Work Text:
This is, primarily, a story about love.
***
Jisung stands in front of his new high school on his first day, ignoring Chan watching him anxiously at his side, and takes a deep breath.
This town is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone’s secrets. It’s fitting that there’s only one high school, too, accomodating a couple hundred kids. Compared to his old school in the city, it’s much smaller. Too small for him to hide.
“People are kinder, out in the countryside,” his mother had said. “It’s a fresh start.”
Jisung understood what she wasn’t saying; that it was less of a fresh start and more of a second chance.
He breathes out, and steps through the gates. Chan doggedly follows, then takes the lead to show Jisung the way. To Chan’s credit, he doesn’t try to introduce Jisung to any teachers in the hallway or point out posters for unrealistic hobbies and sports like his mother might have.
Jisung is grateful. It’s awkward enough to have a stepbrother that he barely knows walking him to his classroom like a child.
They approach an open door, and Jisung cringes away the second they stop in the threshold. Almost every eye in the room swivels over, but the finer details grey out in the face of Jisung’s abrupt embarrassment. His fingernails cut into the meat of his palms.
Stop it. Act normal. He cannot make a bad first impression here. There’s only one high school in this town. He can’t afford to mess up his mother’s new life.
“There’s Felix,” Chan murmurs, and Jisung forces his hands to relax. Felix is Chan’s cousin, nearly exactly the same age as Jisung, and therefore in all of the same classes. He’s bright, chipper, and outgoing— everything Jisung’s not— and he came over to their new house with mismatched socks and a container of brownies to introduce himself. Jisung couldn’t help but like him immediately. Maybe school wouldn’t be so bad here, if everyone was as nice as Felix.
Felix notices them in the doorway and waves. Jisung almost jerks his arm up to wave back until he realises that it was directed at Chan.
“I’ll come find you later this afternoon, ok, Jisung-ah?” Chan says quietly, too quietly for anyone else to hear. Jisung’s stomach still churns uncomfortably.
“Thanks, um, hyung,” he mumbles, averting his eyes from Chan’s reassuring smile, then decisively steps into the room towards Felix.
There’s a group of boys crowded around Felix’s table in a loose circle, watching him approach with dark eyes. They’re all strangely good-looking, like people you’d see on a billboard in the city, and somehow distinctly separate from the rest of the students, even though they’re sitting right in the centre of the room. A little bit untouchable, like starlight.
Jisung stops a foot away from the desk Felix is sitting on, and he doesn’t feel untouchable.
“Han Jisung,” Felix says by way of greeting. The other boys peer at him with interest, then Felix begins rattling off names. “This is Hyunjin, Seungmin, Jeongin, and that—” he jabs his thumb over his shoulder, towards a boy sprawled across a chair and turned towards the window, “— is Minho-hyung.”
Hyung? Jisung thinks, juggling the rest of the names in his head. “Hi,” he stammers, “I’m, uh, Jisung.”
They snicker a little, and he realises that Felix had just introduced him. The flush across his cheeks burns deeper. The boy at the back, Minho, doesn’t appear to have even noticed his arrival, preoccupied with watching clouds slew past. He’s sharp in profile, all jawline and big, unsettling eyes. Jisung has a hard time looking away.
“So, you’re Felix’s cousin?” the tall one—Hyunjin— asks.
“No, not really,” Felix says airily, just as Jisung is about to say yeah. “He’s Channie-hyung’s new step-brother, so. He and I aren’t really related.”
Jisung swallows down the lump in his throat and tries to smile when Hyunjin glances back his way. “Oh. Well, you came from the city, right?” Jisung nods, and something sparks behind Hyunjin’s eyes; hungry, eager. Calculating. “Have you ever seen a celebrity? Like at the airport?”
“Er, no, sorry. I’ve never, um, been to the airport,” Jisung says, feeling somehow like he’s letting the other boy down. Act normal, act normal. “Oh— but one time I met this famous anime voice actor, though!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Minho tilt his head ever so slightly towards the rest of the group.
“Voice actor?” Hyunjin’s brows pull together. “I meant like a lead from a drama, or something.”
Jisung can feel his pulse in his throat, wonders if they can see it flutter against the thin skin of his neck. He imagines a predator zeroing in on the jugular of their prey. Imagines himself with round antelope eyes.
A syrupy voice drawls out, “Hyunjinnie thinks he’s going to be a famous actor one day.”
“Shut up, hyung,” Hyunjin snaps, turning to glare at Minho. Lolling his head back, Minho’s eyes skim over Jisung’s for the briefest of seconds before they flick away again, the corners of his lips curling up, pleased.
Maybe it’s something about Minho’s expression, or maybe it’s just the nerves, but Jisung laughs out loud.
It’s the wrong reaction, if Hyunjin’s suddenly spiteful expression is anything to go by.
Shit. He thinks Jisung’s making fun of him.
Jisung quickly clamps his mouth shut and flicks a worried glance back to Minho, but he’s facing the window again. The slant of his mouth has turned mean, entertained.
“So, Jisung,” one of the others, either Seungmin or Jeongin, jumps in. “What kind of stuff did you and your friends do in the city? There would have been so many cool restaurants and stores, compared to here.”
“There’s nothing here,” Felix sighs a little. Hyunjin nods forcefully, scowling down at where he’s now slowly prying the plastic edging of his desk away from the chipboard wood.
“Oh,” Jisung stammers. I didn’t have any friends. “Yeah, there are lots of restaurants. My mother and I used to go to this tteokbokki place for my birthday.”
“Ah,” Seungmin gives a little nod. Smiles politely. “That’s cool.”
Hyunjin snorts dismissively, gaze drifting to the front of the room. “Even we have tteokbokki.”
Jisung flounders, unsure of how to keep a grasp on the conversation, what to say to make himself seem like someone interesting, someone who could be a friend. He can feel it slipping as Felix blinks owlishly at him, and then there’s a flurry of movement as the teacher walks in, and it’s too late.
***
That first teacher made him introduce himself to the class; he stuttered, and the rest of the day was rinse-and-repeat.
Chan drifts past him at lunch, as if to confirm that he’s sitting with Felix. Jisung shoots him a strained smile that he thinks isn’t too reassuring, but Chan has extracurriculars during lunch, so he can’t exactly stay and play big brother.
Not that Jisung really wants him to, anyways.
Chan is much nicer than Jisung had expected from a stepbrother, but he’s older, in his last year of school. He’d also grown up in this town— he already knew where he belonged.
By the end of the day, Jisung’s shutting down, hardly able to bring himself to make eye contact with anyone in the hallways. But Changbin is waiting with Chan outside his homeroom, and so Jisung forces himself to put on a smile and talk about his day until Chan’s shoulders relax.
Changbin flicks quiet, unreadable glances at him from where he walks at Chan’s other side, but doesn’t comment. Changbin is Chan’s best friend; a year older than Jisung, semi-frightening and hard to read. Whenever their eyes meet, Jisung feels distinctly like a small animal being watched in a cage.
They arrive home, kicking their shoes off messily in the entryway, and Jisung barely even has to exaggerate his exhaustion after a big day before slinking off to hide in his room.
His new bedroom is bigger than his old one, yet still manages to be crowded in with baskets and boxes, bundles of clothes and half-unpacked piles of books.
He wriggles his way through the mess to his bedroom window, unlatching it and pushing it open to let the sweet evening air come curling in.
If he stretches his torso far enough out of the window, he can turn and look back at the facade of the house from the outside. It’s a little weird, to see what his back-lit room might look like to someone loitering out on the street in the night.
Twisting again, he notes that the roof juts out in a peak right below his window. It looks like it’s within climbing reach, and so Jisung hoists himself up fully onto his windowsill, swinging a leg out and down to connect with the scratchy roof tiles. It seems to hold his weight. He lowers himself down until he’s stretched out on his back, head pillowed on his arms to look up at the first smattering of stars against the smoky-dark sky.
They still look the same, the stars, even in a different house with a different family in a different town. Jisung feels a familiar lump of anxiety form in his throat and swallows it back with a steadying breath. He only needs to make it through another few years here until graduation, and then he can move away and go to any university he wants to, anywhere in the world.
He skips dinner, pretending to be asleep in bed when his mother comes searching. She brushes his hair off his forehead with cool fingers. “The first day is the hardest, sweetheart. Tomorrow will be better.”
Jisung opens his eyes, watching her silently in the thin beam of light spilling in past his half-open door. She runs a thumb over his brow with a sad smile. Sometimes Jisung wishes he wasn’t so easy to read, that his mother didn’t know him so well.
It’s selfish, to want to keep his sadness to himself. To want to be loved just a little less well.
She pulls away wordlessly, closing the door behind her as she goes. Jisung rolls over, tugging a pillow into his chest as he stares out the open window.
His mother is right. Tomorrow will be better. It has to be.
***
The next day isn’t better, nor the day after that, or that.
He isn’t sure if the ship sailed that very first day, or if there is just something intrinsically wrong with him. Either way, friendship with Felix and the group slips out of his grasp, and he sinks a little further under the waves.
Water is just as impenetrable as glass sometimes, he thinks. Even if he screamed and cried and begged for attention, all anyone might see is a few bubbles and wide eyes under the surface.
There isn’t really a beautiful way to say he’s lonely.
At night, Jisung lies on his back on the roof, watching stars spiral past overhead, and pretends he doesn’t notice how Hyunjin has been whispering behind his back all week, giggling with Jeongin when Jisung walks past. Pretends he doesn’t see the way Minho’s mouth ticks up, amused. The concerned looks his mother sends him over the dinner table when he lies about his day.
The stars are distant and unreachable and dying, in the same way that everything is dying. He shivers as a breeze tickles across the exposed skin of his neck, and has resigned himself to crawling back inside when light dances across the sky. A shooting star.
Make a wish, Jisung thinks, then closes his eyes. I wish I had a friend. I wish I wasn’t alone.
In answer, the breeze pushes at the hem of his shirt where it’s ridden up his stomach. Jisung shivers again, sighs up at the stars, and slips back inside.
***
It’s somewhere around the start of the third week that there’s no longer room for Jisung at the lunch table.
He’d grown ok with sitting at the end, being talked over and around. Felix would look to him occasionally, as if he was about to ask a question, but Hyunjin always intervened before the conversation could steer towards Jisung.
It was fine. He mostly kept his head down, stealing glances every so often at Minho, because he was never looking back.
Today, though, the table is full when Jisung drifts over. Changbin is sitting in his usual spot, and Jisung must pause too long, trying to figure out where else to go, because they turn to look up at him.
“Oh,” Hyunjin says, sounding anything but apologetic. “Sorry, Han. I guess Changbinnie-hyung beat you to it.”
They’ve taken to calling him ‘Han’, lately, and it makes Jisung feel even greyer around the edges. A little less of a person.
“It’s ok,” Jisung tries to smile, keeping his eyes somewhere between where Felix and Seungmin’s shoulders meet. “I’ve actually gotta talk to someone, so…”
Hyunjin’s smirk says that he doesn’t believe this thinly veiled excuse. “Ok. Bye, Han.”
Jisung drops his gaze to his feet, shuffling away as quickly as possible. It’s not quick enough to avoid the calculating way Changbin watches him. Not quick enough to avoid the way that Minho never looks at him at all.
He ends up hiding in a bathroom stall, because he doesn’t really know where else to go. Jisung looks at his lunch balanced on his knees, and feels tears well up hot behind his eyes. There has to be more than this, he thinks, and his vision blurs over.
It might be a few minutes or most of the lunch break that he spends staring at his food and willing himself not to cry, when the bathroom door slams open, familiar voices filtering in.
“You have to convince Chan-hyung to buy us drinks,” Hyunjin is saying, footsteps stopping somewhere near the sinks.
There’s an amused snort. Felix. “No way, bro. You know he won’t do it.”
“My parents really won’t be there, though.”
There’s a long silence, the sound of water running. They don’t seem to realise that the end stall is occupied.
“Make sure you get hyung to come alone, though,” Hyunjin warns suddenly. “He can’t bring Han.”
Felix sighs. “You guys know he’s really not that bad. Plus, my parents say I have to be nice to him.”
There’s a tearing of paper towel, and Jisung is so still he almost forgets to breathe.
“I don’t know why you bother,” Hyunjin says, voice somewhere between exasperated and nasty. “He’s too weird.”
Felix makes a distracted, noncommittal noise. The conversation shifts back to food and drinks for a party that Jisung’s not invited to, and eventually the voices filter out as they exit the bathroom.
Jisung doesn’t think he can move, doesn’t think he can face them in his next class. But then the bell rings, and he can’t afford to skip class and have someone call his mother, so he hastens to pack up his untouched lunch and bustles out of the stall. He’s wiping at his eyes with the back of his wrist as he goes, and almost smacks right into someone standing silently at the sinks.
All the breath shocks out of him as he meets Minho’s eyes in the mirror, dark and unblinking and intense. Minho stares at him for a long moment, slowly drying his hands with a paper towel. He must have walked in with Felix and Hyunjin. Did he know Jisung was there the whole time?
After a minute, Minho breaks eye contact, turning to throw away his paper towel. Jisung’s feet feel stuck to the floor. There’s a tilt to his head when he faces Jisung, expression unreadable.
“Are you having fun?”
It’s the first thing he’s said to Jisung in weeks. Jisung doesn’t understand what it means, or why he feels trapped, even with his back to an open door. Overwhelmed, his lip wobbles, and he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek to stop it. Minho’s eyes flick briefly to his mouth in response, then he blinks slowly, and brushes past Jisung wordlessly on his way out.
Jisung arrives late to class with red-rimmed eyes, and receives a warning from the teacher in front of everyone. Hyunjin snickers behind his hand, and Minho stares out the window the entire time.
***
Things aren’t too different to how they were at his last school, really, except at least back then Jisung was invisible. He’s not sure if he prefers being invisible to this, though. Sometimes the wrong kind of attention feels better than nothing at all. The realisation makes him feel even worse.
