Work Text:
Iyen-ah, Darling
Jeongin is in the middle of his break when he gets the Google alert. A half-eaten beetroot wrap sits on the plate in front of him, right next to the mug that once held his mocha praline. Jeongin has been circling its rim with the tip of his index finger as he scrolls through his phone, absentmindedly scraping away the coffee stains left from where his mouth closed around the ceramic edge of the mug. When the notification comes through, his finger stutters to a halt.
‘The Butcher of Gimpo’, Minho Lee, sentenced to death row by the Supreme Court of South Korea, asks for his soulmate to visit him in prison.
Swallowing the morsel of food still on the flat of his tongue, Jeongin clicks on the notification. It takes a few seconds for the article to load, nothing but a blank white screen on his phone that somehow perfectly matches the anxiety he can feel spreading across his skin like a virulent rash. He bounces his leg impatiently, willing the website to come through. After what feels like an age, it finally does and Jeongin rushes to drink in every word. With each second that passes, his stomach tightens and tightens like it’s ready to squeeze out everything he’s consumed over the past twelve hours. Jeongin can already taste the beetroot wrap inching back up his throat, acid left in its wake.
He locks his phone and puts it face-down on the table. Thinks better of it and puts it in his pocket entirely.
“Jeongin! Jeongin! Jay!”
He looks up to find Hyunjin weaving his way across the shop floor, completely bypassing all of the vacant tables with dirty dishes and mugs that need to be collected on top of the tray he has tucked under his arm. Hyunjin skids to a stop at Jeongin’s side, all but vibrating out of his uniform at a frenetic speed. His eyes are wide with urgency.
“Have you heard about Lee Minho?” he asks breathlessly. “They sentenced him to death row, I just saw the tweet about it. Fucking finally, I thought they’d never get around to it.”
Jeongin feels sick.
“Oh really?” he manages. “I didn’t know.”
“Yeah.” Abandoning the pretence of working, Hyunjin plops into the armchair opposite him, hugging the tray to his chest. “You need to see the clip, man. He was genuinely surprised by the fact that they said he’s guilty. Like what the fuck, you literally murdered seven people and you thought that you’d be able to just walk away from that?” Eight people. He’s murdered eight people. “He has to be a narcissist if he genuinely believed that was going to happen, there’s no way he’s not. And did you see what he said afterwards?”
He slowly shakes his head no. Undaunted by the lack of enthusiasm, Hyunjin continues with full-steam.
“He asked for his soulmate to come and visit him in prison. His soulmate! What the fuck? Literally just: what the fuck? Here, let me show you the clip, just give me a second.”
The last thing Jeongin wants to see is the video of Lee Minho in court, even though he knows he’ll probably go home and seek it out on his own anyway. But for some reason, the refusal doesn’t come. His tongue stays glued to the roof of his mouth. All he can do is look blankly at the screen when Hyunjin shoves his phone under Jeongin’s nose, the action underscored with the scandalised vindication that generally surrounds gossip. Except this isn’t just mindless gossip. This is Lee Minho, The Butcher of Gimpo. The serial killer who has taken South Korea and the world by storm.
In the video, Minho is in a pressed suit in the courtroom, his artificial orange hair carefully parted to the side. He stands with his hands clasped behind him, head tilted to the side as he listens to the judge: the very picture of well-mannered and civilised. When he’s pronounced guilty, his head twitches almost involuntarily and his eyebrows arch upwards. There’s the surprise Hyunjin was talking about. His shoulders shake with a disbelieving laugh.
“You’re clearly a very sick individual,” the judge says, “and your behaviour throughout this trial shows no sense of remorse. It’s a damn shame really because you had so much promise. You could’ve really made something of yourself. But just as your actions have robbed seven innocent women of their futures, they’ve robbed you of yours too. For the good of society, I pray you never see the outside of a cell.” Another disbelieving laugh from Minho. The judge peers over his glasses at him, adding dryly, “Have another witty remark to make, do you? Lord knows you’ve been so full of them throughout this trial.”
The camera cuts over to Minho again. The amusement on his face is unmistakeable, but it’s the sort that’s tempered with more of that disbelief that emerged upon his sentencing. He really did think he was going to get away with all of it.
At the judge’s words, he looks directly into the camera.
“Iyen-ah,” he says, sweet like tangerines in the summer, “darling. I know you must be watching this from wherever you are. If I’m going to be locked up for the rest of my life, won’t you come and visit me sometime? Hyung misses you.”
He lifts his left hand in the air, each digit spread out. Then he rubs the base of the fourth finger with a meaningful smile. The gesture is clear. Though the red string looped around his finger isn’t visible to the naked eye or the camera, there is little this can be aside from a call for his soulmate.
Jeongin stares at the image of Minho behind the stand. At the way he stares down the lens of the camera so intently, his mouth quirked up on one side. At the red bow tied at the base of his ring finger and how it matches the one looped around Jeongin’s.
When Jeongin was in elementary school, his first grade teacher asked him, and the rest of the class, what he wanted to be when he was older.
“An actor,” a boy in the front row cried out.
“A doctor!” said another.
“I want to be an astronaut.”
“I want to be a science man!”
“I want to be like you, Teacher Lee!”
“I want to be like BoA!”
I want to be away from my Appa, Jeongin thought. He didn’t say it out loud; he might’ve been only six years old, but he knew better. He wasn’t brainless, no matter what his Appa liked to spit.
By six years old, Jeongin already knew that people could be lots of different things. They could be as quiet as a mouse in the mornings as they tiptoed through the apartment and gathered their school things like a spy on a super secret mission. They could fast when there was no food in the fridge and not complain even once because monks liked to fast and they never complained about it even though they went hungry for much, much longer. They could be an errand boy and scurry through the streets, doing little jobs here and there because they had to earn their keep. Or they could be a punching bag, a waste of space and an ash tray.
Jeongin knew that people could be lots and lots of different things and that he himself had been many of them already. The only thing he never had the chance to be was a little boy. But that was just what life was like for people who were too close to his Appa. They got hurt.
His Eomma used to get hurt like Jeongin did back before she went tumbling off of Gimpo Bridge. He has fuzzy memories of being curled up in her arms at night and seeing the patchwork black and blue of her face. She used to kiss him on whichever injuries of his hurt the most and tell him that it was because her kisses were magical and could cure anything. They weren’t really all that magical because his pain never went away despite the press of her mouth, but Jeongin still liked the treatment anyway. So he’d snuggle in her arms, trying to block out the sound of the raucous, drunken laughter coming from the living room, and kiss her face where it hurt the most, hoping she liked it just as much as he did.
The first time he met Minho, he kissed him where it hurt the most too.
It wasn’t long after Jeongin started elementary school although it might’ve been before his teacher asked him what he wanted his future to look like, he can’t quite remember. The meeting took place in the alleyway next to the FamilyMart store closest to Jeongin’s apartment, the one with the cashier who had been in the same platoon as his Appa during their military service and used to let Jeongin buy cigarettes on his Appa’s behalf. He was probably on his way to do just that when he came across Minho.
At the time, Minho had been a skinny little thing, all arms and legs, practically drowning in his school uniform. He was crouched behind a dumpster bin, crying as he pet the stray cat that used to hang around that area. Jeongin can’t recall what he said when he paused to speak to the boy, but he knows that he must’ve said something because somehow, he ended up darting forward to press a peck against the pink handprint emblazoned across Minho’s cheek.
