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The trek to his mother’s grave is a long one. It’s situated at the peak of the cemetery, right on the hilltop, between Son Changwoo (Admiral, Father) and Kang Yeseul (Dance on). He wonders about them sometimes, the days he stays here long enough to run out of things to tell his mother. He sits cross-legged, in radio silence, and wonders who they were. Who loved them? Who did they love? Why did no one ever come for them?
During winter, Mark started bringing two extra flowers to leave by their headstones. They would freeze and wilt away by his next visit. During summer, the stalks slightly brown under the sun, but his slowly-growing pile of flowers keep nonetheless, and he returns now to find an elusive note propped up against Yeseul’s headstone. Thank you, it reads, in neat, compact print.
“You’re welcome,” Mark breathes. A shudder sweeps across his body as soon as the words leave his mouth. But his goosebumps soon shy away from the blistering sunlight, and his skin smoothens, burns a painful shade of red. Still, Mark sits, and talks.
Below the hill is a brook that cuts through the cemetery like a chasm to the Underworld. Wild roses bleed along the banks. Jaemin, Mark’s friend from school and one of the few workers here, says the river sounds like it’s giggling in the summertime. Mark thinks it sounds like the wails of the Furies, Erinyes. To that Jaemin would reply, “Get your head out of the fucking Iliad, hyung.”
Jaemin can roll his insolent eyes all he wants, Mark knows Jaemin won’t go within ten feet of the brook. The veteran workers call it The Styx.
Which is why he’s surprised to see a person sitting at the edge, knees tucked close, hand clutching a bundle of daisies. Mark stretches forward, peering curiously over the edge of the hill. They must be new around here. Mark winces. Recent death, then?
Mark rises to his feet, a throbbing ache behind his knees and his blue t-shirt glued to his back. “I have to go now,” he tells his mother. He smiles. “Some people don’t like to pay attention to superstition.”
He plummets down the sloping belly of the hill, an object in motion, unable to stop until he reaches the bottom, where the ground is flat and drowning in weeds.
He’s never gone down here. Beyond the hill, that is. His head, heart, nerve endings, scream at his legs to stop moving, but they continue in their quiet, almost predatory bearing upon the person.
“Hey,” Mark calls out, voice soft, “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” His voice is muffled and trembly.
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed,” Mark laughs, “we’re in a graveyard.”
The guy sniffs, turning to regard Mark, and Mark’s chuckle awkwardly peters out. Two things happen at once: Mark steps back, afraid he went too far, and his mind clicks with a fuzzy sort of recognition. It’s like he’s seen a ghost.
“Lee Donghyuck?” Mark mutters, his fingers wriggling by his side in a hesitant wave. Could it really be? No one ever leaves this town and comes back. Everyone floats away, eventually. Even Mark—who only remembers Canada through other people’s memories, who can count the number of times he’s visited Seoul on one hand—is leaving.
“Oh,” Donghyuck hiccups, hastily wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “You still remember me?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Mark asks. How could he ever forget Lee Donghyuck? After seven years, his face is less plump, his hair less curly, but his skin still drips gold. It takes six years for Mark’s eyes to travel down Donghyuck’s torso, his unblemished thighs, his robust calves, and on the seventh, they rest upon the ink etched on Donghyuck’s Achilles’ heel: half an angel’s wing.
Something flutters in Mark’s stomach.
Donghyuck hums. “Take a seat, Mark hyung,” he says, patting the grass next to him.
Mark eyes the brook. It’s calm. He sits.
Donghyuck shakes his bouquet of daisies, saying, “Wanna know where I got these flowers? Stole them from Cha seongsaengnim’s front yard. Do you still walk her dog?”
Oh, Donghyuck. Why’d you bring up the goddamn dog? Why here?
Mark heaves a sigh and says, “The dog passed away three years ago, Donghyuck.”
Donghyuck’s face falls. His grip on the daisies tighten. “I see.”
