouds slither across the sky.
“Do you even get cold?” Seokmin asks around a mouthful of rice. Seungkwan tuts at him, reaching over to peel a shred of gim from Seokmin’s chin. Seokmin swallows a little too quick.
“Of course I do,” he says. “Just—it’s never hurt before.”
Seokmin’s eyebrows leap. “Does it hurt now?”
“Not yet, but almost.” Seungkwan sighs, hard. “It used to feel so good, actually. Summer never was my favorite time to go swimming. When me and my brothers would come down here in the winter—that was the best. It feels like you’re being scraped clean. Now it just stings.”
Seokmin freezes. “Wait. Your brothers.” He scrambles for his phone, pulls up the calendar app, cursing himself under his breath for not putting two and two together. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. They’re coming back, right? You said they come here once a month.”
“Seokmin-hyung. . .” Seungkwan starts, quietly, but then Seokmin sees it—the date. He puts his phone down, but Seungkwan won’t meet his eyes.
“Hey,” he soothes, piling up their scattered lunch dishes so he can scoot in and pull Seungkwan close to his side. “So the full moon was yesterday. It’ll come again, that you can count on. We’ll just meet them then.”
“Seokmin-hyung,” Seungkwan says again, louder this time. He shrugs Seokmin’s arm off his shoulder, draws away ever so slightly.
“Come on,” Seokmin urges. He smiles down at Seungkwan, hoping it hides the desperate pang he feels seeing Seungkwan so unreachable, so mysteriously distant. “Just think of it as an extended vacation. People here would kill to spend two months in Jeju. I’m not that bad to be around, huh?” He gives Seungkwan’s narrow shoulder what he hopes is a playful nudge.
Sharply, Seungkwan lets out a breath he seems to have been holding. “Stop.”
Seokmin does, his very heart stilling. “Okay.” He doesn’t quite know what to do; when Seungkwan refuses to unfreeze under his gaze, he turns to look instead out at the water.
This is the part of the island he could never get tired of. The ocean’s immense size is both terrifying and comforting. When his heart feels too big for his chest, he stands in front of the water and lets it fill his vision till all he sees is evershifting blue; when his fears feel too immense to hold, he holds his ears to the waves and let them whisper: You are a grain of sand on an endless beach. You are a single star in a sky of billions. In the grand spill of time, you are an insignificant moment. Isn’t it better to be too small to matter?
“I went swimming last night,” Seungkwan says, finally. Seokmin resists looking at him again, resists bending in like a sunflower to hear Seungkwan when his voice drops to a whisper. “I met them.”
“Your brothers?” Seokmin asks, after a moment. He sees Seungkwan nod in the corner of his eye. “Did you speak to them?”
Seungkwan nods again. “Yes.”
Fear, relief, and guilt strike Seokmin in a triple-punch. What if Seungkwan had simply slipped home last night, without so much as a goodbye? But then, isn’t that what they have been searching for: a way home? Seokmin’s feelings don’t matter if it means Seungkwan can return—this he knows and believes in desperately, but at the moment, he cannot help but feel thankful and relieved that he is still here, that they are still together.
“Tell me honestly,” Seungkwan speaks again, then pauses, his lips open around the words to come. He blinks wetly, then continues. “You have it, right?”
When he realizes what Seungkwan is saying, Seokmin’s hands go cold. “What are you talking about?”
“What else, hyung?” Seungkwan’s mouth twists in frustration, and Seokmin is reminded of that first night, afloat in the dark, Seungkwan sharp and defensive and, he now realizes, so scared. “Why else would I still be here? How could I be feeling like this—” he stumbles, swallows, then keeps going, “—if you don’t have it?”
Seokmin is scared, too, but he has to know. “Feeling like what?”
Seungkwan finally looks at him. Tears track down his face, and Seokmin can almost taste their salt. “Like you have a part of me.”
Seokmin stands, startling both Seungkwan and himself. His sock feet slip on the gravel. “What do you want me to do, Seungkwan?” he says, shocked at how his voice comes out pleading. “How can I prove to you that I don’t have it?” How could you think I would do that to you, he doesn’t say. How can I have part of you when it is you who has me.
To his credit, Seungkwan looks just as miserable and confused as Seokmin feels. “I don’t know, hyung,” he says, allowing himself to really cry, now. “Do you think I know how it works? All my life, it’s just been a story—don’t let anyone take your coat, or you can’t come home. You’re trapped. Up until last night, I was hoping that that’s all it was—a story.” He sniffles, wrapping his arms around himself, hands hidden in the sleeves of Seokmin’s old army sweater. “But they wouldn’t take me back.”
