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When Gyuvin eventually tells Ricky that he’s something akin to ‘a vibe,’ he’s not lying — putting a label on what he is at his core is honestly impossible. If he thinks about it for an extended period of time, eyes open and losing focus as he stares at the darkened texture of his (“ his”) bedroom ceiling, he can remember a long expanse of existence that was filled with a shimmering color of consciousness. To put it more concretely is indescribable for quite some time…until he examines a memory of Gyuvin’s where he and his family are at the beach. In the background of watching his youngest brother take shaky toddler steps through the sand towards their mother’s outstretched arms, light refracts off of gentle ocean waves in a rainbow-like spectrum, quick and twinkling. It’s as close as he’s ever seen the physical, corporeal world get to replicating that place he can come back to that he feels has to be some spiritual realm.
He can also remember the pull. Animal instinct that drew him to a host, emotional more than physical. Maybe he was some orb of light or invisible humanoid ghost, but how was he to know? No eyes, no brain, no fingers or toes. It’s another feeling that isn’t so immediately replicated, but it’s one that’s strong. Magnetic, like there wasn’t a choice. He was meant to be Gyuvin. There was a suffocating pressure about it, an intense rush to get there, to be the first, to collect the prize — innately, he knows that there were others vying for a host, and somehow he won. When he settled into Gyuvin, there was an immediate warmth there, and he nestled into his new home with comfort and security.
The exact opposite of his first moments as a human. For as much pain as was immediately present, his first human memory being a blurry glimpse of a street framed sideways, he enjoyed it. Outside of the pull, it was his first experience and therefore special. Moments passed and it was all he could concentrate on — the throbbing in his legs, sharp ache in his head, fingers flexing awkwardly at the seatbelt keeping him in place in the tipped-over vehicle, trying hard to push into the button though his stinging wrist wouldn’t cooperate. A ringing trilled loudly in his ears, sharp shouts on all sides except the one cushioned by concrete. To hear, to have a sense of touch and sight, was thrilling.
It didn’t last long. He took his first sharp breath with excitement, and his consciousness exploded.
He’s Gyuvin now — but not quite. Memories and mannerisms are old and trodden, and the body he inhabits now isn’t new. His existence inside of it, however, is. This slant will take some getting used to, and so Gyuvin is born.
Gyuvin feels love in every corner of his brain, expanding outward rapidly. Every once in a while a negative feeling will stutter him to slowness like a speedbump — jealousy, aggravation, exhaustion, disgust. This boy, Gyuvin, is mostly an optimist and has lived a very positive life. He has a tight knit family with good values and work ethic. He has friends who respect him and reciprocate his loving feelings. He has ambitions and goals, a vision for his life that seems very achievable.
— Had . He had all of those things. Now they’re Gyuvin’s to take the reigns of. The pressure is immense.
Love can also be felt in warmth and casual touch, he discovers, when his mother rushes into his hospital room as soon as the doctors give visitation clearance. He sees her pause and observe him with shocked and fearful eyes — Gyuvin himself has been in and out of wakefulness, having to deal with a massive mental overload at the same time as being poked and prodded, questioned by nurses and doctors alike. Can he please follow the pen light with his eyes? Can he remember what happened, can he explain what he can recall before and after the unconsciousness? Does it hurt when they push here, move this limb? The number of machines he’s hooked up to, he feels unnecessarily, must be a scary sight to behold. His mother can’t cup his chin or cheek with his neck brace on, but she grazes her fingers against what flesh of his skin she can access, then through his hair.
“My baby, oh my God, my baby,” she coos. She’s thin and pretty, just like in Gyuvin’s memories, but her face is swollen from tears and worry. He wants to tuck a strand of hair falling into her face behind her ear, having escaped from the unusually messy bun she’s thrown her hair into, but is mostly immobile. “I thought I lost you, oh don’t scare me like that ever again!”
Logically he’s sure that the accident wasn’t his fault to make any apologies or promises for, but the response tumbles out anyway. “I’m sorry, I won’t!” The freshest memories of the accident flood the front of his consciousness, overwhelmed trying to process all nearly nineteen years at once but the concerns for his family push forth. “Where’s everyone? Dad, Gyuri, Gyuwon? Jongsu?”
There were stages to becoming Gyuvin. Every time he felt like he had a conscious grasp on what was going on in the real world, another dump of memories, thoughts and feelings took him away. He recalls seeing his father looking at him, hand groping at him through the broken car window before it became something of background noise, focus shifting to observing years of memories of middle school, family vacations and birthday parties. His sister was yelling his name at one point when he was in an ambulance, and the wife of the man in the oncoming vehicle was screaming…something , before Gyuvin was closed in and thrust back into the emotional sensation of thousands of hugs, hundreds of bruises and more tears than he can even think to quantify.
“Everyone else is fine, baby.” She’s shaking his arm now; Gyuvin doesn’t complain that she’s grabbing at the needle port under his skin and making him flinch. “Just some bruises. More than anything we were all scared for you. My baby, thank God you’re okay!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” All of these people love Gyuvin — love him, since none of them know or recognize the difference. Their love exists in every part of him, probably keeping Gyuvin’s body more put together than any of his bones or muscles. He wasn’t the driver that hit them and tipped their car over, but his existence and how their hearts all hinge on it tinge every flourishing feeling with guilt. Knowing that the boy they all care for is actually dead, this doppelgänger in his place, the tears explode forth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
For this woman, and all the others, he has to be the perfect imitation. All of this love cannot go to waste.
The first person Gyuvin sees in the hospital after the accident, who isn’t staff or a family member, is Ricky. It’s the first time that they’re meeting, but of course there’s already a wealth of context and knowledge about the boy that Gyuvin runs through quickly in his mind; almost three years of memories and feelings are consumed in a bite-sized second. It’s a testament to how perfect Ricky always seems to be that there are only subtle indications that he’s rushed there. The constantly white overhead lights make time feel vague, but it’s late at night; Gyuvin knows from how his mother had stopped by with his siblings a bit before to tell him goodnight, and Ricky is dressed casually — Ricky-casual, anyway. Gyuvin spends time at home in basketball shorts and big T-shirts, but the times that they’ve spent together outside of school Ricky lounges around in large black sweaters and slim fit jeans. His face is flushed and jet black hair only slightly mussed, which some people could mistake for a sloppy-on-purpose style. There’s also a muddy smudge around the bottom of his eyes — blurry brown eyeliner that’s run but barely streaked. It’s something Gyuvin has never bore witness to, but it looks like Ricky could have cried, if only for a moment.
Which for the past few hours, Gyuvin hadn’t found the ability to stop crying. His mother had left, the tears had subsided, then she’d come back with more of his family and the cycle started up again. Lo and behold, Gyuvin sees Ricky — first through the thick pane of glass of his private room, then rushing in to make sure he was okay. Another wave of sobs wrack his chest, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks. His whole body is sore, and none of this is helping, but it’s out of his control. To outside eyes, people may find it an overreaction — no one died, no one is very hurt, even Gyuvin’s internal pain is manageable with over the counter drugs. Only he knows that the tears forming have nothing to do with any of that. It feels like his whole body is full, with no way to release the pressure except to push saline and snot from his face.
Ricky looks scared, and it could be for several reasons. It doesn’t appear that he’s been told how serious the situation is or isn’t, and Gyuvin knows exploding into tears again in front of him is probably making the answer to the question somewhat confusing. He’s also sure his face looks like an absolute mess; there’s only so much leeway his boyish charm and good looks can give him when he’s purple and gasping. There’s also the half-coherent blubering about his family and how happy he is and it feels so good to see his good friend. His best friend. Gyuvin knows by how many of those memories exist, and how quickly the entirety of him races with a need for their closeness. Despite his trepidatious expression, Ricky reaches up to wipe at Gyuvin’s face. His touch is gentle, and Gyuvin instinctually chases the feeling of flesh as it meets his own. He can’t lean into the swipes of Ricky’s fingers much — he’s still in a brace, then held back by an arm full of wires and sensors — but Gyuvin craves for Ricky to simply hold out his hand so he can burrow against it. Something about the soft palm against his skin would make him feel better.