He takes to spending his time studying in the library and going for walks through the forest bordering their neighbourhood. It’s mostly fine, so long as he stays out of the house, or else his mother and Chan will start to worry.
Chan worries in a different, much more overbearing way than his mother. One Friday, after Changbin walks home from school with them, Chan manages to corner Jisung in the kitchen in front of his mother.
“Are you doing anything tonight, Jisung-ah?” he asks innocently.
Jisung avoids looking at his mother, staring down into his glass of orange juice. “Er, not really…”
“Great!” Chan claps his hands. “You can come join Binnie and I for our Ghibli movie marathon!”
Jisung tries very hard not to wince. He loves Ghibli movies, but Changbin has been sitting at Hyunjin’s lunch table for weeks. His mother shifts her stance in his periphery.
“Oh, um, yeah. Thanks, hyung,” he clears his throat. “That sounds fun.”
It’s not as bad as he fears; he gets the armchair all to himself and his favourite blanket, and it’s not exactly like they are chatting while watching the movie. Then after the first movie, Chan offers to go make them a snack, and bounces off into the kitchen, leaving Jisung staring wide-eyed at Changbin.
Changbin squints at him in that cryptic way he has, before sighing a little. “I know you’re having a hard time.”
Jisung blinks at him, surprised at the bluntness.
“You’ve got to stand up for yourself,” Changbin urges quietly. “You’ve got to learn to fix your problems yourself. I know you’ve got it in you.”
Jisung isn’t really sure what to do with that. He supposes that Changbin is trying to be helpful, in his own way. At least he doesn’t hate Jisung too.
There’s a rustling in the kitchen. He darts a glance at the doorway.
“Ok, I will, just— don’t tell Chan-hyung,” Jisung breathes out, all in a rush. “Please.”
Something that might be respect solidifies in Changbin’s eyes. “Ok, ok. I won’t.”
***
The days get cooler, and Jisung spends more time in the forest. There’s animals everywhere, now, flitting around in his peripherals as they start to prepare for winter. From the clearing at the end of his street, there’s a faint trail leading up into the trees that he often takes. It weaves uphill for a while, before looping past a stream and then back down towards his house.
Jisung hasn’t ever seen another person on any of his walks, until today.
There’s a big rock near the stream that Jisung hadn’t taken much interest in before. Too scared of slipping and falling. But today, someone is sitting hunched on the top, knees tucked into their chest. Startled, Jisung quickly ducks back into the shadowed trees before they can catch a glimpse of him. He doesn’t know why he does it, at first, but then thinks it’s something like instinct when he realises with a jolt that the person is Lee Minho.
A sour feeling washes over him, bitter at having one of the people he is least interested in seeing show up in his safe place. The feeling quickly ebbs away, though, when he sees Minho bring the heels of both hands up to press into his eyes.
It’s a little hard to tell from this distance, but he thinks Minho might be crying.
It dumbfounds him for a moment. He remembers Minho watching him rub his eyes in the bathroom, impassive. Thinks about the way he laughs offhandedly when Hyunjin makes a mocking comment under his breath as Jisung walks past. Minho sits and stares out the window in class. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone.
Jisung watches as Minho’s shoulders shudder under his too-thin t-shirt, and guilt swells up in his throat. He shouldn’t be seeing this.
As quietly as he can, he turns around and sneaks back the way he came.
***
If there’s one thing Jisung is good at, it’s studying. It comes easy to him, possibly as a product of being on his own his whole life. Much to the verbal annoyance of his classmates, Jisung has already risen to the top of most of their classes. It wasn’t intentional— he doesn’t need to create any more reasons for Hyunjin to hate him.
Literature class is the one Jisung likes the most, and he knows he’s doing well, so he’s abruptly worried when the teacher instructs both Jisung and Minho to stay back after class.
Minho was called on a few times today because he wasn’t paying attention, looking out the window as usual. Jisung hadn’t been called on. What if… what if she somehow overheard one of Hyunjin’s snide comments? He’d been getting bolder, lately. Worse.
It’s not as bad as it looks, he imagines telling her. I can handle it; I’m used to it.
Jisung doesn’t want to think about the look on his mother’s face when she finds out.
“Minho,” their teacher says, except her voice is gentler than Jisung was expecting. “We talked about what would happen if you started falling behind in class.”
Jisung immediately drops his eyes to his desk, doesn’t dare glance over at Minho. Oh.
“I know you’ve been trying to improve on your own, but it’s time to get some help. I can either speak with your parents to arrange for tutoring outside of school—”
“No,” Minho interrupts, something like panic bleeding into his voice.
“—or,” their teacher continues, “you can work with Jisung to improve your grade.” Here, she pauses and looks at Jisung. “You will of course be compensated with extra credit, Jisung.”
Jisung just blinks at her. He doesn’t need extra credit. He doesn’t need to sit across a desk from Lee Minho trying not to let his hands shake. Jisung chances a peek at Minho. He’s flushed bright red, upset, and he’s blinking like he’s trying not to cry.
“Um,” Jisung says softly, right as Minho blows out a frustrated breath and says, “Fine.”
“Great,” their teacher says, smiling placatingly at each of them in turn. “I’ll let you work out the details between yourselves. That is all.”
He wants to ask if he gets a choice in the matter, but it doesn’t seem likely once Minho pushes back his chair roughly, storming out of the room. Jisung scurries to gather his things and chase after him, almost running to catch up in the empty hallway.
“Wait, Minho-ssi!” he calls.
Minho skids to a stop, whirling around with wet eyes. “What?”
“I just—” Jisung falters, out of breath and out of his depth.
“I don’t want your help, Han,” Minho hisses. Something cold douses Jisung’s spine, and by the time he blinks away the feeling, Minho is already gone.
***
After another failed day of trying to catch Minho in the hallways to talk about tutoring, Jisung shuffles awkwardly to Chan’s doorway after dinner.
Chan’s room is very different to his own; the corners are crammed with sporting equipment and tech gear, posters and medals and glowing lights plastering the walls. It’s nice, even if it makes Jisung’s head spin a little. He knocks softly against the outside wall, eyeing the way Chan is bent over his desk in concentration.
Chan looks up and smiles hopefully. “Hey, Sung.”
Jisung returns his smile tentatively. “Hey, ah, hyung. Sorry to bother you…”
“Not at all!” Chan says, waving a hand to usher Jisung in past the doorframe. “What’s up?”
Hesitantly, Jisung perches on the edge of Chan’s bed, opposite his desk. “Um, I was wondering if you know Lee Minho.”
Something flickers behind Chan’s eyes. “Yeah, I know Minho. He’s friends with Binnie. Why do you ask?”
Jisung chews at his lower lip, darting his gaze around the room until it settles somewhere over Chan’s shoulder. The lamp on his desk is pointed at the wall instead of down, and Jisung lets his eyes cross a little as he stares at the halo of light.
“We have the same literature class, and he’s uh, not doing so well. Please don’t tell anyone. The teacher asked me to help tutor him, but he’s kind of… avoiding me. So.”
“Yeah,” Chan huffs a non-laugh. “That doesn’t surprise me. He’s probably embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed?” Jisung feels a jolt of surprise go through him at the idea of Lee Minho being vulnerable in any way. “Why?”
“Oh.” Chan chews at his lip. “You have to promise me that this stays between us, okay?”
“Yeah, of course.” Jisung frowns a little. Who would I even tell, he thinks.
“Well, you know that Minho’s older than you, right? He should be in the same class as Changbin, but he was held back in school. He has some trouble learning, from what Binnie’s told me. I think it’s hard for him to concentrate. And I know that it’s not easy for him at home.”
Jisung frowns deeper in confusion. He can’t reconcile what Chan’s saying with the cold, aloof version of Minho in his mind, but then he remembers seeing Minho in the forest, the way he was blinking back tears in the hallway. He wants to ask for more detail, but the way Chan’s rubbing at the back of his neck gives the impression that he’s already shared more than he wanted to.
“Oh, ok,” Jisung says, standing. “That makes sense. Thanks, hyung. I, um, I guess I’ll just have to keep trying.” He knows he won’t.
Chan looks like he wants to say something else, like he’s trying to find a way to keep talking with Jisung, but after a moment he deflates a little, smiling half-heartedly. “Yeah, that’s the spirit. Good luck, Sungie.”
***
Jisung has a spare period on Thursday afternoons, right before the end of the day. Most of the other boys either ditch school early to go get food and hang out, or they head to the fields to play impromptu sports. Jisung always heads to the library, where he knows he’ll be left in peace.
This morning, his mother had asked whether he was going to hang out with friends this weekend. He lied, telling her he had plans to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. Chan had looked at him a little funny, but hadn’t said anything.
He thinks back to what Changbin had said, during the movie marathon. Jisung knows that he should stand up for himself, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Hyunjin’s taken to pretending he doesn’t exist, sometimes; bumping into him in the halls, or dumping his stuff on Jisung’s desk right after he sits down, forcing him to scramble up and move to a desk at the back of the room before the teacher notices and thinks Jisung’s causing trouble.
The others mostly pretend they don’t see it, or laugh with Hyunjin and quickly steer the conversation elsewhere. Felix still looks at him, ever so often, eyes round and a little confused. Jisung feels confused, too.
He’s given up on Minho.
A group of girls giggle a few tables away and are shushed by the librarian.
Jisung presses the tip of his ballpoint pen into the top corner of his notebook until the ink pools. I’m so sad I’m so sad I’m so sad, he scrawls across the page. He stares at it, blinks away the wetness in his eyes, then folds his arms over the notebook and buries his head in the crook of his elbow until the bell rings.
***
The next week, Jisung is sitting in the end bathroom stall, eating his lunch, when a scuffed pair of sneakers stops right outside the stall, and turn to face the door.
“Are you eating your lunch in there?”
Jisung flushes and hates that he recognises Minho by voice alone.
“Hey. Open the door.”
Reluctantly, Jisung stands with his lunch held against his stomach, and swings the door open. For a moment, they just stand facing each other warily. There’s an intensity in Minho’s eyes that kind of scares Jisung a little.
“Is that homemade kimbap?”
Jisung blinks, wondering if he heard correctly, and nods slowly. “Um. Yes.”
Minho’s face does something complicated before shuttering blank again. “I need you to tutor me.”
Jisung blinks again. “But—”
“Not at school,” Minho states.
What. Ok. He can do this. “Er, I can come over after school,” Jisung offers meekly. He’d probably have to take a bus, which he hates, and he’d have to lie to his mother that he was going to see a friend, and—
“No,” Minho says quickly, eyes skittering towards the main bathroom door and back. “Please. Can we go to yours?”
The use of the word ‘please’ throws Jisung so much that he finds himself nodding dazedly. He feels weak, animal-soft. Then Minho almost smiles at him, and he’s thrown again.
“Cool. I’ll come by later this afternoon.”
With that, he’s turning and marching out the door, leaving Jisung to stare at himself and his box of kimbap in the mirror, wondering what kind of alternate reality he’d just experienced.
Yet sure enough, at four o’clock on the dot, there’s a knock at the front door and there on Jisung’s front porch stands Lee Minho, still in his school uniform, fingers curled tight around the strap of his bag. Jisung doesn’t bother asking how he found his address.
“Oh. Hi,” he stutters.
Minho raises an eyebrow, and sighs a little. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Nobody else is home except Jisung, so they settle in the living room, books on the coffee table and an ocean between them on the couch.
Jisung genuinely did not think this day was going to come, so he is in no way prepared to actually tutor Minho. He figures that starting with the content they’ve covered so far this week, and identifying the parts Minho is struggling with, should be enough for today.
Unfortunately, Minho seems to have zero interest in cooperating with him, not even to point out the things he finds difficult.
“This section was one of the key points for this week,” Jisung tries. “Maybe if you could summarise it, to see if it makes sense?”
Minho grunts, eyes drifting listlessly over the page in front of him. The old clock that Chan’s father has sitting in the hallway seems louder and louder with each tick.
Why did Jisung allow himself to get into this situation? He’s such a pushover. He should have tried harder to tell the teacher he didn’t want to do this.
Nervous and quickly veering into panic, he doesn’t notice his leg bouncing restlessly between them, until Minho whirls to face him on the couch, glaring pointedly at Jisung’s knee. He flinches, forcing his leg into stillness.
“Can you stop?” Minho huffs. “It’s really distracting.”
“Sorry,” Jisung whispers, trying and failing to meet his eyes.
There’s a long pause before Minho speaks again, uncharacteristically hesitant. “Are you… scared of me?”
Jisung doesn’t say anything, looking away.
“Oh,” Minho says, voice small.
Jisung stares down at the papers in front of him, willing himself not to cry. Maybe tomorrow he can go back to their teacher, and tell her that he tried to tutor Minho, he did, but it’s not going to work out.
The papers in front of him shift.
“Um, this part?” Minho says quietly, pointing at one of the revision questions circled in red pen. “I don’t really understand what it’s asking.”
Jisung looks up at him, eyes wide. Minho avoids his gaze, nudging the paper towards him a little.
“Oh,” Jisung clears his throat. “Okay, yeah.”
The rest of the session is bearable, at least, with Minho trying to engage. Jisung isn’t sure they make much progress in terms of the course material, but at least he doesn’t feel like crying, by the end.
“I’ll be better prepared next time,” he says as he walks Minho to the door, then blushes, realising he’d assumed Minho would come back.
“Okay,” Minho says amicably, stepping outside. “Um. Thanks, Han-ah.”
Han-ah. It rattles around his skull for the rest of the night; distracts him all through dinner, doing the dishes, his own homework. It shouldn’t stun him like it does.
He can’t help it. He’s hungry for affection. Starving.
Near midnight, he crawls out to the roof to try to clear his head, but he can barely see the stars, mind swimming with Minho.
***
School remains miserable. All week, Hyunjin has been talking about a new movie that they’re going to see this weekend. It’s a live action remake of a popular anime, and Jisung is pretty sure that Hyunjin has very little interest in the movie itself, and is instead getting more enjoyment out of mentioning it loudly to the group whenever Jisung is in earshot.