Realizing how much distance he’s put between them, Seokmin rushes in to sit next to Seungkwan on the stoop again, who, this time, lets himself be held. Seokmin feels the flutter of Seungkwan’s heartbeat against his chest, the ever-fascinating reminder that Seungkwan is real and alive, and possibly, like Seokmin, a mere mortal. Is that what he wants? He shakes away the thought. This isn’t about you, Seokmin, he thinks, fierce and sudden.
It is as if Seungkwan has read Seokmin’s mind when he says, not looking up at Seokmin but instead turning into his neck, his nose sliding gently across Seokmin’s throat, “I think I need to go.”
Seokmin tries not to think about Seungkwan’s silky hair against his lips, the sturdy frame of his shoulders in Seokmin’s arms. “Because you don’t believe me?”
Seungkwan shakes with a sigh. The wind around them gets even colder. “Because I want to.”
*
Seungkwan leaves the next day, with one of Seokmin’s suitcases full of mostly Seokmin’s clothes (a fact in which Seokmin finds his one strange comfort—that if the ownership of a person’s clothing has power, then perhaps he will remain, in a way, Seungkwan’s). They’ve decided that his first goal is to see how far he can go; the second is to see if he is pulled in any certain direction, both hoping that by some instinct he will be reunited with the coat, wherever it may be. What they don’t discuss is also twofold. If he is tethered to Seokmin’s place, it surely must mean that Seokmin is holding him captive; if he finds himself aimless, it must mean that the coat is lost completely, either to the ocean or to some nebulous realm between this world and the next.
Seokmin drives him to the city. He walks him into the airport, finds an ATM, stuffs the cash he withdraws in Seungkwan’s coat pocket without letting him count the bills.
“I’ll be fine,” Seungkwan says, smiling wanly. “I technically have way more life experience than you, hyung.”
“Then why do you keep calling me hyung?” Seokmin jokes back, weakly.
Seungkwan shrugs. He looks strange under the fluorescent lights, surrounded by so many people, so many shades of black and gray and beige. He’s even smudged concealer under his eyes, which Seokmin thinks does less to perfect his skin and more to give the impression that Seungkwan has flaws—that he is one of everybody else. He isn’t, though—this Seokmin knows. Though he has watched Seungkwan learn hunger and fatigue, he is still different. Perhaps only Seokmin can feel it, but the way that just being around Seungkwan makes him feel universally important, like this world and the next exist for him, makes him both sure that Seungkwan has not lost his magic and desperate that he never does.
He is shaken by his thoughts by Seungkwan closing the distance between them and wrapping him in a firm hug. “Thank you,” he whispers into Seokmin’s shoulder, and Seokmin cannot speak, only able to hold him as tight as he can until Seungkwan lets go, turns purposefully, and walks away into the terminal.
And then he is gone.
*
Fall freezes over into winter, which in turn blooms into spring. Seokmin finds it depressingly easy to return to his routine: boat days and dock days and market days blurring into a long expanse of time that he can only barely keep track of by walking out to the water each morning to feel the air, the water, and the sand. Some days it will take minutes before he realizes he needs a coat—other days he will stand there for even longer, till the clouds on the distant horizon take on shapes: a thin-legged deer, hair dried in salted swoops, a pair of bare feet propped up on the dash of his truck. Eventually, though, these too fade into the wind.
And then, on a blazing hot day in June, a man in a white coat appears at the other end of the beach.
Seokmin’s fixing his neighbor’s net again, cursing as he rearranges its tangles across the gravel in front of his house that merges into sand. When he sees him, he half expects to see an arrow protruding from his side, like the last time something approached him along the coast.
This time, though, he breaks into a run. The ocean recedes, opening a plain of firm, wet sand for him to dash across as, with the wind at his back, Seungkwan does too.
When Seungkwan runs into his arms, it feels like Seokmin is holding the sun. The width of his shoulders, the scent of his hair: everything about Seungkwan is exactly as he remembered. Except for one thing.
“You found it,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at Seungkwan’s face as he draws the material of the coat through his fingers. It is fine, yet heavy, fitted with a tie around his chest and loose panels around his hips. Underneath, he is wearing jeans, and their cuffs are wet with seawater. He looks perfect.