He hasn’t had very long to examine all the memories he has now, but Gyuvin recognizes Ricky instantly. The way his heart feels lighter, and he’s immediately relieved to see the boy — everything feels better, despite the extreme circumstances. Gyuvin has been alive for less than a day, but he knows Ricky well, intimately in ways. He starts sobbing again, and he can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed; Ricky doesn’t rib him, just collects tears against his finger to take them away. This is also love, intense and unspoken. When the boy leaves, Gyuvin will go through their history together, to prolong the comfort and examine why a feeling so all-encompassing stayed so secret.
( high school, year one )
It was actually Seungeon who suggested the five of them approach the new student in school, but no one had any objections. If anything, Junhyeon was over the moon.
“I saw him when I went to drop off homeroom paperwork yesterday. You don’t get it. He’s an idol trainee or something. Definitely American. Blonde and blue eyes. He has a piercing right through here.” Gesturing a pencil sideways through his nostrils; the circle gasped lightly. The five of them were sitting around before class, nodding and taking in the information with wide eyes. “We might need to get on his good side if we want to avoid any trouble, you know what I mean?” The new student sounded exotic, dangerous.
— And maybe that would have been the case, had Junhyeon not been wrong about almost everything. Shim Cheonye was indeed blonde and foreign. He wasn’t American, but had lived there for six years before moving to Busan, and didn’t appear to have the practiced grace and introduction skills a trainee would have, even though it was obvious he worked very hard to enunciate and stick to a previously rehearsed script of shaky Korean. He was originally from Shanghai, with dark eyes and small and puckering holes in both lobes where earrings should be, most definitely not his nose. Their homeroom teacher did require him to include his Korean name on all turned in materials, but casually, shyly, the new kid preferred his English name: Ricky.
For as many facts as Junhyeon misconstrued, Gyuvin did understand the overall vibe that he was trying to get across, and it wasn’t entirely wrong. There was an air about Ricky that gave off mystery and intrigue. Just based on his small introductory backstory and stilted Korean, he would be an interesting person to know.
Before lunch, Junhyeon reconvened them, though not acknowledging his obvious errors.
“Listen,” he whispered harshly, suddenly the ringleader of the operation, “if we tuck this guy into our group, our image and popularity…” Junhyeon jerked his thumb up, up, up before gesturing between Seungeon and Gyuvin. “Any girl, any activity. Get him to come to your tennis games and the whole school will follow.”
“Every girl here already knows you.” Gunwook clapped him on the back. “Even the new guy couldn’t rehabilitate your image, Jun.”
Gyuvin existed on the outskirts of that particular activity. While he was of course personable, and was as intrigued about the new student as anyone else was, he’d worked very hard to put harsh limits on how engaged he was with his circles. He still had his tightknit group of friends, still took care of his family, but his boundaries were much more set in stone. No big team sports — tennis was more a collective of people playing the same sport versus a unit of people working together to win the same game. Gyuvin didn’t play doubles, and one of the people on the team was Seungeon anyway. He couldn’t let people down with his exhaustion again, and introducing a sixth to their five-friend collective would mean spreading that energy thinner and thinner.
So he observed Ricky while every other hyena in his circle latched onto him with gnashing teeth. Ricky was softer than expected — shy, even. He used respectful language and cast his eyes downwards, conceded readily to any direction the conversation went in, and he listened with focused intent to every word, even the ones stacked on top of one another. Ricky’s eyebrows crinkled together and he shyly asked what someone meant if he didn’t catch or understand a word. He wasn’t the boisterous, Americanized teen they all expected, and Gyuvin took in all of him once, twice, again and again.
Ricky had small, pearl-like teeth that peeked out when he smiled politely. He had a long and straight nose, and symmetrical lips that took small bites of food and chewed slowly. His roots were beginning to show, betraying a rich black color as his natural state. That would look best on him, Gyuvin thought — and so he said as such.
Tennis practice was the second round of the group courting their potential new friend, and Gyuvin fell into athlete mode. He didn’t want to appear rude and stand-offish, but the season would be starting soon. Seungeon didn’t seem to care as much, slowly getting ready while the others chatted and put Ricky through another round of twenty questions, usually overlapping, some inquiries needlessly invasive. The other tennis club members, used to their team members having three other hangers-on, also crowded around into the semi circle of boys in the bleachers, Ricky the glowing prize in the center of all of them. Gyuvin felt an instinct to butt his head in, to bring some order to the chaos, but he couldn’t be distracted. He had to practice, and their coach was intensely monitoring him and his progress.
— Except it all fell apart once Ricky was introduced into the dynamic. The coach was very interested in him, asking about his athletic pursuits in Los Angeles. It was revealed Ricky played basketball recreationally, but had given up sports his last year of middle school to focus on art. He was naturally charming and accommodating, and listened with sharp and attentive eyes as the coach went over Seungeon’s accomplishments and then Gyuvin’s.
“That’s really impressive. For being new to the sport.” Ricky nodded at Gyuvin before shrinking in on himself. “Sorry, I don’t mean anything by that. Respect.”
“That’s okay.” Gyuvin shrugged, loudly calling over his shoulder as Gunwook threw a tennis ball at him that was returned with great force. “I know I’m a monster rookie.”
Gyuvin watched Gunwook and Yunseo try to teach Ricky tennis serves, though neither an expert themselves, and the boy continued to be a step behind the ball and where it was going. His brain moved slowly, movements delayed, and he clumsily ran to chase down every ball even as the gang yelled back at him that they had more, don’t worry, while howling with laughter. Ricky laughed with them, playing into his horrible initial instincts and cheering loudly for himself when he finally hit a couple balls over the net.
This was a boy who wanted to belong, and to feel loved. And if it was Gyuvin’s lot in life to give as much as he could, who was he to deny him?
It’s not like Gyuvin ever told anyone — a lot of the memories Gyuvin has to go through in order to exist as his host aren’t explicit. It’s all implied, all synapses stringing thoughts and emotions together. There’s also not a diary he can read with literal interpretations. To know that the feeling of love is love, and who it’s for and why…it’s all innate. Previous thoughts aren’t so much booming words spoken in his brain as they are encoded captions to every memory and moment. Thankfully whatever he may be, Gyuvin has the ability to translate it all pretty seamlessly. It makes him feel better about what he is — maybe he really was previously a human soul, just looking to slide into the place of another one, one much luckier and who actually got to see some side of afterlife.
If he has to quantify the amount of feelings Gyuvin had for people in his life, Ricky easily places right beneath all of his immediate family. He cared so much for so many people, but Ricky proved special. Every memory is tinged with intrinsic fondness, hued with just how much affinity and affection Gyuvin had for that boy. Comparatively, he feels somewhat similarly when it comes to his other close friends, but there’s just more there. Gyuvin sees his host watch TV shows and films, and to string all of these instances together it feels like that’s what he’s doing inside of his own mind now: getting a front row seat to how Gyuvin fell in love, and so very hard.
He is Gyuvin now, so it makes sense that he too feels that same pull of attraction when analyzing the memories. Gyuvin’s mind automatically comes up with the context for him. Ricky shows up to school late and has to fiddle an earring out before the teacher sees — he falls asleep with them in, typical and endearing. He bites his lip as he pulls the stopper from the pin and puffs out a breath of relief indicating an absurd level of stress. Adorable. He wants to buy Ricky a strawberry milk at lunch soon to add another memory of his lips puckering cutely around the tip of the straw to the embarrassingly large collection. Gyuvin doesn’t need to put effort into the thoughts. They appear as naturally as the calls to breathe and walk.
Gyuvin is a little jealous of this boy who lived within him previously. Just like everything else, we wants to feel that love organically, to experience it for himself, just like all the other firsts.
