Work Text:
✩
“There is no such thing as an empty space or
an empty time. There is always something to
see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may
to make a silence, we cannot.”
― John Cage
PART I: NOW
“Do you remember,” Minho begins, without any greeting.
Jisung opens the door, feels his heart drop out onto the space between their toes, sees the world tremble between rapid blinks as his ears confirm that his eyes have not been deceived, and those are Minho’s first words to him in five years. “Do you remember when you were nineteen?”
He sounds breathless—looks breathless—like he’s just run a mile, probably more. His hair is longer than it had been when Jisung last saw him, and it’s all astray, and his shirt is sitting crooked on his shoulders, and he’s a mesmerizing sight to behold. He always has been, but maybe even more now, in the intense energy he’s given to this fragile moment.
It just can’t be.
He should have no business here, no business drumming on Jisung’s door with the same pattern of knocks they’d used back when they were sixteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, no business running back into Jisung’s life when he was the one who disappeared.
He should have no business skipping the apologies, skipping the explanations—as to why he left, and what happened—to ask Jisung this. And really, it’s a silly question. Of course Jisung still remembers how it was like when he was nineteen.
“I— why are you asking?” he croaks instead, a non-answer. How are you even here, he should be asking instead, though it’s a miracle his voice even works. Because after the first two years… he hadn’t expected to see Minho ever again, had crushed any lingering traces of hope deep within his heart and had moved on. Or at least tried to.
And yet all the words he’s saved for this very moment he didn’t ever think would happen have been swept away from him. All the anger, the hurt, the sadness and bitterness—they’ve vanished with Minho’s reappearance.
Now he can only stare at the Minho standing in his open doorway and wait for a reply.
“We made a marriage pact… at that time,” Minho says, and, with a fiercely-determined gaze, finally looks Jisung in the eyes.
✩
There were alcohol bottles scattered on the table, but Jisung had been entirely sober when he’d said it.
“If we’re both still single when you’re thirty, let’s just get married together.”
Minho had been completely sober, too; after all, they hadn’t been the ones drinking.
On the other end of the sofa—at that time, it had been past midnight, just the two of them left in the room—he shot Jisung an unreadable look. “What? You joking?”
Jisung hadn’t been joking, not really. Mostly he was young, and foolish, and harboring a crush on his best friend. Even so, he could picture them, growing old together. Maybe Minho would have his own dance studio then; maybe Jisung would finally have finally figured out how to compose a decent rap track, or an album, or two. Maybe they’d share an apartment; they’d have cats—tabbies, like Minho’s cats now. Maybe he was young and maybe he’d meet more people, find someone he wanted to settle down with later, but right then Jisung was crushing badly on Minho (the term crush by now an unacknowledgable understatement), and didn’t think he’d find anyone else like him, and he knew it didn’t have to be romantic, either—it could just be them, coexisting together, kind of as they did now. To Jisung, the idea didn’t seem too far-fetched, considering how close they had managed to stay over the last ten years.
“Maybe,” Jisung replied instead, shrugging. He could feel the tips of Minho’s feet, warm, pressing into his ankles atop the middle cushion. Only the kitchen light, in the background, was on, so he took reassurance in the fact that Minho probably couldn’t read his face well either, even if the quiet tone of his own voice had certainly betrayed him.
“Then. Honestly?” Minho said. He had taken to playing absentmindedly with his fingers, like his words either didn’t mean anything or they meant more than he was letting on and he just didn’t want to show it. “Sure.”
“Really?” The question slipped out of Jisung’s mouth—disbelief at Minho agreeing so easily.
Minho looked up again, just stared at him. “I mean it’s almost ten years out. And with you… it wouldn’t be so bad.”
At that, Jisung felt his mouth quirk up. “Yeah, I guess I’m pretty cool.” He had to ask. He knew Minho wasn’t. And he still asked. “You’re not drunk, right?”
Minho was really staring at him now, an intensity in his eyes that pinned Jisung to the sofa. Jisung still couldn’t tell what was going through his head. “No. Should I be, if we’re talking about marriage?” In a blink, though, the intensity was gone; Minho laughed and his eyes twinkled, teasing.
“Maybe…not?” Jisung chuckled along with him, weakly. He hadn’t necessarily been joking, but he also hadn’t meant for Minho to take any of it so seriously, either—even if that seriousness had been fleeting. “But it is a long way off, and a lot can change between now and then…”
“It can,” Minho agreed, finally glancing back at his fingers. He fiddled with his nails. “Will you still be desirable in ten years? Hmm… we’ll see.”
Still be implied Minho currently did find Jisung desirable, at least to some degree.
“I will too! You’ll see… we’ll see,” Jisung echoed, flushing as he sheepishly dragged out the last syllable. This wasn’t anything he didn’t know, the uncertainty. The future was full of uncertainties. He probably shouldn’t have opened his mouth in the first place; then, certainly, they could have stayed in comfortable, drowsy silence. But now he was awake, and maybe. Just maybe. In the future…
He wanted— “Should I try the soju then? Finish it off?” He was grateful when his voice came out light, teasing. Bemoaning. Like it was a bit embarrassing, a bit silly. He could steer the conversation back into something that didn’t feel tinged with tension. “Then I won’t remember bringing this up and you can surprise me with rings when I’m thirty.” And he’d definitely still be single, he knew. What he didn’t know was if he’d ever find someone else, not when he had Minho.
Minho snorted. “Okay.”
“I’m really gonna do it, then,” Jisung leaned to the side, reaching for the closest bottle. Made a show of bringing it up—
“Oh. This one’s empty.” He hadn’t really been planning to drink, but he hadn’t intended for this to happen, either. Sometimes the universe worked in comedic favor.
Minho was really laughing now, lips curling and giving way to bright teeth. “Oh no,” he said, sounding anything but disappointed, and Jisung set the bottle down to pick up a couch pillow. He smacked Minho’s head with it, hard, but not hard enough to hurt, and Minho stole the pillow and returned the favor, until they were drunk—on laughter.
So they’d both remember in the morning.
After that, though… it probably wouldn’t come to that point.
✩
It really probably wouldn’t come to that point, because the next thing Minho proceeds to tell him, after dredging out a nearly-forgotten, half-assed marriage pact from the past, is that the world might end before either of them turns thirty.
There is utter silence in the wake of his announcement.
Then: “...What?” Jisung musters out.
Minho is back. Minho is alive. Here Jisung stands, face-to-face with Minho. Speaking directly to Minho.
He manages to crack a joke, laughing in the face of the past. “I thought I asked for wedding rings, not the end of the world.”
“You asked for them at thirty; we’re not thirty yet,” Minho replies, and the smile that breaks across his face is both amused and conflicted.
✩
They never brought up the conversation of that night, though it had never fully escaped Jisung’s mind; after the fact, he’d been so self-conscious of how he’d let his mouth run, jabbering off about marriage, that he couldn’t stop himself from replaying the scenario, every once in a while. But gradually he’d grown busier, focused on finding jobs, and almost a year after he’d graduated—
Minho had just vanished.
It had been a spring day, the air crisp and fresh when Jisung had stepped out of the apartment that morning. He’d woken up to his alarm, and, through the closed window, the faint sounds of birds chirping, of squirrels tittering. The geraniums he and Hyunjin had valiantly kept alive—a joint effort, for neither of them bore any sort of green thumb—were in full bloom, in pale pink and bright magenta.
Jisung hadn’t ever been a morning person. He wasn’t particularly a night person, either; he didn’t mind both sleeping through mornings and retreating to his bed early at night.
But the day was new. And it was a Friday at that, which meant he’d get to Minho’s place after work—a production gig that seemed more promising and permanent by the day—and they’d watch movies over home-cooked dinner. That was their weekly routine.
Jisung had been looking forward to it. He had traversed the parking lot with an eagerness in his step and work had passed faster than usual, though it had never been a huge drag, either. After, on the drive to Minho’s, he’d turned the radio low, conjuring ideas for the movie they could watch (it had been his turn to choose). The sun had just started to set, an unmarred blue flaunting dreamy pink-gold edges, and Jisung remembers thinking to himself, it’s a good day today.
He had been in his second month at the job, and it wasn’t fame, wasn’t big money, but he still liked it. It wasn’t repetitive because he got to experiment, got to create new soundscapes, and the repetition he did have was in established routines that he looked forward to: poorly-executed but nonetheless edible dinners he cooked with Hyunjin and now sometimes Hyunjin’s boyfriend Jeongin, movie nights with Minho, occasional late nights scrawling the internet.
Normally, though, Minho would already be home by the time Jisung pulled up on Friday. He’d open the door before the doorbell would finish announcing Jisung’s presence.
You’re a little late, Minho would tease, at the door. Or: Wanna hear what I had to sit through at work today?
He’d be waiting for Jisung with an obnoxiously-winsome smile, vegetables halfway chopped, maybe the onions already on the stove or maybe the oven already set to preheat.
That day, he wasn’t.
Jisung had not been able to get in contact with him. Not through texts, or calls, and not even when he showed up to the other’s apartment again three days later with the spare key—an apartment that had still looked lived in, as if Minho had taken nothing with him when he’d gone.
Nobody had known what had happened; Minho had left absolutely zero trace of his disappearance. They’d called the day before it had happened, and Minho had been cheerful, pleasant, not like he’d been planning an unpleasant magic trick. His other friends and his family, they’d all been just as baffled as Jisung.
For a while, Jisung had been scared to consider it: what if Minho had died?
He had cried. Once, twice, many times. But he had never mourned, for Minho hadn’t left a body to find, either.
✩
Now, here he is.
Here he is, like he’s walked out of Jisung’s desperate, yearning dreams; here he is, talking about that marriage pact and the end of the world.
“Yes, but…what?” Jisung will ask again. Reeling, a hand on the door frame for support. Realizing today will be anything but normal.
“The world is probably going to end in five months,” Minho repeats. He’s finally begun to catch his breath, no longer seeking air between every few words. “I know everything sounds crazy right now, that I maybe look crazy, that it’s crazy I’m even here at all, but…it’s true.”
Minho doesn’t look crazy, not really. He just looks like a bright flame—eyes burning with the force of determination and hair blazing gold under the afternoon sun.
Jisung burns, too. As he blinks it in, him in, the longing that settles in his chest—a sort of longing that grips his entire body despite having Minho right in front of him—is an old friend.
Minho set afire is a sight to behold. There’s no insanity in it, just truth.
So Jisung responds with equal honesty. “Right now, it’s not hard to believe.” For if Minho could return after all this time, then… maybe, as sudden as it sounded, the world could end too. “But where— where have you been?”
Minho stares at him. He still has the same way of staring as he did years ago; it’s a way that leaves Jisung winded. He stares, and stares, and then says, “I’m sorry.”
Jisung should repeat his question, but Minho doesn’t look like he’s going to give him an answer to it. And Jisung still can’t find it in himself to be upset, only relieved—that Minho didn’t, somehow, die at the edge of the world; that wherever he had been, he’d returned.
“It’s…okay,” Jisung acquiesces. Maybe it isn’t completely okay, but five years had given him a lot of time. Time enough for Jisung to recognize that he can wait to prod into what Minho seems reluctant to reveal.
“I don’t want the world to end, though,” Minho says. He stands up straight, runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe that’s obvious. I mean, I don’t think anyone does.”
“Probably, yeah,” Jisung agrees, and all of it is so ridiculous that he just starts laughing. It’s a helpless, what-is-going-on kind of laugh. “So,” he swallows. Will Minho even tell him just a little, he wonders. “Could you…? I’m assuming you’re going to explain a little more about that?”
“I mean, I should,” Minho’s voice trails off. “I hadn’t even—I didn’t prepare a good explanation because the moment I figured it out I just—”
He lets out a long sigh.
“So I suppose…” he ventures, finally beginning to sound a bit sheepish. His mouth curls up, a crooked curl, and he asks, “I suppose now isn’t the best time to ask if you’ve ever believed in magic?”
Magic.
The stuff of dreams.
There had been times.
When he was much younger, his mind tickled by all the outlandish ideas of children’s fantasy books, when it seemed like so much more was possible, he had believed, just a little.
He hadn’t yet begun to classify the sporadic oddities that popped up as coincidences, or fortune—instead, he’d seen them as special incidents, wondrous little surprises.
There had been birthdays of wishes miraculously granted—by knowing parents, most likely, who knew all too well the toys Jisung had secretly wished for.
There had been his first time at the arcade—he’d put the last two coins into a claw machine on a whim, sure he’d end up empty-handed, but the claw had, miraculously, latched onto the exact stuffed animal Jisung had aimed for. He still has it, the small vaguely Rilakkuma-like thing, though it’s sitting in a box in his closet somewhere.
There had been his first gaming console—it had walked into the face of death many times and come out alive. A drop into a fountain, almost certainly meaning doom; but Jisung had heard a resounding thunk and not a splash, and he’d found it resting, just barely dry, atop a stone fish amid the fountain base that the water level hadn’t yet breached. It had been left forgotten it on the bus once to school, too, only for Jisung to have found it, not stolen, just mysteriously sitting there exactly as he’d left it on the same bus home.
Of course, if Minho had asked Jisung the same question five years ago, maybe Jisung would have—partially teasing and completely honest—replied that the most magical moment had been the day he’d met Minho.
It’s a day that still doesn’t quite feel real.
Today might beat it off the podium, though. Today, Jisung could be convinced.
Has he believed in magic?
“Realistically… once upon a time, maybe when I was nine or ten,” Jisung answers. “Then again, you’re here now, so I can’t exactly say I don’t believe, not at least a little.”
Minho laughs a little, and it still sounds the same. Light, airy, always on the verge of a giggle. “Realistically, that’s as good as I could have hoped for.”
✩
Jisung and Minho first crossed paths on a Tuesday.
Summer was in, and in full force; the sun beat relentlessly against Jisung’s neck and cast short shadows on the pavement.
The garage overhang wasn’t helping—Jisung was staked out on the driveway, colored chalk pieces strewn by his sandaled feet, and he felt like he’d need to consume at least two popsicles after this endeavor before he would even begin to cool down.
He was too focused now, however, to stop. On the gray cement—less gray by the minute—he’d been trying to catalog all the birds he’d caught sight of in their backyard throughout the summer, and he only had a few to go.
First there was the one that vaguely resembled a blue jay, but had more white and gray across its back and wing coloration that looked more like the ocean than the sky. Jisung only had one shade of blue chalk, though, so it would have to suffice.
There were also two smaller species, both with sandy brown mosaics for wings. One had a whitish belly and longer legs, while the other had a reddish head and squat legs.
Jisung was in the middle of drawing that red splotch of color—a satisfying little swoosh at the top of its round head—when he heard it.
A bird call? No, that was too distant, in the trees far away.
But in the foreground, a faint whir, this mild little buzzing sound. Jisung looked up and saw the dragonfly, its body a striking shade of burnt red and its wings webbed golden across translucent panes. The air seemed to shimmer in its wake.
Jisung had almost never seen dragonflies. And he’d certainly never seen them by his house, which was at least a dozen miles away from the nearest lake. When his parents drove him there, occasionally, in the summers, he’d spot small green dragonflies, or maybe blue-black striped dragonflies, but never red.
He glanced fleetingly down at more red, at the chalk in his hand. But the natural pastel of the chalk couldn’t compare to the bold red of the dragonfly, which was whizzing nebulous circles around the driveway.
Then it veered off course abruptly, fleeing down the sidewalk.
A split second decision—and Jisung left his unfinished birds to chase the insect.
He ran, and ran, and didn’t stop, following the dragonfly down one street and then the next, turning left, right, right, left, left—
It stopped. Was racing in tipsy loops over the middle of the street, the rapid flutter of its wings more frantic this time.
That shimmer, that golden-red dragonfly shimmer, circling over the pavement.
Except it was beyond the pavement now, too.
Along the opposite sidewalk, the air was trembling, kind of the way it did when there was a heatwave and the pavement could fry eggs, except this tremble was too close to him to be an illusion, and it sparkled golden-red, and—
Jisung followed the colors with his eyes, skimming past curbs and mailboxes.
And there he was.
A boy, standing there, across the street, with a bag slung across his shoulders.
When Jisung blinked in surprise, the dragonfly, and all the air vibrato—it disappeared. Like it was all a scorching summer illusion, and it really was totally hot, because now that Jisung had stopped running he could feel the sweat beading across his neck, his back, and he panted like a thick-coated dog to take in more air.
But what hadn’t yet become an illusion was the boy, who was still standing there. He had just seemed to notice Jisung, now, too, if the way his eyes had widened was anything to go by.
Jisung marched over. With fast, determined steps—there wasn’t any room to be cautious, when the boy might zip off the way the dragonfly probably had.
He didn’t vanish, though, just watched as Jisung neared him.
“Did you see that?” Jisung asked. “The dragonfly?”
Jisung was still catching his breath, wiping sweat off his forehead, but the boy looked mostly unfazed by the heat. And if he’d been expecting a greeting or a different question, he didn’t show it. Actually, he looked delightfully surprised; his mouth broke into a beaming smile. “Yeah,” he declared. “Those are my favorite.”
“Oh. Oh!” Jisung replied. “But I’ve never seen one like that before?”
“You have to look closer,” the boy said, leaning closer in a conspiring tone of voice. “They’re fast, and quiet.” He leaned back, brought his backpack straps tightly over his shoulders, and grinned again.
In the span of a minute, Jisung had made a friend.
“Maybe you could show me how to find them,” Jisung said. “I’ll…” he had to offer something in exchange. “Then I could tell you about all the different birds. I watch birds a lot.”
“Cool!” the boy replied, sounding genuinely enthusiastic about it. Then a note of something shy crept in. “Um. So. My name’s Minho.”
Minho.
“I’m Jisung,” Jisung said, mirroring his grin. “Since you live closeby, you should come to my house sometime. Actually, I’m drawing birds right now, you should see them.”
“Okay. I just moved here,” Minho told him. “And maybe you could show me your birds right now? ‘Cause I think I’m lost. I know my house is somewhere nearby but I can’t tell…”
That made more sense, why Minho had certainly looked kind of lost when Jisung had first laid his eyes on him. But now he didn’t seem so distant anymore, after he’d quickly tethered himself to Jisung.
“Don’t worry,” Jisung reassured. “I know how to get home. And then you could give my mom your address once she gets back from work, and she’ll help you find it. Or…” he tried to mimic Minho’s previously-secretive tone. “Or we could try and find your house ourselves? Like an adventure.”
“But we could get more lost?” Minho pointed out.
Jisung laughed. “Maybe. Then let's go to my house first.”
So they did, two boys traipsing down the sidewalk in the sun. On his driveway, Jisung explained each drawing to an attentive Minho, and finished sketching the last two he’d left before chasing the dragonfly. Minho sat down in the limited shade of the overhang and took a book out of his bag.
“It’s a journal,” Minho said. “I’m gonna write down everything that happened today.”
“Ooh,” Jisung made an appreciative noise. He preferred drawing to writing, but maybe he could start a drawing journal sometime, or something. He scooted closer to Minho, squatting down next to him. “Can I see?”
“No,” Minho turned, shielding the book so Jisung could only see its solid navy shell. Then he smiled again. “My journal’s just for me. But maybe another time.”
“Okay,” Jisung said, disappointed. But he understood. They had just met.
“Here,” Minho ripped off a tiny corner of one page, and wrote a line with his pencil. “This is my new address. Do you know it?”
Jisung took the offered paper. He read it twice, but on the second time the street name rang a bell. “I think so,” Jisung said. “I think you live really close!”
“That’s good,” Minho said, closing his journal. “Then I could come over again sometime?”
“Totally,” Jisung eagerly agreed. “Also, hold on.” He stood up, tiptoed to punch in the keypad for the garage. “I’m gonna get some popsicles,” he announced.
So that was how Jisung navigated Minho back home; two wrong turns and four right ones later, sticky popsicle remnants on their fingers and shirts. Jisung learned that Minho was eleven, would be two grades above in the fall, that he liked insects and birds and cats and endless numbers of animals, and he learned that Minho had a very kind mom who didn’t need to be as worried as she was when she found them on her doorstep.
“Hello,” Jisung greeted when his mother opened the door. Her eyes went from Minho, to Jisung, then back to Minho, and her mouth turned up in this relieved sort of smile.
“Thanks for bringing him back…”
“Jisung,” Minho filled in for him. “This is Jisung.”
“Jisung, thank you. And Minho, don’t stay out too long again, okay? It’s been hours; I was getting worried because you left so long ago.”
When Jisung had found Minho, Minho looked like he’d hadn’t been out that long. He hadn’t been dripping sweat, but he’d had to have wandered far enough to get lost. Maybe he’d been wandering in shade, wandering smartly under the elusive shade of trees along the sidewalks. Maybe he was just cool like that; Jisung wishes he were as impervious to the sun as Minho had been, at least until they’d sat on the driveway and Jisung had seen a warm flush begin to rise up Minho’s cheeks.
“It wasn’t that long. And I saw lots of interesting bugs,” Minho protested. So maybe he had also just gotten lost in time chasing insects, as Jisung had too.
His mother’s mouth went up crooked, forming something that seemed both a grin and a grimace. “As long as you don’t bring any inside.”
“I don’t take them! I just watch them,” Minho said, defensive.
Jisung only laughed. “Me too. It’s fun. So let’s hang out again!”
“Yes please,” Minho said, and they shared popsicle-sweet smiles as Minho’s mother gently closed the door.
✩
Maybe magic had first brought them together, maybe magic is bringing them together again. Whatever the force is, there must not be any magic in Jisung’s apartment, which is as cluttered as ever.
Jisung has half a mind to apologize for all the disarray but ends up laughing it off; years ago, before everything, he’d seen Minho’s apartment at all its highs and lows. This is just a reversal. Besides, there are better things to focus on, now.
Because Minho is here. Here, as in Jisung’s apartment. Jisung wonders—does Minho know about his own place?