“Did it work?” he asked.
Minho sniffed. “No.” But he pressed two gentle fingers against the spot that Jeongin’s lips had landed on. When he did, his eyes dropped to the red string hanging between them and then widened. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
He tugged on the red string, gasping when it was stretched taut between the pinch of his fingers and the pull of it had Jeongin’s hand jerking towards him.
And then again, he exclaimed, “Oh my god!” with pure elation in his voice as though he hadn’t just been crying his heart out in this dirty, dingy alleyway.
Again, Jeongin doesn’t really remember the specifics of what followed after that. But he does know that he came away from the encounter knowing that Minho was his soulmate (although what ‘soulmate’ actually meant wasn’t something he’d grasp until he was a little older) and that it had to be kept a secret between the two of them (he didn’t understand why that was until he was older too). He knows that Minho introduced himself as Jeongin’s new hyung and that he escorted him back to his apartment, talking his ear off and asking a million questions, and that when he saw Jeongin in the playground at school the next day, he zoomed over and declared that they were now best friends, even though he was a whole two years and four months older.
With Eomma gone, Minho quickly became the one person whom Jeongin cared for more than anyone else in the world. He loved him deeply and viscerally with a depth he couldn’t comprehend. And he wishes – god, he wishes this means that he can say with utmost certainty that Minho has been wrongly convicted of those awful crimes he’s been accused of. But Jeongin, more so than anyone else, knows that he’s guilty of every last one.
In the days that follow Minho’s death sentence, a fringe movement emerges online. Mostly made up of women in international spaces, the group is adamant that Minho Lee has been wrongfully imprisoned and is innocent of the crimes he’s been charged with. A Change-dot-org petition with an alarming number of signatures starts to circulate through social media, begging the South Korean government for a retrial, and posts upon posts of copypastas that demand for his immediate release flood the internet.
Hyunjin sends a link to one such tweet promoting the movement into the group chat, attached to words of disgust. Seungmin, too, echoes the sentiments when he replies. Stomach already in knots of confusion as it is, Jeongin ignores it entirely.
That doesn’t stop Hyunjin from bringing it up in person the next time they see each other. It’s unfortunate that it happens to be when they’re at work during a lull in customers – which is quite frankly ridiculous because Jeongin has no idea why a Starbucks smack-bang in the middle of London is so quiet on a weekday morning – so there’s no way for Jeongin to escape when Hyunjin launches into his rant.
“Can you believe them?” he seethes, sliding back into their native Korean so he can properly articulate just how angry he is about the turn of events. “They’re out there campaigning for a retrial, literally signing a petition to the government to overturn the decision! And why? Just because they think he’s good-looking? They’ll deny it, but that’s the real reason they’re doing all of this. So what if he looks good in his fucking mugshot, he’s a fucking murderer. A serial killer. He’d sooner kill his stupid admirers than kiss them, but they’re out there breaking their backs to clear his name. It’s so fucking vile, do none of them have morals anymore? It honestly knocks me sick.”
Well, that’ll make two of them. He thinks. He doesn’t know anymore. What Jeongin does know is that he doesn’t want to talk about this topic, not now, not ever – not that he’s been doing much talking in this conversation in the first place. He’s kind of just had it foisted upon him, acting as nothing more than a body to have words hurled at as Hyunjin works himself up about Minho’s case again.
“Maybe you should stop looking up stuff about it on the internet,” he suggests, focusing his attention on wiping down the countertop. “It’s clearly not doing you any good if you’re getting this worked up about it.”
Hyunjin sighs. “I know, I know. It’s no good for me to keep talking about it. But I can’t help it. I literally can’t move past it for some reason. It keeps me awake at night, you know what I mean? It’s just so scary to think that there are people like that out there and that people are so sympathetic towards them.”
Again: that’ll make two of them.
To be fair, Jeongin can’t really blame Hyunjin for his obsession. Minho’s case really has taken the world by storm, in part because of those good looks that have spurred on such a passionate defence from people on the internet. His initial mugshot was plastered everywhere when it was leaked – that’s how Jeongin even found out what had happened in the first place. And not to mention his first appearance in court. Viral doesn’t even cover it. The video of Minho’s entrance into the courtroom has amassed millions of views across several social media platforms. Even the articles written by various Korean news sites weren’t able to resist mentioning his actor-like visuals (although they tried to make up for it by pairing it with the monstrosity of the crimes he’d allegedly committed. As if that somehow cancelled it all out.)
Either way, the world has been on the edge of its seat as this trial has unfolded. It’s been especially true for Jeongin and their little community of Koreans on this side of London. Being so far away from South Korea means that certain news from the motherland tends to hit harder to home and Minho’s trial has been one of them. Everyone Jeongin knows hasn’t been able to shut up about it. Hell, he even has a whole Google alert dedicated to it. But as drawn to all of it as he is, Jeongin also just wants to bury his head in the sand and pretend like it never happened in the first place.
Every time someone mentions Minho’s name, Jeongin can’t help but remember the smile that bloomed at the corner of his mouth when he addressed the camera at his final trial. Remember the way Jeongin’s nickname sounded when it was held in the wetness of his mouth again.
Iyen-ah, darling. Won’t you come and visit me sometime? Hyung misses you.
Jeongin has missed Minho ever since he left Gimpo. Ever since Minho suddenly stopped replying to his texts and the only thing that answered Jeongin’s calls was an automated voice stating that this number was no longer in use. The only thing that reassured him that Minho was still alive was the fact that he could feel a faint tug on the other end of his red string whenever he pulled on it, dulled by thousands of miles of distance.
In the meantime, he entertained fantasies of visiting Korea after his graduation and somehow tracking Minho down to tell him all about what his life has been like over the past seven years. Of reconnecting with him properly: talking, hugging, kissing, bringing him back to England to meet Jeongin’s parents and build a home together. Somewhere Minho couldn’t tumble down a dangerous path he wanted to shield Jeongin from knowing about, somewhere no one could hurt them again.
Never in his daydreams did he picture that Minho would be behind bars before any of that could happen. That he would be condemned to death row for brutally murdering seven women, each one gentle with maternal curves and soft features, hair chopped to just below the chin. Nice women, lovely women, mothers and daughters and sisters whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That Minho, his lovely Minho-hyung with his sweet, silvery voice who promised he’d only hurt the people who hurt them first, would have ripped these innocent people apart is something he could never have imagined.
But now the grim reality of their situation is staring Jeongin dead in the eye and he has no idea how to escape its unrelenting hold.
Iyen-ah, darling. Won’t you come and visit me sometime? Hyung misses you.
Jeongin has no idea what he’s going to do. Whether he’s going to book a flight to Korea to visit Minho, sit on the other side of the plexiglass and look at the red string of fate that runs right through it and anchors them to each other, act like his heart isn’t breaking with every second that passes. Or whether he’s going to live out the rest of his life in London and pretend like he’s not in love with one of the most notorious serial killers of their age. He just doesn’t know.
“You know there are people writing him letters claiming that they’re his soulmate?” Hyunjin continues his tirade with full-steam. “Do you not think that’s so twisted? Who the hell would want to be soulmates with someone like that? He’s literally a – “
“Hyunjin, I get it!” Jeongin bursts out. “You don’t like the guy or the people supporting him! That’s fine, I’ve gotten the message. Can we just leave it at that?”
Hyunjin blinks at him slowly, his shoulders still drawn up to his ears from when he jumped at Jeongin’s yell. “I was just saying...”