School is an exercise in committing to normalcy. Gyuvin’s first day back is early, making the rounds to meet with all of his teachers to catch up on anything he’s missed or needs to complete. Nothing much, and most assure him that the few days he’s been absent won’t hurt him for any CSAT preparation. The hardest conversation reveals a pit in his stomach he hadn’t paid much attention to with all of the overwhelming sensations of becoming a person — his tennis coach shakes his head for a moment when Gyuvin advises he won’t be able to play anymore for the season, until he catches himself and nods at his star player, wishing him well in his recovery. He starts in on university questions, but Gyuvin finds an excuse to leave quickly.
The surreality of putting faces to all the names and how naturally it comes fades over a couple of days. There are instinctual handshakes and hugs that he gives to all of his friends, and the memories that come up when he sees them are fluid. Gyuvin really is Gyuvin, and it feels like it doesn’t take much practice, if any, to slot seamlessly into this life.
—Barring one obvious initial irritant, anyway.
There’s a prickle under his skin every day, and it’s hard to find exactly the right way to scratch the annoying itch. It’s not a pang of hunger or anxiety — Gyuvin knows what those feel like, he’s absorbed almost everything about his host at this point and knows those emotions well by now. Gyuvin has discovered that while his connection to his host’s core memories is absolute, getting his muscle memory down in a satisfying way is something he’s yet to master. He simply can’t pinpoint the details finely enough to figure out what it is that’s off every time it does happen.
But Ricky can, and it’s obvious.
Quite a few memories exist of Gyuvin catching his newest friend staring at him unprovoked. They didn’t lock eyes most of the time, but Gyuvin peered over in Ricky’s general direction enough that he got skittish, looked back to the schoolboard or shifted his attention elsewhere. Ricky’s reaction time proves slower than most, so there was usually an obvious moment of staring at one another before he was caught and turned away. Now, in the present, that same trepidation isn’t there. His eyes are narrowed and locked in, not deigning to give up his observation when Gyuvin turns and obviously catches him in the act.
Fuck. Does he know? Is there some way this is obvious to him?
Impossible.
He puts the extra effort in. Inserts as many random Gyuvin-isms into his routine as possible. More skinship, more jokes, more scrunching of his nose and mouth, more movement of his hands and feet. He tries to correlate the prickles of need or moments when his body just doesn’t feel right to specific situations, but it’s hard to get any measured results. It doesn’t help — Ricky still stares, liberally and deliberately. The previous endearment is gone, now replaced with a steely and examining glare.
Gyuvin sees him one day, talking to Gunwook with hunched shoulders and a concerned knit in his brow. The idea that anyone could know what he is, what he’s done, is something he’s never considered — let alone everyone knowing. Would they interrogate him? Ostracize him? Cut him open from tip to tail to see what actually exists inside this dead boy’s body?
It’s a little ridiculous, but so is his existence in the first place.
Ricky doesn’t seem to tell anyone, and that’s if he even knows what to tell people in the first place. Gyuvin is aware that Ricky is pretty intuitive, once the engines of his brain get to working at full steam, but how would he ever put two and two together in a way detailed enough to be legitimate? If Gyuvin himself can’t even fully explain it, there’s no way Ricky could.
And it’s not even that he’s certain that Ricky knows that something is up with him until tennis practice one day — it’s a stretch to call it that when no one has any hopes of winning a match, not even Gyuvin now that his career is benched with his wrist brace. It’s been a few weeks since the accident, and he recognizes the actions and attitudes of everyone around him as being normal at this point. Barring one, of course — sitting on the sidelines means more quality time with his friend, the one who examines him with scrutiny and precision. Gyuvin doesn’t even know what he does that’s wrong as they play and roughhouse, just that something is off based on how Ricky’s face shifts from understanding to lost, subtly but in a way strong enough for someone like Gyuvin, an expert in this boy’s presence, to catch.
He would like for things to stay as they are — no one knowing, continuing life as the original Gyuvin would have. There’s a vague outline there, with dreams of university and having a long and happy life. Gyuvin now has to insert the finer details, but he can’t concentrate on what those might be while he’s worried about Ricky somehow blowing his cover.
Gyuvinsits in the feelings and lets them marinate as he stares down at Ricky, squinting up at him. He can recognize them as Gyuvin’s own thoughts sliding into the situation seamlessly, and his eyes pull to his favorite features, Ricky’s greatest hits. His flat eyebrows cant downward lately more than they lay straight on his face. His usually neutral expression is tense and large eyes small in the sunlight, but under the dourness it’s still Ricky. Just as lovely, just as easy to reach out and touch.
It’s the second Sunday after his accident, and Gyuvin is allowed to attend church with his family. The incident happened on a Thursday night, he’d been kept forty-eight hours for observation, so he’d barely been home twenty-four hours before service was scheduled to be held. There had been some discussion with Gyuvin’s family whether they were even going — his father had had to get a new car leased, and he wanted to call it a wash, but his mother was so rattled that she said it was paramount they not miss service and give God thanks for their good fortune in the face of such potential adversity. And so, he’d gotten up and half-dressed before his mother spotted him, tie half-done as Gyutae tried to help him with it, incapacitated by his stupid wrist brace. That had been the end of that — he was an exception; Gyuvin needed to rest and that was that. Now enough time has passed, and his mother has deemed him well enough to continue going to services.
Gyuvin has seen thousands of memories of he and his family at church, going almost every Sunday possible. They’d occasionally skip if someone was sick or there was something else going on — previously Gyuvin had many a football game scheduled for Sunday morning, and no one held any ill will that they’d have to miss services because of it. The past memories are tinged with calm feelings and relaxation, which is what Gyuvin is hoping for.
They pile into the small building and line up on the pew — the parents bookend the four children, with Gyuvin sitting next to his father on the left, his siblings lined up to his right in age order. The wooden bench beneath him is uncomfortable as it is, and the way he’s pushed closer to his father’s wide frame pinches him, but it feels exactly like it always has. Physically cramped but emotionally comfortable.
Their preacher has only changed once since Gyuvin was born, and after six years leading his flock Pastor Oh takes the pulpit with slow but practiced grace. He’s on the young side, maybe early forties, and he grins widely at everyone as his gaze sweeps from one side of the church room to the other. His gaze lands on Gyuvin for a moment, and his smile falls to one a bit more pitiable.
“Before we begin, I want to bring something to the attention of everyone. The Kim Jingyu and Lee Seoah family, who have been with our church for generations, have experienced a very terrifying situation. A two-car collision that had the potential to greatly — if not gravely — injure one or more of them, or even the other family involved.” Pastor Oh gestures to their location, sweeping an arm outward with a flat palm. “And instead, of all eight people involved, only one person sustained injuries. Healing, non-serious injuries at that. I extend to the Kim family our great relief at this outcome, and feel confident in saying that God has held your family tightly cupped in His hands.”
There’s a murmur amongst the parsonage and a few claps. Gyuvin can hear Gyuri to his right let out a gentle curse, and sees his mother awkwardly stretch her heel over to nudge it hard into her daughter’s shin.
After the low murmurs die down, Pastor Oh starts again. “So it would be an honor for me to have the head of the Kim household to join me in leading our first prayer. Kim Jingyu-ssi, please.”
Pastor Oh beckons Gyuvin’s father forward, and he stands with a humble and low bow before heading to the pulpit. A sense of pride sparks in Gyuvin , ears previously tinged with pink at being part of the center of attention. He watches his father and pastor bow again, his father taking up most of the frame at the pulpit as he bows his head; Gyuvin follows suit. He’s sure his father didn’t know this would take place, but his naturally commanding voice and presence hide any unpreparedness.
“I stand before you, a humble man and not part of God’s clergy. I have faith that regardless, this prayer will reach all of you and then onto the Lord. Heavenly Father, with a heart of gratitude, I come before You today humbled by Your mercy and love. Thank You for Your divine protection that spared me and my family from harm in the accident, as well as your extended mercy and protection of the Yoon family. I know that it is by Your grace that we are all here with You today, safe and whole.”