“I did,” Seungkwan replies, and when he raises a hand to cup Seokmin’s cheek, Seokmin nearly stops breathing. “I’m sorry,” he says, terrifyingly sincere. “I should have believed you.”
“It’s okay,” Seokmin breathes, and he means it. He has so many questions, but suddenly, they don’t seem to matter: this is it. Seungkwan’s going home. The realization comes with such overwhelming sorrow and joy that Seokmin finds himself clinging to Seungkwan, to his coat, like he could never let go. “Thanks for coming to see me before you go,” he manages; he doesn’t know what else to say.
His hand still holding Seokmin’s face, Seungkwan stares at him for a long, bright moment, before rising up on his toes to kiss him.
The kiss is shocking—Seokmin can’t remember the last time he was kissed, but he knows it didn’t feel like this: Seungkwan holding him steady as the thrill, which threatens to knock him over like a giant ocean wave, melts into sunlight-warmth, and the taste of him, sweet and familiar, bursts on his tongue. He wants to drink him in; he wants to keep him in his mouth forever; he wants to make him a home that is better than any other world could be; he believes that he can.
“You don’t have to let go,” Seungkwan murmurs against his lips. When Seokmin draws back to stare at him, feeling, as he always did, like Seungkwan could read his mind, ever forced to work in double time to keep up with him, Seungkwan just smiles, the wind ruffling his hair.
[FILL] this world and the next (pt. 2)
Seungkwan, however, has the uncanny ability to coax Seokmin into the light.
Though he’s seemingly carefree with his words, Seungkwan’s wit sometimes wraps Seokmin up in knots, startling him into brash laughter at the strangest moments. When Seokmin makes a lame comment to keep a conversation going, Seungkwan grabs it and gives it depth, and meaning. He’s serious and genuine about everything, unafraid to admit that he’s afraid to meet the halmeonis Seokmin works with (who adored him, of course), openly delighted about perfecting his first gimbap roll (“I’ve never really cooked for myself,” he admits). Though his insistent honesty is shallow—Seokmin still doesn’t know exactly why Seungkwan would be so nervous around new people or why he’s never cooked, though he has a host of hazy, magical theories—Seokmin can tell that it’s real, and it makes him feel thankful for Seungkwan’s trust, though he’s not sure if gratitude has ever been this thrilling and terrifying.
Two weeks pass, then three. Summer finishes its final pirouette and faints into the arms of autumn.
They go to the mall in Seogwipo, but at home, Seungkwan still wears Seokmin’s shirts, and his sweaters now, too. Some days, he stays home while Seokmin goes out—seated frozen at the low table in the kitchen, his face gray with distant longing. On these days, Seokmin always revisits the fear he felt that first day: What if I come back and he’s gone? What if I come back and he’s still here?
Most of the time, though, he just comes back to a slightly brightened Seungkwan—one who’s made lunch for them to share out on the stoop.
“It’s getting colder,” Seungkwan comments on one such day. Seokmin has to agree. They’re eating jumokbap and cup ramyeon while staring at the ocean, and the salted wind coming in from the water had bitten at his bare arms until he’d gone in to grab a sweatshirt. Slim gray clouds slither across the sky.
“Do you even get cold?” Seokmin asks around a mouthful of rice. Seungkwan tuts at him, reaching over to peel a shred of gim from Seokmin’s chin. Seokmin swallows a little too quick.
“Of course I do,” he says. “Just—it’s never hurt before.”
Seokmin’s eyebrows leap. “Does it hurt now?”
“Not yet, but almost.” Seungkwan sighs, hard. “It used to feel so good, actually. Summer never was my favorite time to go swimming. When me and my brothers would come down here in the winter—that was the best. It feels like you’re being scraped clean. Now it just stings.”
Seokmin freezes. “Wait. Your brothers.” He scrambles for his phone, pulls up the calendar app, cursing himself under his breath for not putting two and two together. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. They’re coming back, right? You said they come here once a month.”
“Seokmin-hyung. . .” Seungkwan starts, quietly, but then Seokmin sees it—the date. He puts his phone down, but Seungkwan won’t meet his eyes.
“Hey,” he soothes, piling up their scattered lunch dishes so he can scoot in and pull Seungkwan close to his side. “So the full moon was yesterday. It’ll come again, that you can count on. We’ll just meet them then.”
“Seokmin-hyung,” Seungkwan says again, louder this time. He shrugs Seokmin’s arm off his shoulder, draws away ever so slightly.