So on Saturday morning, Jisung sets off early to go explore the forest. It’s pretty much his favourite activity, these days. He pretends he’s working for one of those nature documentary series, trying to quietly scout out all the little creatures in their habitats.
He’s been wandering around for a few hours when he finds a new part of the forest he hasn’t been to before, a sort of clearing with less tree cover, the soil drier than near his house and the stream.
There’s a slither of movement up ahead, and he spots a stubby-looking little lizard foraging through the undergrowth. Amazed, he creeps over, crouching down carefully. The lizard pauses, blinking up at him but not shying away. Jisung wonders if it’s friendly, and is just stretching out his arm to try and brush a finger against its scales, when—
“Jisung!”
He barely registers the impact as he’s yanked backwards, landing awkwardly on his tailbone. He whips his head up, heart racing.
Lee Minho towers over him. He’s panting a little, as if he’d run over, eyes wild with something Jisung can’t place.
“What were you thinking?” Minho snaps, and the tone of his voice makes Jisung want to flinch away.
“Minho-s-ssi?” he stutters.
“It could have bitten you!” Minho’s hand is still clutched tightly in Jisung’s shirt.
At this, Jisung blinks a little, the adrenaline washing back out through his palms into the dirt. “It-it wasn’t going to hurt me. It was only a-a lizard.”
Minho’s arm droops a little. “What?”
Jisung looks back over at the shrubs, the dark undergrowth where the lizard had been resting. Minho follows his gaze, but the lizard is long gone.
“I thought it was a snake,” he says weakly.
“It’s gone,” Jisung mumbles. “It got scared away.”
“I… I thought it was a snake,” Minho says again, and Jisung looks up at him. He looks miserable, ears bright red. His knuckles are hot against Jisung’s shoulder. He thought Jisung was about to get bitten by a snake.
Oh.
“You were worried,” Jisung whispers. “You— you called me Jisung.”
Minho flinches, dropping Jisung’s sleeve and awkwardly shuffling back. Everything about his wilted posture screams uncomfortable, out of place. It’s very unlike the Minho that Jisung knows. Jisung’s Minho is never unsure of himself. He glances back to where Jisung had been crouched, a little dejected, like maybe he wanted to see the lizard too.
Jisung wants to ask what Minho is doing out here all by himself, why he isn’t at the cinema with the others. He wants to ask why he tried to help. Instead, he says softly, “Do you like animals?”
The question seems to catch Minho off guard. He himself isn’t really sure why he asked it, but he forces himself not to try and take it back. Minho’s expression is wary, but he slowly meets Jisung’s eyes and nods.
Dusting his hands off against his jeans, Jisung clambers up onto his feet. “I saw a bird’s nest around here the other day.” Minho stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “I was going to go back and see if there were any eggs. Do you, um, maybe want to come with me?”
There’s a long pause, and Jisung can’t decipher Minho’s expression. He expects to be laughed at, or perhaps more likely, for Minho to go blank on him and walk away like he was never there in the first place. Like Jisung is just a ghost drifting in and out of existence.
To his surprise, Minho nods, eyes fixed firmly over Jisung’s shoulder. “Ok.”
They walk side by side down the trail in a tentative kind of silence. The bird’s nest is still there, but clearly older and abandoned, a remnant of spring. It’s dusty dry and poked through with holes. Minho doesn’t seem too bothered, though. Weirdly, he seems content just to have someone wandering along with him, peeking into hidey-holes and under shrubs to try and spot little creatures.
They unintentionally circle back towards Jisung’s street after a while, and he’s feeling strangely disappointed to burst this odd bubble they’ve found themselves in. Then Minho gasps, grabbing again at Jisung’s sleeve. “Look!”
Jisung follows the line of his outstretched arm. Up ahead, a young fox is slinking across the path. It pauses, turning back to look at them for a moment, and Minho’s fingers tighten around Jisung’s arm. Jisung glances at him sideways, quickly. Minho’s eyes are round with awe, and for a moment, it’s like he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to hate Jisung.
Are you having fun?
The fox sighs at them, and disappears back into the trees.
***
The next time Minho comes over to study, Jisung’s mother is home. He didn’t think to mention it to Minho beforehand, but he also didn’t expect Minho to freeze in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Oh, h-hello,” he stutters into a bow, clutching his school books tightly to his chest.
“Oh, no need for all that, darling!” Jisung’s mother says, nearly as surprised as Minho is. “You must be Minho, it’s lovely to meet you.”
Minho straightens up quickly, looking at her like a deer in headlights. After a moment where it becomes clear that Minho isn’t going to say anything, Jisung carefully nudges past him, heading towards the living room.
“We’re just going to study now, eomma.”
She waves them off with a smile. “Of course, I’ll bring some snacks later.”
“Thanks!” Jisung calls back, shepherding Minho down the hallway.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t know your parents would be home. Do you want me to come back another day?”
Jisung tries not to let his confusion show on his face. “No, it’s ok. She’s just happy to have more mouths to feed.”
The joke falls a little flat, and Minho is quiet while opening his books on the coffee table. Jisung isn’t sure if he should talk Minho through what he prepared for this study session, or just let him do his own thing. He’s hesitant to disrupt the careful sort of peace they established wandering around in the forest— he thought they were making progress, but Minho’s gone all still, robotic.
After a long while of Minho staring at his books unseeingly and Jisung watching out of the corner of his eye, his mother comes in bearing a plate of sliced pears. She purses her lips at the palpably strange atmosphere, then smiles brightly.
“Here we are, boys,” she sets the plate on the table, thanking Minho as he moves his papers out of the way hastily. “What are we studying today?”
Minho keeps his head down, so after a beat of silence Jisung blurts out, “Literature.”
“Oh my,” she intones, frowning pensively. “And is Jisung a good teacher, Minho darling, or is he just full of it?”
Minho whips his head up, eyes wide as he looks between the two of them. “Um,” he fumbles, the tips of his ears heating red.
“Eomma, leave him alone!” Jisung whines, then to Minho, “She’s only joking, don’t listen to her.”
“Okay, okay,” she laughs, stealing a slice of pear and shoving it between her teeth as she backs out of the room. “I’ll leave you two brainiacs be.”
Minho is staring at him like he’s never seen him before when Jisung turns back around. He flinches a little at the intensity, rubbing self-consciously at his mouth. “Sorry about her,” he mumbles. Minho just blinks at him, so he reaches out for the plate of pears instead. “Want one?”
Carefully, Minho extracts a slice from the pile, and seems to shake himself back to life as he chews cautiously. He still hasn’t looked away from Jisung.
“Um, I prepared some study notes, if you wanted?”
Minho nods, finally turning back to his books, and Jisung feels his shoulders slump in relief. Like being released from the jaws of a rabbit trap.
Later, Jisung’s mother pokes her head back in to check on them and invite Minho to stay for dinner.
“The men are out tonight for Chan’s baseball game, so it’s just Jisung and I left to fend for ourselves,” she explains. Minho awkwardly nods, and she beams at them before disappearing back to the kitchen.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” Jisung whispers. “Your parents must be wondering where you are.”
Minho tilts his head at him and doesn’t say anything.
Dinner is uncomfortable at first. Jisung doesn’t really know how to talk to Minho, and Minho seems to be incapable of making eye contact with his mother. She turns to teasing Jisung instead.
“I don’t know if you know this, but Jisung here is extremely poor at sports.”
“Eomma.”
“Really, dear,” his mother grins when Minho looks over at her for a second. “Our Sungie is excellent at many things, but sports is not one of them. He once managed to give himself a black eye playing soccer— ran straight into the goal post.”
Jisung groans good-naturedly, going pink when Minho giggles and casts him a glance over his bowl of japchae. Part of him is worried that his mother has just provided one more thing to make fun of Jisung about at school, but a larger part of him warms at the sight of Minho’s timid smile.
His mother quickly realises that Minho needs a little more care than most, and continues on like that until he starts to loosen up over the course of the meal. Jisung is reminded of just how much he loves her.
Minho continues to be amazed by the relationship Jisung has his with his mother, blinking over at him in shock every time he rebuts one of her jokes or teases her in turn. After dinner, once his mother has packaged up leftovers for Minho to take with him— ignoring his protests— Jisung walks him to the door.
Minho pauses outside. The porch light casts shadows across his face that are both eerie and familiar, like Jisung has been seeing him hover near his front door for years, dragging his feet on his way home.
“Your mother is really nice,” Minho says softly, then looks at him, gaze heavy. “You’re lucky.”
“Yeah,” Jisung whispers. “Thanks, Minho-ssi.”
Minho’s eyes flicker away, guilty. “You can, um, just call me hyung.”
Jisung’s whole face heats. “Huh?”
Shifting his weight, Minho reaches up to tug an earlobe harshly. “I’m— I don’t mean to be so—”
Oh. Jisung flaps his hands a little, trying to stop Minho’s face looking like that. “It’s ok—”
“It’s not,” Minho snaps, and deflates when Jisung recoils a little. “Sorry. I’m just… not good at getting along with people.”
“Well,” Jisung says carefully, “I’m not really that good with people, either. So.”
Minho huffs a laugh but sends him a grateful look. “Ok. Thanks, Han-ah. I guess I better get going.”
“Yeah,” Jisung smiles tentatively. “See you. Hyung.”
Minho smiles back, just a flicker of one, but it eases the tightness in Jisung’s chest all the same.
***
It gets easier, after that, having Minho in his space. Jisung loosens up a little, not afraid to crack a smile here or there, occasionally getting one from Minho in return.
He stays for dinner more often than not, now, at the insistence of Jisung’s mother. He knows that Minho realises she’s picked up on whatever is going on for him at home, and is giving him extra attention and extra helpings at the dinner table because of it.
None of them bring it up, although the few times Chan and his father join them, Minho does his best to keep his head down to avoid getting trapped in Chan’s sad moo-cow eyes.
A few times, they drift into conversation about hobbies and realise they are both into anime and science fiction. It’s like the floodgates open. Minho’s eyes light up as he talks about whatever plot line he’s currently engrossed in— sometimes it’s multiple stories at once— and Jisung wants to do anything to keep Minho open and bright and human like this.
Jisung is a big reader, but quickly learns that Minho isn’t, and does better with graphic novels and anime. Minho is shocked that Jisung is allowed to watch TV after school, but doesn’t complain when Jisung notices his twitching fingers one afternoon and declares that they need a day off, turning on an anime instead.
The only thing that doesn’t get easier is the actual studying.
“Minho-hyung,” Jisung says gently, setting down his pencil.
Minho snaps his head back around guiltily, caught staring out the window again. “Sorry.”
Jisung smiles a little wearily at him. “It’s ok.”
Yanking a hand back through his hair, Minho blows out a frustrated breath. “It’s not, though. I’m not stupid, you know.”
Today has been particularly difficult. Minho was distracted all through class, even more so than usual, and got told off more than once by their teachers. Hadn’t stopped fidgeting the moment he set foot through Jisung’s door.
“I know, hyung.” Jisung chooses his words carefully. “I never thought you were. You named more plant species than anyone else in biology class the other day.”
Minho’s eyes go wide, and he blushes pink, ducking his head a little. He probably didn’t realise Jisung was paying attention. Maybe Jisung shouldn’t have given himself away like that.
He makes himself as gentle as he knows how to be. “It’s hard for you to concentrate right now, isn’t it?”
The curve of Minho’s ear glows redder, and he nods jerkily. He reaches out and pulls the textbook back towards himself, like he’s expecting to be told to try and concentrate harder. Jisung makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, carefully tugging the textbook away and closing it.
“Let’s go for a walk instead.”
He glances over then quickly averts his eyes, neck heating at the wide-open look on Minho’s face. It feels too vulnerable for Jisung to see.
The forest smells damp and the ground is spongy under their sneakers as they amble along the path. It’s nearing sunset, so they shouldn’t stay out for long, but Jisung can’t bring himself to make them turn back when Minho looks more alive out here than he has all week.
“Oh,” Minho says, then starts giggling. It knocks the breath out of Jisung, and he attempts to school his face into something bordering neutral when Minho turns to face him. “Hannie!”
He’s pointing to the grass on their right, where a bunny is slowly grazing, ears translucent-pink in the setting sun. Jisung blushes, and pouts to try and hide it. Hannie Hannie Hannie. “I’m not a bunny!”
Minho giggles again, teeth glinting in the golden light, and Jisung feels something heavy turn over in the pit of his stomach.
***
It was naive to think that this budding something with Minho would mean things would change at school. Jisung remains as inhuman and vulnerable as ever. It does no good to search out Minho’s eyes when Hyunjin and the others tease him, he learns, and so he keeps his head down instead. It hurts his stomach to think about Minho ignoring him in class, and so he doesn’t think about it.
His time with Minho exists hidden away in his living room, tucked between the trees of the forest. Some other plane of existence, somewhere far removed from the hallways of his school. It’s not real in the way an elbow to the ribs is real.
Jisung finds himself pretending, daydreaming, more often now. When Hyunjin and Jeongin snicker after he stutters reading aloud, he remembers the way Minho laughed at his joke two days ago. Minho ignores him when he trips over tied-together shoelaces; he thinks about the way the afternoon sun turned Minho’s eyes liquid as he watched Jisung pick berries in the forest.
It’s maladaptive. Addictive.
People do funny things for survival.
Jisung’s mother talks quietly with Chan in the kitchen when they think he can’t hear them. She asks if Chan notices anything, but everything Chan knows comes via Changbin. “He’s doing fine,” Chan tells her. “He’s just a little shy, I think. It seems like he’s slowly starting to make friends. It just takes time.”
Jisung clenches his teeth together so hard they creak, then relaxes his whole body. It just takes time, he repeats to himself, slipping silently up to his room and crawling out onto the roof.
***
Ever since he could remember, Jisung has wanted to go to the ocean. Wants to watch grey waves roll against dark rocks as the horizon swells with the threat of a storm.