“You know your parents took in all your old apartment stuff? Someone else is renting it now. So you won’t have anywhere to live.”
Frenetic laughter spills out Minho’s mouth as he toes off his shoes by the wall. “That’s okay.” There’s a pause. “I was kind of hoping I could just stay at yours for the time being? The world is probably ending anyway, so if I’m a bad roommate you wouldn’t have to deal with me for long.”
Live together. The thought of it sends Jisung for a loop. He pictures himself and Minho. Under one roof.
And they really are talking about the end of the world?
“Wouldn’t you be the better roommate out of the both of us? Better cooking, better cleaning, better… I don’t know, most things.”
Minho squints at him. “So that’s a yes?”
“Yes,” Jisung agrees without hesitation. He’s already justified it in his mind because he knows Minho usually is better at managing his space, and, in a twisted way, isn’t this what he sort of wanted? Marriage pact or no marriage pact, for them to live together? To share a space—to invade each other’s spaces, welcomely. Even after five years of no Minho at all, maybe in spite of it, Jisung wants this more than ever.
“As long as you cook for me sometimes,” he tacks on. Maybe he’s the slightest bit selfish. In light of the news he’s just been delivered, Jisung figures he better make the most of this that he can.
“Of course. That’s a given.” A pause, and then the next words come out teasing. “And a bargain.”
“For you.” An eye roll. “You’d think after all these years I’d be just fine in the kitchen now, and I am, usually! But not always effortlessly.”
“I never said it was effortless,” Minho’s still smiling. “You of all people would know I’ve burnt things, forgotten to add ingredients, had my fair share of cooking accidents.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jisung waves him off. “Stay here, I definitely don’t mind. But you’re sure you want to be so pessimistic about this? I mean, are you… are you sure that the world is going to… end?”
“No,” Minho answers. “But with the way things are going… probably.”
“So would you like some tea or something? Sooth the nerves a little?” Jisung feels his lips quirk up. He’s not sure what the etiquette for these types of situations are; do they get right down to the serious talk about the world ending? Jisung doesn’t know, but humor has always come easily to him, and he can feel the banter pulling at the ends of his mouth too, already, even after Minho’s only been back in his life for a few minutes.
“That would be divine,” Minho throws back, his voice purposefully posh and his eyebrow poised in a delicate arch. But it drops, and bluntness returns. “What I could really go for right now is a drink, but that’s going to make my headache worse than it already is trying to figure out all this.”
Jisung snorts. “Tea, then. And maybe water.” So he fills up the kettle and joins Minho at the table. “Do I get to learn your secrets now?”
“As much as I can safely tell you,” Minho informs him, whatever that’s supposed to mean. He proceeds to stare at the wall above Jisung’s head, frowning, and then his line of sight goes hazy, like he’s become lost in thought.
“I’ll… just get the tea,” Jisung says, feeling a little lost and deciding to leave Minho to it. The feeling fades, thankfully, when he returns to the table with two cups and Minho seems to have refocused.
“Thanks,” he says. He brings the mug to his face and inhales, possibly gauging the type of tea.
“Oolong,” Minho names it, and looks up to pin Jisung with another stare, that intense breath-stealing one. “Thanks. Again.”
Oolong has always been Minho’s favorite. In Minho’s absence, it may have become Jisung’s favorite, too.
“Yeah.” Jisung evades his gaze this time, bringing his own mug up to take a sip. Still, he catches Minho’s eyes piercing into him above their respective rims.
“I can see the future.”
Burning. Sharp, hot burning on Jisung’s tongue.
“Shit! I should have waited to say that,” Minho’s voice rises two octaves up the scale, from mildly apprehensive as he’d dropped his second bomb on Jisung today to incredibly panicked and extremely apologetic.
“I’m fine,” Jisung manages to reply. “Just swallowed more than I was expecting.” He’s not sure if he’s talking about the tea or Minho’s words at this point.
But Minho jumps up, anyway, rummaging through the kitchen and returning with a cup of cold water.
“Not used to this layout.” As Jisung chugs, Minho continues speaking. He sounds sheepish referencing the prolonged time he’d spent in the kitchen, probably searching for the cabinet with the cups. “Last time you shared an apartment with Hyunjin.”
“Right,” Jisung says. “That changed last year when he moved out to live with his boyfriend. And I moved into a one-bedroom here… wait, how did you find me?”
“I called Hyunjin and asked, one of the first things I did when I came back.”
And now Jisung finds himself with more questions. “Hyunjin? You thought to call him and not me? You could have just gotten that information from me yourself!”
“It’s not like that.” Somehow, he sounds more sheepish. And amused. “You’re the first person I thought of. Is it weird to say I didn’t want to hear your voice over the phone like that; I wanted to hear it in person first? But I tried to call you before Hyunjin anyway. And you didn’t pick up.”
Minho shouldn’t be allowed to say these things; Jisung’s not sure how to deal with Minho’s reappearance and sappy words combined.
Fleeting confessions run through his head: So, you know I was in love with you before everything? And that I still kind of am? Or: You can’t just say things so casually like that—it’s not good for my heart.
Instead, all he says is, “Huh.” He had likely missed the calls because his headphones had been on; he had probably been on a deep dive into a specific corner of music posted to the internet, a hobby he spent a lot of time indulging in after work hours.
“Yes. So. That’s why,” Minho says.
“Fair enough. I could not have known you’d call,” Jisung admits. He couldn’t have known he’d be sitting across from Minho this instant, his heart a jittering mess.
“But about what I said, with seeing the future and all… it’s never that certain to begin with. Think of it like a sort of magic, a really finicky sort of magic. But now, I can’t… I just can’t see the future past a certain point at all. And that’s the point at which the world maybe ends.”
“That’s so…” Strange. Interesting? Surreal? Instead of finishing his sentence, Jisung blurts the fleeting question that comes to mind, a question born from foolish hope. “So were we married in that original future? Is that why you asked if I remembered earlier?”
He’s most certainly wrong. There’s no way.
Take it back, he chides himself. Why’d you ask that. Idiot.
Minho huffs, face breaking into a crooked smile. There is a thinly-veiled wistfulness beneath, a quiet sadness that he can’t quite cover up. “I guess you’d be curious. I don’t know, though. It’s possible. But…I told myself I’d never pry into people’s business like that, especially people I know—at risk of seeing something I might not want to. I mostly look into the past now, actually, rarely the future. Besides, seeing the future or the past too much… it messes things up.”
He hasn’t answered Jisung’s other question, but Jisung might rather burn his tongue again than repeat it.
“Then the world’s ending because it’s already been messed up enough?”
Minho squints at him. “You’re fast.”
Jisung can only shrug, mostly still confused.
“Sort of,” Minho continues. “Let’s just say that I’m not the only one who can do this… and that over time, all of us have racked up quite the cumulative debt with the universe. And now we might be past the point of turning back.”
“Oh. So like… you can’t see anything anymore?”
“Not really. Only up until a few months ahead—and then it’s not possible to see anything at all.”
“Oh,” Jisung says again. “Then… what do we do?”
“What do you mean, what do we do,” Minho replies plainly. “This is it. I wanted to warn you in case my foresights—or lack of them, I guess—play out to be true.”
“It sure is a warning,” Jisung sighs, snickers. “Haven’t you ever heard of ignorance—and bliss?”
“Sorry,” Minho says. “I just wanted to tell someone. I thought about not saying anything actually, I—”
“No, I’m—” He feels like he could be in a dream; like he could wake up tomorrow and none of this will have happened. “I’m glad you told me. I’m honored that that someone you’d chose to tell is still me. But…it’s just a lot.”
When he looks up again, Minho is pensively sipping his tea.
“I lied,” Minho admits. He looks down into his cup. “There is a chance of stopping it. But it’s nearly impossible. Like if all the air molecules in a room ended up on one side and created a vacuum on the other side levels of impossible.”
“...Right,” Jisung replies.
“I don’t know,” Minho is now glaring—a frustrated downturn of his eyebrows and mouth—into his cup. “I feel like I need to just sit and think about this for a long, long, time, and maybe then I’ll think of a way to go about it.”
“Maybe I could help?” Jisung offers, a little hopeful. “Could you explain what you mean?”
“I’m sorry,” Minho tells him. Eyes on the tea. “That’s…out of my hands. I want to, since you probably don’t understand much, but I don’t know if I should, either…I have to find loopholes.”
“Loopholes?”
“Yes. I’ll find a way.” He finally meets Jisung’s eyes again, and the determination he’d barrelled in with earlier that afternoon has returned. “Trust me?”
“I don’t know if I have another choice.” A wry smile.
Through the kitchen windows, the sun is setting. A sign that the universe is still intact, for now.
✩
Minho cooks them dinner, holding true to his promise even though Jisung insists multiple times that he doesn’t have to. It’s a simple meal but so hearty, a honeyed beef stew, and he feels warmer than he can remember ever feeling in the longest time.
A forlorn piece of history clicks back into place: a five-year-overdue meal Jisung had expected but never been able to share with Minho until now. All they would have to do is play a movie with it, and it would be like nothing’s changed.
Today they don’t watch a movie but they do talk about old times, and it’s pretense enough, taking Jisung back to high school and college and graduation. Minho pratters on and on, more talkative than Jisung remembers, but he welcomes it, the reminiscence, and Minho seems to relax the longer they stay there, stew slowly depleted from their bowls and conversation an endless stream of past thoughts.
Night has fallen by the time Jisung realizes it.
“Today’s your birthday,” he says, as Minho comes out of the shower, wearing Jisung’s old t-shirt and Jisung’s old sweats. With wet hair, a flushed face, and Jisung could drown in the sight but now he wants to know: “Why…”
He’d remembered subconsciously, every year past Minho’s departure, not as a reminder on his calendar because he had been too prideful to do that, but rather as a mark branded into the back of his mind; secret, nagging, present, then forgotten when Minho himself had shown up on his doorstep. But it’s back now, and he remembers. He should have remembered right when Minho brought up the marriage pact, because today Minho is twenty-nine and that really does mean the world might end before they’re both thirty.
“Of course,” Minho tells him. “I know.” He looks like he knows all too well.
Jisung doesn’t understand. “I mean, why come back today?”
“Today? I had to,” Minho settles on, voice diminished and gaze elsewhere, and Jisung already knew this too but it seems infinite, the number of secrets Minho now keeps to himself, hidden under this layer of solemn resoluteness.
“Well,” Jisung announces, only more confused by the moment but not to be deterred by the rapidly declining mood. “We should still celebrate.”
“We don’t need to,” Minho replies, and he sounds sincere this time. “I’m just glad to be here. Really.”
Not for the first time that day, Jisung wonders where Minho has been, what he’s seen. For him to speak like this now; different and yet not quite.
“You’ve always been like this,” he says instead. He still recognizes the way Minho likes to play one of two games: quiet and evading or candid and hard-hitting. If it’s the former now, then Jisung has to become the latter. “You know this might not be possible next year, so that means we have to do it this year.”
“We don’t have to,” Minho tugs back, reels it in. But he says it with too much force, tries too hard to hide the smile in his voice; Jisung already knows he’s caving.
“If I searched for cake recipes right now, would you stop me?” He pulls out his phone.
Minho moves fast despite his bashful behavior. In a fleeting second the phone is out of Jisung’s hands and into his own.
“No,” Minho tells him. He holds up his prize victoriously, as competitive as ever. “But I know a better recipe by heart. I’ll tell you the steps; we can use that one.”
“Oh,” Jisung can’t help it. He beams, delighted. “But I’m doing most of it; it’s your birthday after all.”
“Can you?” Minho asks, dubiously, but Jisung’s a fully grown adult who has baked at least a few times on his own, of course he can, and he declares this to Minho and Minho keeps teasing until their conversation has devolved into banter, then into childish bickering.
It’s easy, like this, to pretend they aren’t older now. To stall for time, which never stalls.
✩
Jisung and Minho grew up in a small, secluded corner of the world, a picture-perfect neighborhood with green lawns and red roofs but no picket fences, which meant free access to the grass that cropped up next to the sidewalk and, by extension, free bug watching.
The world shrunk to a tinier scale for bugs, but maybe that wasn’t so true; after all, half had wings that could carry them further than Jisung could ever go on two feet. So he felt bad about sticking them in jars; instead, he and Minho let them crawl across their hands, climb their seemingly-mountainous feet, and return to their dirt beneath the green lawns.
On the sidewalks, they drew what they encountered, impressing themselves but not always their parents. Bugs, birds, the neighborhood squirrels and cats and dogs—almost all of them must have been commemorated as chalk portraits on the pavement.
“We could become artists,” Jisung used to say. Then Minho would scrawl a loopy mustache onto the pristine bird head Jisung had brought to life and they would chase each other down the street or play hide-and-seek in the neighbors’ gardens until they had sweat enough to persuade their parents into buying more popsicles.
Time passed. Crept up on them.
Long chalk sticks were reduced to brittle nubs, and Jisung’s parents started taking him to music lessons. He didn’t want to play the piano, he defiantly told them, but then he did warm up to guitar, and singing, and so sketchbooks became notebooks, became diaries told in lyrics with doodles reduced to the margins.
“You could become a musician,” Minho used to say. Then Jisung would make grabby hands for Minho’s book, that secret little journal he always wrote in but refused to let Jisung peek at, even though Jisung let Minho peek at all of his notebooks. He was on the third volume now, after the deep blue cover had turned to a leafy green and now a cardinal red, and each was small, nearly pocket-sized, like he could carry them with him everywhere he went. He quite possibly did.
“Are you gonna be a writer, then?” He’d ask, but Minho would shy away. He’d shake his head and hold his book to his chest, bleeding red. “But you’ve written so much in those books.”
“It’s nothing,” Minho would say. And he would always tell Jisung the same thing, with the most satisfied and mischievous smile on his face: “I’m writing nobody’s stories.”
It was so cryptic that it only ever made Jisung impossibly more curious, but Minho would always proceed to flip, carefully, to a blank page. He’d show the whitespace to Jisung, as if proving a point.
Jisung wouldn’t understand it, then. “That’s unfair. I want to see what you wrote,” he’d say. He knew they had no secrets between them—except for the contents of Minho’s books.
“You’re seeing what I have yet to write,” Minho would reply, like that was just as important, and maybe it was equal parts teasing and truth.
There was always a faint melancholy concealed under that sly smile. It was the one expression Jisung could never discern, the one that was as enigmatic as Minho’s replies in these moments.
Maybe it was also infuriating, the non-answer, but Jisung had always abided by his best friend’s boundaries. It was an unspoken law of their friendship, of any friendship really.
So he asked, but he never pressed the question. He let Minho deal out abstruse replies and figured he’d make sense of them someday.
Or, someday, Minho might finally reveal what he meant.
✩
Jisung and Minho grew up together, and here they are again:
At the early morning of a new day, six hours before Jisung needs to be awake to leave for work. In nights past he might have binged a show, or an anime, or fallen down the endless internet scroll trap.
Today, though, he’s still awake because he and Minho had made the kitchen come alive. Because his stomach is full of cake and the giddiest warmth. He hasn’t felt this way in a long time.
And now—
“This got an upgrade,” Minho says, gleefully flouncing onto Jisung’s bed, referring to the old tiny twin Jisung had ditched a few years ago—when he and Hyunjin moved out of their old apartment. But the couch in the living room is still old and more there for appearance than comfort—and Jisung wouldn’t let any guest sleep on it—so now they’re back in his room and Jisung almost doesn’t want to go to bed, in case he really does wake up to the world spinning normally and Minho still gone.
“Go brush your teeth,” Jisung slaps the feet sticking off the mattress on his way to the bathroom, hearing a muffled grunt as he goes to search for a spare toothbrush under the sink.
“I’m here! As requested,” Minho shows up moments later, sidling up to him against the counter. He bumps his hip against Jisung’s, grinning cheekily. “Thanks.”
Jisung fails to convey a scoff through the foam he’s worked up brushing, and settles instead on rolling his eyes, the mirror reflecting the motion for Minho to see.
“You don’t need to keep thanking me,” he says, once he’s done. “It feels weird.”
“Okay. No thanks to you,” Minho easily agrees, so Jisung shoves him and bolts for the bed himself, burying under the covers.
As he waits for Minho, Jisung’s sorts out a few of his thoughts. The most obvious, that the world is supposed to end—and along with that, the fact that he doesn’t know why or how that is supposed to happen, but that it maybe has something to do with magic or Minho and other people being able to see the future. And then there’s this, that this arrangement with Minho is apparently going to last until then. That he’s going to get to sleep with Minho by his side, that they’re going to share more meals together, more laughter, all of it.
It’s not the worst way for the world to end; he doesn’t really need that marriage pact anymore, he thinks.
“Hurry up,” Jisung teases, feeling inexplicably okay about everything. He pats the bed loudly. “It’s getting cold.”
“Honey, you called?” Minho stands in the bathroom doorway a minute later, one hand on his hip. He always plays along with Jisung’s antics, and Jisung suddenly feels this wrenching feeling in his chest because he missed this so much. Nobody has ever matched his humor as much as Minho always does. “I will be the best bed warmer to have warmed your bed.”
“Uh huh,” Jisung can’t deny it but he doesn’t want to incriminate himself, either, so he settles for a skeptical tone.
He pretends like he isn’t hyperaware of Minho turning off the light.
And shuffling back to the bed.
And crawling in.
When they were kids, they used to do it all the time. When they hadn’t outgrown sleepovers and when they hadn’t become busy with the burden of studying to get into good schools. So the last time it happened was seven or eight years ago; Jisung remembers it clearly. Jisung had come over and they’d celebrated the end of the school year—the end of college in general, for Minho, who’d just graduated. To his tired-drunk brain, it had seemed like the best idea, so he’d clambered into Minho’s bed after Minho and promptly sprawled across Minho himself. Minho had laughed and wrapped his arms around him and they’d just… fallen asleep, like that.
Jisung had woken up with a cheek pressed against Minho’s chest; he’d woken up to a quiet, steady heartbeat and an angelic smile of a sleeping angel.
Come to think of it, a lot of things had happened that summer. His first few performances at that bar, that all-too-easy bed sharing, even that marriage pact.
So now, when Jisung blinks and suddenly sees the grainy outline of Minho facing him in the dark, sees the shine of two eyes glinting back at him, memories flash through his brain, unbidden. He’s all too awake, and it’s not the sugar he’d consumed.
He squeezes his own eyes shut. “Why was the marriage pact the first thing you brought up earlier?”
Minho’s exhale is loud in the dark.
Jisung counts another breath before his response.
“I don’t know,” Minho says. Then his mouth keeps running. “I wanted to tell you about the end of the world, first thing, but then I was on your doorstep and I thought, what if you didn’t want to know everything might end. And then I panicked. And blurted that instead.”
“You still sprang the world ending stuff on me maybe a minute later,” Jisung murmurs.
“Clearly my stalling skills need some work.” An amused huff. “I think I just wanted to tell someone about it so badly that I was like, here goes nothing. I figured if I were to tell anyone, it would be you. My parents would ask too many questions.”
“I’m asking questions right now,” Jisung points out.
“But you know how it is. It’s not the same. You’re…you get it.” You don’t pry as hard, he means. Because there are many other questions Minho hasn’t given him the answers to.
“Shit. Minho, yeah, but do your parents even know you’re back?” At the realization, a mixture of concern and traitorous warmth churns in his gut—that he had still been the first person Minho came back to. He opens his eyes, sees Minho still looking at him.
“I was planning to do that…tomorrow,” Minho says. “I know when I see them again they’ll be so protective, and I get it, if my kid went missing for years and suddenly came back I’d do the same. But they definitely won’t let me out of sight for a day—for a month, even, if they’d have their way. I love them, but I can’t let them be my shadows. I have to figure these things out too, about the world ending, and,” a sigh. “You know?”
Jisung knows, but doesn’t know. He only knows what Minho’s been telling him so far. He sighs too. “Yeah.”
“And the marriage pact.” It’s a clear attempt to change the topic, but Jisung lets him. Maybe he can still sympathize with the situation, and maybe now he’s curious about what Minho has to say.
“It was—I don’t know why I said that, I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Minho continues. “I’m not—I shouldn’t even be bringing it up again now. I was gone for five years, and you had probably forgotten about the thing in the first place.”
Almost. But not quite. Jisung doesn’t think he will ever forget dropping the question, that one night years ago. He doesn’t say this, though. He says nothing.
“So,” Minho continues, grinning wryly. He sounds more sure of himself now. “Just pretend I didn’t mention it.”
Minho walks back into Jisung’s life, wakes his heart from a five-year slumber, and shatters it with a sure sentence.
“Mention what?” Jisung asks. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Miraculously, his voice does not crack. He can pretend Minho never brought it up. It should be easy. It should be easy.
Minho scoffs, amused. “Anyway—you know what hasn’t changed?”
“What?” Jisung asks.
“I’ll always consider you my best friend. Okay? And I really—” A slight pause. “—Even if you hate me a little for what happened, I’m just glad I could see you again.” Here, a strangled sound. “I’m going to stop talking now. This is too sappy.”
“I can’t hate you. Believe me. Well. Maybe just a little, but not really. Not hate hate,” Jisung hastens to explain. “And I’m glad too. I’m really glad you’re here.” His throat closes up a little, but it’s dry, cottony. He tastes something metallic, wrong.
He’s still thinking about it. He should forget the damned marriage pact. Pretend it really didn’t happen. Pretend he really didn’t hear Minho’s first words. Why did they have to be his first words back? Why—couldn’t Minho have just started with something else? Something that wouldn’t give Jisung false hopes like that.
Still. It came to him on a whim, Jisung understands that. If he were the one who had disappeared off the face of the world and then found himself standing on his best friend’s doorstep five years later, he wouldn’t quite know how to begin either.
And what can Jisung say now, that being twenty-seven is really a fraud and he’s still nineteen at heart and he wants it as badly as before? That five years apart may have changed them both but there are things that have stayed constant, that he knows he’s always wanted to spend a future with Minho.