“Well stop it, alright? I don’t want to talk about this guy anymore. Stop bringing him up to me.”
Hurt flickers across Hyunjin’s face, enough to have Jeongin prickle with guilt. He can feel it work its way up along the ladder of his spine and shifts uncomfortably. His eyes drop to his hand on the counter and the splay of his fingers around the damp rag that he’s been wiping it down with. At the red bunny ears of the bow that was tied around his fourth finger years and years ago, invisible to everyone but one other man on this earth.
Whether Hyunjin approves of it or not, there is someone out there who is soulmates with ‘someone like that’. He’s standing right fucking next to him. And as much as Jeongin is horrified by what Minho has done, being Minho’s soulmate is something he’s treasured for a long, long time – and old habits die hard. No matter what’s happened, there’s still a part of his soul that calls out for its other half.
“Okay then,” Hyunjin says. A customer approaches the counter to peer at the desserts behind the glass casing and he turns to serve them, adding in a muttered aside, “I didn’t realise I was bothering you so much. Sorry.”
Jeongin ignores him and carries on wiping down the counter.
Later, he’ll have to pull Hyunjin aside and apologise for his outburst. Hyunjin is the sensitive sort and Jeongin knows he’ll toss this encounter over and over in his head, worrying about what he did to piss Jeongin off so much. He gets really anxious about stuff like that. But for now, Jeongin just needs a moment to breathe without Hyunjin spitting insults about Minho down his ear.
The customer rattles off an order, some overly complicated modification to a frappe that Jeongin already hates making as it is. He suppresses his sigh and turns around to whip up the drink while Hyunjin deals with the payment. As he’s pouring a fresh batch of milk into one of the jugs, his left hand twitches involuntarily. Jeongin startles so hard that he nearly spills milk all over the counter. He slams the carton down and then just – stops to stare at his left hand.
Seconds pass and nothing happens. He starts to think that he must’ve imagined the entire thing – maybe his body cooked something up since he’s had Minho on his mind so much recently – but then he sees it: the way the red string spooled around his hand pulls into something a little stiffer, his ring finger shuddering in answer to the faint call.
One, two, three. Three tugs of their soul bond. The ears of his bow quiver with the movement.
It’s early evening in Korea right now. Minho must be in his six-by-six prison cell in Seoul, bored out of his damn mind. He always did hate staying cooped up all day, used to be constantly vibrating with the urge to move, move, move. When they were younger, the two of them used to wander through the streets of Gimpo for as long as his Appa and Minho’s Aunt Jiyoung would let them, trying to burn his itch away.
Iyen-ah, darling. Won’t you come and visit me sometime? Hyung misses you.
Biting his lip, Jeongin hesitantly tugs back.
Jeongin was fifteen when he first met someone who was openly gay. At the time, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All he’d done was point at the rainbow badge on Seungmin’s backpack and say in careful, heavily accented English, “I like.” He could’ve said it in Korean since he knew ‘Seungmin’ was a Korean name, but there had been no trace of an accent in Seungmin’s voice when he had introduced himself to Jeongin in homeroom – or ‘form’ as they called it here – nothing but crisp, perfect English, and he didn’t think Seungmin would understand it. So instead he reverted to punching out words in an unfamiliar garble of syllables and pointing like he was some sort of fucking child, even though the humiliation of it tasted like acid under the bite of his teeth.
Even with his limited English skills, he wanted to make friends. He was halfway across the world from where he had grown up with no one but his new family to keep him company. No Minho to give him the comfort he so desperately sought, none of the chaos from the other kids in the orphanage. Nothing but the boy in front of him with his crisply ironed school uniform and polite smile and the spot of colour on his backpack. So Jeongin smiled back and pointed at the rainbow badge, even though he didn’t actually care for it much.
“I like,” he said.
Seungmin glanced down to where Jeongin was pointing and then smiled again, this time a touch more genuine. “Oh right. Thanks, mate. My mum bought it as a gift for me after I came out to her.”
‘Came out’? Jeongin tilted his head to the side in confusion. He was unfamiliar with the term.
Sensing this, Seungmin clarified, “I’m gay.” And when that cleared up nothing, he switched to Korean, the words as polished as his English, and repeated, “I’m gay. I’m attracted to men.”
That got him a reaction.
Jeongin couldn’t help it: he reeled back, blinking in surprise. He had never known anyone who would so readily admit something like that to someone they had only just met. His heart pounded in his disbelief.
Seungmin’s smile remained fixed upon his face, but his features shifted ever so slightly, no longer so opening. There was a steeliness that sat beneath them, belying the softness of his puppy fat.
“Is that going to be a problem?” he asked.
Jeongin slowly shook his head. “N-No. I just… I didn’t expect it, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well.” Seungmin shrugged. “It’s not something I’m ashamed of so don’t expect me to tiptoe around it for you or anybody else. As long as you’re cool with it, then we’re cool too, yeah?”
“Y-Yeah.”
Jeongin remembers being mystified by how casual he was about it. He knew the West was more open about things that weren’t necessarily flaunted in Korea – he’d seen the scantily-clad women in pop culture, all of the songs and movies that glorified drugs, sex and violence, and the viral videos of kids disrespecting their seniors yet garnering nothing but respect for it – but he hadn’t expected to be confronted with such a stark difference in culture so soon. It was so jarring.
As time went on, he realised that things weren’t as different around here as Seungmin’s candidness had led him to believe. They were still different, yes, but not entirely so. In their school and the general community around them, there was an odd balance between acceptance and rejection when it came to anything that strayed from the perceived norm.
Same-sex relationships, for example, weren’t necessarily uncommon in their school, but news of one generated far more gossip and side-eyed looks than a straight one, especially if it came with a red string of fate. No one treated Seungmin like a social pariah for being one of the few students who was open about his attraction to guys, but they’d also laugh and call each other ‘gay’ whenever someone did something that was uncool. After they left secondary school, an increasing number of people who had made those very comments came out of the closet themselves. It was very strange.
(One of those people was Hyunjin. Jeongin had already known for a couple of years that Hyunjin was gay, but it hadn’t been until the summer after he and Seungmin had finished their A Levels that Hyunjin admitted it to anyone else. The announcement came in the form of a proud declaration to his social media followers that his soulmate was Seungmin where Hyunjin thanked him for being so patient with him as he went through his personal journey. It was his most liked picture on Instagram for a year. After it was posted, his follower count skyrocketed.)
The boundaries here were drawn differently. Blatant homophobia was met with pushback from Jeongin’s peers, but two guys who were a little too handsy with each other were branded with suspicion and speculation. Meanwhile in Gimpo, Jeongin and Minho had been free to be as comfortable with each other as they wanted to be as long as they pretended that they were just friends beneath it all. Neither of them were the touchiest of people to begin with so it didn’t matter as much, but when Minho used to sidle up behind him to wrap his arms around Jeongin’s waist and pull him flush against his chest, softly complaining that Jeongin was going to be taller than him at this rate, nobody had cared. They were best friends. It was normal.
Anything that was more affectionate than that was reserved for quiet alleyways where no one could see them. They spent a lot of their time finding secret corners to squeeze into so they could kiss each other in private. From the very first kiss they shared when Jeongin was twelve and Minho was fourteen, they must’ve had hundreds and hundreds of them.
“Iyen-ah,” Minho liked to wheedle, puckering his lips into an obnoxious pout. “Kiss!”