Gyuvin’s spine lights aflame with a sudden magnified self-awareness. His father is meters away from him, heartfelt and grateful to God for his family still being with him — but that’s a farce, and only he knows it. Gyuvin’s throat dries immediately, and he makes the mistake of looking up to see his father gripping the pulpit with white knuckles, his face the most strained and expressive Gyuvin has ever seen.
“Lord, in that moment of danger, You were my shield. I know You, Lord, and so I know that You will readily be that same shield and shepherd for all of Your flock gathered here. I ask that You watch over all of us, and surround us all in Your love and light. Help us, Lord, to use this life You have preserved for good. May we walk in gratitude, living each day with purpose and kindness. Let our hearts remain ever mindful of Your presence, and may we never cease to give You thanks in all circumstances.”
So far he’s been very astute, using the vernacular of practiced prayer. His father, previously with eyes closed, opens them already facing in the direction of his family. The two of them make eye contact, and Gyuvin’s skin prickles with immediate sweat.
“I want to take a moment to thank You personally, Lord. My oldest son was in danger of being taken from us…or so we thought, for a moment. When I prayed to You, to ask You to spare him and keep him with us, I know that the chance he was truly in grave danger was small. I still asked You, Lord, to not be tempted to take our angel to be with Your own. Thank you for protecting him and for knowing that he must stay with us. With all that I am, I give You praise, now and forever.”
Gyuvin knows his face is tight, and the prolonged eye contact with his own father, face also puckering, is causing his eyes to water. None of these words are for him. They’re to a boy no longer with any of them, and Gyuvin wonders if his father would curse God to know that his prayers went unanswered.
It feels like there is no air in his lungs.
The only thing Gyuvin can focus on is the loud ‘Amen’ and the sound of applause from the parishioners. His eyes are still glued to where his father was, now out of focus and only seeing his father and pastor embrace as a blurry image past where he’s looking. Only a split second seems to go by and Gyuvin’s father is pushing in next to him with an arm thrown around his shoulders, squeezed into a hug as Gyuvin feels his father’s nose press into the crown of his head to breathe for a moment before pulling back.
This is love he doesn’t deserve. He shudders holding in a sob and knows that the true Gyuvin wouldn’t settle for half a hug, only a true, crushing embrace — and he’s never felt so out of tune with his purpose than in that moment.
Pastor Oh thanks Gyuvin’s father and reiterates his gratitude for the family’s safety before launching into his sermon. There’s a span of a minute or two where Gyuvin tries to get all of his body’s senses to connect with one another. His head still ghosts a sensation of his father’s weight against his scalp, and in his nose he can smell Ricky’s cologne and tennis rubber. He rubs his good hand across his eyes and finds the blurriness of his vision isn’t from tears.
Once it all settles into place, suddenly it feels like any way he sits is incorrect. Gyuvin crosses his legs, uncrosses them, sits on one leg, and the jitters just won’t leave. His father looks across at him. At first his face is stern, but it quickly falls into an expression of concern.
“Is something wrong, son?” He whispers, though turning his face back to the front. Gyuvin doesn’t know how to answer the question in any way that’s honest, which feels even worse in a church. He wants to shake his head no, but the mounting pressure of lying in a house of God is enough to keep his neck straight and stiff. Just another sin to add to the talley, but he can’t afford for the total to grow larger. Gyuvin bolts upright a few moments later, excusing himself across the rest of his family to step quickly out of the service, huffing out a shuddering and held breath once outside.
The swirling thoughts even out as the fresh air fills his lungs, painfully, standing on the small curb against the street. He doesn’t belong in there — what’s happened to him isn’t of God, and he can’t rectify his existence with any kind of spiritual knowledge that currently exists in this dead boy’s brain.
“Gyuvin!” He whips around to hear his mother calling for him, wobbling over as her heels find divots in the pathway tile that nearly throw her off balance. “Sweetheart, are you alright? Was it too much?”
“I’m okay, mom, I’m okay.” His breathlessness isn’t very convincing, Gyuvin is sure, but he waves his brace around. Lying doesn’t feel as oppressive now that he’s on the common street. “It just started to hurt…I didn’t want to disturb anyone if it got worse.”
Her hand catches his movement and she grips Gyuvin’s brace gingerly. She rotates his arm in midair, like she can see the cause of the pain with some X-ray vision. Finding nothing but suit fabric and toughened velcro, she raises an eyebrow at him. “They said it was just a sprain—” Trailing off, she pulls out her cellphone and starts tapping furiously while she shakes her head. “Let’s go back— no, to a clinic, right after this.”
Gyuvin lets out a sound of duress, not trying to make this into a big deal. It’s supposed to be his job to alleviate worry, not cause it. “It’s fine. I’m fine, please don’t worry.” He slings his good arm around her and tries to pull his mother into a half-hug. Proof that he’s just as floppy and loving as usual, nothing to see here.
But she doesn’t buy it. She stops tapping away on her cell phone to look up at him with a stern stare. “Gyuvin, a sprain shouldn’t hurt enough to make you run out of church.”
He’s fine. Gyuvin isn’t someone who causes problems for other people. To be Gyuvin is to put others first, and he’s already failing so miserably by making his mother so stressed and hurried in front of her childhood church. She’s supposed to feel peace and comfort here. He’s completely fucked everything up.
It’s impulse that grabs the phone from her hand, requiring some grip strength and back and forth before he’s finally claimed it. They both look shocked at one another at the action — Gyuvin stares at the device in his hand and then back to his mother’s wide eyes. He’s never been so forceful with her before. It takes effort to keep his voice soft as he hands it back to her, trying hard not to tremble with embarrassment and shame. “Mom. It’s fine. Please go back inside.”
They stand in front of one another for a few painful moments. Gyuvin waits for anger to enter his mother’s expression, but instead she only bites her lip and folds her arms. She gives him no directive or order, instead following his own command. Her sleek ponytail shakes with concealed and vibrating emotion as she forcefully steps back inside, shaking her head the entire time.
( high school, year one )
Of their group of friends, Gyuvin had always been the most well off. No one he knew was destitute by any means, but he’d personally been to Europe and received expensive, brand name gifts on birthdays, Christmas and for any accomplishments his father and mother deemed worthy enough. Introducing Ricky into the mix, Gyuvin discovered he was no longer at the top of the list when it came to expendable income. He wasn’t a boy who flaunted wealth, but Ricky mentioned enough indicators of it so casually that it was very obvious his family was rich. Gyuvin stalked his old social media profiles, squinting at details found in artistically shot selfies. The dashboard of a car he was in featured the iconic winged-B logo of a new Bentley, and screenshotting Ricky’s clothes to put through Google Lens brought back results of high fashion, high ticket items — Armani, Versace and couture Los Angeles streetwear Gyuvin hadn’t heard of before.
There was something antithetical about it, taking a public bus to one of the more affluent areas of Busan, but that was how he initially got closer to Ricky. They both took the same route, with Ricky getting off at a stop closer to the center of a very upscale neighborhood, Gyuvin venturing a little further out, an apt measurement of his fiscal distance from his friend. The first few times they stood at the stop together, usually by themselves as it wasn’t an especially popular route for high school students, it was awkward. He tried to make small talk, occasionally succeeding to bully some social interaction out of Ricky, but he was a skittish cat — it took time to get him to warm up to a person.
That particular day, Gyuvin sipped a bottle of water while he observed Ricky’s post-school ritual. He assumed Ricky wasn’t going out on the town every single day, but like clockwork he pulled out a small plastic container and began slipping in his earrings, required to be removed from his ears for school. Simple silver hoops went into the cartilage of one ear, a dangling silver spiral on the fatty lobe of the other. His fingers fumbled with another stud, and Gyuvin grabbed the container from his friend’s thigh where it was dangerously close to falling to the concrete.