There used to be a photo of him, not more than two years old, in front of a blue sea on a sunny day. He’s standing and holding the hand of a man with the same eyes that he sees in the mirror every day.
The photo disappeared years ago, and Jisung can’t remember the sea. Yet still, he wants to see it— the churn of the ocean before the storm.
Thunderclouds sit overhead all day, the streets soggy and waterlogged by the afternoon; much like Minho when he shows up to Jisung’s door.
“Hyung!” Jisung exclaims, hands fluttering uselessly as he tries to usher Minho through the door. “You’re drenched!”
“D-don’t have an umbrella,” Minho says sheepishly, teeth chattering around a poor attempt at a grin.
“Ok, ah, just wait here,” Jisung urges, then turns and runs up the stairs two at a time to yank down a fresh towel from the cupboard, and some dry clothes from his dresser that he hopes will fit.
Minho hasn’t moved an inch, dripping water into the entry mat and shivering a little until he sees Jisung returning.
“Just try and dry off best you can, and you can borrow these—” Jisung babbles, all but shoving the pile of fabric at Minho’s chest. “Bathroom is— oh, well, you know where it is.”
Minho takes the towel and clothes hesitantly, but there’s gratitude in his voice even if he won’t meet Jisung’s eyes. “Thanks, Jisungie.”
The nickname catches Jisung off guard, and he stands there for a beat too long before awkwardly telling Minho to come find him in the living room when he’s ready.
Minho is docile after a hot shower and changing into dry clothes, and settles in quietly to study while Jisung goes to hang his wet clothes to dry. He pauses in the living room doorway when he comes back; something about he way his own t-shirt pulls across Minho’s shoulders making his throat go tight. Blinking away the heat in his eyes, he settles in on the couch, biting the inside of his cheek when Minho shuffles until his knee is pressing into Jisung’s thigh.
Studying is easy, soothing, when Minho feels cooperative. He works his way through the homework on his own, only occasionally asking Jisung for clarification on a revision question or phrase in the text.
Jisung doesn’t realise when his own attention drifts, watching rain drip from pine needles, the forest looming and shadowed green at the edge of the property. An elbow nudges him harshly in the ribs, and Jisung startles, whipping around with wide eyes.
Minho’s got a sharpness in the corners of his mouth, but his eyes are round, softening as he flicks a glance over Jisung’s shoulder, then back. “What are you looking at?”
A flush works it way up Jisung’s insides, heating the skin of his throat. “You’ll laugh.”
“No I won’t.”
Jisung fixes him with a look.
Minho cracks a little, huffing around a smile. “I promise, I won’t. Tell me. C’mon!”
So impatient, Jisung thinks, then curls his fingers around the edge of the pillow across his lap and mumbles out all in a rush, “I was just thinking about all the little animals in the forest. And— I was imagining them snuggled up together, somewhere warm and dry, to escape the storm.”
There’s a beat of silence where Jisung is too embarrassed to meet Minho’s eyes, and then when he does, he wishes he hadn’t; wide-open and fond. “Cute,” Minho says under his breath, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud.
Jisung clears his throat, shuffles the papers in front of him, suddenly hyper-aware of all the places Minho’s body is touching his. Minho lets him go without further comment, and it sends adrenaline spiking into his stomach.
Minho stays for dinner, and then because it’s Friday, he stays late to watch anime. Raindrops trace strange shadows across his bare arms; crossed over each other and pillowing his head where he’s sprawled across the living room floor.
“I can’t believe they brought this guy back to life again,” Minho whines, tossing his head back to look up at Jisung. His hair dried funny from the shower, and Jisung feels the corner of his mouth quirk every time Minho looks his way.
He lets it stretch out into a grin. “But hyung, isn’t it so romantic how his girlfriend cries every time?”
Minho grumbles, flopping back down with a huff. His hair is ridiculous. “Too much romance. More fighting. More dragons.”
“…What if it was a dragon romance?”
Minho props himself up on both elbows, glaring.
Jisung tries to keep a straight face. “Like an anime documentary. Smoke and Embers: Mating Rituals of Scaled Beasts.”
Minho’s eye twitches.
“Actually,” Jisung says, “I think there might be a word for that.”
“Han Jisung,” Minho warns, crawling threateningly closer. “I am not watching— that—with you.”
“It’s ok, hyung,” Jisung giggles, “there’s no shame—”
He’s cut off as Minho launches himself with an indignant squawk, fingers digging in to the soft skin of Jisung’s stomach, thighs, wrists. He gasps for air and tries to fight back, but Minho is too strong. Or maybe Jisung doesn’t really try all that hard.
“Hyung!” Jisung sucks in around a laugh. Minho’s fingernails are sharp where they dig into the back of his knee, tiny pinpricks of absentminded pain. Star-like.
“Okay, okay, truce,” Minho relents, sitting back on his heels. It puts him eye-level with Jisung and too close, but he hovers for a moment. There’s a flush high on his cheeks, and the cavity of Jisung’s ribs aches.
Where did that come from? he wonders. How long will it last?
Minho pulls away, smiles faintly. “Let’s watch something else.”
***
Hyunjin slams into his side as they pass in the hallway right before their afternoon literature class, sending Jisung ricocheting off the lockers hard enough to drop all his books and papers.
“Whoops,” Hyunjin tosses over his shoulder, airy and unapologetic. None of the other students in the hallway make eye contact with Jisung as they hurry past. There’s a bone-deep ache radiating in his hip when he stumbles to his feet, and he knows it will bruise.
He’s late to class, receiving yet another reprimand from the teacher and cold disinterest from Minho when he limps past his desk. Liquid heat wells up behind his eyes. He wants to cry. He wants someone to notice.
He plays out a conversation in his head, where he tells someone— Minho— that he’s holding back tears. Why? Imaginary Minho might say. What’s wrong?
I don’t know, Jisung would reply, pushing down the lump in his throat, laughing at himself. Nothing, I guess.
Near the end of class, Jisung is called up to the front to read aloud. His voice is small and shaky and everyone stares. He reads, “The earth looked at me and said, ‘Wasn’t that fun?’” When he glances up, his eyes snag on Minho’s and burn around the edges. “And I replied, ‘I’m sorry if I hurt anyone.’”
It’s cloudy and threatening rain again by the time Minho knocks at his door that afternoon. Jisung’s mind drifts even as he forces them to study, and Minho is twitchy and too loud from the start.
When he checks, the bruise on his hip is storm-cloud purple and perfectly round. Minho accidentally presses into it when he shoves Jisung over on the couch; bored of study and burning his restless energy by playing around with Jisung instead. He swallows down a whimper and leans into Minho’s hands as they prod at him; touch-starved.
Does it hurt? Imaginary Minho might ask, if he knew.
Yes, Jisung would reply, if he could. It hurts more than I thought it would.
***
Things are simple, in nature. Eat, or be eaten. Prey know they are prey. They don’t look into the eyes of a predator and try to get along, try to be smaller, try to co-exist.
Predators don’t play with their food, in nature. There’s no need for games when everyone knows their place in the food chain.
Humans aren’t as simple; everyone at the apex all at once. A different kind of hunt. Is it better to be toyed with, or eaten alive? Can you have both? Do you want it?
In biology class, the teacher puts on a nature documentary and dims the lights. Ten minutes in, most of the students are either asleep, passing notes or whispering amongst themselves. Jisung feels a prickle at the back of his neck, and tilts his head slowly so as to not draw attention to himself, glancing backwards.
Minho is staring straight at him, eyes all pupil and glittering in the dark. Jisung feels himself flush and hopes it’s hidden in the shadows. After a moment, Minho grins, shapes his mouth around a silent word. Bunny.
On-screen, a gazelle is snagged and tumbled by a lion.
Toyed with, or eaten alive. Both, if you want it.
Could you stand it?
***
Minho gets a B on his literature test.
He pulls the paper out of his backpack in the middle of their kitchen, shows Jisung, then his mother. The paper has been crumpled and smoothed back out again and in the top right corner the grade is circled in red.
“Minho, sweetheart, that’s amazing!” she says, coming over to press a kiss to the top of his head. “Well done! I’m so proud of both of you.”
Minho goes pink and pleased, grinning bashfully. Jisung can’t look at his mother.
“I guess you don’t need me anymore,” he jokes, except it doesn’t really come out like a joke at all.
Jisung is not a good actor. He’s often been told that his face is like an open book, easy to read, heart on his sleeve.
Minho looks at him for a long moment, then his eyes soften. “Don’t be silly, Jisung-ah, we can’t quit now that it’s working! Besides, who else is going to be bear bait for me in the woods?”
“The woods don’t have bears,” Jisung protests, but it sounds too much like relief. His mother smiles at him when they leave the kitchen but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
Jisung has a big hardcover book on bugs that they read sprawled out across his bed. It’s the first time Minho steps into his bedroom, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s comfortable, familiar.
“Look at this one!” Minho wrinkles his nose, pointing.
“It looks like it’s inside out,” Jisung giggles.
Minho mimes gagging, then leans closer to squint at the picture. “Maybe it really is inside out… or is that supposed to be a cocoon?”
Jisung’s lost to the warmth of Minho’s side pressed all along his. Sinks into it, spine molten liquid. He pictures a cat lying in the sun, feels the golden heat against his eyelids.
Earlier today, Hyunjin had knocked over Jisung’s open water bottle when the teacher’s back was turned, soaking through his notebook and pooling in his lap. Felix had gasped out a shocked little laugh before muffling it in his palm. Jisung didn’t want to draw any attention to himself, and so he’d sat there for the rest of the lesson, wet and cold.
“Hannie.”
He blinks up, startled. “Hhm?”
There’s something teasing at the corners of Minho’s mouth. “I said, we have to go find this bug in the woods. We can make it a race: if you find one before I do, I’ll watch whatever sappy romance anime you want.”
“Ok,” Jisung laughs faintly, rolls away a little from all that warmth. “Unless the bears get me first.”
***
On Thursday afternoon, during Jisung’s spare period in the library, somebody walks up quickly to his table and stops right next to his seat, bringing with them the smell of damp earth and wool.
Startling, Jisung looks up in time to catch the softness in Minho’s eyes, watching him back. He presses a slip of paper onto the table in front of Jisung with a quirk of his mouth, then scuttles back out again.
Amused and pleased and something else he doesn’t want to name, Jisung slides the paper closer and unfolds it reverently.
HAN JISUNG, in Minho’s handwriting, all caps. I FOUND A BIRD’S NEST LIKE THE ONE WE FOUND. IT’S DEAD AND OLD. I WANT TO WATCH HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE. YOU CAN BE SOPHIE.
Jisung reads it twice, smiling helplessly as he tries to string along Minho’s train of thoughts. Bird’s nest to travelling house to Howl to Sophie to— Jisung.
If Jisung is Sophie, does that make Minho Howl?
There’s a muffled thump as somebody drops their bag on the table. Jisung jerks, shoving the note under his book, wide-eyed when Changbin sits down across from him. They don’t talk at school, still, not unless Chan is nearby.
Jisung glances around, but Chan is, as expected, still in class.
Changbin watches him closely. There’s something knowing in his eyes. It reminds Jisung of how he felt when they first met; small, trapped, dissected.
Changbin sighs. “We’re friends, right?”
It’s so abrupt and confusing that Jisung doesn’t respond, just stares at the older boy for a moment. Changbin doesn’t seem perturbed, nodding to himself. “Minho is my friend too, you know. One of my closest friends.”
Here, Jisung finds it in himself to nod. He doesn’t understand what is happening right now.
“The thing about Minho,” Changbin says, carefully, “is that he’s not an easy person to understand. He lives in his own world. When he lets you in, it’s like… it’s like anything that he says is possible, is possible. It’s consuming.”
“When we were younger, Minho convinced me to ride down the big gravel hill behind the school on the handlebars of his bike. He forgot to use the brakes, and I broke my arm in two places.” He cuts an empty smile at Jisung. “In the hospital, he said it felt like flying.”
Oh.
Jisung thinks about the times Minho’s been too excited, grabbed too hard, made him wince. Thinks about the depth in his eyes when they’re wandering around in the forest, how sometimes it takes a few tries to catch his attention.
Lately, when Minho looks at him in a dark classroom or in the shadows of the forest or his living room after dinner, Jisung’s breath catches in his throat, and he can’t look away. Even when his throat closes over. Even when he should.
“Yeah,” Changbin says, watching Jisung intently. “That’s the thing about Minho.”
***
When the rain finally clears, they trudge out to re-trace their favourite path through the woods, but end up waylaid near a rocky rise that neither of them have been to before. Rain has washed away the soft ground on the other side over time, creating a crumbling drop down into the forest below.
Jisung’s shirt sticks a little to his back underneath his hoodie. Too stubborn to take it off and carry it, he pushes his sleeves up his forearms and watches Minho clamber up the rocks. He’s wearing a cable knit jumper and his same old high-top sneakers, the soles worn smooth and slippery.
“Hyung,” Jisung hedges, wary.
Minho tosses a grin over his shoulder, pushing to his feet when he reaches the top. Backlit by the sun, the edges of his hair fry golden, tangling into his eyes in the breeze. He turns to face Jisung, temples shiny with sweat and bottom teeth showing in his smile. “You have to see this!” he calls, arms flung wide, messiah.
Jisung huffs a laugh, scraping a hand through his hair and making no move to scuttle up after Minho. “You’re facing the wrong way, though. The view is behind you.”
Amusement dances across Minho’s expression, then he shrugs, crouching to half-climb, half-slide back down. “Can’t look. Scared of heights.”
Jisung blusters out an incredulous laugh. Remembers Changbin’s story about the bike. “What? Why did you climb up there, then? You could have gotten hurt for nothing!”
Minho lands on his feet, grins brightly. “Sometimes it’s about taking the risk.”
***
The day starts off fine. Not great, just fine, like any other day. Jisung drifts listlessly between classes, tacks on a smile for Chan when he passes in the hallways, ignores the comments Hyunjin makes under his breath.