“My lips hurt,” Jeongin would complain as he ducked his advances. “I’ll kiss you later.”
As much as he liked to grouse about how Minho was too much, Jeongin usually caved and gave him what he wanted sooner rather than later. He didn’t believe that kisses had healing powers anymore, too jaded with the world to buy into something so ridiculous, but he couldn’t deny that there was still a power to the ones they shared. Maybe they couldn’t erase the marks that constantly littered Jeongin’s skin or stop Minho’s aunt from ever laying a hand on his body, but they were still theirs. Something they’d chosen, something they could control.
Years later, Jeongin wonders how things would’ve turned out if kisses really could heal where it hurt the most. Because for Jeongin and Minho, the worst bruises weren’t the ones that coloured them black, blue and green; they were the ones that were deep inside of them both, intangible and invisible to any prying eyes.
Nowadays, the worst of Jeongin’s bruises have more or less healed. Or they’re as healed as much as they’re ever going to, that is. There are still things that poke at them every so often, keeping them tender enough to bother him sometimes, but Jeongin can live with that.
It doesn’t matter to him that the smell of alcohol still makes him sick to the stomach, even if the student drinking culture is a force to be reckoned with; he’s already older than the other people in his year on account of the two gap years he took between college and uni, so it’s not like he’s in a rush to go out drinking with them in the first place. And maybe it’s a little fucking annoying that his body freaks out on him whenever he’s around overly loud bursts of noise or people who are arguing, his mind clouded with memories of his Appa’s intoxicated fits of rage and how he used to rampage around the apartment, trying to break anything that had the misfortune of being in his way – but that, too, he can deal with.
He knows that he’s only this way because he was lucky enough to get out of the situation he grew up in. That there are countless of other children who were never able to escape their homes and that Minho is one of them. If he could’ve brought Minho with him to London, would he have ended up this way? Jeongin likes to think he wouldn’t have, but then again, he didn’t expect Minho to have killed all of those innocent women even without Jeongin in the picture.
He’d be a liar if he says there isn’t a violent streak in Minho. He’s seen it before in the set of Minho’s teeth whenever Jeongin’s Appa turned him away at the door because Jeongin had to wait on him and his drunk asshole friends, in the venom that drenched his speech whenever he made a passing reference to his aunt. Saw it in the pink flush to Minho’s knuckles, his hands curled into fists at his side when one of the girls at school said that soulmates of the same sex were defective; in how they split open when he pummelled a bully from Jeongin’s class so badly that he transferred elsewhere after he made the mistake of picking on Jeongin once. Minho was ablaze with hatred and aggression the day that Jeongin talked back to his Appa and was met with such a brutal reaction for it that he had to be hospitalised for a week afterwards. He knows that Minho is no stranger to violence.
But the anger was justified in those cases. They weren’t senseless acts of barbery, not like this string of murders was.
The Minho that Jeongin remembers – plucky and adventurous, lighting up Jeongin’s world one lopsided smile at a time – would never have done such a thing. He’s nothing like the sleek, polished creature that Jeongin saw behind the stand in all of those clips that went viral on the internet. Maybe that’s why he can’t muster up the courage to tell his parents the truth, ugly as it is, or dip into his student finance to book a flight to Seoul. Right now, he doesn’t know if he can ever look this new Minho in the eye.
As the weeks limp past, Jeongin feels faint tugs on his string at various points throughout the day, knows that it’s Minho’s way of asking Jeongin to come and visit him. Whenever this happens, Jeongin likes to thread the string between his fingers like he’s about to make a cat’s cradle with their soul bond and then gently tug it in reply.
I’m sorry, he thinks each time that he responds. I can’t.
Four months after he’s locked up in Seoul Detention Centre, Minho breaks out of it.
“What are they, fucking incompetent?” Hyunjin rages after the news breaks. They’re all in the apartment he shares with Seungmin, trying to help him practice his lines for the supporting role in a new drama he’s auditioning for in a few days. As soon as the notification came through on their phones, however, all thoughts of running through the script have shrivelled to dust. “How the hell did he escape? And why did it take them more than sixteen fucking hours to find out that he has? He could be anywhere by now!”
“The government thinks he might have escaped to China,” Seungmin says. “Or Japan.”
“The fact that he even escaped at all is a joke.”
Jeongin says nothing.
The news article is enough to leave him reeling. It paints the tale of a mastermind criminal, someone who somehow managed to smuggle a hacksaw into his cell and chisel out an escape route through the ceiling. Minho has always been resourceful, but this is on a whole new level entirely. There’s a world of difference between him stealing some food from an overpriced vendor in the street and launching himself into the World’s Most Wanted Criminals list.
He has no idea what the hell is running through Minho’s mind. What he has planned next. He tugs on his red string questioningly, but for once, there is silence on the other end.
Days pass and the search for Minho proves fruitless. The South Korean government puts out an official statement to assure everyone that they’re concentrating all of their efforts on recapturing him and are determined to have him back behind prison walls, but Minho manages to somehow evade capture despite their resources. He really could be anywhere in the world right now. Jeongin would half-believe that he’s vanished off the face of the planet entirely if it weren’t for the occasional tug of his red string, each one a little stronger than the last.
In the meantime, Minho’s supporters on the internet rally together to demand everyone who seeks to capture him to stop. The hashtags trend worldwide every day, cherry-picking missteps from his trial and piecing together a tale of heartbreak, of a man who was failed by the very government that condemned him. Their critics push back, sneering at the ‘oppalogists’, but they persist regardless.
He’s innocent, they howl in their droves. He wouldn’t have escaped if you hadn’t put him on death row for something he didn’t even do! Acquit him of his crimes right away!
Minho isn’t innocent, Jeongin thinks. He just doesn’t like being trapped in one place for so long. He would know; he used to feel the same way too once.
When Jeongin was a little under fourteen years old, his Appa died.
It was a strange time for him. For the most part, the news brought on a tidal wave of unadulterated relief as he was swept away with the realisation that he no longer had to fight tooth and nail to survive every day. Fear that he’d somehow misheard and misunderstood what was said trickled beneath it, making him worry that his Appa was still alive and well and waiting for Jeongin to return from the hospital so he could kick his ribs in again. But later when he was alone in his hospital bed, stiff with pain because his meds had worn off in the middle of the night, Jeongin found himself crying a little.
It was ridiculous. Even while he was shaking with tears, he knew that it was so fucking ridiculous. He had never loved his Appa, had never known him to be anything but the hateful, spiteful man that had tormented him. He hated him for driving Eomma to her death, for treating Jeongin like he was a glorified manservant, one that doubled as his personal punching bag for whenever his fists felt particularly loose, and he hated everything else about him too. The slurred yells he threw at anything that breathed the wrong way near him, the cloud of alcohol that clung to his skin like perfume, the yellowed stain of his teeth and the dirt trapped beneath his fingernails. Whenever he thought of his Appa, it was with nothing short of revulsion.
Yet there was a tiny, tiny part of him – so small he’d never known it existed until that day – that had taken the name Appa and bundled it up with the usual attachment and care that came with such a relationship. So Jeongin mourned for his father in his hospital bed on that very first night after he was found dead, even as he took solace in the news, and then he let the government handle the funeral arrangements.
The government did a little more than that while they were at it: as soon as Jeongin was released from the hospital, he was escorted to the orphanage he had to call upon as his new home. With both of his parents dead, he was officially an orphan after all. His shelter was now their responsibility.