“Come on,” Seokmin urges. He smiles down at Seungkwan, hoping it hides the desperate pang he feels seeing Seungkwan so unreachable, so mysteriously distant. “Just think of it as an extended vacation. People here would kill to spend two months in Jeju. I’m not that bad to be around, huh?” He gives Seungkwan’s narrow shoulder what he hopes is a playful nudge.
Sharply, Seungkwan lets out a breath he seems to have been holding. “Stop.”
Seokmin does, his very heart stilling. “Okay.” He doesn’t quite know what to do; when Seungkwan refuses to unfreeze under his gaze, he turns to look instead out at the water.
This is the part of the island he could never get tired of. The ocean’s immense size is both terrifying and comforting. When his heart feels too big for his chest, he stands in front of the water and lets it fill his vision till all he sees is evershifting blue; when his fears feel too immense to hold, he holds his ears to the waves and let them whisper: You are a grain of sand on an endless beach. You are a single star in a sky of billions. In the grand spill of time, you are an insignificant moment. Isn’t it better to be too small to matter?
“I went swimming last night,” Seungkwan says, finally. Seokmin resists looking at him again, resists bending in like a sunflower to hear Seungkwan when his voice drops to a whisper. “I met them.”
“Your brothers?” Seokmin asks, after a moment. He sees Seungkwan nod in the corner of his eye. “Did you speak to them?”
Seungkwan nods again. “Yes.”
Fear, relief, and guilt strike Seokmin in a triple-punch. What if Seungkwan had simply slipped home last night, without so much as a goodbye? But then, isn’t that what they have been searching for: a way home? Seokmin’s feelings don’t matter if it means Seungkwan can return—this he knows and believes in desperately, but at the moment, he cannot help but feel thankful and relieved that he is still here, that they are still together.
“Tell me honestly,” Seungkwan speaks again, then pauses, his lips open around the words to come. He blinks wetly, then continues. “You have it, right?”
When he realizes what Seungkwan is saying, Seokmin’s hands go cold. “What are you talking about?”
“What else, hyung?” Seungkwan’s mouth twists in frustration, and Seokmin is reminded of that first night, afloat in the dark, Seungkwan sharp and defensive and, he now realizes, so scared. “Why else would I still be here? How could I be feeling like this—” he stumbles, swallows, then keeps going, “—if you don’t have it?”
Seokmin is scared, too, but he has to know. “Feeling like what?”
Seungkwan finally looks at him. Tears track down his face, and Seokmin can almost taste their salt. “Like you have a part of me.”
Seokmin stands, startling both Seungkwan and himself. His sock feet slip on the gravel. “What do you want me to do, Seungkwan?” he says, shocked at how his voice comes out pleading. “How can I prove to you that I don’t have it?” How could you think I would do that to you, he doesn’t say. How can I have part of you when it is you who has me.
To his credit, Seungkwan looks just as miserable and confused as Seokmin feels. “I don’t know, hyung,” he says, allowing himself to really cry, now. “Do you think I know how it works? All my life, it’s just been a story—don’t let anyone take your coat, or you can’t come home. You’re trapped. Up until last night, I was hoping that that’s all it was—a story.” He sniffles, wrapping his arms around himself, hands hidden in the sleeves of Seokmin’s old army sweater. “But they wouldn’t take me back.”
Realizing how much distance he’s put between them, Seokmin rushes in to sit next to Seungkwan on the stoop again, who, this time, lets himself be held. Seokmin feels the flutter of Seungkwan’s heartbeat against his chest, the ever-fascinating reminder that Seungkwan is real and alive, and possibly, like Seokmin, a mere mortal. Is that what he wants? He shakes away the thought. This isn’t about you, Seokmin, he thinks, fierce and sudden.
It is as if Seungkwan has read Seokmin’s mind when he says, not looking up at Seokmin but instead turning into his neck, his nose sliding gently across Seokmin’s throat, “I think I need to go.”
Seokmin tries not to think about Seungkwan’s silky hair against his lips, the sturdy frame of his shoulders in Seokmin’s arms. “Because you don’t believe me?”
Seungkwan shakes with a sigh. The wind around them gets even colder. “Because I want to.”