Mark tears up shoots of grass between his fingertips, earth caking itself in his nails, not knowing what to say next. Where does he begin?
It’s been a long time.
No.
I’ve missed you—no.
Why did you come back? Why now?
“Are you still living in Seoul?” Mark asks, plucking up a dandelion.
Donghyuck nods. “We’re here for the summer.”
They fall back into silence. It’s not a comfortable one. It’s a silence that makes Mark feel as though he’s underwater, holding his breath, his lungs burning. They were best friends, seven years ago. The people here used to say that if you listened hard enough, you’d be able to hear Mark and Donghyuck, Donghyuck and Mark laughing from across town.
But now, Mark thinks, Donghyuck had chosen to leave his soul behind in Seoul. To protect it. It’d already been broken by this place before—and it never got the justice it deserved.
“I didn’t know you were still here,” Donghyuck says. He leans over, pursing his rosy lips, to blow on the dandelion, and Mark is so mesmerised that, for a moment, he questions whether Donghyuck is really here.
When Mark was fourteen, he went through a phase of watching psychological thrillers on the small TV in his room. Then he’d lay awake all night, scared to the bone, and wonder whether Lee Donghyuck had died along with his youngest sister. That maybe he’d suppressed the memory because the grief of him leaving was too much to bear. It wasn’t true—there were newspaper clippings (8 YEAR OLD SCHOOL GIRL DEAD AFTER HORRIFIC HIT AND RUN, DRIVER UNIDENTIFIED), a lone gravestone to prove it, but still, Mark wondered.
And then, after a while, Mark forgot. Because that’s all he could do.
“I won’t be for much longer,” Mark replies, resting his cheek on his wrist. He smiles at Donghyuck, though Donghyuck isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at the river. “I’m going to Yonsei next year.”
Donghyuck’s eyes turn to him. He doesn’t say anything, but he smiles too. Mark doesn’t need him to say anything. It’s like riding a bike. He feels the crackle of hope.
“I’ve never been down here before,” Mark says. He’s inched closer to Donghyuck without even realising it, like a moth to a flame, and their shoulders knock against each other.
Donghyuck laughs, loud and bright, and the sound takes Mark by surprise. He's laughing at Mark. “I have. Jeno and I once jumped off the bridge near Sixth and ended up here. It was mildly terrifying. Is he still around?”
It sounds like Donghyuck is asking is he still alive. “Yeah. We, uh—”
“What?”
“Went out,” Mark whispers, because he’s already brought it up now. He shouldn’t have said it, he’s always been so good at controlling his tongue. He has to be, in a small town like this. “It was for a month a couple years ago? But it was too strange so we stopped—and besides Jaemin’s been in love with him for—”
“For his entire life,” Donghyuck cuts him off with a snort. “I’ve missed Jaemin. He didn’t like me very much though.”
“Wait.” Mark sits cross-legged, his back straightening. “You’re okay with it?”
“Okay with what?” Donghyuck says. The petals from one of his daisies are now scattered across his thighs.
“With what I just said. The Jeno thing.”
“In theory I am,” Donghyuck says slowly, “But a part of me isn’t.” His mouth quirks, the low sun melting the brown in his eyes—and with that, the silence is gone and Donghyuck’s soul is back, there for Mark to capture like a lightning bug in a jar.
“Which part?” Mark exhales.
“The part that—that’s missed you as well,” Donghyuck answers. They sit by the Styx and talk until dusk about everything between life and death, the sky going from blue to orange to grey, and then Donghyuck stands, leaving the daisies on the ground and holding his hand out to Mark. “Promise me this, hyung. We say goodbye to this place. We go have dinner at—is Kwon’s diner still open?—and we never not see each other ever again.”
It's with the barest Mark-like hesitation that Mark takes Donghyuck’s hand, and says, “I promise.” When they walk up the hill, he passes his mother’s gravestone, the thank you note heavy in his back pocket, and looks back for a fleeting moment, before flying after Donghyuck, like Icarus.