Then, in their last class of the day, Minho gets told off during maths for not paying attention when the teacher asks him for an answer, and Hyunjin snickers quietly. Hyunjin never laughs at Minho.
Jisung glances up to see the back of Minho’s neck flush red, shoulders hunched up around his ears. Catches Hyunjin watching him with something sharp in his eyes, and quickly ducks his head back down to his books, ice trickling down his spine.
As they leave class, Jisung tries to catch up to Minho in the hallway. To do what, exactly, he doesn’t know. Just to look into his eyes, maybe. See if he’s okay.
But in his haste, he doesn’t see the elbow Hyunjin aims for his side, sending him jostling against Minho. Both of their books scatter across the hall, and Minho rounds on him with fire in his eyes.
“Can you just watch where you’re going, and get out of the way for once in your life!”
Jisung reels back, tongue gone thick in his throat. “S-sorry, m’sorry—”
Blinking back tears, he rushes off in the opposite direction, not even bothering to stoop and gather his papers. He barely registers Felix crouching down to pick up Minho’s books, but Hyunjin’s smarmy, pleased face stands out in the crowd of bystanders.
The thing that Hyunjin doesn’t quite understand is that nobody knows how to hate Jisung better than Jisung. He wants to scrub away his own face, press himself flat enough until he can disappear into the walls.
He hides out in the bathroom like always, trying to calm down as students filter out of school. Only once the hallways are quiet does he emerge, trudging back to pick up his stuff. Changbin is waiting by his locker with Jisung’s books in hand, and he only offers a sad smile and a pat to the shoulder before carrying on to find Chan.
Jisung is half-surprised to hear a knock at the door later in the afternoon, but leads Minho inside to the living room anyway. He wonders what it will take before he stops letting Minho in, and can’t come up with an answer.
Jisung’s fingers fidget where he’s got them wrapped around the hem of his shirt, awkward at the opposite end of the couch from Minho. He’s afraid to look directly at him.
“I’m sorry,” Minho croaks out suddenly, knuckling at his eyes like he’s trying to force away tears. Jisung sits up ramrod straight. “I’m just so tired. I didn’t sleep last night because it was too loud, and then I got yelled at in class for falling asleep, and—”
“Hyung,” Jisung whispers, throat gone tight. “It’s ok. It’s ok, hyung.”
Minho drops his hands, looks away. Sighs out shaky, his whole body deflating with it. “M’sorry.”
Jisung stares at the water glass on the table. There’s fingerprints smudged around the sides, and the light comes through it in three places. Minho swallows next to him and Jisung’s jaw aches.
“Maybe let’s just watch a movie or something?” he offers, timid. Minho agrees, and Jisung puts on something they’ve both seen before. It doesn’t really matter — Minho is asleep within the first ten minutes, and Jisung lets him nap until his mother comes in with a complicated expression to tell them dinner is ready.
Jisung forgot she was here. He wonders how much she heard.
Minho stirs awake groggily and follows him to the table, eats slowly and quietly. He lingers at the door, and Jisung wishes he could ask him to stay here, where it’s safe and Jisung can keep an eye on him.
But Jisung doesn’t know how to ask, and some problems are too big for one person to try and fix.
Minho goes, and they don’t talk about it again.
***
For Jisung’s birthday, his mother and stepfather buy him tickets to the aquarium in the city. It’s as close as he can get to the ocean. He thinks that they intend for him to go with Chan when he sees there’s two tickets, but his mother gives him a cryptic smile and tells him he should ask Minho later that afternoon.
They’re having tteokbokki for dinner, because it’s what Jisung and his mother used to have in the city on his birthday. Minho is brimming with excitement when he arrives, overly-pleased to be celebrating Jisung.
He’s too nervous to ask. Minho notices almost immediately, eyes honing in on the way Jisung can barely meet his eyes, how he’s fidgeting a little in his seat. He turns fully, pinning Jisung in place with a look.
“Jisung-ah. You’re hiding something from me,” he demands, and Jisung blushes bright red. It’s embarrassing— how much he wanted Minho to notice, how happy he is that he did. He shyly produces the tickets from the top of his dresser.
To his surprise, Minho lights up when Jisung asks if he’d like to go. He moves too quickly and doesn’t notice how Jisung flinches, asks fifty times if Jisung’s sure that he wants Minho to come with him.
Jisung says yes, fifty times.
***
It’s crisp and quiet-cold on the train platform, early on Saturday morning. Jisung doesn’t ask where Minho’s parents think he is and Minho doesn’t offer an explanation. The morning sun is too-white and hazy breaking through the clouds, turning Minho’s eyes into liquid glass as he tilts forward to peer down the length of the empty tracks again.
The tips of his ears go pink when he notices Jisung watching. Minho scuffs the toe of his sneaker against the ridges of the yellow line on the platform and mumbles, “I wanted to see the train coming.”
With a twist in his chest, Jisung begins to suspect something. “Hyung— have you been to the city before?”
Minho nods at him, eyes wide and alive. “We went for school once, for the end of year trip. That was on a bus though, and I was still in Changbinnie’s class back then.” He smiles wistfully. “He kept pointing out things he remembered from when his family lived there.”
Jisung’s chest twists tighter, and an emotion he can’t name foams up in his throat. Before he can try and swallow around it, Minho’s attention is stolen away by the dinging of the crossing gates down by the road, and the rush of an approaching train.
The journey into the city is quiet, the regional train mostly empty this early in the morning. Minho’s breath fogs up the glass with how closely he presses against the window, watching the world speed by; faster than a bus, faster than a bicycle careening down a gravel hill. Jisung’s eyes get stuck somewhere around the curve of his jaw, outlined in wavering beams of sunlight.
They exit into the main city station, ants into the stampede. It’s a sea of coats and bags and the clacking of heeled shoes against tile and cement. Jisung nearly loses Minho near the staircase, finds him again at the exit turnstiles. Minho’s eyes are wide as he huddles close to Jisung’s back, something nervous about the set of his mouth as he tries to keep up with him in the crowd.
Keeping his eyes forward as they walk, Jisung wordlessly wriggles his arm around and takes Minho’s hand, expecting him to pull away. Minho goes rigid for a second, then shuffles slightly closer, gripping Jisung’s hand a little tighter. He lets out a breath, and hopes his grip hides the way his hand shakes.
The city looks different, with Minho next to him. It’s like he’s only just noticing for the first time all the little things he used to take for granted. People dart through the crowds with purpose, always in a rush, here. But Minho— he stumbles along after Jisung, bumping elbows and getting glares he doesn’t see, because he’s too busy craning his head back to look up at the towering buildings.
Jisung squeezes at his hand, tugging him out of the way of the crowd, and Minho blinks back down at him, flashing a somewhat bewildered smile. “There’s people living up there with the birds.”
That could be you, Jisung thinks, then, Don’t go too high. Don’t go where I can’t reach you.
The aquarium is busy with families, but somehow less claustrophobic than out on the streets, even walled in by glass and water. They drift through the exhibits in a state of wonder, elbows and shoulders brushing as they silently orbit around each other.
Minho is hesitant about getting too close to the glass, until they stop in front of an otter enclosure and Jisung steps forward to press a finger against the tank. One of the otters spirals over, rolling onto its back to stare at Jisung before squirming forwards, pressing a wet nose to the glass.
“It likes you!” Minho giggles, shuffling forward. Jisung’s voice gets caught in his throat when he turns and finds Minho so close, huddled in towards the curve of Jisung’s outstretched arm to fit his palm to the glass next to Jisung’s. The otter huffs a little, blowing bubbles and fogging up the glass before flipping away playfully. Minho giggles again, and Jisung has an abrupt mental image of pressing his other hand to the tank, caging Minho in.
He drops his arm and steps backwards. “Let’s keep going.”
There’s so many exhibits and so many types of creatures, yet Jisung keeps catching himself lingering on the way blue light flickers through the water and wavers across the bridge of Minho’s nose.
Jisung thinks, maybe just for a moment, he sees Minho watching him back.
They save the best for last, the part that Jisung had been most excited for when his mother showed him a brochure for the aquarium. In the main exhibit, there’s a long glass tunnel stretching the length of the tank. The crowds have thinned considerably by now, dampening the echo of voices against the curved walls.
Jisung drags Minho through the entrance giddily, turning slowly on his heel to marvel at the shoals of fish shimmering all around them. He remembers a feeling of being trapped underwater. Pictures himself standing on the other side of the glass, frothy and glittering with bubbles as he loses all his air, watching Minho walk past.
“Jisungie!” Minho clutches too-tight at Jisung’s sleeve, pointing up as a manta ray glides overhead. The ray is dark grey and silent as it passes, blocking the light and casting Minho’s face into shadow. His mouth is slack in awe, and Jisung nearly doubles over with the sudden intensity of the feeling that washes through him.
It’s too much, not enough. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
Minho’s eyes are round and so young when he looks back at Jisung. “It doesn’t seem real.”
“Yeah,” Jisung says, voice sticky.
The sky is bleeding grapefruit pink and orange when they exit; flickering blocks of colour slanting through the windows of the train and pooling on the linoleum floor. The carriage is evening-busy, but slowly empties out the further they get from the city. Jisung points out two spare seats and they collapse into them wearily, slouching into each other.
Minho brushes a fingertip featherlight over Jisung’s hand where it’s curled around the edge of the seat, traces out the peaks and valleys of his knuckles. “Thank you for bringing me,” he whispers. Then he sighs, tucks his head into Jisung’s shoulder.
Jisung stiffens and melts all at once. He wants to say something that he doesn’t know how to say. He wants to have Minho like this all the time.
It’s consuming, Changbin’s voice whispers at the base of his skull.
Jisung tips his head back against the seat and closes his eyes.
***
Things have been… better, lately. Hyunjin seems to be ignoring him rather than teasing him, which means the rest of the group ignores him too. Minho seeks him out in the quiet parts of school more often than not, now, and Jisung feels less grey, more real.
It’s the Friday before Chusoek, and Jisung has the house to himself. His parents are going to visit his step-father’s family, and Chan is staying with Felix for the weekend. They tried to drag Jisung along with them, but eventually agreed to let him stay when he told them Minho wanted to sleep over.
Jisung thinks it must bother Minho, the way they all quietly pity him. But if it means the two of them can stay up all night unsupervised, watching movies and eating junk, maybe there’s a silver lining after all.
The hallways are more crowded than usual, before class. People are loitering, girls giggling with their friends and boys shoving each other teasingly— little slips of paper and packaged treats passing between hands, like white moths fluttering in a sea of dark uniforms.
It was a tradition at his last school, too. He didn’t receive any treats there either. Jisung smiles faintly at it all, then tucks his chin and shuffles through the crowd towards his locker.
Almost instantly, someone crowds in uncomfortably close to his back, jostling him a little as people stream past. He’s about to turn and say something when he gets a whiff of a familiar soap-and-wool smell.
“Hannie,” Minho murmurs under his breath, nudging closer to his side. Jisung forces his body to relax, tilting his head slightly in acknowledgement as he watches out of the corner of his eye. Minho doesn’t usually approach him like this, not out where everyone can see.
“Here,” he says, pressing something into the palm of Jisung’s hand where it hangs at his side, hidden from view. Jisung curls his fingers around it instinctively, a question bubbling up in his throat, but Minho has already drifted away, swallowed back up by the sea of students.
Huddling into the alcove of his locker, Jisung carefully uncurls his fingers. In his palm sits a little white paper crane, and a half-smushed chocolate wrapped in foil.
Very, very gently, Jisung places the gifts on top of the stack of books in his locker, fingers gripping tight around the metal of the door. He swallows thickly, blinks at the little white crane. Minho thought of him. Minho made him a paper crane. Something hot and sad and achey foams up in his throat. It shames him, how much he wanted to be part of this. Wanted Minho to think of him.
Jisung shuts his locker and heads to class biting at the inside of his cheek to stop anything from spilling out.
***
Later, Minho pokes his head over the top of the bathroom stall and Jisung startles so badly he nearly drops his lunch.
“Hyung!” he hisses. “What if I was… you know!”
Minho snorts. “But you aren’t, though.” He pauses, eyes flicking to Jisung’s lunch balanced once again on his knees. He looks like maybe he wants to comment on the fact that Jisung still hides here to eat his lunch, but he doesn’t. Jisung pretends he doesn’t notice.
“We’re still having movie night tonight, right?”
Jisung huffs a laugh. “Yes, hyung. My parents leave around two this afternoon.”
“Cool,” Minho smiles— his real smile— and says softly, “Enjoy your lunch, Hannie.” Then he drops back down to the ground and strolls out.
Jisung catches himself grinning down at his food like an idiot, and squeezes his eyes shut to try and lose the imprint of Minho’s smile against the back of his retinas.
***
There’s a knock at the front door, and Jisung’s stomach flips.
He smoothes his shirt down from where he’d absentmindedly twisted his fingers in the hem, going to open the door. Why is he so nervous?
Minho smiles timidly from the front porch, dressed in comfortable clothes and fingers tight around the strap of his bag. Maybe it’s not just Jisung feeling strange, then.
They drag all Jisung’s pillows and blankets to the living room and build a nest in front of the TV, complete with snacks and sweet drinks. Minho’s plan is to watch as many anime episodes as possible back-to-back before they pass out.
They make it through two episodes before Minho kneels up, reaching over to pull something from his bag.
“Hyung?” Jisung mumbles, then pushes to his elbows with wide eyes when Minho sways a bottle of soju in front of him. “Hyung! Where did you get that?!”
“Snuck it from my dad,” Minho grins at him. “C’mon, you have to try it at least once!”
Jisung blushes at the— correct— assumption that he’s never had alcohol before. He’s nervous that his mother will find out. He’s nervous that he’ll say something to Minho that he shouldn’t. “But—”
“It’s ok, Hannie. Hyung won’t let anything bad happen, right?”
He flicks his eyes away from Minho’s, swallowing around a lump in his throat. “Right.”
Minho swirls the bottle and uncaps it with a flourish, then watches like a hawk as Jisung hesitantly takes a sip. It’s not as bad as he thought it would be, smooth and sweet like liquid heat down his throat.