The place they boarded him wasn’t too bad. A little overcrowded and overrun with kids who were all much younger than Jeongin was, sure, but it was still a step up from life with his Appa. The matrons running the orphanage didn’t care where he ran off to in the day either since it meant they’d have one less kid to constantly account for. Naturally, Jeongin used that as an excuse to plaster himself to Minho’s side like a barnacle and refuse to leave until curfew called his name. On his part, Minho was delighted by the extra hours of company.
Back then, Jeongin didn’t see the orphanage as another cage. Nowadays, however, he looks back and realises that the entirety of Gimpo was. He has never felt so confined by a city, never felt so insignificant.
The neighbourhood they grew up in was the textbook definition of deprived: pothole-ridden streets, parents whose paycheck swam at the bottom of their next soju bottle instead of used on their kids, teenagers who scurried around running drugs or thinking that they were tougher than they really were just because they carried a knife with them that they’d never used on another person. Sure, London has more than its fair share of problems and rough areas too, there’s no denying that, but Jeongin has the fortune of being far away from all of that. Meanwhile, the chokehold that Gimpo had him in left permanent fingerprints around his throat once it was done strangling the life out of it.
When he was first adopted, Jeongin didn’t realise that things had been so bad. At the end of the day, this scruffy little area of the city was all he had ever known; things were just like that around those ends. As long as he had his Minho-hyung by his side, he was sure that things would work out either way.
It was why Jeongin panicked so hard at the realisation that he’d have to leave Minho behind, all because some altruistic couple wanted to feel good about themselves and adopt a foreign child. Why they chose Jeongin and not one of the many babies in the orphanage, he had no idea. But he hated it. He absolutely fucking hated it. The only reason he left was because Minho pushed for him to go and build a better life, promising that he’d follow as soon as he graduated high school and could leave home.
(Of course, that had been before Minho had started to evade his questions about what he was doing in Gimpo, of how he was making all of this money he was going to use to come over to England. Before they lost touch entirely.
Jeongin had been right to be afraid.)
At twenty two years old, he can see it now. Gimpo was a prison. No, it was poison, seeping into their veins and slowly infecting them all. He wonders what it must’ve done to Minho after he left, after Jeongin’s texts and calls stopped going through to his phone. How it turned him from the boy Jeongin knew and loved into The Butcher of Gimpo of today.
Winter has a habit of making Jeongin nostalgic. Maybe it’s the frost in the air, how it chases everyone indoors to huddle next to their electric fireplaces and hope the heat burrows beneath their skin. Maybe it’s the long nights that come with winter, the way they seem to stretch on forever, how the world feels stagnant as soon as they fall. Whatever it is, the season has him turn more reflective, even more so after the events of this year.
He wanders through the Christmas markets in Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland, warming his hands with a corrugated cup of hot chocolate and mini Dutch pancakes in a cardboard box, takes pictures of Hyunjin and Seungmin next to a Christmas tree, and remembers years’ worth of Christmases spent with Minho. It was nothing like the grandeur that surrounds him now, but he treasured them anyway. Still does despite everything that’s happened.
Back in Korea, Christmas is a bit of a romantic holiday for couples so he and Minho would make it a point to meet up at some point during the auspicious day. They didn’t always have gifts for each other since money was often tight, but Minho never failed to come without food that he’d cooked (or had bought or stolen). The two of them would hide away in a corner to pig out on the goods, brimming with joy as they celebrated another year of being at each other’s side. On New Year’s Eve, they’d meet up again to beckon on the next one together.
This time around, Jeongin celebrates both with his parents. A lot of holidays in their family tend to be an amalgamation of various traditions since their household is a melting pot of different cultures. His adoptive dad is Korean (which is why he wanted to adopt Jeongin), but he was born and raised in Melbourne, and his adoptive mother is Afro-Cuban, who his dad met and realised was his soulmate when he worked at the Bank of New York (and who grew up in the care system herself which is why she wanted to adopt Jeongin). It’s honestly nothing like the future Jeongin envisioned, but he likes it. At least his six-year-old self got what he wanted either way, eh?
Christmas is one of the holidays that has a bit of everything for all of them – rice cakes and stockings and Christmas crackers and a huge feast on Christmas Eve courtesy of his mum, after which they open their gifts as soon as the clock strikes midnight. But New Year’s Eve is always just about squeezing into the living room of his parents’ apartment to watch the fireworks show at the London Eye and then going outside with a set of sparklers to trace their names in the air.
“Happy New Year, baby,” his mum says, pulling him into a sideways hug. She ruffles his hair. “Let’s make it a good one, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he agrees.
Still tucked under her arm, Jeongin looks down at the fizzling end of his sparkler and feels the nostalgia wash over him again.
He and Minho once plucked a box of these from the back of a delivery truck on Minho’s seventeenth birthday. He remembers sitting on the rooftop of the local shopping centre, the city lit up like a sky full of constellations below them as they waved the sparklers around in the air. Minho accidentally brought one too close to Jeongin’s face and something about the image got mixed up in his head, replacing the sparkling stick with the burning cylinder of a cigarette and he flinched so violently he nearly descended into a panic attack. Minho wasted no time in pulling Jeongin into a hug to calm him down. Afterwards, he kicked the box of sparklers off the roof.
“I’m sorry,” Jeongin remembers muttering in shame. He felt like such a fucking kid around him sometimes. “I didn’t mean to ruin your birthday.”
Minho was genuinely confused. “When have you ever done that?”
When he dropped Jeongin back to his apartment later that evening, he pushed up the sleeves of Jeongin’s jacket and shirt to expose the ugly scars that decorated his left arm, dark circular burns that were too deep to fade away. Then he ran his lips across them, right there in the stairwell where anyone could stumble upon them, with a tenderness that shocked even Jeongin and had him flush pink all over.
“Hyung!” he hissed, scandalised.
Minho looked up at him, solemn and intent. “You know I love you right, Iyen-ah? I think you’re the only person in the world I can say that to.”
“I know that, hyung. It’s the same for me too.”
“Good,” he said and then rocked forward to plant his next kiss on Jeongin’s lips. “Nothing you do will ever change that.”
He kissed Jeongin’s scars on the last proper day they spent together too, huddled in the backroom of an abandoned shop that had shut down years ago. Kissed Jeongin’s scars and then kissed Jeongin’s cheeks and kissed Jeongin’s lips, all of the desperation he refused to give voice to channelled into the only method of communication he knew. Neither of them cried that day, but when it was time to part ways, the setting sun glowed like liquid fire in Minho’s eyes.
He reached over to loop a section of the red string that connected them to each other in a little bow around Jeongin’s fourth finger.
“The next time I see you,” he vowed, “I’ll make that a ring.”
Jeongin hadn’t trusted himself to say anything without his voice cracking in half. So instead he tied a bow around Minho’s finger too and hoped that spoke for itself.
For someone whose entire body cringes at the thought of anything that’s even the slightest bit cheesy, Hyunjin puts a surprising amount of thought into Valentine’s Day. It’s probably because he’s convinced that the sun shines out of Seungmin’s arse, no matter how much he likes to claim he’s not whipped even though they all know he is. Practically everyone who meets them figures out that Hyunjin and Seungmin are soulmates within minutes; it doesn’t matter if they can’t see their string, the sheer adoration in Hyunjin’s eyes whenever he gazes at Seungmin is enough.