“Why’d you do all that?” Gyuvin asked, shaking the container. There were at least ten pieces of jewelry still inside, and he was pretty sure Ricky didn’t actually have that many piercings. Maybe he did, and he’d just not noticed before.
“Jewelry?” He asked, fingers dipping into the container to pull a small silver back to hold the stud in place. It was up and back from the dangling spiral, and he seemed to be done with that ear. Ricky tapped his foot, thinking — he didn’t know the word for ‘piercing,’ Gyuvin realized, and was formulating a response best he could. “They’re cool. Fashionable.”
Gyuvin hummed and picked up one of the other pieces from the container. A simple silver cross; it reminded him of the necklace his mother wore all the time, stem extending down with a short crossbar. “Do you go to church?”
“No.” The answer was quick and blunt. “I believe, a little.”
He’d never been the sort to obsess over conversion, but Gyuvin couldn’t help but feel some relief that Ricky wasn’t not religious. “Does it hurt to get pierced like that?”
“Hmm.” Gyuvin continued to watch Ricky pull tiny piece after tiny piece of silver metal out of the little box, not needing to look where his hand was moving after a couple successful pulls. If Ricky missed, his fingertips would pinch at the fabric of the slacks on Gyuvin’s thigh. He half-expected it, tensing every time he watched what he noticed to be thin fingers enter the area and delicately lift jewelry to put to his ear. “A little. You’d cry.”
Ricky’s profile betrayed a small smile. Gyuvin wasn’t sure he’d ribbed him like that before. It made his nose crinkle. “Probably.”
It was Ricky’s turn to ask a question, taking the box back now that he’d secured all of his piercings in place. There were still studs, hoops and the cross inside, confirming Gyuvin’s theory. “Would you ever get one?”
“No.” Gyuvin answered honestly. It had never occurred to him that he should modify his body. His mother and sister had singular piercings, just the standard lobe and usually just studs. It wasn’t that he was afraid of pain, just committed to physical conservatism. No piercings, tattoos, no drinking or smoking…life could be pleasant and happy without all of those things.
But Ricky, on the other hand…if he thought about it, Gyuvin could see that kind of lifestyle slotting into Ricky’s image. He was a surprisingly soft boy, but Gyuvin pictured him with a cigarette outside of a bar, smoke indistinguishable from the visible breath as he stood in the cold. Maybe a little buzzed, in all black with a deep grey overcoat. It would cover his tattoos…what kind of tattoo would he get? Words, a drawing?
He shifted away from the visuals; they made Gyuvin on edge for some reason. He revisited the original question. “How many do you have in each ear?”
“I don’t know.” Ricky shrugged, noncommittally waiving his hand in the air after feeling each of his ears. “Five or six?”
His fingers stretched just slightly at first, already casually splayed to start, but then quickly shifted for all but his pinky and thumb to fold against his palm.
There was an obvious question to ask that Ricky didn’t immediately know how many piercings he had, but that wasn’t at all at the front of Gyuvin’s mind at that moment. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“This?” Gyuvin mimicked Ricky’s hand gesture and shook it a bit; he’s sure he’s seen this gesture in a Western movie or something before. In English: “Los Angeles style?”
Ricky mimics the gesture and snorts a laugh out. “No, no, no. Six, in Chinese. How would you show six in Korea?”
Perplexed, Gyuvin counted out his digits, all fingers on one hand and then an index on the other. “Or, like. Chisanbop?” He brought his right thumb and index finger down to his lap, pressing them pointedly into the fabric there.
The way Ricky stuck his hand out next also confused Gyuvin, who stared at the outstretched palm. “Base ten?”
Ricky’s laugh was slippery. “Idiot. Give me your hand.”
Careful fingers positioned Gyuvin’s own back into the original shape, ‘six’; a tight pinch with his ring and pinky finger angled downwards, ‘seven’; an upward gun-like shape, ‘eight’; a hook with his index finger, ‘nine’; finally his index finger sticking up straight to indicate—
“Ten.” Ricky placed his own index finger across the middle knuckle of Gyuvin’s, vertical meeting horizontal.
“You need two people to say ‘ten’?”
“You’d use your own, idiot.” Ricky said it again, ‘idiot,’ with such a strong puff of air to accent the word. It was endearing. He withdrew his hand and Gyuvin realized Ricky had never touched him before. Not on purpose.
They spent the next few minutes waiting for their bus replaying the gestures. Gyuvin mastered them well enough that Ricky taught him variants, how ‘seven’ could also be a stretched thumb and downward-pointing index finger. Gyuvin held the digits to his face, mock-crying while Ricky shifted a gestured ‘eight’ into a gun to point at his wailing victim. Gyuvin went home and taught his younger siblings how to do them too, and all marveled at this new counting method — but they were all closer to being children, while Gyuvin couldn’t quite place why he found something so average to be so remarkable.
The shoe drops unexpectedly, and Gyuvin almost misses the seriousness as he smirks at the small plastic animals bouncing around in his friends bangs.
When Ricky looks at him, eyes shaking with uncertainty and asks so earnestly — “You aren’t you anymore. Are you? ” — Gyuvin doesn’t mean to smile instinctively, awkwardly. His friend’s eyes go wide, and he knows this impulsive action isn’t Gyuvin. It’s foreign, an answer to the question in and of itself. Shit. Shit, shit, shit . It’s not as if he hasn’t known Ricky has had him under personal surveillance for a month, but being confronted is something Gyuvin hasn’t prepared for.
He’s caught, and Gyuvin is in part relieved. Any consolation leaves his body when he tells the truth, confirms Ricky’s suspicion — without looking at the bigger picture, Ricky loves being right, Gyuvin being wrong. It’s just the worst, worst possible thing a person could ever be correct about, and so Gyuvin watches his best friend’s heart break in real time.
( high school, year two )
One thing Gyuvin could always count on was Ricky forgetting about the concept of rain. He retained facts about his newest friend readily — Ricky was born in Shanghai, humid and rainy, but spent the last six years in Los Angeles, California. Gyuvin knew where it was of course, but he still Googled it: something called the “French dip sandwich” was invented there, the Hollywood sign weighs over two hundred thousand kilograms and it rains less than 10% of the year.
This was the version of Ricky who moved to Busan. He was obviously well off, but would step onto the bus lowering his backpack from atop his head and so obviously frustrated from the lack of preparation. It never changed him, always caught in a rainstorm either coming or going.
Maybe it was the excitement from his recent good news giving him an extra push of boldness— he was used to cajoling Ricky into sharing an umbrella, which was the case that afternoon. The five of them were on their way to pick up Gunwook, then chicken, then catch a bus back to his place. It could have been embarrassing, having people fawn over him, but Gyuvin was actually looking forward to the get together to celebrate his most recent tennis win.
That’s what did it, he was sure. He was around Ricky consistently and made sure to be much more aware of his personal space. There were limits, of course: Ricky was still hugged and grabbed from time to time, but prolonged contact was off the table for the most part. He wasn’t a casual toucher, and Gyuvin respected that— just not that day, sliding his arm to hang casually around his friend’s shoulders. Ricky was more broad than Seungeon, not as broad as Gunwook. He draped himself across those two all the time, and he committed to memory where Ricky slid into that ranking.
The two had fallen back compared to their other friends. Junhyeon and Yunseo were discussing some idol controversy, standing at opposite ends of the discourse, but the conversation wasn’t as committed to memory. Instead he could hear soft pounding in his ears drown out all other sounds, save for the gentle patter of the rain against his umbrella. Ricky didn’t shirk away from him, but he did make a clumsy step after the sudden touch. Gyuvin’s limp sling curled into something more commanding, forearm drooping so that his fingers lightly tapped against Ricky as he moved.
Some would have considered the lack of response to be a bad thing— maybe neutral. To Gyuvin, it was a win.
Maybe he isn’t as cut out to be Gyuvin as he previously thought he was.