“Oh,” he says, grimacing a little at the aftertaste and handing Minho the bottle back.
“Good, right?” Minho smiles, tipping his head back as he drinks. Jisung watches the bottle press into his lower lip, still wet with Jisung’s spit. Watches the way Minho’s throat bobs as he swallows. He looks up, and Minho’s smiling at him again, eyes glittering. “Just wait until it hits you.”
Someone turns the anime back on again, but he loses the thread of the plot. Jisung doesn’t drink much, pretending to sip when Minho passes the bottle over. Minho, on the other hand, isn’t nervous at all.
“Hannie,” he giggles, tipping into Jisung’s space, slouching against his side. His teeth are glossy in the dim lighting as he grins up at Jisung, face pink and soft and happy. So young.
“What, hyung-ah?” Jisung smiles down indulgently at him. It’s so late, verging on early morning, and Minho blinks quickly, fighting against the droop in his eyelids.
He giggles again, fingers tracing pretend constellations in the sky. Jisung curls his fingernails into his palms to stop himself from reaching out and tucking a wave of Minho’s hair behind the seashell curve of his ear.
“Jisungie.”
“Yes, hyung.”
Minho grips at his wrist, tugs until Jisung looks him in the eyes. There’s a serious little line between his brows, and Jisung wants to smooth it out with his thumb.
“You’re so good,” Minho whispers, something heavy behind the words. “You’re just so… I like you a lot, Jisung-ah. Is that ok?”
Jisung’s head spins. He blinks, and he sees stars, like he’s laid out on his back on the roof in the middle of the night. Maybe he drank more than he thought. Maybe this is what Minho meant when he said it hits you.
“Hyung,” he mumbles, “what—”
Then Minho surges forward, so fast it should make Jisung flinch, and suddenly there’s warm lips pressing firm against his. He can feel the shape of his own teeth, wants to open his mouth and crowd Minho down against him, so small that he could swallow him whole and keep him safe inside forever.
“Minho-hyung,” he breathes out, and Minho pulls away, slumps into his side again with a sad little noise.
“Jisungie,” he mumbles, then tugs his arm up over his face, groaning out something unintelligible.
Jisung’s brain is white static. He likes Minho so much that it hurts to think about, sometimes. He’s never allowed himself to pretend that Minho felt the same, to imagine the feel of him pressed so close—
He can barely speak around the butterflies in his throat, whispers so as to not break the spell. “I— I care a lot, too. You’re my best friend.”
There’s a pause, and Minho’s arms drop back down to his stomach. He huffs out a hollow-sounding laugh. “Ah.”
“Hyung?” Jisung worries he’s said the wrong thing, that Minho didn’t understand because of the butterflies in his throat. He tries to lean over and see Minho’s face, but he rolls onto his side, away from Jisung.
“S’okay,” Minho mumbles, reaching back blindly to pat Jisung’s arm. “Tired. Wanna sleep, now.”
“Okay,” Jisung breathes out, swallows around fluttering gossamer wings.
Minho’s breath takes a long time to even out, audible even over the midnight rain smudging down the windows. Jisung wonders whether he should try and say something, but doesn’t want to wake Minho up.
He can’t help feeling like he said something to upset Minho, replays the night over in his head. Then he thinks, oh. Maybe Minho had butterflies in his throat, too. Nervous and shy, like Jisung.
Jisung squeezes his eyes shut tight, can’t help feel a swirl of giddy anticipation at the realisation.
Lee Minho likes him back.
***
Jisung rolls over the next morning, back stiff and sore in a way it really shouldn’t be for his age, and inhales deeply. His pillow smells like soap and wool.
Blinking fully awake, he sits up, confused to find himself alone in the living room. His blood is thick and sluggish as he drags himself to the kitchen and finds a note left in Minho’s familiar handwriting.
PARENTS WANTED ME HOME. SORRY.
He frowns, pictures Minho in the blue morning light, packing his bag stealthily while Jisung was still asleep, sneaking out the front door without lingering on the porch. Minho’s parents have never asked for him to come home like this before. Why didn’t he wake up Jisung and tell him himself?
Something turns over in his stomach. He wants to talk about last night. He wants to tell Minho again how much he likes him. Maybe hear Minho tell him again that he likes Jisung, too.
The world wavers between each blink, like he’s underwater again. He rubs a knuckle at his eye, tries to find reason. It’s fine. Something might have happened with his parents, and Minho had to go, that’s all. Things would go back to normal next week.
***
Minho doesn’t come over for two days and avoids meeting Jisung’s eyes as they drift past each other in school. It’s not that he routinely comes over every day, but he usually finds a way to tell Jisung beforehand on the days that he can’t show up. It feels different this time, panic drip-feeding into his bloodstream.
On the third day, Jisung manages to catch him alone in the bathroom. Minho’s got his back to the far wall, and his eyes are shifty, darting to the door over Jisung’s shoulder every few seconds.
“Sorry,” Minho mumbles. “I’ve just been busy. My parents need me at home.” He’s looking at the sinks when he says it, and Jisung doesn’t understand which part he’s lying about. He thinks he’s done something wrong, for Minho to be acting like this, but he doesn’t know what.
“Hyung, did—”
“Can I please go?” Minho says, voice small and timid.
His voice is so off and wrong that it makes something acidic swirl at the back of Jisung’s throat, and he jerks a step backwards, turns so he’s not caging Minho in against the wall so much. “Yeah, of—of course, hyung. But—”
Minho slips around him without another word, ducking his head as he pushes out the door.
On the fourth day, Jisung wakes up with a stomachache, and it never really seems to go away.
The avoidance goes on for the rest of the week, and then the week after that, until Jisung hasn’t spoken to Minho in three weeks and he feels completely unmoored.
***
The distance aches like growing pains.
He’s more sad than anything else. Or, not sad, exactly, but melancholy. It’s comforting in a way, though. A heavy blue weight swelling against his ribs.
It would be more bearable if not for his mother.
She asks once where Minho has been lately. Jisung can’t remember what lie he told, but she doesn’t ask again.
At some point, he blinks, and finds himself sitting alone at the dinner table opposite her.
“Baby,” she says. Her hands are tucked up under her chin, chopsticks flat on the table like she’s been watching him for a while. “Sweetheart. Where have you gone?”
Jisung starts falling behind in school. It doesn’t really matter, though. Nobody seems to notice.
It’s easier to come home and retreat into his books and manga and documentaries. He can separate the world out there from the one in Jisung’s head; one that he can escape to each afternoon until reality drags him back in the morning. Bottling it up hurts, but crying hurts too.
He just wants to sleep until this is all over, but doesn’t allow himself to stay in bed. Can’t stomach the thought of his mother finding him like that again.
He wants to be someone his mother and Chan and his own younger self would be proud of. But he doesn’t know what that person looks like. He daydreams; pictures himself, older, confident, walking down the streets of Seoul. Hyunjin passes him, and waves in recognition. Jisung goes to wave back, for old times’ sake, but his hand is weighed down, fingers intertwined with someone else’s. He looks up, and Minho looks back.
***
Hyunjin’s become worse, again. Jisung lets it happen, lets himself be pushed around by the roiling waves.
Seungmin and Jeongin stand by and watch as Hyunjin sends Jisung’s books scattering to the floor in class. They land at the foot of Minho’s desk, nudging the toes of his sneakers. Jisung keeps his head down as he hurriedly picks them up, opens to the correct page just as the teacher walks in and tells them to quiet down.
Look at me, he wants to shout. Don’t you see what’s happening here?
Jisung stares at the words on the page until they blur together. He wants to make everything beautiful. He wants to leave and never come back.
At home, he locks himself in his room and lies flat on his back on the floor until his brain feels less like grey static and self-loathing. It was good while it lasted, he tries to tell himself. It was more than he expected when he came here.
He tries to let it go, but he’s too soft; an overripe peach. Every bump makes him bruise.
***
The forest is shadowed and unfamiliar, warping in and out of focus around him. Scraped-bare trees loom overhead, caging out the night sky. There aren’t any stars, even though Jisung thinks there should be.
Tinder-dry twigs snap under his bare feet as he shifts— except when he looks down, they aren’t twigs but bones; tiny and shattering like porcelain against his heels.
Jisung’s heart beats rabbit-quick in his chest, panic curling against the lower rungs of his ribs and urging him to run, but he can’t, feet dragging against the forest floor and smearing blood against the leaves.
Something brushes against his side in the dark, at the place where he was once bruised purple, where he’s most vulnerable and soft. Tender.
There’s a voice nipping at his earlobe. It wants him to turn around. He tries to run, but it won’t let him— turns his head like a puppet on a string.
Minho’s face is a pale oval in the moonlight, gossamer and ink.
Bunny, Jisung thinks, except it isn’t him who thinks it. He whines around the sudden pressure against the inside of his skull, and the corner of Minho’s mouth curls.
In the shadows of the forest, Minho’s eyes look all wrong. Too dark, too much pupil. He looks like he could eat Jisung alive, like he could scrape out the corners of Jisung’s mind with a metal spoon.
“Hannie,” Minho whispers. “Are you having fun yet?”
When he smiles, his teeth are predator-sharp.
The walls of Jisung’s room are solid and unassuming as he sits up in bed with a gasp; pulse racing and a whimper stuck in his throat. It was just a dream, he tells himself, shuddering back down into the mattress. A nightmare.
Jisung slips his thumb inside his mouth and clamps his knuckle between his molars. It wasn’t real, it can’t hurt you. He breathes out slow and shaky. There’s no stars visible outside his window, even in reality, hidden by milky clouds.
When he closes his eyes, he sees Minho’s razor-sharp smile. It can’t hurt you, he repeats to himself, and ignores the way he can feel his heartbeat in his tongue.
***
When Jisung walks into literature class that afternoon, Minho is the only other person in the room, backlight by afternoon sunlight. Untouchable. He doesn’t look away from the window until Jisung squeaks to a stop right in front of his desk, something urgent propelling him forward without his rational mind giving consent.
Don’t do this, Han Jisung. Don’t do it, don’t—
“Hyung?” Jisung says, so soft it’s almost a whisper.
Minho’s gone tense all over, watching Jisung out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t say anything, not even a noise in the back of his throat. Jisung’s never felt so insubstantial.
“Minho-hyung. Please, just— I don’t understand. Did I…What did I do?”
Minho’s chin is turning slowly, mouth opening around a word, when there’s a snarky little laugh from behind Jisung. “Can I help you, Han? You’re in my way.”
Jisung flinches back. They’re all there, fanned out behind Hyunjin; staring, passive. The whole gang. Jisung remembers seeing them on his first day and thinking they could be friends. What did they think of him then? Now? Do they even think of him at all?
Jisung trembles where he stands, but doesn’t allow himself to drop his gaze. Wills himself not to cry. “I need to speak to Minho-ssi.”
“Minho-ssi,” Hyunjin repeats, high and nasally. He glances over at Minho for a reaction, then back to Jisung when he doesn’t get one.
There’s a bruise under Hyunjin’s eye. Hyunjin sees Jisung noticing it, and clenches his jaw so hard a tendon stands out in his neck.
“Are you having fun?” he sneers. “Playing make-believe?”
Jisung digs his fingers into his palms until it hurts. In another life, he and Hyunjin are best friends. They have a secret handshake, and inside jokes, and Hyunjin never tries to make him cry.
Felix is watching Jisung with something helpless to the slope of his shoulders. I didn’t mean for it to get this heavy, his eyes say. It was supposed to be something that you could carry.
“What do you want from me, Hyunjin?” Jisung’s throat hurts like he’s sick.
“The same thing everyone wants,” Hyunjin says. “To be entertained.”
Jisung’s eyes slide to Minho involuntarily. To be entertained. “Hyung,” he pleads, except his voice cracks, and Minho won’t meet his eyes. He looks zoned out, like he’s not really here.
Hyunjin looks between them, and his smile turns cruel. “‘Hyung’? He’s not your friend, Han. Just because you pity a stray dog doesn’t make it your friend. You might play with it, let it follow you around, but it’s not your friend. Don’t you get it yet?”
“Hyunjin,” Felix reprimands, but it’s too late.
Let it follow you around. Jisung’s blood runs cold, and his body is moving before his brain catches up, pushing past Hyunjin and running out the door. A teacher might have called out as he runs down the hallway, but he can’t hear over the white noise in his ears.
Follow you follow you follow you.
He finds himself in the same place he’s been hiding all year - the last stall in the bathrooms. Locking the door behind him and collapsing onto the seat, he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Thoughts whirl past behind his eyelids too quick to grasp; Hyunjin’s sneer, the tense hunch of Minho’s shoulders, a soju bottle wet around the rim.
He’ll have to wait out his last class hiding in here. There’s no way he can go back and sit in that room. The teacher will probably think he’s skipping on purpose and call his mother after school, tell her about how he’s letting his grades slip, and she’ll know that Jisung has been lying to her for weeks.
Jisung feels his eyes start to get hot, then he’s startled by the bathroom door opening.
A familiar pair of sneakers trudge across the floor and drag to a stop in front of the closed stall door. There’s a long moment where neither of them say anything. He stares at the toes of his own shoes, and wonders if things would have been easier if he had never opened this door that very first time Minho asked.
“Jisung.” Minho’s voice is all wrong, flat and tired. Jisung slowly shuffles forward, lets the door fall open. Minho's eyes are red, purple pressed underneath like thumbprints. He’s still beautiful, in the way a volcano or a supernova is beautiful.
Jisung is tired, too, but there’s nothing beautiful about it.
“Why didn’t you say anything, before?” Jisung says wetly. “Why don’t you ever say anything?”
“It’s not like that,” Minho huffs, roughly shoving a hand through his hair. Jisung knows by now all the signs that Minho’s getting overwhelmed, frustrated— but Jisung doesn’t want to be the one to bring him back down. Not this time. “Hyunjin’s not that bad. It isn’t easy for him, at home.”