But it’s okay if it’s still as best friends.
A quiet breath. His heart is not hammering in his chest (maybe it is, but he knows Minho can’t hear it), and his voice does not wobble at all (it really doesn’t). “Regardless of what happened, there are more important things anyway—like how you said there might be a way to prevent everything from ending?”
“It’s still a small chance, just an idea I need to think about.” Minho sounds relieved. Relieved that Jisung doesn’t hate him? He should have known that Jisung never really could. Relieved that the pact truly will become a thing of the past, maybe? That’s just Jisung being harsh on himself.
Realistically, Minho is just relieved to be here, as it all stands. At least for the time being.
So Jisung’s fingers curl into their palms under the blankets. They clench. His heart clenches. He’s relieved, too. Relieved that he had already spent all of his tears when he was twenty-two and Minho disappeared, relieved that he’d wrung himself so dry back then that he feels comparably nothing, now, that he can easily will away the prickling behind his eyes. That he can push that emotional vulnerability to the backburner, because there’s more on the line now.
“An idea is better than nothing,” Jisung says.
It could be a lot worse, really; after hoping so long for the impossible, he has his best friend back in front of him, and he knows that’s already more than he could have asked for.
✩
“I’m going to make a mistake.”
“Don’t think about that.”
“I’m going to mess up, my voice is going to crack or I’m going to forget the lyrics or...”
“You wrote the lyrics.”
“Doesn’t matter. I could still forget them.”
“You’ve practiced so many times that I know all the words by now. You’ll be fine. No, you’ll be amazing. Everyone’s going to be swooning at your feet.”
“Come on.” A petulant slap, two sets of giggles. “Now you’re just saying stupid things to distract me.”
“I’m being honest!”
“Sure.” This was laced with dubiousness.
“Cut me some slack, okay? So what if I’m trying to distract you? That’s the point. Hey—stop picking at your fingers.”
A hand reached for another hand. Fingers slid between fingers; the nervous movements halted.
A thumb rubbed calming circles onto the back of the other hand. “It’s going to be over soon, anyway. And I’m sure—however nervous you are—you’re going to love it.”
“Okay. Okay. You’re right.”
“Obviously.”
“Can you leave now.”
“I.” A pause. Then teasing, accompanied by an exaggerated wink. “I don’t think you want me to.”
A stretched-out groan. The recipient swung their joined hands, shook them, wiggled them. But they held stubbornly tight, fingers cradling fingers.
“There’s no escaping me.” A smile.
Then two smiles. “Fine.”
“That was easy.”
“You’re just that charming.”
“And your sarcasm is scathing.”
“Hey.” A gentle nudge. “The last band just finished playing. Yep. They’re collecting their stuff and coming down. So I think you’re up.”
“Oh.” The nervous laughter returned. “Great.” An apologetic smile as he broke their hands apart to reach for the guitar he’d set against the wall behind them. “Fuck. I’m really nervous.”
“I know. But—don’t be.”
“Easy for you to say. If you were about to go up right now you’d feel sick too.”
“Hey. Look at me. All that practice wasn’t for nothing, okay?”
And then he pushed Jisung forward, up the stairs and into the spotlight.
There were a few cheers, some clapping. Jisung heard his roommate, Hyunjin, sitting in the crowd somewhere. And where he’d come from, to his right, Minho.
His brain flooded with white noise, a stream of fuzziness. He ran through the sound check barely aware of anything, his voice a distant haze.
“Hi,” he said to the crowd. It had been somewhat of a sparse crowd anyway, and half the people were probably other college students just trying to get drunk enough to put off whatever the rest of the week had in store for them. The entertainment manager had looked at him, skeptically, a couple weeks ago, when he’d asked. But it turned out that he’d only been so skeptical of Jisung’s age.
“I don’t want minors anywhere close to the bar,” he’d said. Jisung was nineteen. But still under twenty-one, by state law. Still, he’d listened to the demos carefully. “Do you have a chaperone?”
“I can do that,” Minho had dutifully piped up from Jisung’s side. “I’ll keep him away.” He had laughed; they both knew that Jisung wouldn’t be running to the bar, anyway.
“Alright. You want a half hour slot two weeks from now? Tuesday,” he said.
Of all the days of the week, Tuesday was probably one of the most dead, Jisung knew. But it was something. And he had clung to that.
“Yes. Thank you so much for the opportunity!”
“My name’s Jisung,” he said, now. “I’m going to play a few songs I wrote recently.”
The static cleared from his head, transformed into electricity running through his arms and legs. He had wanted to do this for ages. He was doing it now.
When he opened his mouth again, it was to the tune he’d written a month ago, curled up on his bed.
He sang and his fingers moved on their own, dancing along the fretboard and over the body. The crowd faded until it was just him and the microphone and his guitar. The music. His music.
When he finished the cheers were louder. More people were clapping. He was beaming. He cradled his guitar down the steps with him.
He saw bright colors; a bouquet of flowers was thrust into his face.
“Congratulations!” Minho was smiling impossibly brighter. “Your first stage, done.”
“Where did you even hide these?” Jisung carefully placed his guitar back in its case and took the bouquet, a stunning bloom of oranges and yellows, and Minho swept him into a hug.
“It’s a secret,” Minho said. Jisung could feel his breath flitting past his ear, could feel his hands splayed across his back. There was almost an unspoken tension in the air, and it felt both enticing and dangerous.
“Seriously?” he rebuked, laughing. Skeptical but beguiled. He felt a little reckless. Minho’s shirt collar was wide and his shoulder was right there, under Jisung’s chin. His neck, pressed against Jisung’s cheek. If Jisung tilted his mouth downward…
“I actually…” He could hear surrender on the tip of Minho’s tongue when a third voice interrupted them.
“That was amazing!”
They pulled apart, charged static leaping across the new space between them, and Jisung shook his thoughts away to grin at Hyunjin.
“Tell me how later,” he whispered to Minho, whose fingers lingered on the small of Jisung’s back before he stepped aside.
To Hyunjin, Jisung raised his voice: “Thanks!”
“Should I ask you for a picture with me here so I can brag about it in a post five years from now when you’re famous?” Only Hyunjin could sound so jovial while wearing a Cheshire smile.
“So you want to leech off me.” Jisung laughed, still riding a giddy high, and Hyunjin laughed with him.
“Hey, I kind of want a photo now, too,” Minho cut in, and they were all laughing.
Someone Jisung didn’t know at all brushed past. “That was a nice set, congrats!”
“Wow—thank you!” Jisung said again, face warming at the complement of a stranger.
“You’re blushing,” Hyunjin teased, and Jisung kicked his shins.
Minho just crossed his arms, looking between the two of them with endeared amusement. “Let’s take a picture,” he declared.
“I never said yes.”
“Never said no, either,” Hyunjin pointed out.
So Jisung acquiesced and they pulled over another stranger to take a photo for them. Minho nudged him— “get your guitar!”—and it ended up like this: Jisung in the middle, clutching his guitar and a yellow-orange display of flowers; Minho, his best friend, pointing cheekily at Jisung and other hand resting on his waist, and Hyunjin, his roommate and second best friend, arm slung across his shoulders. Warmth, all-encompassing, and three dazzling, open-mouthed smiles against the dim lighting of the bar. When Jisung received his phone back to take a peek, he could practically hear the laughter in the snapshot.
The thing is, when Minho had appeared on his doorstep, asking if Jisung had remembered what it was like when he had been nineteen, a lot of memories had flashed through Jisung’s head, the marriage pact not at the forefront of them.
It had been this day. The start of a childhood dream, coming true.
✩
Jisung isn’t famous, but his dreams haven’t entirely not come true, either.
It’s not the spotlight he has now—it's a quieter life, go to work and come back and repeat it tomorrow—but it’s music and songwriting nonetheless.
And Jisung realizes he’s overslept, for his phone is sitting quietly on his desk and his ears haven’t been assaulted with cheerful girl group chanting, only the silence of a forgotten alarm.
He clambers out of bed. Checks his phone, relaxes a little when he sees the time is only half hour later than his alarm. He still dresses fast to make up for it and scurries out of his room even faster, only to stop when he hears Minho’s voice.
He hasn’t forgotten that Minho is back. He’s back. And that is a dream come true.
But Jisung also still has to go to work.
“No, he wasn’t with me,” Minho is saying, and Jisung peers out into his small living room and sees him, sitting on the couch in Jisung’s clothes and frowning at the opposite wall.
He’s on the phone with someone. It’s so… normal, like this could be a usual occurrence. And that’s what throws Jisung off for a moment—it seems completely normal, but, with the circumstances of Minho’s sudden reappearance, it’s not.
There’s silence, as the person on the other end replies. Then Minho again: “I don’t know.” Pause. “I looked, but nothing. I don’t know where he could be. I know you’re upset, but I really don’t.”
More pausing. Jisung shuffles into the view, shoots Minho a quick wave and darts for the kitchen. Though it’s an uncanny sight, Jisung knows he has to adapt fast and eat even faster.
He has a hand up the bread bag when the doorbell rings.
“Seungmin, I want to tell someone,” Minho is saying. Jisung pretends he isn’t trying to eavesdrop, but he is.
He wonders who Seungmin is; he hasn’t heard their name before but a lot can change in five years.
Before he can stop himself, he wonders where Minho has been. Again.
Now the ringing at the doorbell has been replaced by incessant knocking. “I don’t care,” Minho tells Seungmin. Now he sounds defiant.
Jisung drops a slice into the toaster and scrambles for the door.
“You’re not going to stop me.” Definitely defiant. “You can’t.”
The person on the other side is Changbin. Of course it is. Because Changbin drives them to work on Tuesday mornings and because Jisung is clearly late.
“Look who just woke up,” Changbin says, grinning a lopsided smile. He burrows into Jisung’s chest, enveloping him in a hug.
“Woah,” Jisung says, hands automatically landing on Changbin’s back. “Morning,” he greets, embracing the warmth. Growing closer to Changbin outside of work has meant that he’s also grown accustomed to the way the other naturally seeks physical touch.
“I think he—” Behind him, Minho pauses abruptly mid-sentence.
Changbin lets go of him, peers above Jisung’s shoulder. “You had someone over?” he asks, lowering his voice. “I sat in the parking lot for ten minutes and then I got worried and came up—I’ve never waited longer than that.”
“Oh,” Jisung wonders how he can explain this. Minho is still silent behind him. “Sort of. Just an old friend. He’s on the phone right now though,” he says, hoping it serves as a cue that he doesn’t mind if Minho continues the phone call. “Um…”
“Sure,” Changbin says easily. “Friend?” Wiggles his eyebrows.
“Friend,” Jisung says firmly, rolling his eyes. He refuses to overthink everything with Minho first thing in the morning, refuses the heartache. “Sorry, just give me one minute and I’ll be down.”
“Okay,” Changbin says again. He hovers in the doorway, a gleeful grin on his face.
“Stop being weird,” Jisung snorts. The toaster pops. “Hold on.”
He leaves the door open. Changbin shrugs, just waits patiently as Jisung retrieves the toast, holds it with his teeth and then rushes into his room to grab his phone and his bag.
It’s routine, except this morning the routine has been disrupted. It’s weird, not so mundane anymore, because Minho’s sitting on his couch and Changbin’s standing in his doorway and neither of those usually happen in the mornings.
“I’ll see you later,” he says, signaling to Minho as he leaves. Minho looks up, offering a tight-lipped wave.
The thought occurs to him that he might not see Minho later, in fact, and a sudden bout of fear strikes him as he tries to shove his feet into his shoes.
He shoves his left foot into his shoe with more force. Minho wouldn’t do that to him again, he wants to hope. He’s not sure anymore, though. Not sure after Minho left without a word the first time.
If Minho’s gone later, it will be because he went to go talk to his parents, like he had said he would, Jisung reassures himself.
That’s what he believes. Wants to believe. But— “One more second, sorry,” he apologizes to Changbin with a hand on the door, closes it gently, steps back inside.
He draws Minho’s attention with a finger on his arm. He hasn’t said anything for a while—he’s just been listening to this Seungmin person on the other end. But the touch has Minho blinking up at him, eyes wide.
“One moment.” Then Minho sets his phone down, looks back up at him expectantly.
“Can I,” This is harder than it should be. “Can I have your new number?” In case you aren’t here later. In case you disappear.
“I?” Confusion and then understanding flash across Minho’s face. “Believe it or not, I never changed it.”
“Okay.” Jisung takes a step back. He thinks about all the phone calls that ended in static dial tones—no voicemail, no automated response, just a dead line. All the texts underscored haughtily in red, taunting him. Message Not Delivered. “You really didn’t change it?”
“No. But it should work again,” Minho says with conviction. There’s something soft in his expression, like he knows exactly what brought upon these questions. And Jisung wants to look away but he can’t.
But Minho straightens himself up, and it’s not pity in his eyes but warmth. “I’ll,” he swallows. “I can try to explain later.”
That’s better. Even if Jisung’s texts and calls won’t go through, Later is hopeful. It means Minho won’t disappear for long again. That’s enough.
“Later, then,” Jisung agrees.
✩
Jisung should have known Changbin would be quick to catch on.
“Am I tripping, or was that Minho? As in childhood bestie, high school and college sweetheart Minho.”
“Don’t call him that.” Jisung’s face flushes red as Changbin pulls out of the apartment complex.
Once, several months ago, they had gone out for dinner and drinks, and Jisung had maybe spilled too much, rambled his mouth off about missing Minho and probably shown Changbin some old photos he had of the two of them together—transferred over to his phone when he’d gotten a new one a couple years ago.
With how much he’d talked his mouth off that night, he’s not surprised Changbin remembers, though.
“So it is him.” A smile, equal parts teasing and serious.
“Yeah.”
“That’s surprising.”
A large understatement. “Yeah.”
“It’s been, what? Five years.”
“Give or take.”
“So…”
“I don’t know,” Jisung says lamely. He hasn’t known a lot of things, lately. “I don’t know what to feel. I mean, it’s great, but—”
“You’ve been pretty calm about this.”
“Not really,” Jisung tells him. “But if I seem calm…that’s good. Everything’s also just sinking in right now.”
“Who was he on the phone with?”
“I’m not sure,” he admits. “He hasn’t told me much.”
“What about where he went?”
“Nothing…”
Jisung knows Minho can see the future. Jisung also knows Minho is going to tell him more later. But maybe Changbin’s not supposed to know that, so he keeps quiet.
Changbin shoots him a worried frown. “Okay. You sure you don’t want to take the day off, or…?”
That elicits a derisive snort from Jisung, and Changbin side-eyes him, looking increasingly concerned. Because Jisung has, once again, been reminded that the world might end. And if that’s the case, what use is working? If they’re all going to be reduced to stardust anyway, is there any point to it?
Ah. But there might be a way to stop it.
And Jisung is only human. He believes Minho but he hopes that Minho’s wrong, that it’s a false alarm and the world was never going to end in the first place.
So he’s still going to work and earn a living.
“No,” Jisung says vehemently. “Besides, don’t we have to get that track finished by today?”
It’s not fame—definitely not, when they have been ghostwriting and composing backing instrumentals for other artists to use. But the pay, the royalties, they’re enough for him to live in his own apartment, much more than the small amount of money Jisung used to make at his gigs. Gigs that didn’t seem to be going much anywhere.
Changbin laughs a little. “I don’t know if that should be your most pressing concern. Minho’s going to be fine just staying at yours today?”
“I guess.” Jisung omits the part about Minho possibly leaving his place. On second thought, maybe he should have given him a spare key to get back in. On third thought, he could have also given Minho his car keys since he mentioned wanting to talk to his parents; he doesn’t think Minho even still has his own car at this point. Maybe he will try texting or calling Minho later.
“You don’t sound so sure.”
“We’re going to finish the track,” Jisung says, his resolve solidified. Besides, if he sits at home, he figures he’ll be more of a bother to Minho while the other sorts his thoughts out, while he figures out how to approach all of Jisung’s questions.
Leaving the easy option: Jisung returns to routine.
✩
It had been hard at first, to find any footing in life after Minho had first disappeared.
It’s not like Minho had been Jisung’s only friend, but Minho was the only friend he’d ever loved so hard that he sometimes thought his chest would spill itself onto his tongue. Minho was the only friend he had ever thought about marrying, and that he’d foolishly told Minho, to his face.
Except Minho probably thought it as a last resort when Jisung really saw it as the opposite.
When Minho had disappeared, he had been so, so lonely. But still—quietly hopeful.
Then weeks passed. Months passed.
When he had accepted that Minho was gone, probably for forever, then the crushing loneliness had set in.
He’d stewed in it. Wallowed in it. Dissolved in it, and then put himself back together.
Showed up to work like everything was fine. The harder he pretended, the more he convinced himself it was.
And eventually the loneliness subsided. He still had old friends. He found new friends. Fake smiles became genuine smiles. So many things in life would still remind him of Minho, but he tried to take them in stride; tried to look back with fond nostalgia instead of desperate yearning.
He tried to move on in other ways, too. If he and Minho weren’t a possibility, maybe there was a chance Jisung could find someone else. Someone that wasn’t Minho—nobody else could ever be Minho—but someone who could complete him, in different ways. Maybe a second chance, from the universe to him.
He tried.
He couldn’t.
He had rebuilt himself around the hole in his heart, but the hole remained.
And so remained had the one question Jisung couldn’t answer, the question that he had been unable to come up with a logical explanation for, the one question that really contained infinitely many questions:
What had happened?
✩
Now Jisung is sure that he’d been searching in the wrong places. The explanation wouldn’t be logical, not when Minho reappeared like magic and claims he has magical powers, too.
At work, he’d texted Minho hey u can use my car if u want, keys are on counter. Minho had replied (which in itself was a small wonder), nah its fine probs just gonna call parents first or else i wont ever be able to leave the house again.
The last texts sent had been from three years ago, a lonely and drunk night out in which Jisung had texted i wonder what ur up to and i miss you and nothing else. The texts before that had been a month after his disappearance: i really hope you’re at least ok, if you ever see this please call or text me back.
When he sees those, they leave a pathetic taste in his mouth.
So he arrives home courtesy of Changbin, still half-expecting—but not hoping for—the apartment to be empty again, but is instead surprised by a sheet of paper taped to the wall, large writing in permanent marker scrawled across them, and the scent of warm food.
Minho, shuffling around in the kitchen.
Jisung, blinking away tears in the doorway.
“I missed you,” he says, pushing his shoes onto the rack. Not just in the last eight hours while he's at work, but because he hasn’t said it since Minho came back yesterday, and this is something he feels like he has to tell Minho. Has to give him verbal confirmation of, even if they both know it, unspoken.
“Me too,” Minho replies, simple as that. He turns around and holds a spoon out towards Jisung. “Hey, your timing was pretty good. Try some of this soup?”
Jisung’s eyes have cleared by the time he steps towards the counter. “Yes, please.”
He sticks his head forward, opens his mouth. Feels the warm metal of the spoon and then a savory tomato flavor flooding his mouth.
“Mmm,” he says. He could still marry Minho for sure, even if just for the food. It tastes nostalgic, if that’s even possible. It’s a tomato soup flavored with other vegetables, and maybe a bit of chicken broth too, and Minho had added his egg noodles in and he wouldn’t have thought it would work but it does. It tastes like home—it tastes like what Jisung’s always wanted to come home to. “It tastes like my mom’s cooking, kind of,” he remarks instead.
He expects Minho to laugh and Minho does laugh, but it comes out short and clipped. “I suppose it could be,” he says, and Jisung’s not sure what to make of that.
“Okay, now go look at the paper on the wall,” Minho tells him.
“Sure…?” Jisung had been curious about it anyway, so he heads back into the living room to peer at what Minho’s written.
Order of business!!! It reads in large handwriting.
Pester Seungmin about the pledge and the top secret info. As long as repercussions aren’t horrible then if he says not to do it anyway ignore him. ✓
Talk to parents. Talk CALMLY. Do not let them freak out. ✓ (somewhat)
TELL JISUNG THE TRUTH.
“Seeing” the future. Not actually seeing.
Last five years. I didn’t actually exist here during that time.
How the world might not end: restoring the past to the way it should have been
And at the bottom, in much smaller but looser scrawl, an afterthought: remember to start dinner earlier!!
“Huh,” Jisung says. He’s amused by the note, intrigued by it too. It’s like a snippet of Minho’s brain, a tiny thought dump, and it speaks of the truth yet still deftly eschews it.
That must be Minho’s role in this, to actually tell him.
Minho sets the pot of noodle soup atop a coaster—one Jisung hasn’t seen in ages and yet Minho’s somehow found—on the dining table, and approaches him slowly—warily—so Jisung can tell he’s anxious.
“I can explain while we eat?” Minho suggests. “I doubt the note cleared up anything. It’s definitely confusing. This entire situation is confusing, but I’ll try to clear up as much as possible.”
“Sure,” Jisung agrees.
“I just had to organize my thoughts a bit,” Minho says. “Although that paper isn’t much. It’s very messy.”
“Yeah,” Jisung laughs.
As he sits down, Minho snags the paper from the wall and sets it on the table, then grabs a couple bowls and spoons from the cabinets—the corresponding locations of which he’s already memorized with ease, Jisung notes.
And it’s with Minho’s motion that Jisung realizes not eating dinner alone at home—eating dinner with Minho—is going to become a new routine. They had stew yesterday, soup today. Jisung thinks he should probably make a grocery trip so Minho can stop throwing whatever’s left in his fridge together into soupy meals. But if Minho doesn’t mind then he doesn’t mind either; anything Minho makes is good, and both meals so far have been delicious, and… he just really likes this. Sharing meals with people. He's gone out to dinner quite a few times with Changbin, goes over for lunch at Hyunjin’s place still occasionally these days, but he can hardly remember the last time he’s had someone else over at his place. He should change that, he figures. He could invite people over more. Share more homey meals. But—for now—he’ll be doing that every day. Not just Fridays. With Minho.