Gyuvin walks back in the direction of the school, waits only a few moments at the bus stop before it arrives, and he leisurely takes up two seats on the nearly empty vehicle when he finally gets on. He wishes there were more people on board to help stave off the way his heart is racing, panic finally sinking in. Ricky knows. Gyuvin told him, laid it out as coolly and collectedly as he thought he could. He he should have treated the situation with more care and consideration now, especially after seeing him—
—Ricky, lower on the hill and far away, but the watery way his eyes sank down into his face was visible even at a distance. He didn’t cry, but Gyuvin could tell at multiple points that he was pretty close to tears. Who could blame him? His friend has died, and then been replaced by…what was it he said he was? A “vibe?”
God, how stupid. Gyuvin’s not sure what else he was supposed to have called himself when he isn’t even sure what he is, but a vibe?
It was impulsive, to ask Ricky if he wanted to know how Gyuvin felt. It just seemed to be the best way to make this a clean break, if that’s what Ricky wanted. Gyuvin would spoil the ending for him, then they could proceed with living separate lives— except even the suggestion of it made his heart hurt, and gearing up for even a blunt and factual confession earlier had made it nearly beat out of his chest. Gyuvin breathed a sigh of relief when Ricky declined, marched down the hill and towards the beach. His feet begged him to follow behind, to chase after Ricky and comfort him, but now his instincts are wrong. If he’s why Ricky is upset, how can he also bring him comfort enough to offset it all?
He walks home faster than normal, pushing away his feelings with the physical force of slamming his feet onto the paved street. He barely thinks to stop when he enters his house, making it halfway up the stairs before his mother is suddenly nearby, calling for him.
“Gyuvin?” Her voice is tinged with worry, and anxiety is replaced by guilt when he sees her face drop at his own expression of tension. “What’s happened? You didn’t answer my texts.”
Hadn’t he? He remembers looking at his phone at the bus stop with Ricky — then going to eat with him, the confrontation, and now it’s late. Late enough that him not being at home with no notice would at least be questionable, cause for concern when he never answered.
“Sorry, mom…” The guilt is genuine, and he steps back down the stairs to meet her at her level. She’s a taller woman, but he still looms over her, having to lean down to pull her into a hug. “Some personal stuff, but not serious.”
“What personal stuff?” When she pushes him away, it’s forceful but not severe. Her eyebrows hover closely over her eyes, studying her son’s face. It figures — Gyuvin’s life is one without problems, more often than not. Even simply saying one issue exists in his life would be something his mother would hone in on. Especially after the incident at church, which he can’t blame her for. “Sweetie, you know to let me know if there’s ever anything going on, right?”
“I told you, mom. Nothing serious.” Gyuvin pinches her cheek and she glowers before returning the favor, though maybe a little harder than normal. “I’m sorry, I got caught up and didn’t text back. Won’t happen again.”
“Your father is coming back from his Ulsan trip tomorrow now. It’s just the five of us unless you’ve got a friend coming over.” She’s moving away from him now, back into the kitchen, and so her voice raises to accommodate the distance. Gyuvin can see how she wraps her arms around herself, how her shoulders hunch forward and her thin cardigan flutters against her thighs. “Gyutae, that’s not— Gyuvin, dinner will be done in an hour. Just get comfortable in the meantime, okay?”
Gyuvin trails behind her and peers into the kitchen. Gyutae, his youngest brother, is peeling carrots down to the core, shaving much more skin than necessary. The air smells of dakbokkeumtang, the braise spicy exactly how he likes it. He offers his brother a ‘ yo ’ and a wave, but can’t bring himself to offer any jabs or conversation. Truthfully, he wants to go up to his room — the doting son thing to do would be to gently move his mother away from the pot of spicy sauce she’s stirring and tell her to sit down for a bit, he’s got this much handled. The guilt compounds when he feels the intrusive thought circle his mind — “ she has three other children, they can help for once” — but right now he has bigger fish to fry.
Dinner is odd. He’s had enough time to shower, change into home clothes and now…what? His advice to Ricky had been to proceed as if everything was the same, namely because it is the same from the outside looking in. The problem is that he is on the inside, and practicing what he’s just preached feels, suddenly, very difficult.
It’s just new, he tells himself. There’s a rush of adrenaline pumping through him because this is a big development in his life. Tomorrow he’ll wake up and it will be the same routine, same bus to school and back, same brothers and sisters, same bed to fall asleep in. He’ll also wake up in it the next day, do it again and again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The knowledge doesn’t keep him from opening and closing his KKT over and over again, considering what he’ll text Ricky. That’s the only constant that is suddenly at risk tomorrow. Will Ricky sleep on it and decide that staying friends is impossible. And even if he doesn’t, what breaks the ice after finding out the old Gyuvin is dead?
When he does come down, everyone else is already seated. Gyutae and Gyuwon next to his mother on one side of their long sitting table, Gyuri on the other. He takes a seat to her left and she playfully taps her heel against his shin. His elbow goes a little too hard into her shoulder and she gives him a look.
“What’s up with you today?”
“Your brother is tired.” His mother saves him. “Let’s all just eat.”
Usually dinner is a lively time. Part of the weird vibe can be chalked up to his dad being away, out at some plastic surgery conference. He’s so rarely away from home for work, his absence is of course well-noticed. The rest of the reason Gyuvin couldn’t fully put his finger on. He would fall into a conversation with one of his siblings, and his mother would chime in to not bother him, their brother needed to eat. Gyuvin thinks about her actions leading up to tonight and knows she’s been on a bit of a protective streak, but nothing so… isolating before.
Everyone finishes and Gyuvin offers to wash the dishes. Unsurprisingly, the chore gets relegated to a complaining Gyutae instead.
“Rest up, baby.” Gyuvin’s mother takes advantage of his seated position to kiss his forehead easily before taking his plate away. His ability to even consider offering any kind of assistance is removed from him by a firm squeeze of his shoulder, a slow sigh ruffling his bangs. “It’s a big year for you.”
“You’ve been weird lately.”
Gyuri stands in his bedroom door, fidgeting her feet to press against both sides of his doorway. Her legs spread while her arms cross, eyes narrowing to give her brother a studying look. He looks up from his phone at her, not bothering to move from his place bundled up in every blanket he owns. “Yeah, that’s a given. You always think I’m weird.”
“Weirder than usual.” She doesn’t move, aside from leaning forward just slightly, like it will somehow bring whatever blemish she perceives into better focus. “Mom can tell, too.”
This gives Gyuvin pause, phone in his hand falling flat to his comforter while he adjusts himself to sit up crisscross, hood of his jacket pulled back so he can see his sister clearly. “Did she say that?”
“Not to me.” Obviously, she’s uncomfortable about something. She takes a long moment to get it out, twirling the end of her long ponytail around a finger in the meantime. “She mentioned it to dad, though. I heard them talking about how you need a physical therapist. Or a regular one. Or both.”
“Stop eavesdropping, squirt.” He pats the mound of blankets on his bed and it’s then that his sister moves, joining him to bring herself into a twin half-cocoon using a throw Gyuvin sacrifices to her. Up close, her expression is softer than he previously observed, and her bottom lip is pulled slightly into her mouth, worried with her teeth. Gyuvin pushes a foot out, making her newly crafted pile wobble. “I’m fine. The doctors wouldn’t let me leave if I wasn’t fine.”
It was maybe a little too romantic to think Ricky would be the only one to notice that Gyuvin had something of an off period — maybe of their friend group, that made sense. But Gyuvin’s life revolved around his family, and so it’s suddenly clear and obvious that they too would notice the odd mannerisms it took a while for Gyuvin to settle into. Hopefully with some time and more practice with his physicality, their worries will be quelled.
— Maybe a physical therapist would be a good idea. He could go, get some kind of treatment, then blame any lack of fidgeting or some new mobile tic on his pinched nerve. Easy peasy.