Jisung thinks that maybe they aren’t just talking about Hyunjin. He thinks that maybe it’s never just been about Hyunjin. But he’s tired of trying to understand, of being understanding.
“That’s not fair, hyung. It’s h-hurting me, and I’m s-so sad. And hyung doesn’t— you just…”
“I don’t what?” Minho’s eyes are hard. “It’s not my fault that we can’t all be soft like you— can’t all be teacher’s pets, do whatever we want. We don’t all have families that love us, either. Life isn’t fair. Grow up, Jisung.”
“Hyung.” His bottom lip wobbles. “Hyung. I thought we were… f-friends.”
Minho looks at him, through him, and doesn’t answer.
Jisung feels very, very small and naive.
The pain is so acute, clean and splintering, like little white bones of a rabbit spearing through his chest. Jisung remembers the bruise he had spreading across his hip a few weeks ago, and wishes it wasn’t quite so faded. Then he would at least have something to show for this.
Everything goes a little numb around him. Sounds are watery in his ears as he stumbles out of the stall, heaving his bag over his shoulder as he goes. He has to go, he has to get away from here, from all of this. He thinks he hears someone call his name, maybe, but he doesn’t stop running.
***
Time unspools.
Jisung doesn’t remember anything between running out of the bathroom and reaching his own front door.
The door shuts definitively behind him, echoing in the stillness of the house. His parents are away again this weekend. At least nobody is around to see this, he thinks, folding in on himself.
Jisung isn’t sure how long he spends curled against the front door, sobbing into the crook of his elbow, before his legs start to go numb. He abruptly pictures himself as if from outside his body, small and wet and spineless.
Stop being so pathetic, he tells himself, pressing the heels of his hands hard into the hollows of his eyes. You should have known better. He tugs his water bottle out from his bag, and drains half of it in one go. Then he forces himself to his feet, shoves his shoes on and stumbles back out the door, beginning the walk towards the forest.
The fresh air clears his head a little, and the damp smell of green trees and soil is familiar and comforting in the same way it always is. At a fork in the path, he deliberately chooses to go left, where Minho had always taken them right.
He thinks maybe he should feel angrier, but instead he only feels a little sick. An image of Minho’s face under wavering blue lights at the aquarium comes to mind, and he pushes it down with a flick of his head. How could he have been so naive? Is a friend really a friend if they only exist where nobody else can see?
You should have known, you should have known, you should have—
He’s in an unfamiliar part of the forest, now, and it feels good, to be somewhere that Minho hasn’t. Not at school, or his living room, his bed, the stream running up further north. Jisung should have known, when Minho was spending every afternoon at his house, at his dinner table, and still wouldn’t meet his eyes in class.
Grow up, Jisung.
He stops at the base of an ancient tree, presses his spine into the bark of the trunk until it hurts, then slumps down with his head on his arms. Hot tears soak through the sleeve of his jacket, tacky against his skin. It feels like he’ll never stop crying. Like it’ll never stop hurting.
It’ll pass. It has to. He reminds himself that there is more out there for him in the world. He’ll find his place. He just has to get through the day, and then through the weekend, and the next week, and the rest of the year, and then he can finally…
Finally…
***
When Jisung eventually peels his head up, he’s got a stiff neck and gummy eyes. Blinking groggily, he realises he somehow managed to cry himself to sleep, and that the sun is almost completely down.
Shivering, he stumbles to his feet, nails scrabbling against tree bark as his numb legs nearly buckle underneath him. The forest is blue and cold and alien around him.
“Shit,” he breathes, peering up at the rapidly darkening sky. He didn’t bring anything with him, not even a flashlight.
Turning in a jerky circle, he tries to figure out what direction he came from. The path is overgrown and unfamiliar, and he can’t tell which way leads home. He shivers again, slowly beginning to realise the gravity of the situation.
If there’s one thing he’s learned from watching documentaries, is that people are no match for nature. He takes a deep breath, and considers his options. One, he can try and stumble his way home in the dark, possibly manage to injure himself somehow, and probably only succeed in getting more disorientated. Two, he can huddle down here for the night, try to stay warm, and find his way back home as soon as it’s light outside. Nobody is going to come looking for him tonight; Chan is supposed to be with Changbin and his parents aren’t back until Sunday. If he waits he can probably find his own way back, and nobody has to know.
If he were to get even more lost or injured, he’d be stuck out here until somebody thinks to look for him, and the only other person who comes out here is—
So he’s going to wait.
Carefully picking his way back over to the tree he’d fallen asleep against earlier, Jisung pulls his jacket tight around himself and huddles back against the trunk. It isn’t exactly warm, his body heat seeping out into the ground, turned cold and unforgiving as soon as the sun slipped below the horizon.
His fingers and the backs of his legs are the first things to go numb, the chill biting at his nose as he tucks his chin down into the collar of his jacket, shivering miserably. He doesn’t think it’s cold enough to get frostbite— or worse— but after a while it’s hard to keep a grasp on his trailing thoughts, everything going a little foggy and distant.
Trying to guess how much time has passed since he first left his house, or since he sat down in this spot, is impossible. Tiny noises are amplified at night, echoing unfamiliarly through the eerily silent trees. He wonders why there’s no breeze, and then wonders whether he’d even feel it if he was bitten on the leg by something nocturnal and deadly.
Minho might be the one to find him, after all— he might go for a walk one day in some distant future, and stumble across Jisung, the boy that never came back, frozen and thawed and eaten alive.
Jisung shakes his head sharply, trying to rid himself of the macabre thought. The sun will rise, even if nobody realises that he was missing. He will not let himself be consumed by the woods.
It could be minutes, or hours, later, when he’s startled out of a sleepy, cold-induced daze, something pricking at the edges of his conscious with urgency.
He thinks he hallucinates the voice, at first.
Then it comes again, faintly; “Jisung!”
Jisung coughs, trying to sit upright and call back, but his voice catches in his throat. Coughing louder, he tries again, croaky and numb with cold. “Ov-ver h-here!”
There’s a beat of silence, then a crashing of someone pushing through the forest, a beam of light splicing through the trees. “Jisung! Where are you?!”
“Here!” Jisung coughs, and then there’s a flashlight being pointed directly into his eyes as someone runs over, swearing loudly. He winces away from the light, blinking away spots as Changbin comes skidding to a stop in front of him.
Changbin?
He stares at Jisung for a beat, like he can’t quite believe he’s really there. Jisung thinks he’s going to yell, going to tell him to get up and explain himself— and then he’s dropping to his knees, yanking Jisung into a hug so tight that it takes a second to feel the way Changbin’s shaking.
“You’re okay, it’s ok, Jisung-ah,” Changbin babbles. Jisung blinks wetly, is confused when he realises he’s crying again. “Hyung is here, hyung’s got you now.”
Fear and relief hit him all at once, and Jisung sobs as his frozen fingers curl painfully into the front of Changbin’s jacket. The fabric is real and warm and someone came looking for him. “Hyung,” he gasps. He realises he was more scared than he wanted to admit to himself.
Changbin swears again, pulling away slightly to shout out, “Hyung! Over here!”
There’s more crashing through the trees, and Jisung doesn’t have time to wonder who else is out here before they’re joined by a frantic-looking Chan.
“Jisung!” he gasps, and Jisung cries harder as Chan pulls him into his arms. “Jisung, oh my god. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Hyungie,” Jisung blubbers, pressing his nose into Chan’s shoulder, the tears hot against his numb face. He didn’t think anyone would even notice he was gone.
“Sung-ah. Shit,” Chan pulls back to look at him, rubbing his hands briskly up Jisung’s arms. “You’re freezing. Your lips are blue.”
“We gotta get him home,” Changbin says, then wriggles out of his own jacket to tug it across Jisung’s shoulders, ignoring his weak protests. “Are you hurt? Can you walk?”
Jisung shakes his head jerkily, then nods, but his legs are staticky with cold and won’t behave when he tries to get to his knees. Chan and Changbin drape his arms over their shoulders, and heave him upright, steadying him when his legs threaten to buckle.
It’s slow going at first, until he starts to thaw, and then he clings to Chan’s side for warmth instead.
Changbin pushes ahead, moving tree branches out of the way. Jisung catches him staring as he holds a branch for them to duck under, and in the swaying beam of their flashlights, his expression looks so stricken that Jisung nearly trips over his own feet. Chan steadies him with a strong arm around his waist, and Changbin’s face is shadowed in the night as he turns back to the path.
They don’t really talk as they wind their way through the forest— nobody asks Jisung what happened, why he ran off. It must mean that Chan knows, and a tight ball of worry builds in Jisung’s chest. He wonders how much Changbin told him. He wonders if someone called his mother.
It isn’t until they reach the very edge of the forest, and Jisung spots the glow of a distant streetlight up ahead, where the grass gives way to pavement, that he clears his throat.
“H-how did you find me?”
Changbin twists his mouth up, looking away. Chan’s fingers dig in a little against Jisung’s ribs. He answers carefully, “Minho thought you might be in the woods.”
Jisung’s voice catches in his throat, comes out small. “Minho?”
Chan nods, once. “You should hear it from him, first.”
Jisung doesn’t understand, but then they turn the corner onto their street, their house coming into view. Under the porch light, a figure sits hunched over, head dropped into their hands.
Minho. Jisung makes a strangled noise, and Chan’s hand shifts, steadying at the centre of his back.
They’re too far away for Minho to hear, but his head snaps up all the same, eyes immediately finding Jisung. He freezes, and then he’s on his feet and running; Jisung barely has time to register what’s happening before Minho crashes right into him. Jisung catches him on instinct, stumbling backwards with how tightly Minho grabs onto him.
“Jagi,” Minho breathes out into his shoulder, and Jisung feels sick. It was all just entertainment. Playing make-believe. He should have known he should have known he should have—
“Jisung-ah.” Minho’s hand comes up to cradle the back of Jisung’s head, his whole body trembling beneath Jisung’s palms. “Hyung is sorry, Jisungie. Hyung is so, so s-sorry.”
It wrings everything from him, presses against every bruise and scrape and aching bone. Jisung crumples, pressing his face to the hot skin of Minho’s throat as he starts crying again.
Minho keeps them both upright, mumbles things into Jisung’s hair that he’s too washed-out to understand. Chan and Changbin quietly move back in an attempt to give them privacy, but Jisung can feel the way their eyes trace Minho’s hand stroking down his spine.
It’s too much, all of it. He can feel his breaths start to come shallower, and he struggles to wrap his head around everything that has happened today. Or maybe it’s yesterday, now. Minho is holding him so tight, and he can’t, he doesn’t know how—
“Ok,” Chan’s voice breaks through the haze, gentle but firm. “I need to get Jisungie inside now, Minho-yah.”
Minho’s fingers curl in imperceptibly, but then he pulls away, steps back. Chan comes up with an arm behind Jisung, steadying him where he sways. He didn’t realise he was so unsteady on his feet; untethered, a paper boy.
“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” Minho croaks, eyes wide and trying to hold Jisung’s.
When it takes Jisung too long to answer, Chan hums. “You can come back in the afternoon, maybe, if Jisung feels like talking. Ok?”
Minho nods, hanging his head a little. Changbin steps up beside him, gently places a hand on his shoulder. “How about I walk back home with you? It’s on my way.”
Minho nods again, and Changbin shoots Chan a weary smile before he starts turning them away.
“Hyung,” Jisung mumbles at the ground, not really directed at any one person. It doesn’t matter; all three of them stop and turn to him. “Thank you.”
There’s a pause, then Chan tugs him a little closer into his side. “Ok, Sungie. Let’s get you home.”
***
Chan helps him upstairs, helps him out of his clothes, gives him water, washes his face. Washes his face again after Jisung bursts into tears and gets the shoulder of Chan’s shirt all snotty.
Chan’s been right here the whole time, Jisung realises. He’s been reaching out, trying to get through to him, and all this time Jisung thought he was sitting alone in the dark.
“Hyung,” Jisung croaks as Chan tries to get him into bed, tears spilling over again. “Please don’t be mad at Changbin-hyung. He thought he was helping. I’m sorry— I’m sorry I never let you in.”
Something heart-wrenching twists Chan’s face before he smoothes it back out again. Swipes his thumb across Jisung’s cheek. “Shh, Jisungie. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“But—”
“Jisung,” Chan says, voice firm. “It’s ok. We can talk about it in the morning, alright?”
Then he brushes his fingers through Jisung’s hair, just once, just like his mother does. When Jisung’s eyes fall closed, Chan does it again, and doesn’t stop until sleep swells up around them and takes Jisung under.
***
Chan is kind, and forgiving, and guilty for not seeing what had been going on this whole time. He says he feels responsible; for Felix, for Changbin, for not looking past Minho sitting at their dinner table.
“It’s not your fault, hyung,” Jisung says, over and over. “I tried everything to hide it from you.”
Chan forgives him, over and over, but is guilty nonetheless.
Blind panic stopped Chan from thinking to call their parents last night when Jisung went missing, and when he mentions it in the morning, Jisung begs him not to tell them. He thinks the guilt is the only reason Chan agrees.
Sitting across the dining table from Chan and recounting everything that’s happened to him here makes Jisung see things in a different light.
Looking back, he feels sorry for himself. He’s only ever wanted desperately to belong, to have people that cared about him as much as he cared about them. He wanted to be wanted.
At his last school, Jisung was so meek and unsure of himself that he drifted through the hallways like a ghost, blending into the background. He became so invisible that even his teachers stopped noticing whether he was there or not. Eventually, he stopped turning up, just to see if anyone even realised he was missing.
It took a week before his mother came home in the middle of the day and found him in bed staring up at the ceiling. He hadn’t tried to run away, back then. He’d just stopped getting up.
His mother had been excited and busy with her new husband, and Jisung hadn’t wanted to spoil everything, but after that day, she’d taken up Chan’s father’s offer to move out to the country. We have to get you out of here, she’d whispered into Jisung’s hair, blinking back tears.
Jisung had wanted to start over, at this new school. He wanted to try harder, be normal. Didn’t want to make his mother cry.