They take turns spooning soup into their bowls.
“Let’s start off with the thing about seeing the future,” Minho hits the ground running.
“Okay.” Jisung sips his soup, feels the warmth spread outward. “So can you actually do that, or…”
“Yes… but it’s not what you think,” Minho tells him. “I was being purposefully misleading before because I’m not supposed to tell people about this… like, at all.”
“The reason I can see the future isn’t because I can ‘see’ into the future,” he continues, sotto voce. “It’s because I can go to the future—I can time travel.”
“Oh.” Jisung swallows another mouthful; his hand moves on its own as he processes it. He thought he’d been given all the major surprises, and he knew there was a lot Minho hadn’t told him. Even now, Minho wasn’t trying to deliver the news portentously—maybe even the opposite—but still. It’s not something Jisung could have ever guessed. Not that he’d been the one with any sort of foresight, anyway.
But. Now. Now he knows. Really knows.
Minho can time travel.
Minho can see the future, the past, by being in it.
Just like that, puzzle pieces begin clicking into place.
“Is that why you disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Minho nods, relief stark on his face—an expression Jisung thinks he finally understands. Who wouldn’t be relieved to reveal such a secret to someone, someone who would believe them? To receive this soaring respite.
“I can go to the future, the past, whenever,” Minho tells him. “I got stuck in the past. For… five years.”
“Five years,” Jisung echoes. The words themselves feel heavy on his tongue. Five years. In five years you could get a degree. You could meet someone and fall in love and get married, meet many people and make many friends. Move across the country. Do so many things.
“Then. Where… in the past?” He tries to make sense of it.
“So. I went missing in 2022, right?” Minho explains. “From then until now, I was in… 1993 until 1998. Until I was born in that timeline so I had to come back.”
“That’s why it was your birthday when you showed up?”
“Yeah,” Minho shakes his head. “It’s odd. I thought I might be stuck in the past forever, until I remembered my birthday. Then I wasn’t sure what would happen. It’s not like there could be two of me existing at once,” he scoffs.
“Oh,” Jisung says quietly. “That must have been hard.”
“It’s in the past now,” Minho offers him a wry smile. “Or not, I guess, since I could go back again.”
Jisung snorts. It’s just like him, like both of them, actually, to turn to humor even in serious explanations. “Okay. And, earlier, you said the world was ending because you couldn’t see the future past a certain point…?”
“That’s still sort of true,” Minho says. “It’s because I can’t travel to the future past a certain point. Halfway through next year, the timeline for this universe just seems to end. I can’t see what the end of 2028 looks like even if I really tried.”
“I see,” Jisung muses. He sort of gets it now, even if these concepts are estranged to him.
“I was…” Minho sighs into his soup. “I went back to 1993 because I was trying to find another time traveler. A friend. Felix had gotten stuck in 1992, so I had tried to find him. But time travel has been… veering off course, for a while. I just didn’t expect it to be so far off—I ended up in 1992 instead, and I didn’t expect to get stuck as well. I searched for him in that timeline, on and off, during those five years, but never found him. So…even now, he could still be stuck in the past. It would be…1997 for him, now, and he’s not due to be born until the turn of the century. But… then the world’s maybe ending, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
“How do time travelers get stuck?” Jisung scoops more soup into his bowl, more noodles. “Like. Why couldn’t you just come back to the present?”
“Too much traveling?” Minho proposes, but it sounds like he’s not completely sure, either. “Or at least that’s the theory I have. Seungmin—he’s the head of the traveler’s guild—would like to disagree, but I think he’s starting to see that makes the most sense. It’s like, how do I say this, the universe is wobbling out of balance little by little.”
“When we time travel, we’re supposed to end up at the same spot, at a different time, and the universe makes small rifts to accommodate us. But when we were kids and I first started traveling, I would end up on the day I intended to go to, but a street away, or a neighborhood away. And then it only got worse—maybe I’d end up a city away, or the time would be a different day, or week, or month, even. It was pretty bad five years ago. I guess I was hopeful that day—I thought I’d try going back to the nineties once, search for a bit, and come back before dinner regardless of whether or not I had found Felix. But by then, the timespace had gotten too distorted, and I wasn’t able to come back. That’s why I’m almost sure the world will end. Because these ripples are going to form a giant tear and then everything is going to split apart into…nothing..”
It’s a strange concept. Of the universe shifting, molding and shaping itself to others but ultimately obeying some set of invisible rules, trapping them in. Of the universe imbuing chaos until it brings about its own ruin.
Jisung asks what he’s most curious of at the moment. “So then, why travel? Not to find your friend, but the other times—why’d you travel in general?”
Minho levels him with a gaze steeped in regret. “When you have a power like that, it’s hard not to use it. I could argue that I didn’t use it often, but most people didn’t, and still, it all accumulates little by little. When I was a kid I just liked going off and exploring places. I was curious about what the past looked like, sometimes the future too. Or I’d just go off somewhere to be by myself. It was convenient. Like the day you found me, I had gone a hundred years back to when our neighborhood had just been a tranquil creek. And then I didn’t do anything useful. I just took a nap on the rocks.”
That’s news to Jisung. Looking back on it, maybe it explains the way Minho had been slightly lost, too, like he hadn’t come back to the same street he’d left.
He pictures a sleepy eleven-year-old Minho on old sun-warmed rocks, dozing off to the sound of flowing water. “That, though, it doesn’t seem like something you could really blame yourself for…”
“I guess,” Minho says. “It’s hard.”
“So your parents knew, then.” It’s a conclusion Jisung comes to now, as Minho talks about it.
“Maybe. The first time it happened, by accident, and I was nine years old and my mom had just told me about how she’d always walked two miles to school growing up, and I thought, that’s a lot, I wonder what it was really like back then, and just like that I was in seventies, and I knew because I was on a street with longer boxier cars and I was alone. So I thought, I want to go back home, and then I was back home, except I was standing outside the house instead of inside my bedroom where I’d been. My mom had been so confused when she’d opened the door to me.”
Jisung laughs at that. “She might have thought she was seeing things.”
“She didn’t believe me when I said I went back in time. And I guess I never tried hard to prove I could either; I’d just sometimes be gone for short periods of time and maybe she had her suspicions, but it’s also hard to be suspicious of something that you can’t do yourself—because it’s not like my parents could time travel. They probably thought I was just saying things, or that I ran off to the park when they couldn’t find me. I don’t know why I can even travel. Or why anyone can, really.”
“That’s so weird.”
“Yeah, until I got a random call from some guy one time in middle school, and that was Seungmin, and he wanted to invite me to join some traveler’s guild, and he explained that it was for time travelers to find each other. So that’s how I know him. And that’s why I was calling him earlier—he said I shouldn’t tell you any of this because just the act of knowing time travel exists could throw the universe further off balance, but I told him, very kindly, that it didn’t fucking matter if the universe was ending anyway. So here I am.”
Jisung’s smile returns at his choice of words. “Do your parents believe you now?”
“Yeah. I think they’d believe anything, after their son did something like rise from the dead.”
“Probably why I believe you too,” Jisung says, a half-smile on his face.
“Yeah, but my parents are making me share my phone location with them twenty-four seven now, and I understand; I’d be worried still too. I told them that the location thing won’t work if I time travel though, so they told me not to time travel anymore. That’s that,” he shrugs, looking down at his bowl. “But I think I’m going to have to do it again, regardless, if we want to try to stop the world from ending.”
“How would that happen?”
“I’m not sure. Seungmin and I had some civil conversation this morning and we agreed that we’d have to go back in time, find the reason people were ever able to time travel at all, and destroy that. But… it’s vague. We don’t really know how to do that, either.”
“Just preventing any of this from happening in the first place…” Jisung trails off, thoughtful.
“Yeah,” Minho nods.
But then would I have ever met you? The thought occurs to Jisung. A quiet panic. Would our paths have ever coincidentally intersected like that, if you hadn’t decided to have a lazy noon by a river and come back and run into me?
“That makes sense,” He says instead, because it does. It makes sense. Removing the root of the cause.
“So now you know,” Minho meets his eyes. Not smiling, not frowning, just a neutral line and an open face. The truth. “All of my secrets.”
“Then. Thank you for trusting me with this. I’ll keep all of your secrets,” Jisung pledges.
✩
Minho leaves the next morning but not without saying goodbye first; Jisung wakes up to pancakes and Minho at the table and Minho looking at him, worrying his lower lip with his teeth, and saying, “I need to spend the next few days at my parents’ place, I think my priority right now is not having them lose sleep over me.”
“Okay,” Jisung says. It’s reasonable. It makes sense. He recalls their conversation from last night, removing roots and that making sense too. “The pancakes look good.”
They are delicious, and still warm, and so they head out that morning and Jisung drops him off at his parent’s house on the way to work. Changbin works at a different branch most days so he isn’t there to tease Jisung today, but Minho updates Jisung sporadically through text: parents can’t stop hovering around me, and then later: they asked if i wanted to play a board game. i haven’t played one in years fr.
lol!!!, Jisung texts back.
you should be working, Minho replies.
and you should be having fun family bonding time, Jisung shoots back.
they brought out monopoly, Minho notifies him.
name a game that takes longer. they really want to monopolize ur time instead, comes Jisung’s reply.
It falls into place like that naturally. For the next few days, Jisung goes to work and Minho texts him, calls him once on Friday after he gets back home.
“I already miss your cooking,” Jisung laments.
“I need a get out of jail free card. For my own home,” Minho tells him. “And then I’ll come back and cook for you again.”
“How hard is it to get my hands on one of those?” Jisung asks.
“Pretty hard,” comes Minho’s admission. “Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow, and we can talk. I have a couple ideas about…things.”
Jisung doesn’t have to ask what the ideas are for.
A stranger shows up on his doorstep the next day instead of Minho. It’s a man their age in a loose button-up and slacks, like he had come to work an office job at Jisung’s but it’s a Saturday and Jisung has no idea who this is.
“Hi,” the man says. “Are you Jisung Han?”
“Yes,” Jisung answers warily. “Who are you?” He hasn’t seen door-to-door salesmen in ages, let alone one that already knows his name, but he can’t rule out the option either.
“Seungmin.” He sticks a hand out. “Seungmin Kim.”
“Ah,” Jisung realizes, shaking the proffered hand with mild trepidation. “Minho’s friend.”
“That’s me,” Seungmin agrees, good-naturedly. Then he smiles, and the smile he gives Jisung is like a picket fence; white and pretty and unassuming, but nonetheless a warning to keep out of his business—yet he seems to be here to pry into Jisung’s.
“I was hoping we could talk for a bit,” Seungmin says. “Maybe I could tell you a couple things before Minho explains too much himself.”
“Okay,” Jisung slowly agrees, and he’s not sure what gave himself away but Seungmin straightens up then, rolls his eyes in an exasperated way that somehow puts Jisung less on edge.
“Minho told you everything already, didn’t he,” Seungmin says. “I knew he couldn’t be helped.”
Before Jisung can reply, he continues. “Anyway, we should still talk.”
“Seungmin?” A voice, up the steps. “Why are you here?”
“Minho,” Seungmin turns around, not the least bit surprised. Like he had already expected a third guest. “It’s been a long time.”
“So we’re talking,” Minho says.
“Yeah,” Seungmin agrees.
Jisung just opens his door wider. He wonders what he’s gotten himself into.
“Um… so anyone want anything to drink?” Jisung attempts to offer. “Water, or tea, or…”
“Tea is good,” Minho says, in a light tone of voice. “Seungmin’s more amicable when he has something to snack or drink on.”
“So you mean when I’m not talking,” Seungmin dryly replies.
“Hmm,” is Minho’s casual response.
Jisung, both bemused and confused by the conversation, fills up the kettle. The motion reminds him of Minho’s first day back, of burning his tongue on freshly-boiled liquid when Minho had told him he could see the future. The talking they’ll be doing today, though, will probably contain fewer surprises and more musings.
He hopes Seungmin likes oolong.
“I know what you’re thinking about,” Seungmin says to Minho, “But I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.”
“It’s my only idea,” Minho rebukes. “Do you have anything better?”
“No.” This does not appear to mollify Seungmin, who lets out a frustrated exhale. “I just…I don’t want you to get stuck, again.”
“Aww, you actually care about me.” Minho makes a cooing noise; Seungmin’s frown stretches into a scowl.
“Yes. Actually, I do. And that’s why we’re talking about this.” To Jisung, Seungmin says, “The idea was to find the first time traveler, and figure out what allowed them to time travel. And then prevent that from happening—which might have a rippling butterfly effect and prevent any sort of time travel at all.”
“I see.” Jisung pours the tea into cups he’s set on the table, taking a seat between them. “How would you figure out who that is, or when that happened, though?”
“We have records,” Seungmin clarifies. “But we’re just not sure if the first recorded travel is actually the first time someone has been able to do it. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” Jisung nods. Seungmin is surprisingly straightforward; he beats around the bush less than Jisung had expected, though that might also be in part because Seungmin already knows Jisung knows.
“As the recordkeeper, Seungmin is technically the head of all this time traveling stuff,” Minho says, snidely, and Jisung can tell he is just trying to get under the other’s skin. “Maybe he doesn’t want this to happen because the blame might fall onto him.”
“I don’t care about the blame; I care about everyone’s well-being. This is already a risk,” Seungmin calmly says.
“Mm, but a calculated one,” Minho lightly replies.
“That’s what you said last time.” Seungmin’s face hardens, eyebrows pinched together.
“I’m sorry,” Minho says, and he genuinely means it. “I really thought I would be able to…”
“No,” Seungmin swallows. “No, I should say it. Felix was more my friend and I should have been the one who had gone. I shouldn’t have brought it up to you…”
Jisung glances between the two, curious. To Seungmin, he asks, “You couldn’t do it yourself, or…?”
“Just drop it,” Minho murmurs.
“I just regret asking you for help,” Seungmin continues, ignoring him. “I was a coward like that.”
“You’ve always been a bit of a coward,” Minho mutters, but there’s a small smile on his face. “It’s okay. I never blamed you; Felix was my friend too. And I could have always turned you down, told you to go instead.”
Jisung understands, then, that both of them had been acutely aware of the consequences and that Minho had been the only one to try, despite that. That Seungmin really did think he had been a coward and had regretted it, and that even if Minho is back, Felix isn’t, and that might continue to haunt him.
“I know. But still,” Seungmin says.
“It’s in the past,” Minho attempts to assuage him.
“Uh huh. It’s really in the past. Felix is still in the past. You want to revisit the past, again. I’m going to have a headache.”
“If it’s the only way, though, is it worth a try?” Jisung asks, timidly.
“If you really want to try jumping,” Seungmin wearily answers, “I’ll go with you, Minho.”
“No,” Minho immediately shuts it down. “What’s worse than one person traveling is two people traveling, especially if both of us are leaving this timeline to go back to the same point. That has a higher chance of failure.”
“You’re right,” Seungmin grouses. “So I’ll go this time.”
“Don’t.”
Jisung is reminded of family dinners as a child, of his relatives fighting fiercely for the bill. He really doesn’t want Minho to leave again, but at the same time Seungmin doesn’t seem as motivated, and a little more dubious, and maybe Jisung is biased but he thinks Minho might just have a better chance. Maybe the universe wouldn’t mess him up twice. Or maybe not.
“I’ll flip a coin,” he announces.
Both of them turn to him in dismay.
“It’s fair,” Jisung shrugs.
“But if you went last time, I should be the one going now.”
“What happened to thinking this was a bad idea?”
“I never thought it was a bad idea, per se, just incredibly risky…”
“And you don’t normally like to take risks.”
“But you just came back, this wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“The universe has never been fair. But I want to do this.”
“Well, I want to, too.”
“For your records, I hate you.”
“Good. Me too.”
They’re still bickering when Jisung returns with a quarter.
“Tails,” Minho decides.
Seungmin acquiesces with a shrug. “We’re really pinning our future on a coin toss?”
“Yeah,” Jisung concludes. Still, his hands tremble a little when he tosses it.
It lands in loud metallic rings that slice across the table. Swirl, swirl, swirl. Then it settles.
“Tails,” Seungmin flatly reads out, unsatisfied, like he can’t believe his luck has deceived him.
Minho grins. Jisung lets out a shaky exhale.
“So. When do you want to do this?” Seungmin reluctantly obliges.
✩
Growing up was more exciting when you had a best friend by your side.
When Jisung stepped outside that morning, backpack slung over his droopy sweatshirt shoulders, into Minho’s car, the first thing he noticed was the secretive smile on Minho’s face, the fluttering taps of his fingers against the steering wheel. Minho’s license had sat dutifully in his pocket for a year now, which meant Jisung didn’t have to take the bus to school anymore—though, he hadn’t been taking the bus for a while now, but their parents didn’t need to know that.
“Let’s skip school,” Minho said.
“What! No…” Jisung began, scandalized at first, but couldn’t bring himself to say it again. He flipped through classes in his mind—first period there wasn’t anything crucial, nor second, nor third… and he’d be able to get the notes from classmates who had borrowed his notes in the past. Minho had planned it well. He had known Jisung didn’t have any tests to miss today, nor any important assignments to turn in.
“Do I have a choice?” he finished instead. He felt his heart begin to hammer in excitement, in anticipation. He thought stupidly that this was what happened in those high school coming-of-age films: skipping school together.
“Nah,” came Minho’s nonchalant reply.
Minho carried himself a little differently these days; Jisung wasn’t sure if it was the impending freedom he would soon have post-graduation, or the lightness of him finally finishing college applications. They hadn’t talked much about it but Jisung knew Minho wanted to stay in California for his degree, so he’d never be too far away, even if the state stretched a dastardly eight hundred miles from north to south. It would be strange, two years with some distance between them after seven years of not, but it would be okay, Jisung figured. He had always believed he wouldn’t fall out of touch with Minho.
“Where are we going, then?” Jisung asked, all too readily accepting his fate.
“Dunno,” Minho said, but the tone of his voice suggested otherwise.
“Okay…” Jisung dragged out the second syllable, a small smile on his face.
Dunno turned out to actually be errands. First stop was the gas station— “How are we supposed to go anywhere on a quarter tank of gas?” and Jisung sat in the passenger seat with the driver side window down, mouthing an endless stream of complaints to a grinning Minho filling the tank on the other side.
“Jisung, call in sick,” he instructed when he returned to the car.
“What?”
“I called in earlier. You should do it now before they can call your parents about your absence,” Minho told him.
“Shit—I forgot—yeah, okay.” The last time Jisung hadn’t attended class was when he had actually been sick, caught some nasty cold near the end of the year that had put him out of commission for a long weekend. His dad had phoned last time.
Now he dialed in himself. “Hi. Um. My name is Jisung Han, and I’m in the tenth grade. I—” He paused. Minho snickered at him. “I woke up with a bad fever this morning, so I won’t be able to come to class today.”
His near-spotless absence record would keep him trustworthy on this one, he thought. Sure enough, the attendance clerk on the other end jotted down the note and kindly told him to rest well and get better soon. He felt a little bad, but this was promptly quelled by Minho’s loud laughter, which the other had been holding in during the call.
Jisung glared. “It’s not that funny.”
“I know. Nice excuse.”
“And what did you say?” Jisung rebuked.
“Same as you. A fever.”
“So…”
“It was just funny,” Minho said. “The way your eyebrows shot up when you realized you actually had to lie.”
“Shut up,” Jisung hit his arm.
“I like messing around with you,” Minho told him, as if Jisung didn’t know. Jisung rolled his eyes, and Minho probably reveled in that reaction, too, because he grinned in response and turned the key. “Now that we’re both sick, it’s time to have fun.”
“Okay.” Jisung laughed, finally unfurling fully to the idea like a leaf warmed by the morning sun. This really was it—no going back.
Fun was the library, according to Minho. “I’m looking for something to use for my last book report.”
“You skipped school to do stuff for school?” Jisung could hardly believe it.
“Nah. This was just along the way.”
“Why am I even here?” Jisung made a big show out of rolling his eyes, but they ended up both laughing. At the checkout desk, Minho slapped The Girl on the Train— “The premise seemed cool. I just scanned the new releases section”— and the first volume of Chi’s Sweet Home— “Don’t look at me like that—I think someone misplaced it on a nearby shelf but don’t you remember binging these as kids?”— onto the scanner.
The cover did ring a bell. “I remember seeing you reading that years ago. I don’t think I ever read a whole volume though? I’m missing biology right now for this,” Jisung said.
“It’s the best,” Minho replied seriously, completely missing Jisung’s remark about biology. He turned to a page where Chi (the kitten) flopped dramatically onto the grass. It was colored and the art style was simple but warm and effective, so Jisung had to give it that. He wasn’t surprised Minho had been drawn to the manga as a kid, given his predilection for cats.
Jisung laughed. “Okay. The art is really cute.” He took the book, flipping through a few more pages of comical kitten exploration. When he handed it back to Minho, he pushed down the flutter in his chest as Minhos fingertips skimmed his own beneath the back cover.
Ten minutes later they were back in the car, books stowed safely on the backseat floor.
And then there was the grocery store.
“Can you guess yet?” Minho asked, as he dropped a container of pre-cut melon into his basket. This was followed by sandwich bread, lettuce and tomatoes, and deli meats.
“You’re hungry,” Jisung deadpanned.
“A bit,” Minho shrugged. “I did eat breakfast though.”
“Porridge?” Jisung guessed. He’d eaten it a couple times when he had slept over at Minho’s. His mother could make a pretty savory porridge—a mild crunch with chopped lotus, a warm saltiness from the fish, and a freshness from the cilantro.
“Yup,” Minho confirmed. “We got a new thing of dried pork so it tastes better with that added. Anyway… want anything else?”
“No…?” Jisung unsurely replied. Snickered a little, and asked: “Is this much better than school lunch?”
“Shhh!” Minho hissed at him as they made their way to the checkout. “It will be.”
It was. After a half-hour drive Minho pulled into a small Japanese garden that Jisung had remembered visiting once with his family, years ago.