“Do you think about it, ever?” Gyuri’s voice is small, and she doesn’t look at her brother — at least not his face, though she does hone in on Gyuvin’s wrist. His brace is gone, and so that injury is no longer obviously present, but she was there to see him come home with it wrapped around his arm. Scrubbing it in the sink, his complaints that it made gripping anything so, so annoying…and then his couched frustration that he couldn’t finish his tennis season, effectively putting a stop to both a hobby and academic sport. Three years of commitment now felt effectively useless.
Gyuvin exhales through his nose, thinking of how to be honest without being scary, or dwelling on his own feelings too much. “Yeah, I do. It was really intense for everyone, but we all got out of it alright...do you still think about it?”
Gyuri nods and shrinks in on herself, knees hugged to her torso as much as they can be under layers of cloth and batting. “I dream about it sometimes. It’s not like any of us have almost died before.”
She doesn’t dream of just the accident. She dreams of Gyuvin, the fate of her oldest brother’s life precariously hanging in the balance — the doctor’s reassured the family that it was all fine after the unconsciousness scare, but to the mind of a girl only barely a teenager, and with how the flow of information was so confused that day…to Gyuri, uncertainty was certain. As far as anyone knows, he didn’t almost die, but Gyuvin puts himself in her shoes easily: if any of his siblings were injured, their mortality wouldn’t be far from his mind, no matter how minor the injury.
He leaves out of any planned advice the fact that she wasn’t even incorrect in her worries.
Biting his lip, Gyuvin falters at what to say to quell her fears. She continues before he can give any response. “It’s okay if you’re still scared.” Gyuri softly tells him, their feet touching through layers of cotton and fabric. “If you need help, we would help you.”
Gyuvin has had to hyperfocus on Ricky’s knowledge of his identity as an imposter — otherwise, he’s been going through the motions of getting into his role, fully immersing himself into Gyuvin’s life. The grief Ricky described initially felt illogical, when only one simple fact that could be ignored and logically moved around and no one would ever be the wiser stood in the way of seeing him as the exact same person that existed pre-accident. The only barrier between knowing him as his old friend or this new being was looking past Gyuvin’s inability to fully understand how to fidget properly.
— But looking at Gyuri it shifts into perspective for him: her face sad and pitiful as she looks at who she believes to be her older brother, appearing to be stuck in a loop of trauma she has massive empathy for. Because they were there, together. They were a family, in her eyes — so far Gyuvin has felt so at home cushioned in the love he’s felt in Gyuvin’s body, but now he feels foreign.
Maybe Ricky is right. He is a parasite. An intruder. He has no business giving this little girl brotherly advice when he’s an actor, a “vibe” in sheep’s clothing. The body deserves this love and concern, but the mind behind its steering wheel does not.
Gyuri’s face shifts quickly from pallid surprise to features folding in on themself — they look a lot alike, Gyuvin thinks, knowing he’s seen his own face scrunch into tears in the mirror or in photos before. It’s an awkward and forceful motion, and the hug she barrels into him is tight and uncomfortable, but she manages to hold her brother like the roles are reversed. Gyuvin registers his own expression, not unlike the one she’s making as she cries overwhelmed tears into his form, half on his comforter and half staining his hoodie. It’s a struggle to get his arms free enough to hold her back and Gyuvin feels odd about how instinctual it is — proof that he’s becoming more and more intertwined with his host’s mind, though now he’s not so sure that it’s a good thing.
His night of sleep is fitful. Gyuvin weighs out his options with seriousness.
He could disappear. He could leave all of these people behind; family and friends would all be abandoned in favor of removing himself from the equation. Gyuvin didn’t ask for this, and he can’t explain how he came to be, and so he can try and live a life as a different person — but the more the thought is turned over in his mind, the less it makes sense. He is Gyuvin, for as much as he’s not. All of this boy’s thought processes, biases and desires rattle around in his brain, and it’s impossible to divorce all of them from one another to generate some new person. Not to mention…where would he go? He would be found quickly, and for as grown as he’d like to think he is, living alone as a completely different person is something he can’t even conceptualize a starting point for.
And it’s wholly Gyuvin’s thought process of avoiding hurting his family at all costs that he truly can’t drive away. Every mapped out plan of running away results in a roadblock of guilt and shame. He can’t do this to the people he loves. Gyuvin wants to see Gyuri grow up and become a mother, to see his father retire and all of his friends find love and work, cry and fight and come back together again. He gives love and he knows it, and to damage it more than he already has…it’s unthinkable, a non-starter.
So he thinks about finishing what God planned and Gyuvin somehow corrupted. It’s not like he had a say in becoming Gyuvin or not, but the intention or purpose doesn’t really matter. He’s still there, a trespasser who put a stop to what fate intended. The ideas go equally nowhere — it’s morally not something he could ever do. Suicide is a sin, and someone would find him. His mother, his father, a sibling. Whether in his home — or if he did it somewhere else, his body would be found and need to be identified. Thinking of his parents crumpling in on each other as they have to nod through wailing over their dead first born, is—
It’s unthinkable.
Gyuvin has to talk himself into it. To exist as he is is the only option that works for everyone. He’ll get better, be a better Gyuvin so that the only casualty he ever has to truly claim is Ricky. None of his siblings will ever know, his mother and father and uncles, aunts, grandparents, it will never cross their mind because of how inexplicably perfect a replica he’ll be. If he could take it back from Ricky, Gyuvin would — and realistically, he can still spare him if he gives up on him, in all contexts. There are ways to fix the damage he’s accidentally done.
It’s just that as he finally does fall asleep, thinking of Ricky’s tortured face staring up at him from down the hill, it feels so impossible. Gyuvin is surely in heaven, and Gyuvin sends a prayer of hope that he forgives him for breaking the heart of the boy he loved.
( high school, year one )
In year ten, Gyuvin, his father and his two brothers all came down with a nasty version of the flu. Usually he bounced back within a day, no matter the illness, but whatever bug all of the Kim men had caught, it wasn’t going anywhere.
He was sure his vertigo was coming back after being rudely awoken with a bout of dizziness, only to find Gyuri bouncing into stillness right next to his head.
Gyuvin sucked on his teeth, pulled his comforter up to try and cover his squinting, dry face. “Get out of here before you start puking too.”
One of her hands slithered across his forehead, then moved downwards to pinch his nose. It was enough to leave him gasping. “I want to carry some of the germs to give to Dawon. It’s a boy disease, anyway.”
Her boyfriend. Gyuvin prayed for death and tried to puff air through his nose in an attempt to be released. “I’m too sick to listen to boyfriend talk.”
“Then don’t.” Finally she let him go. Gyuvin was too far burrowed down into his blankets to see her stand up, only felt her weight shift off of his mattress. Her voice was still nearby when she spoke. “When did you get a handsome friend?”
He pulled down his blankets just enough to poke part of his head out, squinting in her direction. “Gunwookie?”
“No — he’s alright, though. This one has cat eyes. If he’s just a guy from your class, you should be friends with him. So he can come over.”
Ricky. Ricky was there. “Yah, why are you bringing him up? How do you know him?”
“He’s downstairs. Mom is making him something that isn’t juk. We may have a new dad soon.”
Gyuvin made it out of his bedroom before Gyuri did somehow, only forgetting to check that he was truly wearing clothes right before the turn to go downstairs — a ratty T-shirt and old basketball shorts. At least he had pants on at all. After the momentary pause to collect himself, he stomped downstairs, not waiting to see her before calling out. “Mom! Let my friend leave!”
He found exactly who he expected: Ricky, still in school uniform, not facing him but very obvious by his frame and hair. Unruly, curling from the day’s humidity and vaguely darker at the root under the overhead lighting. His friend turned to observe him, donning a white hygienic mask. Gyuvin’s mother didn’t look up from her own position at the island, cutting a daikon radish into small, silvery slices.