He’s been starving for love, adoration. Just like everyone else.
But the love was there, even if he had a hard time seeing it. His mother, unconditionally; loving him so well that it hurt his heart sometimes. His step-father, buying him tickets to the aquarium, anime, big hardback books on bugs. Chan, waiting for him outside his classroom, leaving his bedroom door open. Even Changbin, in his own way.
Then there was Minho.
Trying to protect Jisung from a snake bite. Holding onto his hand for dear life in a city subway station, pressing into his side at the aquarium, on his living room couch. All of those walks in the woods, a B on his literature test, the bird’s nest; that very first day when Jisung said he’d seen a famous anime voice actor and Minho turned around.
He’s not sure what it was, the thing that he had with Minho. He thinks there was something like love, in the ways that they knew how, but it was painful, too. Jisung was hungry for more than what Minho could give him.
He doesn’t really believe the things Hyunjin said yesterday, not now, in the light of day. Jisung was more to Minho than just entertainment, a stray dog. He knows that Minho needed him too, maybe even more than he realised.
But Jisung had been right, too, crying in the bathroom. It wasn’t fair, how Minho had treated him, allowed him to be treated. That’s not how you treat your friends. Jisung understood that now, and he wouldn't let it happen again, not when he had people who cared about him.
The love that had been there the whole time.
***
There’s a knock on the front door at exactly one in the afternoon, and Chan rubs encouragingly at Jisung’s back before making his way upstairs. An illusion of privacy, but close enough if Jisung needs support.
He moves to the door in a daze, so nervous his whole stomach feels squeezed tight.
Minho is standing too close on the other side, backlit by weak midday sun and shadowed under the awning of his porch. Jisung remembers the first time he opened the door to Minho on his porch, how different everything seemed then.
The Minho standing in front of him now has red eyes, dark circles like bruises underneath them, lips chapped and worried raw. He looks like he hasn’t slept since Jisung last saw him. Jisung’s heart still thumps painfully in his chest.
“Come in,” he whispers, turning back to the hallway. Minho closes the door behind himself, silently slips off his shoes. Jisung leads them into the living room out of habit, and feels helpless when Minho sits as far away from him as possible on the couch.
There’s a long moment of silence. It hasn’t felt awkward like this between them in a long time, not since the very beginning. Jisung wonders if Minho expects him to be the one to start the conversation, and it makes irritation pull at his brows.
Minho blows out a harsh sigh, yanking his fingers through his hair. “I can’t figure out how to say what I want to say.”
Jisung looks at him, feels the irritation slide away. “It’s ok, hyung. Well, it’s not, but I mean you can just— take your time.”
Minho’s shoulders slump, and he turns to blink glassy eyes at Jisung. “Why do you always do that, Jisung-ah? You always try to make me feel better, and this whole time I’ve been letting you down.”
“It’s not—”
“Jisung,” Minho pleads. “I let them do that to you, this whole time. I just— I made excuses for Hyunjin, because he comes from a family like mine. I’ve known all these guys for a long time, and I know they’re good people, deep down. But that doesn’t mean it’s ok what they did to you, any of it.”
He pauses, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist. “You’re my— my best friend. And I just let it happen. How could you stand to be around me, still? Why don’t you hate me? You should hate me, Jisung-ah.”
It might be the most words he’s ever heard Minho say all at once. Jisung twists his fingers in the hem of his shirt until it cuts off his circulation. He doesn’t pretend to understand Minho’s life, or why he acted the way he did. There were times where he wasn’t sure Minho even really noticed what was going on at school. He’s not sure if it’s worse that he ignored it, instead.
“I don’t hate you, hyung,” he says quietly, after a moment. “I like you for who you are outside of school— that Minho is my friend. But you just stopped talking to me, and I don’t know what I did. Then yesterday when Hyunjin said those things, and you found me in the bathrooms…”
Minho shifts closer, gripping tightly at the couch cushions. “Hannie, please, you have to believe me that I didn’t mean what I said, please. I was frustrated, and I was so scared, after that night—”
He cuts off suddenly, face going red. Jisung blinks, confused. “What night?”
Minho drops his face into his hands, groaning a little. It might have startled a laugh out of Jisung if everything didn’t feel so horrible right now.
“Chuseok,” Minho grits out, lifting his head. “The night I stayed over. The soju.”
Oh.
Jisung’s voice comes out so quiet he barely hears himself speak. “Which part of that night, hyung?”
Minho blinks rapidly, eyes puffy and wet. “Jisung-ah. You’re my best friend. I like you a lot. But maybe— too much. And it scares me.”
Jisung’s throat stings. “Hyung, I—”
“It scared me so much,” Minho stammers. “I was scared of what people would think, that you didn’t feel the same. I was scared I’d never get out of this town.” He hangs his head, rubs at his eyes again. “I guess I thought it would be easier to push you away.”
“Hh—Minho. You have to know— how can you not know that I feel the same, too?”
Minho’s eyes go wide, shocked, like he didn’t know. All this time, even after all the hurt, Jisung kept rolling over, belly-up. So hungry for love. How could he have not known?
Jisung swallows, presses on, “But even if I didn’t feel like that, or you didn’t, I was happy being your friend. I needed you. I needed a friend so bad, hyung. At school, it was so… so…”
Abruptly, Jisung realises that he can’t describe his pain in a way that will make Minho understand.
Minho sways forward into the silence. “I’m sorry, Jisungie, please.”
Very, very carefully, he reaches up, smudging away the wetness under Minho’s eyes. His knuckle drags against the petal-soft skin. Minho’s jaw clenches as he fights to keep his chin from wobbling.
“Okay,” Jisung says, breathes in, out. Enough now. Enough. “Okay, hyung. Can we just— try again? We can try again, right? We’ll figure it out.”
“Jisungie,” Minho breathes, then tips forward to throw his arms around Jisung’s shoulders. “Jagi.”
Jisung carefully brings his hands up to smooth down Minho’s back, and when Minho squeezes him tighter in return, he knows that they’ll be ok.
***
Minho stays the rest of the afternoon, glued to Jisung on the couch, attentive. He flinches when Chan pokes his head in to check on them, but relaxes when Chan smiles kindly after Jisung gives him a tiny nod.
He doesn’t know how to tell Minho to stop punishing himself. He thinks Minho is going to be carrying the guilt for a long time.
Minho tells him that when Jisung didn’t come back to class after running out of the bathroom, Minho and Hyunjin fought about it, maybe the first time anyone had ever fought Hyunjin about it. Apparently it got pretty intense, and Changbin had to step in to break it up.
By the time Changbin dragged Minho to talk to Chan, the sun was starting to go down, and when they made it home and realised Jisung was nowhere to be found, it was already dark.
Minho skips around in his story, but Jisung already understood from Chan that they’d made Minho stay back at the house in case Jisung came home, and because he was too worked up to be of any use searching the woods. Jisung starts to think about Minho being worked up over him missing, then quickly shuts down that train of thought when it makes his stomach turn.
Minho also tells him that Hyunjin was very upset when he found out Jisung had run away and never came back. Apparently he had shown up at Felix's door, distraught and blaming himself, and hadn't calmed down until Felix managed to get a hold of Chan to confirm that Jisung was okay.
Jisung finds this incredibly difficult to believe, but then on Monday morning, Minho is waiting for Jisung outside the front of the school with a determined look on his face.
“Hyung?” Jisung mumbles, barely acknowledging the pat Chan gives to his shoulder before disappearing through the gates. He’d been nervous, this morning, not sure what to expect when he went back to school. He knew Minho was trying to do better, but waiting for him out the front of school was more than he’d hoped for.
“Hannie,” Minho says, marching up to him and grabbing at his sleeve, then gentling his grip with an apologetic look when Jisung flinches. “I know you might not trust me very much right now, which is ok, but please just for now, trust me.”
Jisung might nod a little in his daze, which is good enough for Minho. He tries not to notice all the eyes turned their way as Minho tugs him across the courtyard. Is this what it feels like to not be invisible? Or just what it feels like to be in Lee Minho’s orbit?
“Hyung,” Jisung hisses when he sees where Minho is headed, but by then it’s too late— they’ve caught the attention of a group of boys, all turning around to watch them approach with wide eyes.
“You’re here,” Hyunjin says. There's still a bruise fading across his cheekbone, and Jisung is shocked to hear real worry in his voice. “Han, are you— are you ok?”
Jisung is frozen on the spot, something like instinct; waiting for the punchline, waiting for Hyunjin to snap. Minho nudges him carefully where his hand has slid down to wrap around Jisung’s wrist.
“Um,” Jisung coughs. “Yeah?”
Hyunjin’s face goes all pinched and uncomfortable. He flicks his eyes to Felix, then back to Jisung. “I’m just… I’m really sorry, for. Everything.”
Jisung blinks, looks at Minho. He doesn’t understand.
“I don’t expect you to like, forgive me or say it’s ok,” Hyunjin continues. “I just want you to know that what we— what I did was wrong, and I’m sorry. I went too far. You didn't deserve that, any of it. I’d try to make it up to you if I knew how.”
Jisung looks at him, at all of them, and slowly realises that they’re just human beings, like him. They’re all just kids, young and naive, trying to figure out their place in the world.
He thinks about how it would feel to yell and scream and cry at them, show them what they've made him into. Thinks about giving them a taste of their own medicine, making them feel what he felt— but that's just not who he is. He doesn't have that kind of fight in him.
Jisung remembers imagining another life where he and Hyunjin are best friends, with inside jokes and a secret handshake. He looks at the Hyunjin standing in front of him, awkward and unsure, and it suddenly doesn’t seem like such an alien idea after all.
“You're right,” he manages, feels a sudden bravery straightening his spine. “It wasn't fair. It was wrong, and I don't know how to make it right. But— I think I’d like it if we could just start over, again.”
Hyunjin’s eyes go round. It makes him look young and vulnerable. “Really?”
Jisung nods, voice soft. “I only ever wanted to be your friend.”
Minho’s fingers tighten around his wrist, inhaling sharply, but Jisung can’t bring himself to look at his expression. Gently, he extracts his hand, turning to offer it to Hyunjin with a shaky smile.
“Hi. I’m new here. My name is Jisung.”
Hyunjin glances down, then slowly reaches out to shake his hand. “Hi, Jisung. It’s nice to meet you.”
The wall of water between Jisung and the world slowly comes crashing down.
***
In class, Jisung is distracted, keeps turning to glance at Minho. He glares at Jisung, widening his eyes at the teacher as if to tell him to pay attention. It makes him grin, and the teacher catches it, pauses to tell them both to focus on the lesson instead of each other.
Jisung flushes red, and glances back once to catch Minho scowling at his books, but he feels a giddiness push up through his chest past the mortification.
He’s never had a friend in class to goof around with before.
Minho brings him to sit with the group at lunch, and Jeongin darts off to grab a spare chair so they all fit comfortably. It’s a little bit awkward until Jisung manages to make Hyunjin laugh when he does an impression of a famous actor that Hyunjin likes. They grin at each other, and the rest of the table relaxes, branching into side discussions about exams and end of year plans.
“Hey, Jisung-ah,” Hyunjin says, hesitant. “There’s this new movie out this weekend that we were thinking of going to see. Do you want to come?”
“Yes!” Jisung nods quickly, before trying to seem more casual. “I mean, that sounds fun!”
Hyunjin smiles at him, his eyes creasing up with it. It's the first time his smile has ever felt warm. “Ok, cool!”
Hyunjin turns to Felix, and Jisung grins down at his lunch. A knee knocks into his under the table, and he glances up to see Minho smiling privately at him. Jisung flushes a little, and slides Minho a piece of homemade kimbap.
***
Chan kept his promise not to tell Jisung’s mother what had been going on, or about the night in the woods. She’s suspected something has been going on for a while, he knows, but he can’t bear to upset her with the whole truth.
He can sense her watching him, but she gracefully allows him his secrecy. One afternoon when Minho is lounging in their living room choosing an anime to watch, his mother catches him in the kitchen and pulls him into a hug.
“Eomma,” Jisung protests, but goes quiet when she pulls back, eyes glassy.
“I’m proud of you, baby,” she whispers.
Jisung swallows, and hides his face in her shoulder as he hugs her tight. He wonders if this is what it feels like to be proud of himself, too.
***
Even as the year draws to a close, Minho keeps coming over to hang out, or go for walks in the forest, bundled up in warm jackets and hats. They stick to the paths they know, not too deep into the woods, and Minho never strays very far from his side.
These days, when Minho talks about the future, about getting out of this town, he always says ‘we’, and Jisung feels overwhelmed with belonging.
He manages to convince Minho to crawl out onto the roof one clear night to look at the stars. Minho smiles around clenched teeth and pretends he’s not afraid of looking down, but accepts Jisung’s steady hand in his nonetheless.
They lie down on their backs against the roof, and Minho blows out a foggy breath.
“See?” he says, grinning at Jisung over the top of his scarf. “I told you it would be fun.”
Are you having fun yet?
Jisung blinks at him, squeezes Minho’s hand gently. He wants to find a way to tell Minho about the feeling swirling in his chest, but he doesn’t know how. Minho squeezes his fingers back, and he thinks Minho already knows.
Then Minho jerks a little as he spots a shooting star, pointing up with their joined hands.
“Oh! Make a wish!” he demands, closing his eyes. Jisung feels a swell of affection as he traces the way Minho’s face wrinkles in concentration.
He remembers sitting up here on one of his first nights, spotting a shooting star, wishing for a friend. Cold fingers twitch between his, and Jisung feels warm all the way down to his toes.
Minho’s eyes flutter open and he blushes pink when he sees Jisung staring. “What? Did you make a wish?”
“Yeah, hyung,” Jisung smiles softly. “I did.”
"One of these days you're gonna love me.
You'll sit down by yourself and think
About the times you pushed and shoved me,
And what good friends we might've been.
And then you're gonna sigh a little,
Maybe even cry a little, but,
One of these days you're gonna love me.”
[Tim McGraw]