“They have picnic tables.” Minho beamed. So this was the real surprise, the dunno that Minho had clearly planned out from the beginning.
The last time Jisung had gone on a “picnic,” it had involved a sixth grade field trip and accidentally knocking over his container of Lunchables. This, admittedly, already felt a lot better.
So he helped carry the food to the table, shaded both in broad oak leaves and feathery red maple, as the sun peaked above them. The table jutted out of soft springtime grass, which sloped downward into a bank for a small river. Jisung decided he hadn’t missed much by skipping school, not when he was here and the company of his favorite person.
Minho revealed a kitchen knife he’d stashed carefully in the backseat to cut the bread and tomatoes, and soon they’d created a proper lunch, just sandwiches and fruit but perfect for an impromptu picnic. They had drawn the attention of a few wild ducks too, bills dipping into the grass for stray bread crumbs. Across from him, Minho had accidentally kicked Jisung’s feet as they talked and ate—so Jisung kicked him back in retaliation, and they just continued like that, rubber soles bumping under the table.
“You look cute today,” Minho then said, eliciting a glare and flushed cheeks from Jisung.
“What do you mean,” he said, glancing down at his clothes: an old hoodie he’d worn maybe a hundred times and loose jeans. They were the easiest things to roll out of bed and throw on to make it to school just on time.
Minho shrugged, further amused by Jisung’s reaction. “I just think so.”
“Well—you’re—” Jisung felt more heat rushing to his face.
“I’m?” Minho raised an expectant eyebrow.
“I’m not pandering to you,” Jisung finished.
Minho didn’t look cute; he looked pretty. With eyes twinkling mischievously and face highlighted by golden rays of sunlight peering through the canopy, Jisung thought it wasn’t fair—not to his heart, not to their friendship. Just being in the same room, same place as Minho these days had a weird effect on him; he would always notice these details in Minho’s appearance and his actions, and then he’d lose his train of thought or find himself stuttering for words.
“I’m cuter,” Minho filled in, grinning brazenly.
Jisung ducked his head down to hide the silly smile taking over his face. “No. The ducks are the cutest.” He generously brushed spilled breadcrumbs off the table for the said ducks, and he un-generously kicked Minho’s foot with extra force.
“Liar.” Both of them had finished their lunch, and Minho suddenly took to squatting in the grass. It confused Jisung at first, until he saw Minho scooting closer to peer up at him, to get an unobstructed view of Jisung’s face.
“You little shit,” Jisung blurted.
“I knew it,” Minho victoriously proclaimed, and reached a devious finger up to poke Jisung’s chin. The smile still wouldn’t escape Jisung’s face, and his cheeks must have been blazing red by now. “You do think I’m the cutest.”
“Are you a duck?” Jisung blinked, wide-eyed, feigning obliviousness. He picked a breadcrumb he had missed off the table. “Here, have a delicious morsel.”
Minho plucked the crumb off Jisung’s hand and then set his palm atop Jisung’s instead. He clearly had no regard for Jisung’s well-being, because Jisung felt his heart trip three times before picking itself back up.
“Delicious.” Minho rolled his eyes, tugging their now-joined hands. “Come on, I want to dip my feet in the water. We can become real ducks.”
When Minho dropped him back off in front of his house at five-thirty in the afternoon, it was later than usual. Jisung’s socks were still damp, even after they had spent hours at the arcade after. His mom had already turned from work, ready to give him the anxious parent investigation.
You’re usually home by now. I was worried.
Resting securely over his shoulders was a backpack, containing books and a pencil bag he hadn’t touched once. An easy pretense to keep up. So Jisung lied.
I stayed longer at school. I was hanging out with friends.
You should keep your phone on. It’s okay if it happens again, just text me next time so I know.
Sorry. I will.
He hadn’t stepped foot in school a single time today. He had skipped with Minho. And it had been an adventure, just the two of them.
✩
“You have the records with you now, right?” Minho asks, glancing at Seungmin’s briefcase.
“Naturally.”
“So who’s the first person listed on them?” he prompts.
“Someone named Christopher Bang,” Seungmin tells them. “The first recorded date of travel is the seventh of May, 1987.”
He has this information memorized, recites it off the top of his head before he pulls out a worn leather book from his bag.
“Your record book looks like it could probably be from 1987,” Jisung pipes up, curious.
“It may well be,” Seungmin says. “I woke up to this book on my bedside one morning, and I could not tell you how it got there.”
Jisung can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “Like… just appeared?”
“Yep,” Seungmin replies, opening it to the first page—slightly frayed and yellowing on the edges but otherwise still quite readable. “Anyway, here it is. The first two pages of records are all from this one guy, actually…”
The page is divided into name, date and location. There’s two dates on each row—the home time, and the one traveled to. Christopher Bang has nearly 30 entries on each page, spanning from 1987 to around 1997. Then his entries stop.
“He traveled a lot,” Jisung comments.
“Too much,” Seungmin flips to the next page. A variety of unfamiliar names run down the page instead. This continues for a while as Seungmin flips; more names are added to the logs and the time between each log decreases.
“There’s Minho,” Seungmin points out, as entries from years past the turn of the century start filing in. “And me.”
He flips back to the first page. “I’ve always thought it was weird that he was the only one here for the first ten years.”
“And that’s why we have no idea whether or not he was actually the first one to travel,” Minho adds.
“And they’re all in California,” Seungmin says. “I mean, I’m the only one updating these logs now, and I only have contacts with other travelers in the area, so… I doubt these are complete. But this is our only lead, so… we have to look into it.”
“Yeah,” Minho nods absentmindedly. He has pulled out his phone instead, thumbs typing rapidly across the bottom half of the screen.
“You’re looking him up, right?” Seungmin asks.
“Yeah,” Minho says again.
“So you’re going to find out he was actually quite a renowned—”
“Physics professor,” they say at the same time.
“A physics professor interested in time travel wouldn’t be the first,” Minho points out.
“Wait, is he not still alive?” Jisung asks. “We could try to find him in our time first before anyone tries any dangerous time traveling stuff.”
“Born 1952. Died 1997. When the records stop,” Minho says, frowning. “Can’t find any information about his death, though.”
“I was wondering if he could have gotten stuck in time and was pronounced dead, to be honest,” Seungmin admits. “Getting stuck has only started to happen recently, but… it’s not impossible.”
“Guys,” Jisung says, scanning the first records again. “Don’t you think it’s odd that half of these all go back to the same time and place? San Clemente, August of 1975?”
“I noticed, too. Maybe trying to change something from his past?” Seungmin suggests.
“So something happened, he wanted to fix it, and attempted time travel to do so,” Minho summarizes.
“I mean, we don’t know that,” Seungmin says dryly. “Maybe he really wanted to relive one day of his life instead.”
“Enough to relive it twenty five times?”
A shrug. “A lot’s possible.”
“So… T-Street Beach. San Clemente. How far is that from here?” Jisung asks, as Minho types the address into his phone.
“A two hour drive if we leave now. Not bad,” Minho says.
“I guess,” Jisung agrees.
“Not right now, please,” Seungmin urges. “It’s already mid-afternoon. Tomorrow, at least.”
“Okay.” Then Minho peers at Jisung as if he’s discussing the weather. “Drive me there tomorrow?”
✩
Minho’s foot nudged Jisung’s. A sneaky push.
“Gross,” Jisung recoiled from the touch, back pushing into the base of the sofa. His feet were mildly sticky and hot, and he did not need more stickiness and heat pressing against them.
Minho laughed. “How far are you?”
“Not far enough.” Jisung side-eyed him before fixing his gaze back on his laptop screen. His cursor blinked over a half-written sentence. His final essay for his philosophy class was not writing itself easily.
And it was nearly summer. A single, taunting week remained until the end of the term, which meant the sun was bright and unrelenting and Minho’s apartment always ran hot, even with the windows open and the fan on.
“You still have four days,” Minho complained, setting his phone next to him on the ground. By now they had long since warmed the previously-cool hardwood floor with their body heat, and Jisung’s butt was starting to get sore, in addition to sweaty. The laptop balancing on his legs wasn’t helping.
Minho dropped his head back onto the sofa cushion for some reprieve, and Jisung mimicked the motion.
“Four days is a long time,” Minho continued, lazily. His throat, bared to the ceiling, bobbed as he drawled. Jisung watched the motion, then lifted his head to look again at his laptop screen before he could be caught staring.
“To finish ten pages. And I haven’t started anything else that’s due,” he rebuked. Pushed the image of Minho’s upturned face out of his mind.
It was clear Minho was just a little bored, especially as he approached his graduation. He had secured a job as a columnist at the local newspaper, he had already turned in his final papers, and he had only one remaining exam to study for. But he would have to deal with this—Jisung still had two years of school left and two final music projects to work on after he finished this paper.
“You’re…” Minho lifted his head, leaning in to peer over Jisung’s shoulder and squint at paginated corners. “Almost at five. That’s pretty good.”
“I guess,” Jisung relented. His flow had already begun to dry out, so the timing of Minho’s interruptance wasn’t the worst. Besides, he could no longer remember how he had wanted to finish the sentence… so he supposed he could afford to take a break.
“What do you want, then?” He turned to face Minho, and was startled by the closeness of their faces. Their mouths could have been inches apart, their noses even less. Minho’s lips were thoughtfully pursed, though his eyes widened like he hadn’t expected this either.
Then his mouth twitched, and blossomed into a triumphant grin. “You,” he sing-songed.
Jisung’s heart lurched forward at the declaration. Not like that. He’s just saying things.
Minho’s lips curved higher. Simpering. Still so close, too close. “You,” he repeated, “and your precious time.”
Right. Minho was only talking about stealing Jisung’s time. But why did it feel like—why was he peering so intently at—
“You have it now,” Jisung pointed out. He was stating the obvious. But it was the final stretch of the term, and time really was most precious, and Jisung was giving it away to Minho. He didn’t know what else to say, couldn’t formulate another coherent thought. Why wasn’t Minho leaning back? Why wasn’t Jisung leaning back?
Do something, he berated himself. His skin, already sticky from sweat, only grew hotter by the second. His heart pounded forcefully against his chest. And yet he was rooted. He couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, either. Minho blinked, but maintained eye contact; Jisung watched the shutter of his eyelids and flutter of his lashes.
“I do have it,” Minho affirmed, his sly smile fading into something secretive, something milder. His words were softer this time, his voice edging lower. “I have you,” he said this time. Not your time or your attention, but just you. Just Jisung.
In the stifling heat, Jisung almost shivered.
“Minho,” he slowly said, for controlling his mouth was like moving through molasses. His own voice was quiet now, too; it could have been lost to the hum of the portable fan.
Surely he couldn’t be imagining this, the dry electricity crackling through the air. He knew Minho hadn’t meant it like that, but Jisung wanted it so badly—he wanted Minho to want his time, to want him.
“You have me,” he eventually echoed, as a whisper—but not faint enough to hide his words. Despite how quiet and weak it had come out, he meant it.
Jisung really meant it, so he moved first. When he moved—rather, when his arm moved, like an entity separate from himself—his hand fell on Minho’s shoulder. His fingers pressed, hesitant yet searing, at the crook of Minho’s neck.
He felt the skin there rise, and fall, first gradually with Minho’s breath, and then a silent jolt under his fingers as Minho swallowed. He could feel Minho’s pulse against his palm, too, and it was fast, had to have been as fast as Jisung’s own.
The neck was a dangerous place, Jisung realized in that brief moment. There was so much to take from it.
Then he sensed light touches, Minho’s fingertips searching for Jisung’s waist. He was aware of each press through his thin shirt, each finger performing a scorching dance, and he really did shiver this time, body trembling like a flame caught in a breath blown.
Minho’s hand settled, resting in the curve of his waist in a stilling, grounding hold.
Relax, the hand said. It’s just me.
It was just Minho. His best friend. Who he’d known for years. Who he occasionally entertained romantic thoughts for. Who he really wanted to kiss right now.
Jisung’s eyes, Minho’s mouth.
Minho’s eyes, Jisung’s mouth.
A dance of eyes and fingers. All that was missing from the equation was the movement of lips. Jisung could barely breathe.
He didn’t know what he was doing. Nervous thoughts zipped one way and then the next. He didn’t—he hadn’t ever really dated around. He hadn’t done anything with anyone, and his mind was going haywire, and he couldn’t think logically at all, couldn’t think of anything, really—except Minho.
Minho.
Fleeting gazes aligned again.
He knew Minho knew. About his lack of experience. And he realized Minho was waiting for him, Jisung, to make the next move.
So Jisung let out a shaky exhale and reached his fingers further up, skating Minho’s neck to rest under his jaw. He didn’t know—he wasn’t sure—but he leaned forward.
Minho’s eyes widened.
And Jisung flinched away.
Maybe it was because he had reflexively interpreted the action as a warning sign, when Minho had really just been surprised, and not unpleasantly so. Maybe it was because he was too skittish, just the thought of lips on lips enough to make him feel faint. His courage had been flighty, easily broken. He immediately regretted it; he shouldn’t have let the sudden boldness waver.
He let his eyes drop again for a moment—just soon enough to glimpse Minho’s tongue slipping back between wet parted lips. And that had been another foolish, flighty move. He wanted an undo, a redo even. Either would suffice.
But Jisung had already pulled away. And the sudden movement had caused his laptop to slowly slide off his lap with a loud clatter against the floor.
The delayed impact of it caused both of them to flinch this time. Minho’s hand skirted away from him as Jisung bolted up to retrieve his laptop. So caught up in thoughts of MinhoMinhoMinho, he had forgotten the weight on his lap.
“Fuck,” Jisung cursed as he picked it up. It wasn’t because of the damage to the device, though; it had only fallen a few inches from legs already on the floor. It was because he was thinking about glistening lips and intense eyes and hot fingertips. And because he had screwed it up. There was no going back to it, now.
“Is it okay?” Minho asked. Dripped genuine concern.
“Yeah. It’s fine. It’s good. Everything’s good,” Jisung replied. His cheeks were surely still hot, and he only felt increasingly mortified. Would he and Minho have actually kissed if he hadn’t jerked back at the last second?
He scooted back over, set the laptop down next to him this time. He risked a glance at Minho. Only now did he notice the mirrored redness in Minho’s cheeks, in his ears.
This heightened Jisung’s desire to kiss him senseless, but—with the moment gone—he didn’t know how to anymore.
“It’s hot,” Jisung said lamely. “I’m going to get some water. Ice water.”
Minho nodded silently. Then asked, quietly, and fixing his gaze on the wall to Jisung’s left, “Get me a glass too?”
Jisung fled to the kitchen and then came back sipping his water and offering the other glass to Minho with trepidation and not almost dropping the cup when their fingers brushed during the exchange. He furiously refocused on typing his essay. Except not much typing occurred because Jisung could no longer concentrate on the keys beneath his fingers, when, just minutes before, those same fingers had touched Minho’s neck, his jaw.
Like the marriage pact, they wouldn’t talk about this either. Not for a long while.
✩
There were a lot of times, growing up, Jisung thinks, that he would want to revisit.
Minho disappearing for an unknown period of time… isn’t one.
The last thing Seungmin had done before leaving the previous afternoon had been leveling Minho with a quietly indignant look and muttering, “You’re crazy.”
“You wanted to do the same,” Minho had told him, and then shut the door in his face.
Now they’re in a car with the GPS set two hours south. Seungmin’s record book, in addition to a freshly-printed photo of Christopher Bang (my smartphone won’t work in 1975, Minho had said, so let’s print a reference photo instead), rests flatly atop Minho’s lap in the passenger seat.
Jisung has Seungmin’s number in his phone now, too. He’s supposed to call Seungmin if Minho hasn’t come back within six hours—the maximum amount of time the three of them had agreed on for Minho to stay in the past.
The station they’re tuned into is a little too peppy, but playing melancholy music would just make him feel worse.
“This sucks,” Minho says, an hour into the drive, after they’ve listened to nothing but the radio and the wind rasping past slightly-lowered windows.
“It’ll be fine,” Jisung says. He hopes so, anyway. “This is to save the world, right?”
“It could be the first step to it.” Minho doesn’t sound so optimistic, so Jisung rows the windows down further and contemplates the repercussions of turning around and driving back home.
When they pull up to the beach parking lot late Sunday morning, he tries to appreciate the sparkling water, the unmarred blue sky. The beach is nestled into a small bay, rocks at the tips of the crescent. A pier juts out into the sea in striking lines; gulls toe the shoreline, jumping back from waves with playful cries. Jisung’s thoughts still run tumultuously in whorling riptides, crashing into each other.
“So how do you do this?” His voice—comes out calm—barely shakes at all. He turns to Minho, who has shut the car door behind him with a quiet thud.
“I just think about it, I guess,” Minho says sheepishly, tucking the little printed photo into his back pocket. “In my head, something like I would like to go back to—”
“Wait!” Jisung scrambles to interrupt him, hands flying instinctively forward to grasp Minho’s own. “Just like that?”
Minho laughs, loudly, and the sound leaves his mouth in little cascades that are lost to the wind and the pull of the waves. The sound does put Jisung at ease, a little. And Minho’s thumbs rub reassuring circles against the back of Jisung’s hands and Jisung wants to melt into a puddle on the ground, wants to ask Minho to spend a day at the beach with him instead. He wants to be those people frolicking on the beach—lazy, sun-warmed, and content.
But the impending death of the world won’t wait up for them.
“Yeah, just like that,” Minho laughs again. “I’ll do it now—so I don’t drag it out—but I can do a countdown for you instead.”
“Thanks,” Jisung croaks. His mouth is dry.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Pause.
“Wait!” Jisung interrupts again. He’s not going to pretend that he’s not scared. He needs to—he just needs to—
Jisung stares at Minho’s face, traces his forehead, his eyes, his nose, still half-smiling lips, down to his shoulders. He’s going to memorize it this time. He really will.
“Good?” Minho asks. He scrutinizes Jisung for a similar moment.
“No.” If Jisung closes his eyes, the image is already disappearing. Fuzzy, fading fast. But he opens his eyes, and Minho is still there. “Doesn’t matter. Just go.”
“Ouch.” It’s said with playful snark.
“You said it yourself—don’t drag it out!” Despite it all, Jisung cracks a smile. “Asshole,” he tacks on, under his breath.
“Okay,” Minho agrees again. “I’m an asshole.”
“No. Sorry. You’re… just Minho. Just Minho, and you better come back fast.” Jisung is incapable of silence. Jisung needs to stop rambling and prolonging this. “Anyway. Okay. Start the countdown.”
“Okay…” A final question.
“Okay.” A final confirmation.
“Three…Two…One.”
Minho scrunches his eyes up, and Jisung can tell that he’s thinking hard, and he prepares himself for something to happen, expects Minho to vanish right in front him, except a moment later Minho’s eyes fly open, wide and round and panicking, and his mouth flies open too, but Jisung can’t hear what he says because
the world quiets around them
and first fades into nothing before blossoming vibrantly
and behind Minho he sees a multitude of colors
and they are screaming past him and above his head and below his feet
and he hears sound not in ocean waves but in roaring torrents
and they are distorted rushes of static so transient and overlapping and infinite
but amidst the rush of noise and color
and the melting cacophony of everything
he realizes there is still certainty in the space between his fingers
for he is still holding onto Minho’s hands
and he and Minho are
rewinding.
PART II: THEN
Jisung staggers against hard ground. Tough concrete pavement.
Minho’s fingers, twined within his own, steady him upright. His hands: a stronghold.
“Careful,” Minho says, but as the whirlpools and kaleidoscopes recede Jisung can see how pale he is. Almost white. Almost nothing. Does Jisung look like that too?
“I… traveled with you,” Jisung says. The obvious.
Disbelief lurks, and yet he felt everything, hurtling back in time. He already knows it’s true.
“Yeah,” Minho says. He slowly closes his eyes, slowly opens them again as if the careful action will erase what has happened. Blinks a few times, bewildered. Then schools his face into something neutral; hides the distressed eyebrows and worried mouth.
“So…” Minho continues, collected. “Welcome to… 1975. Maybe. 1975…ish.”
Jisung appreciates Minho attempting to remain calm for him. But he understands that their plan has already been derailed. Just slightly. With one extra person now in the equation: Jisung, who has never before existed outside of his own time. The thought of that is mildly unnerving.
Then there’s the skepticism Minho just voiced—have they actually managed to travel to the intended date? The seventh of August, 1975, as listed on Christopher’s records.
And the surprise: “I didn’t know that could happen,” Minho is speaking again. “That if I held onto you, you would come with me. I’ve done it with objects before, but never assumed that it also worked for other people… I realized as I was thinking, I could feel my body tugging away, but I could feel my hands tugging you with me, and I wanted to let go but it was too late.”
It’s better like that, Jisung thinks, almost reflexively. He’d take the option of knowing he’s here with Minho over the uncertainty of not knowing where Minho has really gone, back in 2027.
Instead he says, “We never even entertained this as a possibility, so don’t worry.” Aims for a smile and it falls crooked. “Hey, at least you won’t be lonely here.”
“I sure won’t be,” Minho replies, and it’s tired but relieved. “Thanks. And sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Jisung rolls his eyes. He feels himself regaining energy, feels the fog in his brain clearing. Glancing around, he sees that they’re still in a parking lot, but the cars are longer, boxier, heavy-set in dense steel. A few children and birds are running across the sand alike, and the sunlit ocean still greets the shore in rhythmic crashes; not that much is different.
And nobody bats an eye at their existence. Their sudden appearance. Like they’re meant to be here, when they’re not.
Minho unlinks their hands to reach into his pocket for the picture of Christopher Bang, which gleams under the sunlight. Everything about it is bright: a white dress shirt and a smile a little too dazzling for his posthumous profile under the website of the university he had taught at. It was probably taken in his early days of teaching; there’s a fresh enthusiasm that reflects off even this still sheet of grayscale printed paper. In contrast, Jisung remembers all the other professors on the site wearing tempered, polite smiles.