This year, Hyunjin has decided to create a huge hamper full of gifts for his boyfriend, everything from his favourite box of chocolates to an expensive ornate journal since Seungmin is coming to the end of his current one to a perfume that must’ve cost him a week’s worth of wages. Earlier that day, he sent Jeongin to pick up the huge, life-size teddy bear he insists has to present the hamper to Seungmin. Since Hyunjin and Seungmin live together, however, all of this is being kept in Jeongin’s flat. It’s not even February yet.
“Don’t you think this is a little excessive?” Jeongin asks, even as he snips a piece of cello tape free to secure a flap of wrapping paper. “Where are you even going to put all of this stuff after you give it to him?”
Hyunjin dismisses the concern. “It’ll be fine. We’ll figure something out.”
“If you say so,” Jeongin says dubiously.
They continue to work their way through the mini mountain of presents that Hyunjin has collected over the past few months for this hamper – he started buying them after Seungmin’s birthday passed – and slowly wrap them all up, ready to be displayed. In the background, Hyunjin’s phone circulates through a bunch of pop songs to keep their energy high and motivation up.
“You know,” he says after a bit, “you should really think about going on a date sometime.”
Jeongin stiffens in the middle of trying to fold the wrapping paper over an edge of Seungmin’s new shaving kit. “Why’s that?”
“I mean you haven’t dated anyone for as long as I’ve known you,” Hyunjin says. “And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with not dating if you don’t want to. But don’t you want to know who your soulmate is? You’re never going to find out if you don’t put yourself out there. And after all, this is the season of love! Now’s the perfect time to start.”
Jeongin looks at the bunny ears that straddle either side of his ring finger. It’s been close to two months now and Minho is still somewhere out there, under the radar and out of the grasp of the law. He has no idea whether he’s ever going to see him again, even if it’s through a screen when Minho is captured again. The more time passes, the more he starts to think Minho might end up pulling this off for life.
“I know there’s been a bit of a pushback on the internet recently about soulmates,” Hyunjin continues, oblivious to Jeongin’s ruminations, “with people saying that they shouldn’t matter. And I know there are some horror stories out there about people being stuck in abusive relationships because their partner is their soulmate and all of that stuff. But for the most part, meeting your soulmate is like… I dunno, like finding a home in someone else, you know? It’s really lovely. I think you’ll be surprised by how much you’ll like – “
“I know who my soulmate is.”
Hyunjin cuts off in the middle of his spiel to blink at him in shock. “What?” And then he repeats the question, this time in a shriek, “What? You met your soulmate and you didn’t tell me? Jeongin Yang! How dare you? Why didn’t you say anything? Tell me everything right now.”
To be honest, Jeongin doesn’t know why he even admitted to this in the first place. He knows why he didn’t when he was younger; he didn’t know how to tell anyone that his soulmate is a guy, even if he knew Hyunjin and Seungmin would be the last people on earth who would judge him for it. And now… Well, now it’s not like this avenue of conversation will lead to anywhere good. He can’t exactly tell Hyunjin who his soulmate is, can he?
“It was from before,” he says quietly. “In Korea. As far as I know, they’re still back in Gimpo.”
The excitement in Hyunjin’s expression falters, then mutes down into sympathy. “Oh… Oh Jay, I’m so sorry. It must suck to be so far apart from them. Do you guys still talk?”
He shrugs. If tugging on their strings occasionally can be classed as a conversation, then sure, they still talk.
Sympathy deepening, Hyunjin leans over to pat the back of Jeongin’s hand. “It’s okay, mate. It’ll all work out. I mean, look at your parents! Your dad’s from Australia and your mum’s from New York and they somehow managed to meet because their soul bond brought them together. You and your soulmate will see each other again, you’ll see. I guarantee it.”
Jeongin isn’t so sure about that. And he’s even less certain about whether he even wants to anymore. His eyes drop down to his string again, Minho’s parting words from the day he tied it into a bow floating around in the back of his head.
He loves Minho, there’s no doubt about that. He thinks he’ll always love Minho despite everything. But whether or not love is enough is another question entirely.
Jeongin turns twenty three on the eighth of February. His birthday falls on a Thursday which is fortunate because he only has one double lecture on Thursdays which means he’s free as soon as the clock strikes twelve. A coursemate he gets along with treats him to a coffee date as soon as they’re let out. He then spends the rest of the afternoon holed up in the café in Blackwell’s, playing games on his laptop until Seungmin and Hyunjin have clocked off work and can take him out to dinner. As he’s the birthday boy – and the youngest – they split his portion of the bill between them as a treat.
Then he travels across London to his parents’ apartment to spend the evening with them, cramming onto the same sofa to watch the latest Marvel movie and pig out on homemade nachos and donner from down the road. His mum unveils a personalised birthday cake from Cake Box that she picked up for him and insists that Jeongin has to stuff a gargantuan slice down his throat, even though his stomach really can’t take any more food, and then packs up half of it to take back with him.
“Why don’t you just stay over tonight?” his dad asks hopefully. “Your room’s right there. We can put new bedsheets on if you’d like.”
Jeongin shakes his head. “I kind of just want to be in my own bed to be honest.”
His dad isn’t too happy with the news, but he sighs in defeat. “Alright. Make sure you text me when you get in though. I’ll be staying up until you do,” he warns.
“I will, don’t worry.”
So Jeongin gets his farewell kisses from his parents and then travels back across the city to where his tiny little flat is situated, wanting nothing more than to collapse as soon as he gets in. Today has been a good birthday, but it’s also been a long one since he had to wake up at nine to get into campus on time for his lecture. He’s too knackered to stay up any longer.
By the time he makes it back, his shoulders are heavy with exhaustion. He stumbles through his front door yawning heavily and paws for the light switch. It flicks on and yellow light floods the apartment a moment later. Jeongin turns away from it, halfway through a stretch, and then freezes, the air staggering out of his lungs in a rough gasp.
“Happy birthday, Iyen-ah,” Minho says, sitting cross-legged on his sofa. “Long time, no see.”
Minho looks even better than the cameras suggested.
It’s the first proper thought that strikes Jeongin. The videos he’s seen all over the internet didn’t do him justice. They muted the glow to his skin, softened the sharpness of his nose and jaw. His eyes are so much sharper in real life, so much more alive. The orange dye has been scrubbed from his hair, the locks now as dark as night and in need of a trim but lending him a look that’s no less striking. He’s thinner than he was during his trial, cheeks sunken in a little, closer to the seventeen year old Jeongin remembers from his final days in Gimpo. His smile is just as impish though and the sight of it punches the air out of Jeongin again.
Any sluggishness has been burnt out of him by the electricity that spikes through his spine. In its place, however, sits a fog of confusion. The synapses in his brain are struggling to make the right connections, to match the sight in front of him with reality.
“What?” Minho says when Jeongin doesn’t speak. “No hello?”
This isn’t real. This can’t be real. His hand feels like it’s wading through treacle as he moves it towards his string, curls it around his fingers and pulls. From across the room, Minho’s left hand snaps out in reply. Oh.
Oh.
“How did you – how are you here?”
The amusement hasn’t left Minho once. It deepens at the sound of Jeongin’s voice, at the breathy confusion that tumbles from his mouth. He starts to play with their string, each twitch of his fingers tugging on Jeongin’s hand. Reminding him that this is all real and not something his exhausted brain has cooked up.
“Your friend has a very public Instagram,” he replies. “He posts about you a lot.”