*
Seungkwan leaves the next day, with one of Seokmin’s suitcases full of mostly Seokmin’s clothes (a fact in which Seokmin finds his one strange comfort—that if the ownership of a person’s clothing has power, then perhaps he will remain, in a way, Seungkwan’s). They’ve decided that his first goal is to see how far he can go; the second is to see if he is pulled in any certain direction, both hoping that by some instinct he will be reunited with the coat, wherever it may be. What they don’t discuss is also twofold. If he is tethered to Seokmin’s place, it surely must mean that Seokmin is holding him captive; if he finds himself aimless, it must mean that the coat is lost completely, either to the ocean or to some nebulous realm between this world and the next.
Seokmin drives him to the city. He walks him into the airport, finds an ATM, stuffs the cash he withdraws in Seungkwan’s coat pocket without letting him count the bills.
“I’ll be fine,” Seungkwan says, smiling wanly. “I technically have way more life experience than you, hyung.”
“Then why do you keep calling me hyung?” Seokmin jokes back, weakly.
Seungkwan shrugs. He looks strange under the fluorescent lights, surrounded by so many people, so many shades of black and gray and beige. He’s even smudged concealer under his eyes, which Seokmin thinks does less to perfect his skin and more to give the impression that Seungkwan has flaws—that he is one of everybody else. He isn’t, though—this Seokmin knows. Though he has watched Seungkwan learn hunger and fatigue, he is still different. Perhaps only Seokmin can feel it, but the way that just being around Seungkwan makes him feel universally important, like this world and the next exist for him, makes him both sure that Seungkwan has not lost his magic and desperate that he never does.
He is shaken by his thoughts by Seungkwan closing the distance between them and wrapping him in a firm hug. “Thank you,” he whispers into Seokmin’s shoulder, and Seokmin cannot speak, only able to hold him as tight as he can until Seungkwan lets go, turns purposefully, and walks away into the terminal.
And then he is gone.
*
Fall freezes over into winter, which in turn blooms into spring. Seokmin finds it depressingly easy to return to his routine: boat days and dock days and market days blurring into a long expanse of time that he can only barely keep track of by walking out to the water each morning to feel the air, the water, and the sand. Some days it will take minutes before he realizes he needs a coat—other days he will stand there for even longer, till the clouds on the distant horizon take on shapes: a thin-legged deer, hair dried in salted swoops, a pair of bare feet propped up on the dash of his truck. Eventually, though, these too fade into the wind.
And then, on a blazing hot day in June, a man in a white coat appears at the other end of the beach.
Seokmin’s fixing his neighbor’s net again, cursing as he rearranges its tangles across the gravel in front of his house that merges into sand. When he sees him, he half expects to see an arrow protruding from his side, like the last time something approached him along the coast.
This time, though, he breaks into a run. The ocean recedes, opening a plain of firm, wet sand for him to dash across as, with the wind at his back, Seungkwan does too.
When Seungkwan runs into his arms, it feels like Seokmin is holding the sun. The width of his shoulders, the scent of his hair: everything about Seungkwan is exactly as he remembered. Except for one thing.
“You found it,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at Seungkwan’s face as he draws the material of the coat through his fingers. It is fine, yet heavy, fitted with a tie around his chest and loose panels around his hips. Underneath, he is wearing jeans, and their cuffs are wet with seawater. He looks perfect.
“I did,” Seungkwan replies, and when he raises a hand to cup Seokmin’s cheek, Seokmin nearly stops breathing. “I’m sorry,” he says, terrifyingly sincere. “I should have believed you.”
“It’s okay,” Seokmin breathes, and he means it. He has so many questions, but suddenly, they don’t seem to matter: this is it. Seungkwan’s going home. The realization comes with such overwhelming sorrow and joy that Seokmin finds himself clinging to Seungkwan, to his coat, like he could never let go. “Thanks for coming to see me before you go,” he manages; he doesn’t know what else to say.
His hand still holding Seokmin’s face, Seungkwan stares at him for a long, bright moment, before rising up on his toes to kiss him.
The kiss is shocking—Seokmin can’t remember the last time he was kissed, but he knows it didn’t feel like this: Seungkwan holding him steady as the thrill, which threatens to knock him over like a giant ocean wave, melts into sunlight-warmth, and the taste of him, sweet and familiar, bursts on his tongue. He wants to drink him in; he wants to keep him in his mouth forever; he wants to make him a home that is better than any other world could be; he believes that he can.
“You don’t have to let go,” Seungkwan murmurs against his lips. When Seokmin draws back to stare at him, feeling, as he always did, like Seungkwan could read his mind, ever forced to work in double time to keep up with him, Seungkwan just smiles, the wind ruffling his hair.
“I’m home.”