“Now we wait for him,” Minho says. “Judging by the sun, it’s early morning, which is what I was aiming for. We should find a newspaper to verify the day, though.”
Then he tucks the photo back into his pocket and reaches for Jisung’s hand again. He slots their fingers together, grips his palm tight. Like he can’t possibly risk losing Jisung—not even in broad daylight—here in the past.
“Okay,” Jisung says. “We could check the shops along the oceanfront?”
Behind them, a row of shops line the road. A few of them will still be there fifty years into the future, Jisung can recall, though they’ll be worn by the unending spray of sea salt. Most of them will change hands.
“Yeah,” Minho agrees.
Fifty years they’ve traveled, in the blink of a second.
The changes in haircuts and clothes of people they pass by catch him off guard the first few times. He receives a few stares, too, people peering curiously at them as Jisung peers back. It could be the way they carry themselves, or their differing fashion, or their joined hands. But it’s all casual, fleeting interest—none of them realize Jisung and Minho don’t belong, a fact Jisung is acutely aware of.
They find a small newspaper stand next to a clothes shop. Snooping at copies of the dailies pinned to the walls, they discover that the date is, miraculously, the seventh of August, 1975.
Jisung can feel the eyes of the owner of the newspaper fall disinterestedly from their backs as they walk away without a purchase, unaware of what their true intentions had been skimming the booth. Now both of them are attempting not to appear overly elated.
“Okay, so we just need to wait for our professor to show up.” Minho beams.
It’s the first time he’s smiled since they crashed into the past. And, dumbly, Jisung feels a lot better.
There is relief in this, at least. Even if Jisung’s here, they’re in the time Minho intended to travel to. That this weird fourth-dimension crossing had dropped them specifically where they had wanted, pinching fifty years of time into a brief moment. That whatever weird wormhole they’d been in has granted them that much: convergence after divergence; a misstep equalling an opposite step in the right direction. The universe, tending towards equilibrium despite its predisposition to entropy.
“But how do we know he’s going to show up here,” Jisung asks. “The location in the record book isn’t that specific, he could be anywhere in the beach area.”
“It looks like all the excitement in here by the oceanfront,” Minho says. “But you’re right. We don’t want to be here for nothing—since the sun’s higher up it’s probably mid afternoon. A good enough time to ask around. Carefully, though; we don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves.”
“Ask around?”
“If people have seen him,” Minho says. He waves the photo at Jisung. “Let’s go back to the newsstand.”
So they circle back to the newsstand.
“How much for a copy of the Times?” Minho asks.
The owner eyes them warily. “Fifteen cents.”
“Sure.” Minho easily rummages through the coin pouch on his wallet and drops a dime and nickel onto the counter. Although they look the same, Jisung has the passing thought that the coins must have much older dates stamped onto them, or that there’s some magic going on that allows their currency to stay accurate to the current time.
“Thanks.” The owner nudges the paper over, which Minho takes. He has a bored expression on his face, obviously expecting them to get on their way, but Minho pushes on.
“Actually, I was wondering if you’ve seen my friend? Kind of cheerful looking, Korean, around our age?”
The man fixes them with a slow stare. “You with the police or something?”
“Nothing like that,” Minho replies. He passes the newspaper to Jisung, pulls out the black-and-white photo and sets it on the counter. “We’re high school friends. Having a reunion of sorts—were supposed to meet him here today. Seen him around?”
Jisung is surprised by how easily the lies roll off Minho's tongue. He wonders if Minho’s used to spinning stories from the last five years of being in a place where he himself was almost a lie. He also wonders if he’d be able to tell, anymore, if Minho were lying to him.
Meanwhile, the man across from them lazily inspects the photo. “Maybe,” he replies. “A fair number of folks pass by here. I open at seven, got a decent amount of traffic since then.” He seems to think for a moment. “He around your height too?”
“In the ballpark,” Jisung vaguely answers, when Minho pauses. He knows that Minho has no idea, because he has no idea either. It’s not like they’d researched this beforehand, and it’s highly unlikely the school website would dedicate a section to Professor Bang’s height when they could detail his numerous academic and research-based achievements instead.
“I saw a young man that could match the description head into the surf shop over there an hour ago. He might be out in the water now.” He squints curiously at them. “Were you planning to surf for your reunion?”
“It’s a common hobby, sir,” Minho says through his teeth. Picks up the photo on the counter and stuffs it back into his pocket. “Thank you for the help.”
“It’s nothing,” the owner replies. “Next time, when you phone your friend, you should agree on a specific meeting place, if you get what I mean. Don’t just tell him to come to the beach. Instead try something like the ice cream shop on the corner—it’s much smaller. You’ll be bound to find each other easily there.”
“Uh, thanks,” Minho repeats. “We’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good. Now you two have a nice day,” is the reply they receive.
“You too,” Minho replies. Jisung tries not to snicker and they slowly walk off.
“Surfing?”
“Surfing.” Even Minho appears mildly amused. “Let’s go, then.”
They peel off their socks and shoes and roll up the cuffs of their jeans to sink their feet into warm sand. Fifty years into the future, sand will still be sand. He will feel these granules between his toes and feel the sun against his back, against the water.
As they approach the shore they spot him. There are three different surfers scattered along the bay at different points, but one is the man in question. He’s catching an incoming wave, grinning brightly, blissfully.
“What now?” Jisung asks.
“We wait,” Minho says decisively. “We’re from the future. So we can’t—well, we shouldn’t—approach him directly. But if there has to be a reason this day’s in the books so many times. There has to be a clue somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“Get cozy,” Minho tells him, and sits down where they are in the sand.
“Riveting,” Jisung sarcastically replies. But he drops down next to Minho and lets his eyes grow accustomed to all the blue. Blue sky and blue sea and Christopher Bang, a small speck coasting along all this blue.
Gray suddenly creeps into blue. Clouds shroud late-afternoon sun, then mask it completely. A storm is on the horizon, and Jisung feels the first drop hit the bridge of his nose.
Distant lightning. A long delay, then distant thunder.
“We should go back in soon,” Minho says. “He should, too.”
The rain comes down harder, creating little clumps of wet sand. Minho stands up and Jisung does too, realizing something.
“He’s not coming in.” None of the three surfers have yet, actually. But the waves are getting turbulent, the storm now seeping coldly through Jisung’s clothes.
Lightning again. Thunder crackles, chasing the flash faster. Jisung counts three seconds—that’s less than a mile.
He blinks, and he’s gone.
“He’s still out there,” Minho says. “Where’d he go?” Worry.
One of the surfers is on land again, board tucked under tan arms. Another is closer to shore, close enough to wade in the water. The third…
Jisung blinks again, sees a flash of bright yellow rise up over the crest of a wave.
Jisung gasps. “I see his surfboard.” But it’s just the board, a lonely oval whipped back and forth over growing turbulence. “Where is he?”
“Jisung,” Minho warns. “We can’t do anything about this. We should…”
“Fuck.” Jisung mutters. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t stop looking, either. At the waves, crashing against each other and against the rocks that curve into a crescent-shaped bay. At this vast expanse of roiling blue-gray, and then at the flash of limbs jutting out of the water, falling back underneath, pushed under the pier and then closer to the rocks and the outskirts of the bay.
“He can swim, right?” Jisung asks. His teeth are chattering; his shirt is completely soaked. But neither of them have retreated to the storefronts, to dry overhangs. “He’s a surfer. He can swim.”
“I’m sure he can swim, but… sometimes that’s not enough. Not against nature.”
“We should—we should do something.”
But Jisung and Minho are not creatures of this time. They should not be here at all, not even as spectators.
Minho tugs his arm and they trudge back through the sand. Sit sopping wet under an umbrella belonging to that ice cream shop, bare feet dripping and wet socks stuffed into wet shoes on the concrete. Despite the rain, the air is still warm, now stifling. Humid. He’s no longer cold, just uncomfortably sticky. Jisung itches to shed his own skin.
Ten minutes pass, and a coast guard boat dips into the water. The ambulance arrives half an hour later.
“He’ll be fine,” Jisung says decisively. He’s been telling himself this over and over. “We know that he goes on to get a graduate degree and to become a professor. But…”
“He wasn’t revisiting the past to repeat it,” Minho is still staring out at the ocean. “He desperately wanted to change it.”
✩
The storm has passed. The sun is now a half-yolk sinking into the horizon. The clouds have parted; the air is fresh. The ambulance is long gone.
“This goes against everything I’ve ever thought about time travel,” Minho says quietly. They’re in a small pasta restaurant now—even as a being of the future, their stomachs are still in the present, in this past.
Jisung slurps spaghetti. Tries not to think about the surfboard floating there, the struggling arms.
“What do you mean?” he asks instead. Both of them have been quiet since witnessing an event they shouldn’t have witnessed. They’re still quiet in the restaurant, careful not to attract the attention of others dining in.
“I have an idea,” Minho says. “A better idea. I think…I get it.”
“Get what?”
“This whole time, I’ve been trying so hard to play invisible as the time traveler, to not cause rifts that could cause huge ripples into the future… to influence the past as little as possible while I’m here. But I’ve been thinking…”
“You want to change something.”
“So Chris kept coming back to the past to try to prevent the accident. Even though he survived, something must have happened that he wanted to fix. But he clearly wasn’t able to, because we just watched it happen.”
Jisung connects the dots. “But if we also try to help change it, and we’re successful… then maybe he won’t have time travelled in the first place.”
“And then things won’t get so…wonky,” Minho finishes. “And just maybe if he doesn’t travel… nobody else will. Maybe we’ll fix everything and wake up back in a world where time travel isn’t a thing.”
“I’d like that.” A longing sigh.
“It’s a big if. It’s contradictory to the rules of time travel… but the rules were arbitrary to begin with anyway. Don’t change the past, don’t change the future—all that was born out of social good. But what if changing the past in this case is for the better?”
“It could be,” Jisung muses.
“Yes. I think… I don’t know… I’m strangely hopeful,” Minho says. “The consequences could be ones we never anticipate though, like… what if successfully changing the past for Chris changes something in the future, in our time?”
“But if time travel is really messing up the universe… there is no future for us,” Jisung replies. “This is… I think you’re right. I think we should try.”
Minho calls for the bill. They can pay for their meal easily in money worth a lot more here. It’s almost laughable, how they might exploit the wonders of four-dimensional travel. “Let’s try then.”
“Now?”
Minho shrugs. “When else?”
When they step outside the sky is finally dark. The streetlights aren’t as bright nor as numerous—less city light pollution—and the stars are visible far more clearly. Twinkling. They have spent an afternoon in an unfamiliar time gone, but fifty years into the past is nothing to the starlight that’s traveled billions of years to reach Earth.
“So we just go… twelve or so hours back?” And to fifty years, half a day is almost nothing.
“Pretty much,” Minho affirms. “Here.”
He holds out his hands. Palms up, open, to the night.
“Okay.” Jisung lifts his hands, letting them fall into Minho’s. His thumbs rise up again to wrap the backs of Jisung’s hands, warm and secure.
“Let’s go,” Minho’s smile waxes and wanes as the streetlight flickers above them. Jisung mirrors him, a second upturned mouth echoing a shared secret. They take it with them as they hurtle
back
in
time
again.
The morning sun blinds them a little, resplendent rays emerging from a dark sea dotted by tiny stars. Jisung feels the pavement thrust under his feet, and his head throbbing from the motion and the light. But he adjusts faster this time. Their joined hands help steel each other upright.
“Nice time for a morning stroll,” Minho says it like nothing has happened. He starts tugging Jisung down the street.
“Yeah.” Jisung chuckles a little.
“It’s easier when you travel short distances,” Minho explains, under his breath. “Less whiplash.”
“Makes sense. So what silly business are we going to get up to?”
“If Chris passed by the newsstand earlier in the day, then let’s catch the newspaper man before he comes along. We can tell him to pass a message to our professor for us.”
“Okay. Wait. Is that okay?”
“Don’t worry. We’ve never met the guy before, here.”
Along an oceanfront that is growing more familiar to Jisung by the hour, they stop at a newsstand that they definitely did not stop at hours ago, except this will have been before that.
“Excuse me,” Minho says as they approach. Jisung instinctively balks, but when the man looks up absolutely no recognition flashes through his eyes.
“I’d like a copy of this.” He fishes out a quarter and sets it on the counter.
The man raises his eyebrows; the money on the table is a little more than the asking price of fifteen cents.
“Would you also be able to pass a message to my friend when he passes by later?” Minho pulls out the photograph, again. The context is different. Jisung still gets deja vu.
“Maybe.” He eyes them skeptically. “What’s the message?”
“It’s going to storm later today,” Minho says. “If you squint you can already see gray clouds in the distance.”
Beside him, Jisung tries squinting into the distant sky. He can’t see any gray. That was the danger, last time: that the rain clouds had crept in on them. Fast.
But he says nothing. And their newspaper guy buys it.
“My friend Chris really likes surfing,” Minho explains. “But would you be able to let him know that I’ll be waiting for him after I get off work at four in the afternoon at the ice cream shop on the corner? Tell him to surf earlier, and to find me after I’m done.”
“Alright. Just this once,” the man relents. “What name should I leave for him?”
“Uh—” Minho begins.
“Seungmin,” Jisung says. “Seungmin.”
“Okay, sure, Seungmin.”
“Seungmin?” Minho hisses as they leave.
“You gotta think fast,” Jisung shrugs. “I could totally be a Seungmin.”
“I’d much rather you be a Jisung,” Minho retorts, but a smile cracks through tight lips. “Now we stake out the stand and wait.”
“From?”
“Look, we could go over there. Let’s buy a set of hats first, though—the sun is only going to get brighter.”
It’s a stubby concrete wall overlooking the sea in one direction and the newspaper stand in another. Where they’ll spend the next few hours under matching wide-brimmed hats, shoes dangling over the sidewalk and a mild salt-tinged breeze against their backs.
Christopher Bang passes the newspaper stand sometime later, maybe around noon, with a yellow surfboard tucked dutifully under his arms. The operator calls out to him, passes along their message. When he leaves the place, it’s with a confused furrow to his brows.
Imagine being told your friend named Seungmin wanted to meet you at the ice cream shop later (you don’t know anyone named Seungmin). And imagine being warned to leave early to avoid a storm (that you can’t yet see).
Oh, Jisung would be bewildered, too. He might not believe it.
Christopher Bang doesn’t believe it, because it doesn’t work.
Nothing changes; the man still hits the water later, and is still stranded in the storm.
It’s not enough.
✩
At a cheap seaside motel that night, Jisung curls into the bed. He’s physically exhausted—he’s been awake in this body for two full days now, and terribly longs for sleep.
Minho emerges from the shower. Rustles around for a while, brushing his teeth and drying his hair. Then the lights go off. The bed dips. He crawls under the covers. Situates himself. In 1975.
“The thing about time traveling,” Minho whispers into the space between them, “Is that you have to shrink yourself. Or so I always presumed.”
“But not literally…” Jisung had been halfway to sleep, but now he rolls over to face him, catches the moonlight flashing across Minho’s eyes as he blinks at him in the dark.
“No. You become invisible,” Minho agrees. Sighs. “You become a nobody. When you go to the future, or the past, you don’t belong. You can’t belong. So you have to force yourself to become invisible.”
“It’s terrible,” Jisung murmurs. There have been moments in life where he hadn’t wanted to be seen, but to live like you could never really be seen… he would be a ghost. Barely there, like a soul floating between life and death over the River Styx. Even in his time here, that feeling has never sunk in. Maybe it’s because he traveled with Minho. Not alone.
“The universe doesn’t make space for you when you travel. It doesn’t matter for short periods of time, if you’re a nobody sitting on a rock by a river for an afternoon; that feeling might even be welcome. But five years…I wasn’t Minho for the last five years—I was mostly a nobody… someone who lived small, did odd jobs here and there and never stayed in the same place too long. I didn’t really have long-term friends, no long-lasting routines. It’s surprisingly tiring, always attempting to blend into crowds that can’t accept you. You find commonalities with people at first, broad interests like writing and cooking. And then realize all your differences, realize that the majority of what has shaped your life is so time-dependent, so contextual. You realize everything that’s been missing. Want to listen to a song stuck in your head? Good luck. It’s from the future. Buy a record instead. Want to browse the internet and send yourself down an endless rabbithole of odd videos? Definitely not happening. Want to phone a friend? Hear their voice just like that? It happened to everyone I knew, Jisung. I started to forget your face. Your voice.”
He’s closed his eyes, and now Jisung can only listen. He gets the sense that this is something Minho has been longing to share.
“At first, I held onto hope that I’d eventually be able to come back.”
“You did,” Jisung emphasizes.
“Yes, but for the longest time, the universe wouldn’t let me…” He no longer sounds vaguely upset, just resolute. “Those five years—each day that passed, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back that day in the present—if I could even return to the present. And when 1998 rolled around, it hit me. What if I was to die in that timeline? I was going to be born in October, but I doubted I could exist twice in the same world. Or what if I started over, knowing nothing, as an infant later that year?”
Minho is here now. He’s here, and very much real, but Jisung finds himself reaching for his hands just to confirm, finds himself waiting with bated breath even though he knows how this plays out.
And Minho finds his hands and slides their fingers together, clings with enough force—a tight grip, a contrast to how he’d been gentle, supporting as they had flown back in time—that Jisung can feel the desperation now, even if Minho’s steady retelling betrays nothing.
“As the date approached, somehow, I grew a peace of mind. If I vanished…died, in that timeline, at least it would be over. It would be the natural course of things. I’d be gone like the universe intended, and I could stop trying to live the life of a nobody.”
He exhales, and it’s shaky now, and Jisung squeezes Minho’s hand tight and reassures him it’s okay; it’s horrible, but it didn’t happen, so it’s okay.
“The universe did purge me on that day. But I couldn’t believe it; when I woke up again—it wasn’t quite so instantaneous, maybe a long minute later—I was sitting on the sidewalk of my childhood home, fifty miles away from where I first traveled back. I was back, and it’s 2027, and I thought to myself: I may have lost five years but I will be fine. Here I don’t have to be invisible.”
“I—”
“I guess that’s why I immediately thought of you,” Minho admits. “I never said this much back then, but I’m going to say it now. You were my best friend—”
“Are,” Jisung is the one who cuts in this time. They’re in the present. Minho may have lost five years and Jisung may have lost five years with Minho but that doesn’t mean this isn’t who they still are: Minho and Jisung, best friends, against the world.
“Are,” Minho corrects. He finally reopens his eyes, looks at Jisung. “You always made me— always make me feel seen. So that’s the real reason why you were the first person I wanted to see when I came back. That’s the real reason why I thought about that stupid marriage pact, not just because it was about due.”
“Sappy, but I get it,” Jisung says. Minho has articulated the feeling well, and, eye to eye in this all-seeing darkness, Jisung knows exactly what the other means.
And because he can never properly cut his ties to the past: “So you would still marry me, then? If we’re both thirty and single?”
Eight heartbeats.
Eight beats of almost-silence. Inhale, three beats. Exhale, three beats. Inhale—
“Jisung…” Minho begins.
“It’s okay,” Jisung says, scrambling to correct the situation. In his head, he had always thought of Minho as the one who had taken his words too seriously when he had first proposed it, but really, he has always been the most serious about it. He’s the fool who would still marry his best friend at the end of the world. “Was just teasing.”
“Don’t tease,” comes the reply. Their hands are still joined, and Minho tugs him closer—indignant but not unkind. “You always talked about this like it was half a joke. When you first brought it up, and now, too.”
“Sorry,” Jisung timidly replies. Minho isn’t wrong. Jisung never wanted it to be a joke, but he has always hidden behind that guise.
“I just think—I—” Another inhale. Another exhale. “It’s not that I wouldn’t, but…”
“Please turn me down lightly,” Jisung says. Berates himself. There he goes, still talking his mouth off like everything is funny and easy and simple but it’s not funny nor easy nor simple and his heart is actually stuck in his throat and he can’t feel his own fingers but can instead somehow feel Minho’s filling the gaps between his own.
“This isn’t me turning you down,” Minho sounds exasperated, but his words still come out gently. “I’m just saying, maybe you should think carefully about it. You don’t know if you might find someone in the next couple of years, even past thirty.”
But that’s the thing, Jisung thinks. I know I won’t. Not anyone he’d hold closer to his heart than Minho.
But Minho might. He could be speaking for the both of them, that he doesn’t want to be tied down so soon.
“Okay,” Jisung says instead. “Okay.” I really meant it, though. I only pretended to joke, to tease. Why can’t he just say it?
“But: I like your apartment. It’s surprisingly cozy,” Minho amends. “If things work out, and if you’d let me, I may want to continue stealing it after this.”
“Of course.” Jisung laughs. “Would you still cook for rent?”
“Sure,” Minho laughs too, squeezes their joined hands. “That sounds pretty good to me.”
So they’ll live together, but that will be it. It could be a marriage in anything but name, Jisung tells himself, and takes the thought with him to sleep.
In the dark, after Jisung has forgotten about their hands—fingers between fingers so long that his brain has stopped flagging the feeling—and after he has signaled his descent into dreamland with quiet snores, a pair of lips skirt his knuckles for the briefest of moments. So lightly it could be a ghost. And only then, with this self-satisfied secret, does the second human in the room join the slumber party: a duet of inhales and exhales over a unison heartbeat drum.
✩
If trying to indirectly change the past doesn’t work, then they’ll have to be more direct.
Hand in hand, they careen another day back. The universe must be sick of them, but not enough to skew whatever shortcut they’re jumping through—they land safely on the sidewalk again and Jisung meets the same day for the third time, greets the same bright morning sun.
Later, a tip from two anonymous but keen spectators alerts the coast guard. Three surfers are called out of the water before the worst of the storm hits. Just like that.
Everyone is safe. Jisung and Minho are at ease.
“Now,” Minho says, as they look out into the ocean again. The lull and crash of the waves is less grating, more soothing this time. “This is the part where we travel back to the present. It… might not work. So fingers crossed.”