Jeongin furrows his eyebrows before it hits him. “Hyunjin.”
Minho nods slowly. His smile tips into a smirk. “Judging from his stories, I can see that he’s very passionate about how I deserve to be locked up for the rest of my life. I’m guessing that means he doesn’t know about us then?”
An ugly flush starts to climb along the back of Jeongin’s neck. He shifts on the balls of his feet but doesn’t say anything. What can he say? Clearly, Hyunjin doesn’t know that Lee Minho is his soulmate. No one does.
“That doesn’t explain how you knew where I live though,” he points out instead. “Hyunjin hasn’t exactly posted my address online, has he?”
Minho shrugs. “Let’s just say I’ve been in the country for a few days.”
He’s been watching him then. Hiding so that no one knew he was here and biding his time until he could make his dramatic entrance. Jeongin doesn’t even know what to say.
This is… this is mad. There’s no other word for it. From start to finish, this encounter has been nothing short of mad – and what’s madder is Jeongin’s reaction to it. Because most people would be running and screaming right now if they found out that there’s a serial killer in their apartment, one who has casually and openly admitted to watching them for some time before they made themselves known. It’s what normal, well-adjusted people do.
But here Jeongin is, doing nothing of the sort. All this time that he’s spent worrying himself sick over seeing Minho again, of having to look him dead in the eye after everything he’s done, and now here he is doing just that.
Although even now, his head is in as much of a state as it has been since news of Minho’s arrest first broke the internet. On the one hand, there’s a voice in Jeongin’s head that’s screaming Minho’s list of crimes, of the horrific acts he’s committed. On the other hand, the sight of him in Jeongin’s apartment is so painfully familiar, down to the black hoodie and loose sweatpants. It almost feels like the past seven years never even happened.
A lump pushes up into Jeongin’s throat. The back of his eyes start to sting the longer he looks at Minho.
“Why are you here?” he asks quietly.
Why did he come now? Why is he stirring up every upsetting thought that has tormented Jeongin all of these months? Why does he have to make everything so fucking complicated again?
At last, the amusement starts to recede from Minho’s face. He shrugs again, only the gesture isn’t half as casual now.
“You didn’t come and visit me,” he says. There’s no mistaking the note of hurt in his voice.
For some reason, it’s that – that tiny pinprick of hurt that threads through his words – that has Jeongin’s temper flaring up. Nostrils flaring, he curls his hands into fists at his side.
“Can you blame me?” he hisses furiously. “What the hell did you think would happen? I haven’t been able to get a hold of you or hear from you in years and then when you do turn up, it’s because of all this? How can you expect me to just hop on a flight and visit you after that?”
The glossy creature from the viral videos emerges, glimmering in Minho’s dark eyes. He tilts his head to the side. “Don’t tell me you believe what they’re saying about me.”
“Don’t even try that,” he says lowly.
“You really think I’m that sort of person? A ‘very sick individual’ who deserves to be locked up in a cell for the rest of my life until some asshole in a suit decides when I have to die? I didn’t do it.”
“Don’t,” Jeongin snarls. “Don’t you dare sit there and lie to my face, hyung.”
“Who said I’m lying?”
The fury flares again, white-hot and burning like magma. Jeongin erupts with it, his hands swiping through the air senselessly. “Stop treating me like I’m one of those stupid fangirls online who doesn’t know the first thing about you! Do you honestly think I haven’t noticed who all of those victims looked like? Fuck hyung, the first one you killed was even called Jiyoung! I know you did it!”
At that, Minho’s mouth clicks shut. He sinks back against Jeongin’s sofa, staring at him wordlessly for a long collection of seconds. Bit by bit, the Lee Minho from the trial pulls back until all that’s left is the man who sits behind the image, none of the illusions and grandeur and mockery clinging to him.
“Fine,” he says eventually. His voice is eerily flat as he speaks. “I did it. I killed them. They all reminded me too much of her so I had to.”
Jeongin doesn’t know what he expected. Maybe a part of him was holding out blind hope that Minho was telling the truth when he insisted he wasn’t guilty, even though the rest of him knew better. Maybe he just never thought Minho would cave and confess. Whatever it is, his words feel like a blow to the chest.
He blinks and the world starts to shimmer with a veneer of gloss. “What do you mean you ‘had to’? They were innocent people who had nothing to do with you and you – you destroyed them.”
Minho’s face is alarmingly blank. “I had to get rid of the bodies somehow.”
“There didn’t have to be any to get rid of in the first place!”
“It’s not like I meant to do it in the first place!” he throws back, now overcome with an air of franticness like he’s desperate to have Jeongin understand. He leans towards him imploringly. “I didn’t set out to find women who reminded me of her. I’d just be going about my business and then I’d see them and then – and then all I could think about was her and how it felt like she’d never let me escape, even after I’d already gotten rid of her. You know what she did to me, how she made my life hell for years. So when I saw them, I just… I don’t know, it just… happened. One thing would lead to another and then – “
“This isn’t an affair we’re talking about, hyung,” he snaps. “You didn’t accidentally sleep with someone, you murdered them.”
Just as quickly as his stoicism gave rise to desperation, Minho’s defence transforms into offence and he narrows his eyes, a flicker of fire in them. His teeth bare like a wild cat’s.
“Oh, so now you have a problem with that sort of thing, do you? That’s funny, I don’t remember it being such a huge issue for you before. So what, it’s okay when it benefits you but not when it benefits me?”
Jeongin glares. “Stop trying to deflect from what we’re talking about.”
But Minho is on a roll now. He stands up from the sofa, his hands mirroring Jeongin’s at his side. Pink at the knuckles just like they always have been.
“No actually, I don’t think I will. How dare you stand there and judge me for what I’ve done when nine years ago, you were thanking me for the same thing?”
“That was a completely different situation.”
“No, it really wasn’t,” he spits out. “Your Appa didn’t just drop dead out of nowhere. I was the one who got rid of him for you. Where was your moral fucking high ground then?”
Unbidden, memories of that day spill out of the box that Jeongin keeps them locked away in. They’re more like snapshots than an entire video reel, but he still remembers what happened. How his Appa hurled a vodka bottle at the wall because his favourite football team had lost the finals and then ordered Jeongin to clean the mess up. It was such a minor task, but for some reason, Jeongin chose that day to fight back and say no. He would not clean the mess up. He wasn’t the one who made it so why should he?
It was such a minor mess, but the rage his Appa flew into afterwards wasn’t. That day Jeongin learnt what the bravery to say no to his Appa earned people. Whatever happened, his body would always pay the price.
After he was done with Jeongin, his Appa left him where he slumped on the floor and went out to buy a new pack of vodka and some cigarettes. He didn't even bother to close the door behind him properly.
Somehow, Jeongin managed to muster up the remaining vestiges of his energy to call Minho. Minho took one look at his body when he arrived, more broken than it had ever been before and barely clinging onto consciousness, and it was like all of the anger in the world possessed him in that moment. Once Jeongin’s Appa returned to their flat, he never left it again. Later, they passed off the assault and death as the actions of a robber they’d tried their best to fight off.
The Butcher of Gimpo was charged with seven counts of murder when he was sentenced to death row, but Kim Jiyoung wasn’t Minho’s first victim after all. His first victim had been bludgeoned to death in a damp-ridden flat in Gimpo nearly a decade ago. And all this time, Jeongin has known.
“I didn’t ask you to kill him,” he says, but the words sound faint even to his own ears.