They’ve been lucky so far. Time has been more accommodating when the two of them travel together. So Minho and Jisung
pass through that kaleidoscope
with colors shifting like sands of time
and fast-forward
back to where they belong.
Seungmin is sitting inside Jisung’s apartment, at Jisung’s table, when they stumble up the steps after a two hour drive in which Minho’s hands do not tremble at all.
“Fuck,” Jisung says and jolts backward in shock, hitting Minho’s chest. His hands come up to Jisung’s shoulders, gently holding him.
“Hey,” Seungmin smirks, but it’s a pained smirk, hiding endless relief. “We didn’t agree on disappearing for three whole days. Or on Jisung.”
“I never gave you a key to my place,” Jisung states.
“I found it under that plant you keep by your doormat. It had to be somewhere. Don’t worry—I’ve only been here for a couple hours, though. Consider it an action taken out of concern when I couldn’t contact you, Jisung. I expected Minho might be MIA for a while, but not you too.”
“About that…”
“Jisung was with me,” Minho says plainly. “And we… played around a bit in the past…”
Seungmin narrows his eyes. “You found Professor Bang?”
“Actually, yes,” Minho tells him. “But has anything significant actually happened? We’re not sure.”
“We prevented an accident,” Jisung points out, lowly, so that Seungmin can’t hear them.
“Right. So what did you find out? May I have my record book back?”
“You’re really annoying sometimes, you know?” Minho glares at him. “I forgot it was in my dashboard, I’ll go get it.”
Two minutes later, they are presented with an unnerving fact: the records have changed. By themselves.
Professor Bang’s records are still consistent, insistent. But they all list the destination travel date as a year later this time. 1976.
“We prevented the accident only temporarily,” Jisung realizes. “We only prolonged it. Whatever the professor was trying to fix happened a year later anyway.”
“You did what?” Seungmin asks.
✩
Their timeline is shifting. Maybe not in the right direction, but maybe not necessarily in a wrong one, either.
“Why can’t we travel back to the day we left in the present?” Jisung asks him. “Why do we actually lose time in the past? What’s stopping us from coming back to the day we left, three days earlier?”
“What? Oh,” Minho answers. “Our bodies are still physical forms. We still pass the time, physically. Three days in 1975 is still three days passed. We could have come back three days ago. But then we’d still be living in the past, only by three days instead of fifty years. Everything would be off. We’d still be gone from the present. We can’t exist in both at the same time.”
“I…see,” Jisung says. There are some processes he will never fully understand.
“It’s different from if we went through a black hole. That would be time dilation, weird gravity, all that stuff,” Minho says. “I searched this up once—don’t give me that look. So then we would actually pass time differently; a minute along a black hole might be years passed here. But here we’re still on earth. Still traversing the same timeline, just in one direction or the other. So the time we pass is still… the time we pass.”
“Okay. That… kind of makes sense?”
“Are you ready, then?”
Hands in hands.
It could be a waltz, a two-step: the first step in the present and the second step in the past. Dancing across time.
They go to 1976 now. The scene is almost as Jisung remembers, but not quite. The newsstand operator has tacked up even more newspapers, today. The shirts on display by the nearby shop are different. The special ice cream flavor of the day is pistachio this time.
And here comes Chris, trotting down the street with his trusty yellow surfboard.
“Oh. Sorry,” Minho brushes shoulders as they pass.
“You’re good. No worries!” Christopher Bang beams at them. His smile is exactly like the one they had printed, picture-perfect.
Then his brows narrow. “Um, do I know you?”
Minho hesitates. A myriad of thoughts flit through Jisung’s head.
But he’s only looking curiously at Jisung. Then he blinks hurriedly three times, flustered. “I’m probably mistaken. You reminded me of someone I attended high school with. Brian?”
“Not a Brian, sorry,” Jisung cracks a grin. Phew. What are the chances? He points at the board under Christopher’s arm. Redirects attention. “Are you going surfing?”
“Yep.” A pleasant smile, restored to his face. “Do you surf too?”
“Nah,” Jisung replies. “Maybe sometime I’ll learn.”
“Sure. I could always teach you. I work at the surf shop here sometimes, just stop by and ask.”
They are strangers. He’s offering this to a stranger.
“Maybe,” Jisung entertains the impossible. He’s too scared of surfing to ever seriously consider it, but he sees the person in front of him, starts to really root for him.
Even though they are from different times.
Maybe there’s a little hope.
“Thanks for the offer, though.” Minho cuts in. “Also—be safe, we heard on the radio that there’s a storm rolling in soon.”
“Oh really?” The smile is polite now. But not impatient.
“Yeah. It’ll come in fast in the afternoon. Just—we had a friend who was caught in a surfing accident,” Minho explains. A truth and then a lie. “So we can’t help but express some concern. Stay safe out there!”
“Hey, I get it, dude,” Christopher sympathetically replies. “You wouldn’t want to have someone repeat that.”
“Definitely not,” Jisung nods. “Well—see you around?”
“Of course.”
They spend their afternoon sitting on the wooden planks of the pier, shaded by the guardrails. Minho has bought alcohol, a surprisingly easy endeavor.
(“Of course. Why did I forget that would happen? My ID’s gone,” Minho hissed, thumbing through his wallet. “I never get to keep it when I travel.”
“Okay… and?” Jisung checked his wallet, too, intrigued. Sure enough, he’d only been left with cash and his spare coins. All relics of his present-time identity—gone.
“Stay outside. You’ve got too much of a baby face.”
“Hey!”
“It’s true. And a compliment. Now stay put.”
Minho placed firm hands on Jisung’s shoulders for emphasis and then walked three stores down into the liquor shop. He came out a few minutes later with two bottles of wine.
“Guess I looked old enough. Thankfully,” he said.
“You wanna drink? In broad daylight?”
“A toast to either fucking up the world more or possible saving it,” Minho proclaimed all-too-cheerfully.
“Great.” But it didn’t sound so bad, having a drink on such a bright and sunny day. And who cared what others thought about it because the two of them would be gone the next.)
After dangling their feet over the water for half hour, Chris yet to roam the beach, Minho pries the first bottle open, courtesy of Jisung’s apartment keys.
“Cheers,” he says, lifting it, and takes a sip. He considers it, thoughtfully. “Not bad for a random thing I picked off the shelf.”
He offers the bottle to Jisung, who tips it curiously to his mouth. Some medium-sweet white with a mildly fruity fragrance, nothing too remarkable, nor unremarkable.
“Yeah. Not bad,” Jisung agrees, as he feels it linger down his throat. “It’s strange though. Doing this.” It really is a first for him, drinking midday on a pier as occasional passer-bys spare them skeptical glances. And it really is a first drinking wine from the seventies. Even if this wine hasn’t yet aged.
“Hey. Do you think if I took the other bottle back with us it would suddenly have aged fifty years and taste better?” Jisung asks.
Minho snorts, a sly glint in his eye. “You wanna know something?”
“No way! You did?”
“I had the same idea once. Only thirty years back though… but it didn’t work. Unfortunately.”
“No…”
“It only aged as long as it took me to travel back. A few seconds?”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah. Good thing we’re trying to stop losers like that from exploiting time travel even more, right?” Minho quips.
“True, true,” Jisung passes the bottle back. “Here, loser.”
“Thanks, loser.”
An hour later sees the first bottle mostly finished. Chris has finally hit the water, coasting waves with practiced ease. From above, it’s kind of entertaining to watch, and, luckily for them, they’re half-shielded by the pier’s guardrails, so if he were to look up, he most likely wouldn’t recognize them.
“He’s pretty good,” Jisung says. His stomach buzzes. His head buzzes, too. With the sun still on his back, he feels immensely warm. More pleasant than a wary day of people-watching calls for.
“Yeah, no joke.” Minho leans back, onto his hands. “He looks like he really enjoys it.”
“You can see how much he’s smiling from here too, right? Like he’s one with the water.”
“But if he really enjoys it, he won’t stay in too long,” Minho mutters. “However good he is with the waver…that storm will come around eventually.”
“Really will.”
Another hour later, there are dark clouds skimming the horizon.
“Fuck,” Minho curses loudly—turning the heads of a couple sightseeing on the other end of the pier. The alcohol has hit him now, flushing his cheeks red. This could have just been the sun, but Jisung knows better. “Should we yell at him to get out?”
“Let’s wait a couple minutes and see,” Jisung replies.
“I don’t know about that.” Minho is still talking a little too loud, so Jisung rests a hand on his shoulder, an unspoken message to be a little more lowkey.
“No. Wait. Look,” Jisung points below them. Chris is actually moving back towards the beach. After he rides a wave towards shore, he’s off the board, hoisting it back into his arm as he wades in.
“Woah,” Minho says. “No way.”
“We need to head in too,” Jisung says. “Or go back. Aren’t we done here?”
“Yeah… come on.” Minho grabs the second bottle and suddenly stands up; Jisung lets his hand fall off his shoulder. “Time to go back in.”
He starts ambling down the pier—quite linearly, so he’s only tipsy, Jisung deduces. Minho is just like that—sometimes quieter after alcohol, other times louder.
Jisung picks up the empty bottle and jogs to catch up to him.
“Felt the first drop of rain on my head,” he says.
Minho nods. “Let’s hurry.” He reaches for Jisung’s free hand with his own and breaks into a sprint, pulling them both down the pier and onto the concrete sidewalk and under the overhang. They arrive speckled by water.
“Hey,” they suddenly hear. He feels Minho’s hand around his wrist go slack in surprise, and they whip their heads around to a grinning Christopher Bang—who seems like he’s rarely not in a chipper mood—holding up a hand in greeting. “Thanks for the tip earlier.”
“No problem,” Jisung returns the smile. Minho’s hand falls, then slips into his own, squeezing Jisung’s fingers. Like they provide some sort of support.
“I must confess, I may have doubted it a little; it didn’t seem like it was going to storm. But that’s me eating my foot. It looks like it’s going to get really rough out there real soon.”
“Yeah.” Jisung nods.
“By the way, I don’t think I ever caught your names? I’m Chris.”
“Seungmin,” Minho replies this time, before Jisung can even open his mouth again. He’s having fun now, and Jisung squeezes their hands this time, indignant. “I’m Seungmin. He’s Felix.”
“Cool. Nice to meet you. Um, I’ll—” he glances down at their joined hands, then at their other hands, both holding bottles. “I’ll be off now—have to drive back and hopefully beat the brute of the storm. But hey, if you’re ever down here again and want a lesson, visit the surf shop. I think I might have already mentioned that I work there part-time? So you might catch me around.”
It’s not going to happen, Jisung knows, but it’s nonetheless a generous offer.
“Of course. It was great meeting you.” Minho puts on a cordial smile.
“You stole my name,” Jisung says as Chris walks away. “I was supposed to be Seungmin.”
“Look. You stole Seungmin’s name. And you’d pass for a Felix more than I’d pass for a Felix.” As Minho rationalizes, Jisung dumps his empty bottle into the opening of a nearby trash can.
Then Minho starts laughing. Derisively. “In the end, it doesn’t matter, does it? Maybe we still didn’t do enough; maybe Chris is going to meet his doom anyway. Maybe the world has been destined to end no matter what.”
“Minho,” Jisung says. Taps a cascading rhythm with each of his fingers against the back of Minho’s hand.
“No. Because humans are always like this. We put too much weight on ourselves. We always believe we can make such a difference. Maybe we can, sometimes. But here, in a time we’re not supposed to exist? It should be a paradox that we’re even allowed here, let alone able to influence any minute action at all. That time travelers may seem like ghosts, but that we aren’t actually ghosts. We do have influence. But do we have enough to go against events that should have already been set in stone?”
“I would hope so.”
“I guess that’s what we do now. Hope.”
“Yes,” Jisung says firmly. He thinks of Chris, this man he barely knows but shines like a beacon. If there’s anyone the universe would eventually bend for, it would be him. “We hope.”
“Okay,” Minho agrees. He pauses, starts walking along the sidewalk. The storm barrels down from above, a relentless torrent of drops against the overhang.
Jisung holds on to his hand and follows.
Minho stops at the end of the beachfront, where pale, dry sidewalk transitions with a smattering of droplets to a swatch of drenched gray.
“I’m a little scared, Jisung,” he says, voice smaller. “I don’t want to go back so soon. What if we really did change something today? Maybe it helped, but what if fucked something up even more?”
“I mean, this could potentially bring the end of the world even closer, warp things up too much I guess. But you gotta figure it was worth a try,” Jisung tells him. “Right? You won’t ever know if you haven’t tried.”
“Ah… platitudes,” Minho mutters, slips out of Jisung’s grip, and begins opening the bottle they haven’t touched, the one in his hands. When Jisung makes a protesting noise, he lowers his voice again. “I just want to wait a little. Then we can go back, okay?”
“Okay,” Jisung relents. He has the sudden, pessimistic thought that if they’ve really messed things up, they might not be able to go back. But surely that can’t be true. Right?
Minho hands Jisung the bottle after taking a few sips. “Let’s get dinner,” he decides.
So they end up at a fish and chips place, sitting by the windows inside as the storm clears and a fiery sunset breaks through dissipating clouds.
“You know,” Minho tells him. “I always denied wanting to be a writer as a kid, but the truth is I did want to be.”
“But you…were? Sort of? You studied it in college, wrote for some newspapers and everything…until, you know…you disappeared and got stuck in the past.”
“That’s true,” Minho tells him. “I was referring to my stories, though.”
“Like…an autobiography?” Jisung has long since deciphered that the journals Minho always held close to his heart growing up were a secret because they were about his time travels.
“Maybe. Or just fiction,” he says. “They’d seem fictional to most people, anyway.”
Jisung waits, curious to see where he’s going with this.
“I just feel like writing is a way to time travel without actually doing it, you know?” Minho continues. “You can take people to the past, or to the future, if you write a really good story.”
“That’s…thoughtful,” Jisung says, and he means it. “And—they can still return to the present. No chance of getting stuck in there.”
“Yeah,” Minho remarks, raising an eyebrow. “Funny how that works.”
Jisung kicks his feet under the table. Minho kicks back. The table jostles with it. They laugh.
“I don’t see your journals anymore,” Jisung points out. “Did you stop taking them with you?”
“Kind of,” Minho says. “Not on purpose. I just started forgetting to keep them with me, and then I kept forgetting, so… I left my old ones on my bookshelf. My parents never found them while I was gone?”
“I guess not,” Jisung says. “Or they lumped them in with all your other books. Or else they might have figured out what had happened.”
“Doesn’t really matter now, anyway,” Minho shrugs. Finally, finally, a pleased gleam has returned to his eyes. “If you think about it, we may be influencing things ourselves. Quite literally writing history. And the present. And the future… all at once.”
✩
The return goes like this:
Dinner is eaten. A bill is paid. A second bottle is left on the table, half-depleted. Flushed cheeks, fluttered laughter. The sun sinks; the moon washes up into the sky. Stars twinkle. Eyes twinkle. Reminiscing, recollecting.
“I want to walk out to the beach,” Minho says.
“In the dark?”
“It’s not dark dark.” The moon reflects off the ocean, creating a rippling second crescent below.
“Sure.”
There aren’t any other beachgoers at this time. It’s just them: two small humans before an endless sea.
Shoes toed off. Socks peeled off. Toes teasing the water, waves lapping at toes. The ocean is peaceful again after the storm.
“The water is kinda cold,” Jisung laughs. “But the breeze is warm.”
Minho laughs too, pushes him a little. Jisung pushes back, avoiding the water a second time. Their feet trip against each other. They go tumbling, a bundle of bare feet and rolled-up pants and tangled limbs.
“Fuck. I got sand in my mouth.” Minho turns to the side, spits it out, then swipes across his lips with his tongue, and spits those remnants out too. Jisung feels his chest shake underneath him as he does.
“Me too.” Jisung can’t be mad. He spits to the other side. Licks his lips like he had watched Minho do—like he shouldn’t have watched Minho do. He finds more sand to spit out. Giggles. Looks at Minho’s mouth again. It’s shiny. Looks away before Minho can catch him.
“Fuckkkk.” Again, drawn out this time. “My foot just touched some slimy kelp, I think. And the sand is kinda wet. And salty.”
“This is your fault.” Jisung laughs again, shuffles his feet around a little and touches the same washed-up kelp. Just to try it. Curiosity kills the cat. He jerks away; the leaves are truly slimy, and awfully cold, too.
He hears the water closeby. They should get up before a big wave can hit them, but all he does is push himself onto elbows.
Minho grins up at him. Jisung thinks he could prepare himself to withstand a towering wave but not this—not Minho. He drowns in Minho’s eyes, then in his smile, both brilliant and beguiling. His face has started to heat up. His ears too. But Minho probably can’t tell in the dim light. The two of them are sandy and wet and warm and it shouldn’t be pleasant—shouldn’t be tempting—but it is.
“I don’t know,” Minho says skeptically, as if it could really be anyone’s fault. He tries to say it deadpan but his lips are still upturned. “You fell too.”
“You fell too,” Jisung mimics. His gaze darts down again, shifts left and right. Minho is an angel in the sand, spread out beneath him.
“Fuck,” Minho murmurs a third time. He’s staring up.
Jisung laughs a third time too, and self-consciously averts his eyes. “What now?”
“Right now. I’m not even scared of the waves anymore. Of the water.”
“What about me,” Jisung prods. He holds up threatening ticklers in the form of wiggling fingers.
“You.” An emphatic pause follows it. The singular word lodges a nervous tick in Jisung’s chest, ramping up. And through the nervousness, he yearns.
Minho swats at his fingers. He’s still grinning at Jisung, but it’s mellowed out, less ebullient and more weighted. And then there’s a touch on Jisung’s cheekbone, a thumb brushing away sand he hadn’t realized was still there.
“You know, it’s beautiful. The sky above.” Another pause, another breath. Two heartbeats. Tides, receding. “And you. Mostly you.”
Minho lowers his hand. Jisung lowers his hand too, cheeks blooming fast like fireworks. No more playing now, he knows.
Now, he takes Minho’s bare honesty with budding hope and overdue sincerity.
“You’re more beautiful,” Jisung dares to reply. The words crack out in a fragile whisper, because there’s no hint of a joke in his voice—just equal earnesty.
He hears thick pulsing static in his ears, hears the waves caressing the shoreline. He hears their ebb—
“No. You are,” Minho insists, and Jisung’s stomach swoops and gives way to a lightheaded rush.
—and flow.
“Hey,” Minho swallows now. “There’s something else I wanted to try changing. It would just be between us.”
And ebb—
Before Jisung can fully process what he means, Minho has a hand on the back of his neck and is reeling him in. He stops just shy of contact, scanning Jisung’s face.
“Is this— can I—”
—and flow.
And Jisung falls. He dips his head lower—just slightly—and it’s enough for the space between their mouths to collapse into nothing.
Everything else collapses into nothing, too. The spread of sand beneath them, the ebb and flow of the evening tide, the starlight that has traveled so far to reach earth—gone. It’s just Minho. And Jisung.
They’ll bend time a little more for this. For a hand on Jisung’s nape, another hand cupping his jaw, fingers reverently tucking back hairs brushed loose by the sea breeze. For a thumb at the corner of Minho’s neck, teasing his hot pulse; for a thumb at the corner of Minho’s mouth, teasing his splitting smile. For lingering grains of sand falling from Jisung’s glowing cheeks, for the quiet yet unabashed laughter that collides with their lips before they pull away.
I could stay here like this, Jisung thinks. He lets his head fall onto Minho’s chest this time, and hears a heartbeat calming in tandem with his own.
They lie there like that, for countless more heartbeats.
On one very slow breath, Jisung glances up to see Minho blinking his eyes open: dark, twinkling eyes. His mouth parts too: soft, shiny lips. Jisung breathes in salt and starry night and Minho all at once as Minho breathes out and whispers, “I’m ready to go back now.”
I could return to this, too, Jisung amends, understanding what Minho means with it.
“Then let’s go.” An affirmation.
Jisung extends a hand and pulls Minho upright until they’re sitting in the sand. Jisung’s fingers end where Minho’s begin; Minho’s fingers end where Jisung’s begin.
And sand and stars and ocean and sky
fuse and pitch and bend
and make way for them
to pass through a final time.
PART III: WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
In a quiet, secluded corner of the universe, a boy grew up drawing chalk birds on the driveway pavement. Plump red birds and stout blue birds and proud ruffled birds. What he saw, Jisung cataloged.
One morning, it wasn’t a bird but rather an insect that caught his eye: a bright red dragonfly, whizzing around him in circles. Shimmering wings led childish wonder three blocks away to a house where another boy sat poking at the grass.
The other boy had a wide-brimmed hat, a loose shirt, and pill bugs nestled in his open palms. The dragonfly landed gracefully, with a flourished flutter, on the brim of his hat. Then it stilled.
“Shhh,” Jisung whispered as he approached. He crept closer.
The boy looked up at the sound, an upward tilt of his hat. And the dragonfly still did not flee.
“It’s on your hat,” Jisung said. “A dragonfly.”
“Oh!” It was a silent oh, as the boy’s mouth rounded. Slowly, he returned his hand of pill bugs to the ground. And, even slower, he reached upward to lift his hat from his head. When he lowered it in front of him, the dragonfly still stood there, perfectly poised. It twitched once, and, finally bored, zipped away.
“It’s so cool,” Jisung said.
“Yeah,” an eleven-year-old Minho responded.
“I’m Jisung. Were you playing with bugs? I like watching the bugs too, but mostly birds. I’ve got popsicles if you’re hot,” Jisung said.
“I’m Minho,” Minho told him. On the way back to Jisung’s they bonded over birds and bugs and all the neighborhood critters. And over popsicle smiles, they became fast friends.
In a quiet, unmarred corner of the universe, Minho wrote his adventures exploring the neighborhood and collecting critters in a diary that he let Jisung flip through and tack on accompanying doodles for, in exchange for access to Jisung’s sketchbooks, then his lyricbooks, then sheet music that was really just messily-scrawled guitar chords and broken melodies.
“You could become a musician,” Minho would say.
“Are you gonna be a writer, then?” He’d ask, and Minho would shrug. No answer. But Jisung knew that meant yes.
In a quiet, undisturbed corner of the universe, Jisung followed Minho to college and began pursuing a degree in music composition. He got a few small gigs at local bars, while Minho wrote for the school newspaper—even covered one of Jisung’s shows for a small story once.
If we’re both still single when you’re thirty, let’s just get married together, Jisung said, foolishly, one evening.
Minho scrutinized him on the sofa. Piercing eyes eventually relented. Sure.
In a quiet, cloistered corner of the universe, Jisung still performed occasionally but primarily wrote songs for others. He didn’t mind it, not being in the spotlight all the time. Minho wrote for other papers, edited too. They had movie nights every week and Minho would cook for him and it was a delightful existence, a routine to look forward to. While Minho and Jisung had movie nights every week, Minho went on a few sporadic dates that never went any further. It had been the same story for Jisung. So he should have seen it coming.
On Minho’s twenty-ninth birthday, he appeared on Jisung’s doorstep breathless and asked him if he remembered a night back when Jisung had been nineteen.
At first Jisung had been indignant. He was the one who was supposed to go to Minho’s place first, to surprise him with a cake he had lovingly and carefully baked that now sat cooling in the fridge.
But did he remember? Minho asked. Do you remember?
We made a marriage pact at that time.
Jisung fumbled at the door, tripping over all his words with red cheeks and loose lips. It could have meant what he thought it meant—what he wanted it to mean. Truthfully, he had half forgotten it, or at least tried to forget it; he had deemed it a little embarrassing and silly. But he still did remember.
Good, Minho said, breaking out into a blinding smile, and dropped to one knee.
But you’re not thirty yet, Jisung said, dumbly.
I couldn’t wait anymore, Minho told him. Go on a date with me at least, please.
Like…not our usual movie date..?
No. Unless you want it to be.
Yes, Jisung said, now tripping over words in his haste to get them out. I like your cooking. And I don’t care, either. I’ll go on any sort of date with you. I’ll marry you. Yes to everything.
So a year later—it wouldn’t take a time traveler to figure out what would happen next.
PART IV: WHAT IS
When they reach the present this time, it’s simply… different.
Nauseatingly different. Like memories of a completely different Jisung are battling with memories of the Jisung he himself had known. He watches them flash by, sees the life that could have been—similar, so, so similar, but without any magic. Without any time travel.
He sees what could have been, but when they land on wet sand, and the stars give way to blue skies and the world stops spinning and they catch their balance, and when Minho tugs him away to avoid an incoming wave, Jisung knows that this is still what is. This: running up the beach as glistening rays of sun hit his back; welcoming the warmth like a cat emerging from a content slumber.
Because he’s home. This time is his home.
And he’s still a collection of all of his experiences, not what he has just seen.
Time travel was still a possibility in this universe. Was. Because Jisung feels it in him that it’s not possible anymore. That the rubber-banded shortcut they’d been taking had finally snapped; that it had been their last ticket home, one-way.
That they really did change something, for better or worse.
“Go back,” Jisung urges him. The bright sky is still a little too dizzying, a little too dazzling. But he has to know. “Try going back.” He holds Minho’s hands and meets Minho’s eyes and then an understanding passes between them, that Minho feels it too.
“I can’t. Anymore,” Minho tells him.
Jisung watches his long lashes flutter shut against cheekbones. A long breath passes before Minho resurfaces, fixing him with a steady gaze.
Both of them are still here.
Minho repeats it: “I can’t.”
✩
There are eleven missed calls from Seungmin on Jisung’s phone, and eleven missed calls from Seungmin on Minho’s phone.
“We’ve not even been gone a day,” Minho complains.
“One for every hour,” Jisung points out.
They make their way up to the parking lot before realizing they’ve left their socks and shoes… in 1976. A passerby will find them and wonder who they belong to and then another passerby will model new shoe designs off them, just possibly.
“Well shit, I’ll drive us home barefoot, I guess,” Minho contends, and starts laughing.
Jisung opens the passenger door and sits over the pavement, brushing sand off his toes. His laughter coalesces with Minho’s, because neither of them can stop giggling at the ridiculousness of it all. Two pairs of shoes and socks, left abandoned in a dark night fifty years past.
They laugh again, in disbelief, when Jisung unlocks his front door and finds Seungmin sitting at the dinner table. This is the second time.
“Minho. Jisung.” Seungmin greets them. They probably make quite a pair, hair matted by sea spray and feet speckled with clinging sand and rolled pant legs still damp. “You… did. It,” he slowly says.
“Maybe?” Minho replies, unsurely, and Jisung echoes the sentiment, because even if they can’t travel anymore, surely talking to a man named Chris shouldn’t have been all that it would take to fix everything.
“My record book isn’t a record book anymore,” Seungmin says. Gestures to the book on the table. “Like, an hour ago I opened it and—well, look for yourself. And you’ll never believe what happened—I was suddenly filled with the weirdest idea of some guy giving it to me, some guy who said he was looking for a man named Seungmin.”
Then Seungmin’s phone rings. He glances at the caller ID—they all do—and freezes. “Damn,” he says. “It’s Felix. Wow, I haven’t seen that name in a while.” A pause. He rises from the table. “I’m just gonna. I’m gonna step out for a moment and pick up this call.”
When he leaves, Minho flips open the old record book. It definitely doesn’t house records anymore—it houses a few journal entries that tail off into blank pages instead.
The first date is 1976. September, after the summer.
Just started school. Again. You know, is it weird that I keep thinking about you two? A Seungmin and a Felix. I ask myself, what are the chances that I run into these people and they warn me about a storm, but when I sit in the coffee shop for an hour listening to the weather, there’s nothing about a storm. And then it still comes rolling in, later? Where did you get this foresight?
October 1976.
Still occasionally think about this. I just might look into relativity and time travel. For fun. To scratch that itch.
February 1977.
Time travel should be possible in theory. I’m not sure how it would really work, though. But while it’s theoretically possible, I doubt we would be able to change the actions of the past. It would be a paradox, coming from the future. Guess I should stop chasing this thread now.
It would be a paradox. But it did happen.
Minho shuts the book. “So because he never got into the accident, he didn’t have enough motivation to look further into it. And he never became the first traveler—never opened up all those holes and shortcuts that allowed the rest of us to pass through after.”
That world—a world where they could fly along temporal crests and troughs at will—has ended. This is what they’re left with; this is it.
Just Earth, and everyone on this planet careening through the universe at the same speed, at the same time.
As is.
No going back.
✩
And: now there’s Minho and Jisung. Home, home.
✩
Seungmin says he’s going to meet Felix, and sounds so perplexed by it—when he had barely blinked at the change in his record book—that Jisung almost feels sorry for him.
Which leaves Minho and Jisung. Sitting at the table, still both astonished.
Minho and Jisung. Sitting at the table.
Minho glances at the cover and breaks into an incandescent smile.
“What?” Jisung asks, as he feels his mouth tugged contagiously upward.
“Just. It seems impossible, but that’s it.”
“It…is…” Jisung replies, and allows the pestering smile to break open. “Just some casual world-saving, you know. Easy as cake.”
“I think cake might be harder for you, actually,” Minho throws back, causing both of them to break into frivolous laughter.
“Okay, mister baker. I’ll show you. Next year. It’ll be the best cake you’ve ever had.”
“Right…Next year.” Next year can happen—it will happen.
“Hey. You’ll be thirty next year. That’s kind of old.”
“Thirty is old? What about our parents?”
“I don’t know, what about them?”
“Hmmm. Never mind. What about us?” Minho prompts, and rests his chin on the back of his hand.
“What about us?” Jisung mimics.
“No, what about us,” Minho pointedly repeats. It’s always this back-and-forth. “How are you always so…so…you.”
“Me,” Jisung says, but feels his face heating. He notices the reddening of Minho’s ears and the flush up his neck, too. He recalls a time fifty years ago, from only two hours ago. “Explain.”
“You’re you.” Jisung has another teasing remark on the tip of his tongue in response to this but Minho pushes on.
“I’ve always regretted… actually, I really try not to have many regrets. But in those five years, I always thought I should have traveled back to change the fact that I never confessed to you.”
Jisung feels his knees go a little weak. He feels his pulse in his head.
“But… but you… you came back. You don’t have to go back in time to change that.” He can’t, anyway. Miraculously, Jisung gets these words out.
“Exactly. So this is me, confessing now. I—”
“Wait—” He’s not ready.
“I— You asked me to explain, but I can’t explain it. I just like everything about you.”
Jisung makes a series of incoherent stutters.
“Your turn.” Minho sits back into his chair, self-satisfied. He wears a smug grin over still-pink ears.
“I’m not prepared! I…” Jisung waves his arms around. But Minho’s grin has gone soft, gently expectant. “I just. Yeah. You. I also like you a lot.” He feels his heart stuttering too, then ballooning. “Love, even. In those five years, I thought about you a lot. Your mannerisms and the way you speak and laugh and smile. And now I get to have that again. And I love all of that. You. Probably more, now.”
They have matching cheeks now. They have matching blooms—four flustered roses. “I think I’ve been outdone,” Minho tells him, but beams harder. He stands up and Jisung turns to meet him as he bends down to press his mouth sweetly to Jisung’s. Hands cupping Jisung’s face so warmly, he presses his mouth to Jisung’s forehead, to his cheeks, to his neck.
“I like all of you,” Minho reiterates. He grins into Jisung’s clavicle and Jisung’s breath catches there, stops in his throat. “I love you. Then and now. I always have, and always will—time won’t take that away from me.”
It’s a wondrous admission. Jisung’s heart takes flight.
“We’re timeless,” he declares. What he and Minho have are a collection of experiences, of their time together. But what they also have, these feelings, transcend time.
“Timeless,” Minho murmurs. “That sounds nice. And very romantic.”
Minho uncurls a little and comes back to his mouth. Jisung hooks his hands over Minho’s shoulders, and—much to Jisung’s surprise—Minho slips palms under Jisung’s thighs, uncurls fully, and pulls Jisung up with him.
Jisung lets out a small yelp and clings onto him harder, hands looping together around his neck. “It won’t be timeless if you drop me…” he warns, but Minho has a firm grip under him, and only sets him carefully onto the table, putting them at a more equal level. It’s impressive, or maybe Jisung is just too easily enamored by all of Minho’s actions. Too easily enamored to be scandalized about professing their love and kissing profusely on his kitchen table, especially when Minho swoops back in, stealing any protests before they can leave his mouth.
Jisung exhales against Minho’s lips instead and uses his leverage on Minho’s neck to pull him impossibly closer. This elicits a smile from Minho, which in turn elicits a smile of his own. Their teeth almost clack.
“Stop smiling,” Jisung says, and Minho removes hands that had remained under his thighs to poke him in the chest.
“You stop smiling.”
“I only smiled because you smiled,” Jisung counters, but this only has both of them grinning harder.
“Stop.” Jisung himself titters as he repeats it.
“I’m trying.” Minho furrows his brows, and bites down on his lower lip to keep a straight face. Jisung tries to watch the motion but goes cross-eyed from their proximity—he ends up giggling uncontrollably instead. It’s not long before Minho breaks through with his own barely-contained laughter.
“I’m trying,” Minho repeats. “But it’s really hard when I’m with you.”
“Ah. Guess there’s only one solution,” Jisung replies. “I leave the room.”
“Don’t.” His hands find Jisung’s neck and his waist and hold him there, firmly anchoring. And then his lips go for Jisung’s neck, less gentle this time and a little more insistent.
Jisung breathes out—shakily. Shudders. It’s a sensitive spot, for him and Minho alike.
Minho grins against his neck, again. His mouth is smug now, impish. “Still want to leave?”
Jisung says nothing, flustered but still prideful.
Stop smiling, he should ask again, but he likes it. Likes the way it feels, Minho’s satisfaction on his skin.
Minho’s lips curve higher. He exhales warm breath and ducks away and then Jisung shivers at the cold air. Just as quickly, though, he returns, latching onto Jisung’s neck. Jisung gasps—even though the contact is controlled—as he sucks, as teeth nip against skin.
“Okay?” Minho asks, pulling away again. He looks up at Jisung, hair astray and mouth slick, and Jisung almost gasps again at the sight. He jerks his head down and up instead—a nod.
“Okay,” Minho echoes.
Jisung leans down this time, connecting their mouths. Touching red to red—stoking the fire. He kisses harder, now, hotter. Fiercer. With the next part of their lips, Minho licks into his mouth and Jisung’s fingertips curl into Minho’s shoulders, into his neck.
Minho’s teeth tug against Jisung’s lips and Jisung’s next breath dissolves into trembling whispers. He slides his hands down Minho’s shoulders, and thumbs away residual grains of sand he feels lodged in Minho’s collarbones.
Minho still tastes like sea salt and a starry night on the beach. And Jisung is a washed-ashore shell drawn into the tides, tugged back home.
It’s all breath and mouth and tongue and hands. Sweet and loving and intense and searing.
Minho’s hands roam, each fingertip a distinct pressure. Jisung knows the shape of Minho’s hands by look and by feel—by how they feel tangled between his own, where the softnesses and calluses lie along his palm. Jisung knows how they look and how they feel against his own hands but not so much in all the other places Minho is touching him.
Though he’s thought of them, imagined them—hot on his chest, on his thighs. Slipping between the waistband of his pants, teasing bare skin—that’s just imagination. This is much more.
Hands under his shirt, up his chest. Skin on skin and then nothing; hands skimming the sides of his waist, leaving goosebumps in his wake.
A hand over his heart, feeling his pulse. A hand around his back, holding him close.
Jisung trembles and arches up into Minho, and Minho furls further into him too. He grips onto Minho’s shoulders, first, and then onto the table, but it barely stops his body from reacting.
“Not—Minho,” his breath quivers like petals in the wind. Any decorum remaining is rapidly extinguishing. “Not in the kitchen.”
He could keep going, in the kitchen. If Minho wanted, he would want it too. But right now, he’s thinking about his room. His bed. They have already shared it; now they could share it in more ways than one.
“Okay. Not here.” Minho’s hands venture back to Jisung’s thighs. Palms—hotter now—slip under him and hoist him up with some degree of exertion. This time, Minho pants into his mouth as he lifts him.
“Out of breath?” Jisung asks, contagiously bold.
“Yeah,” Minho heaves out. His fingers squeeze—a little harder, a little hotter—and then he changes tactics: one arm loops all the way beneath his knees and the other falls below his back, and with one swift movement Jisung is being carried across the room.
Moments later, Jisung’s back hits the bed. The springs push back against the sudden force, and his comforter puffs up around him, and Minho peers over him, concerned. “My arms…got tired. Are you okay?”
“This is a bed.” Jisung’s brain deems that a sufficient response; he proceeds to reach up, wrapping fingers around Minho’s nape and bringing him down.
“So you’re good,” Minho double-checks. His gaze has darkened, though, tracing Jisung’s lips. Yes, this is a bed, he realizes; Jisung knows exactly when Minho registers it. His eyes flicker down, where Jisung’s fingers curl into the covers. They linger down, where Jisung’s shirt has ridden up.
“More than good,” Jisung says. He sits up, watching Minho watch the hem of his shirt flit back down. He pushes the comforter away into a little pile in the corner of the bed—makes a little blanket ball.
Minho lets out a tinkling sound. Amusement. With the bed clear, he crowds into the space between Jisung’s legs and presses him back down. He leans over Jisung, and with the hand that isn’t propping himself up, tugs Jisung’s shirt up a little further this time. Runs a hand up his stomach, over his thumping chest.
Jisung mirrors the motion, hands finally roving up the skin under Minho’s shirt. Minho responds with a gasp—half air, half Jisung’s name—and Jisung.
That’s a new one.
Jisung has heard his name out of Minho’s mouth countless times, but never like this. A little desperate, a little breathless. Like a lifeline.
He traces light fingers up Minho’s stomach. He takes Minho’s lips between his and bites a little, and Minho sways, wobbles over him.
Jisung’s name, uttered again. Minho clings to it, but not enough for the two syllables to escape his mouth.
Jisung exchanges it for Minho’s name out of his. He exchanges it for hands on Minho’s fluttering shirt, pushing it over his head.
Minho tugs at his pants. Dips a finger between his waistband and his skin. So shirts come off and pants do too. Urgent. Wanting more.
Then Minho stops him, a gentle hand on his bare thigh. “You know… we’ve got all the time in the world.”
It’s peculiar—yet intriguing—given so much leading up to this has had an expiration date. An old pact proposed years ago, set to expire at thirty. The end of the world, an expiration in itself. But they won’t see that end in this lifetime anymore.
It’s poetic.
Right now, though… Jisung doesn’t want to slow down time for them. He wants this, as it is.
“Are you serious?” Jisung asks, incredulous. He craves, and wants. He has been wanting for a while. “I’m not that patient.”
“I know. Just sharing my thoughts.” Minho cracks a smile that spills into laughter when he gets up, leaving Jisung there, bewildered and sulking, to go hunting for materials. Jisung has to direct him to the right drawer.
The resulting tempo is nebulous, both fast and slow. Urgent in one beat and passionate in the next. Fumbling, sometimes—but always attentive, careful. It takes time to warm up, to open him up, time spent with spilled lube and soft giggles and breathless kisses and pleasured moans, until finally Jisung takes him, and then every touch, every sensation, sets him alight. And their bodies move together and Jisung knows that this may as well be the end of the world—as they know it—because they will have this new memory, added to their collection. Because a one person routine will become a two-person routine, though it already has—ever since Minho came back and stood on Jisung’s doorstep with the wind in his hair and determination in his eyes.
For his next trick, he plans to sleep long and content, with Minho by his side. With Minho’s face folded into his chest and Minho’s shoulders in his arms. With hearts beating together and a warm, cozy comforter tucking them in. With a steady sky over their heads, and next morning’s sun resting under their toes.
With tomorrow theirs to tackle, together.
✩
It’s Jisung’s turn to ask.
Dinner is usually a duet, with Jisung being the sous chef that lets Minho order him around. But since Minho does a lot of his new editing work online, sometimes Jisung comes home from work to mouthwatering scents already wafting from the kitchen.
Today is one of those days—Jisung goes to set his bag in his room, and re-emerges to shuffle to the kitchen. He peers at the boiling noodles and then at the beef simmering and inhales dramatically.
Minho grins and turns away from the sink, where he’d been washing bok choy. He pulls off a leaf and tickles Jisung’s cheek with it. “Happy Friday.”
“Happy…ahh… I love you,” Jisung says. It just slips out. It’s not like he hasn’t said it before, anyway. Just maybe not so easily; he even surprises himself.
Minho laughs. “Me or my food?”
“You and the food,” Jisung amends.
Minho laughs again, and the wet leaf comes down to tap Jisung’s nose before he adds it to the pot. “Love you too,” he says, brushing a fleeting thumb against Jisung’s lips, and both their smiles melt, oozing fondness.
“You know, I really did think seriously about it,” Jisung blurts. Minho is looking at him all starstruck like he wants to kiss him. Jisung’s not sure he’ll ever get used to being looked at like that, but it’s not the reason why his heart does a nervous skip.
He has been thinking about it a lot, though. It would barely even make a difference now that they have this going on—their relationship, and living together. Still, the last few nights he has carefully deliberated over it in his head. It’s not an if, anymore. It’s a when.
“About?” Minho lands a peck on his lips. Then he turns away—with a pleased smile on his face—to stir the pot and reach for soy sauce to add to the beef.
Jisung rests hands on Minho’s hips and presses a soft kiss, his response, on Minho’s nape. “You’re almost thirty,” he says.
“Stop making fun of my age,” Minho replies, but after he sets the soy sauce container down he halts, as if he knows.
“Did it sound like I was making fun of it?” Jisung asks. “I just brought it up, because… do you remember?”
“When you were nineteen,” Minho spins to face him. Meets his gaze head-on. “Of course.”
“Well. That too. I was also thinking about the cake I promised soon, and that I may have overestimated my baking skills. Actually, that’s not what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that I was thinking about that one night when we were in the past when you told me to think carefully about it. The thing is that I was never joking that much with it—I was just too scared to say it then. Because…marriage—” his voice does not tremble. Jisung has confidence now, knows what he really wants, and will propose it without passing it off as something unserious, even if he does ramble an extra ten steps to get there. “—Because it’s… a big thing. But now I—”
“Here,” Minho interrupts him. With the ladle, he scoops some of the beef soup base, blows it to cool it down, and brings it to Jisung’s mouth. “Try it.”
“Um.” Despite the sudden non-sequitur, Jisung allows the ladle to be tipped into his mouth—the liquid is warm and savory. “It’s good.”
“I want to keep doing this with you,” Minho returns the ladle to the pot and turns off the stove. His actions make sense now. He continues, “I want to keep living with you, living with you like this, sharing our lives like this. So my answer is—”
“Let me ask properly first,” Jisung rushes to say. Minho is grinning infuriatingly. “Why are you like this! Let me—”
“What? What? What do you want to say first?”
“Minho, will you—”
Minho steals the end of the question and Jisung’s remaining breath with his mouth. When Jisung pulls away, huffing, Minho chases his mouth and reigns him back in by looping his hands around his neck. There’s no escaping it. But in the past, in the future, and here especially, in the present, Jisung wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Minho!” There will never be another moment exactly like this, with Jisung uttering his name and wearing this much endeared indignance as he stares down mischievous affection.
“Jisung.” Minho tilts his head, smile melted smaller and warmer. He raises an eyebrow: Well? It prompts. Say it. Ask. You wanted to.
So Jisung asks: “Will you marry me?”
PART V: THE NEXT TIME AROUND
Jisung asks it with intent.
Minho says yes.
✩