Minho sets his jaw in defiance. “And yet you thanked me afterwards.”
The tears that have been swimming in Jeongin’s eyes tip over the edge. He wipes them away angrily. He’s always hated crying in front of other people, hated the vulnerability that comes hand-in-hand with it.
“Why are you here, hyung?” he asks again. It comes out in a plea, no matter how much he tries to bite it back. “Why now? I waited for you for years and you never came. And now after everything’s gone wrong, you think you can just stroll in here and act like nothing’s wrong? Like you’re not on the run because you killed seven fucking people just because they looked like your aunt.”
“I wanted to come earlier.”
“But you didn’t. You’ve had all this time to – “
“You don’t think I tried to come?” Minho says, frustrated. “We weren’t all adopted by a rich couple with money pouring out of their assholes. When my aunt died – “ When you killed her, Jeongin thinks, recalling Minho’s words in his outburst from earlier. “ – she didn’t leave me anything. I had fuck all to my name. I tried my best to find something decent, but… well, there aren’t many options in our neighbourhood for a poor eighteen year old kid who can’t even afford to go to university, is there? So I did what I could and it still wasn’t enough to make a difference.”
Jeongin thinks back to all of those conversations he had with Minho where he’d ask after what Minho was up to and receive nothing but non-answers in reply. He had an inkling back then about what was going on, but now it’s clear that Minho really did get caught up in something he was too ashamed to share with Jeongin.
“Why didn’t you just tell me about it? We could’ve worked something out.”
Minho scoffs. “Oh yeah? Like what?” Before Jeongin can answer, he moves on, his tone a little softer, “I did want to tell you eventually. But by that point, my phone had been stolen by some guy on the street and I’d lost your number. You didn’t have any social media either so I didn’t know how to find you. And by the time you did, I was in too bad of a place and didn’t want to reach out.”
And now he’s in an even worse one with the government of South Korea itself after him, but he’s still somehow standing in the middle of Jeongin’s living room.
“So why are you here now?” he asks again.
For that, Jeongin earns a smile. The fire has died down in Minho now, leaving behind the version of him that Jeongin is most familiar with. His scruffy hair and easy smile, one corner hitched higher and embedded deeper into his cheek, the rounded edges to his teeth visible in the slash of his mouth. Differences still mark him as someone who is not quite Jeongin’s Minho-hyung from years’ past. This Minho is older, sharper, infinitely more dangerous than he was when he was seventeen years old. He’s even shorter than Jeongin is now. But when he smiles – god, when he smiles, it’s like Jeongin has been thrown right back into his teenagerhood.
“I wanted to see you,” Minho says.
Jeongin has to scoff despite the butterflies stirring to life in his stomach. Even after all this time, Minho has them in the palm of his hand.
“You wanted to see me?” he echoes in disbelief.
He frowns. “Of course I wanted to see you. Look, I know you must be mad at me and I know you don’t agree with what I’ve done. I get that, I honestly do. I know I’ve fucked up. But I’ve had a lot of time to think recently and…” He licks his lips and then looks over at Jeongin plaintively. “And I realised I’ve never been as happy as I was when I was with you. Even with all of the other fucked up shit happening in our lives, even though everything else felt like hell. I love you, Iyen-ah. I love you more than anything else in this world. Our soul bond has been the only thing keeping me sane these past few months.”
You know I love you right, Iyen-ah? I think you’re the only person in the world I can say that to.
Part of Jeongin wishes the remark would have no effect on him. That all he feels in response to it is a cold-hearted apathy, that he could shrug it off and tell Minho that it means nothing to him. But there’s a red string around Jeongin’s finger that has held all the importance in the world to him since he was six years old and the man in front of him was once the only gentle part of his life, a man who fate has bound his soul to for better or for worse.
Once there was a time when Minho was the only person who Jeongin was capable of loving, the only person he ever wanted to love. Nowadays he has so much more he cherishes: he has friends, he has family, he has a life that is, for all intents and purposes, very happy.
But Minho is still his soulmate. Cold-hearted killer or not, Jeongin is still in love with him.
“I love you too, hyung,” he admits softly.
Minho’s face lights up like Vegas. He laughs and it’s just like Jeongin remembers: loud and clearly pronounced, his shoulders shaking with the movement as his eyebrows arch upwards. He crosses the room until he’s right in front of Jeongin, closer than he has been in years. He smells like fresh cotton and freesia. His eyes are magnetic and so, so alive. When Minho’s hands cup either side of his face, fingertips soft against the cut of his cheekbones, Jeongin sucks in a sharp breath.
(Hands that have been drenched in blood no less than nine times.)
(Hands that have held Jeongin more tenderly than anyone else has ever cared to.)
“Come with me, Iyen-ah,” Minho murmurs. He tips his head up to skim his nose along Jeongin’s, kisses the centre of his mouth with feather-soft lips. “We could go anywhere in the world. You and me together, just like old times.”
The scent of him is intoxicating. Jeongin doesn’t know whether it’s laced with something or whether having Minho this close to him again after so long is enough to have his head spinning on its own. He blinks slowly, Minho’s proposition slow to reach his ears. When it does, he frowns.
“Hyung, I… What are you even saying right now? I can’t – I can’t just leave. I have an entire life here. I – I have friends, I have my parents, I have uni.”
“After graduation then,” Minho says. “We’ll go after graduation.”
“And do what? Be on the run for the rest of our lives?”
Minho kisses him again, this time lingering with the crush of his mouth. Helpless to fight off his base instincts, Jeongin lets him, his lips parted to let him in. Cradling his head in his hands, Minho licks into his mouth, kisses him so deeply and intently that he nearly buckles at the knees.
“Just be with me,” he says afterwards. “We can find a nice, quiet place to live. Stay off the grid, keep out of trouble. After things settle down, you can even come and visit your friends and family whenever it’s safe to.”
“It won’t work.”
“It will,” he insists. Another kiss, this one buzzing off the landing station as soon as it makes contact. Minho skims his hands along Jeongin’s sides, pushing him into an embrace. “You have five months to think about it, darling. Five months to plan.”
Jeongin doesn’t say anything, too lost to even find the words to. He feels like this entire conversation has been giving him whiplash after whiplash. They’ve gone from arguing to crying to kissing and professing their love. And now Minho wants them to run away as if that’ll solve anything. As if that’ll reverse what he’s done, what Jeongin has stood by and let him get away with. Will heal the scars that are still festering inside of them even after all this time.
Soulmates aren’t a choice. They’re assigned to people by whatever entity has created them. Sometimes their soul bonds get it wrong, pairing two people who should’ve never been together like Jeongin’s Eomma and Appa were.
Love isn’t a choice either, at least not when it comes to Jeongin and Minho. For Jeongin, love is an instinct that has been honed by years and years of practice, since before he was even old enough to comprehend what it was. Few people would choose to be in love with the Butcher of Gimpo after all – although Lee Minho, with his silver tongue and starbright laughter, might make them think twice. Love has been tethered to Jeongin since he was six years old and came across a boy crying behind a dumpster in a dirty alleyway, his hand pressed against a cat while the shadow of another stained his cheek. Love is red bunny ears on his ring finger and a promise made against the dying sun.
It isn’t a choice, but what Minho is offering him right now is.
Five months. Five months until graduation, until the day that Jeongin has to decide how he wants to live out the rest of his life. If he’s being honest, he has no idea what he’s going to say when the time comes – and he supposes that, in its own way, says it all.