“My son still has the energy to be rude, so I don’t know how sick he really is.” She sighed, putting her knife down eventually; Ricky offered Gyuvin a small wave in the meantime. “Ricky, thank you for introducing yourself — this won’t be ready for some time, so you can go upstairs to see my son.” One of her delicate hands pat him on the bicep, smiling up at him after giving Gyuvin a playful but scathing look. “Or stay with me in the germ-free zone.”
“Mrs. Kim, really the food should be for yourself.” Gyuvin had only ever heard Ricky speak to teachers as authority figures, but his voice had a certain softness talking to his mother. He bowed his head and waist low, even at the kitchen island. “I’ll go see to Gyuvin to make sure he has all the work, but I also don’t want to bother you.”
“Not a bother at all.” Gyuvin’s mother beamed at him, then turned to give her son an incredulous look. “Get new friends more often. The old ones lose their manners too fast.”
Begrudgingly, Gyuvin brought his newest friend upstairs after kicking out his gawking sister. Typically he would have tried to be a better host, but simply going down and up the stairs once had completely winded him. He climbed back into bed and grunted an invitation for his friend to do whatever he pleased. Ricky didn’t seem to mind the lack of a tour or pleasantries, as he watched him observe the room once before sitting on the floor and shrugging off his backpack, pulling out papers to sit on Gyuvin’s nightstand. Once he was seated, he simply started reading from their Korean textbook.
It was quite a bit of text to get through. A crick started to develop in Gyuvin’s neck, having to twist it to the side and down to look at Ricky. He was leaning against the middle of Gyuvin’s bed, mask pulled to his chin so he could be heard more clearly. His pronunciation remained less than stellar, and Gyuvin’s eyes crinkled every time he watched Ricky’s cheek puff out in concentration or frustration at having to think too long about stringing hangul together to form words.
His profile really was handsome. Gyuvin thought about his sister commenting on it earlier, then about how there had been a blanket assumption that someone who looked like Ricky would have a certain attitude and way about him attached. Like someone accidentally celestial couldn’t also be purposefully angelic in action. He’d gotten a few texts from his other friends wishing him well, Gunwook even offering to bring him work — Gyuvin turned him down, not wanting to get anyone sick. He’d pay dearly within his conscience if Ricky also eventually came down with something. He should have turned him away, or at least put up more of a fight. It was selfish, and he flushed upon the realization.
Gyuvin actually hated being sick, much preferring the opposite — taking care of his sick siblings, as much as it pained him to see them uncomfortable and troubled, was something he found enjoyable. Sans the gross parts — wiping snot, cleaning up puke, changing horrendous diapers — it was fun to play nurse. It made him feel bonded to a person. Reading an additional bedtime story to get a feverish younger brother to bed, or dropping off a care package at one of his friend’s houses. If he knew Ricky like he thought he did, this was something they had in common. He was a caring person, and it was the first time Gyuvin had fully felt the sentiment returned by someone who wasn’t his mother.
— Well, not returned, per se. He’d never seen Ricky sick. He wouldn’t want it taken wrong, but Gyuvin actually wanted to, sometime. He wasn’t wishing ill on his friend, just that whenever the occasion did happen to strike, he would be there with bells on. Ricky seemed to have himself put together, but he was also secretly clumsy and childlike. He had a penchant for watching YouTube videos when they were eating lunch, and it was easy to imagine Gyuvin bringing him a sampling of his mother’s “get well fast” quick cures, then keeping him company watching something on his large room TV — Ricky simply had to have one. Maybe it would be a drama, or some Chinese variety show. Ricky would try and explain the jokes going on, but Gyuvin would shush him with another lozenge and think that understanding didn’t matter, just being together was enough.
Every few minutes, Ricky would look back at him — maybe to see if his charge had fallen asleep. Gyuvin admittedly had slowed to being less responsive, a telltale tickle in his throat indicating the soreness would be back soon and with a vengeance. More and more he worried that Ricky shouldn’t have been there, definitely in the line of fire for who knows what kind of virus had infiltrated their fortress.
Eventually he paused mid-sentence and stood, looking back with a crease of worry in his usually unblemished forehead.
“Be right back.”
Gyuvin watched Ricky leave his room, trailing him wordlessly as he slinked out the door. Within ten minutes time, Ricky was back — his long-sleeved sweater had been rolled up past his elbows, and in one hand he held an inflated washcloth, swelling with water that Gyuvin could see dripping into a cupped palm.
Endearing.
“Rummaging through my house?” Gyuvin croaked, feeling the burn fully coming back to his throat. Still, his face felt hotter.
“Your sister showed me.” Was all Ricky said simply, then shifted Gyuvin’s hair away from his face with closed eyes. The rag was placed askew, but Gyuvin shuffled a hand up to push it into place further towards his hairline. It was heavy with moisture; several drops fell fatly onto his face as Ricky moved the object towards him, thick streams of cool sliding from his forehead, down his ears and neck to soak his pillow. It was enough to tickle his fine hair and make him itch, but Gyuvin remained vampirically still as Ricky squinted his eyes back open to go back to sitting down.
“Shen Ricky, you’ll be a good wife some day.”
“A wife?” Ricky scoffed, but his eyes twinkled when Gyuvin saw him turn to look at him incredulously. The offended expression tickled Gyuvin to the core.
“A wife.” He confirmed; it hurt to laugh more than it hurt to feel Ricky’s balled fist land sideways into his stomach. A trickle of water traversed the other direction, sliding down the bridge into his nose and then the crevice of his tear duct. “Why’d you close your eyes?”
“You don’t want people to see.” Ricky turned slightly, fingers gesturing up into his own bangs. “Your forehead.”
He’d never said it out loud, but it was something he was self-conscious about. Gyuvin thought his forehead was large, and even on days when he was comfortable enough to look at it bare…bangs still suited him more. It was a subconscious thing, he knew, and would make sure to press his bangs flat to his face when friends would rip hats from his head, pull at his tennis headband, and one of his first morning instincts when staying over at someone else’s place was to make sure he hadn’t accidentally revealed it.
Gyuvin’s laugh came out as a congested snort, throat crackling out a playful, “Idiot.” It was something Ricky had noticed, no explanation needed. He wanted to feel bashful, embarrassed that another boy had caught him being so insecure, but instead could only feel a spike in warmth of his skin negate the cool compress.
Ricky didn’t seem to think much of it, only rolled his eyes and settled back in to open their Korean text. “I’ll never step foot in this house again.” Gyuvin couldn’t imagine any fate worse.
Memories exist in two states — pre-Gyuvin and post- Gyuvin. They all lie on a timeline of footage in his brain the same way, but his attachment to the feelings are different. He’s lucky enough not to have to explain it to anyone…it’s confusing, and it’s not like he has the language to discuss what he is or how he works.
— Until Ricky, courageously prodding at Gyuvin’s structure and purpose, makes him talk while they’re walking to the bus stop home. Reasonably, he could slide out of it. Honestly, it would be in Ricky’s best interest. The closer he gets to the truth and reality of Gyuvin , the more his emotional state is chipped away at. Maybe it’s not something their other friends notice, but Gyuvin does — Gyuvin watches Ricky, just like his predecessor did. That’s how he knows the small things, and the inconsistencies. The small changes in how he sits or arranges himself among their friend group, uncomfortable and wanting to keep distance. Even now, there’s space between them that wouldn’t previously have been there.
He explains it how he knows best: when he looks at Gyuvin’s past memories, he inherently knows the feelings attached to them. When he makes memories for himself, he’s not examining something — he’s experiencing it. There’s a vast difference between looking at memories of Ricky and experiencing them now. Gyuvin cried when Ricky went on vacation to Los Angeles last summer, and Gyuvin replays that memory and knows it was because he missed him, was so worried he’d somehow reattach himself to the glamor and dry heat of California again that he’d never come back. It was syrupy, pathetic love-sickness, and he can feel a ghost of how it made Gyuvin’s stomach hurt at the time.
Gyuvin loved Ricky, more than the rest of his friends, and so, so differently — and so Gyuvin loves Ricky by proxy. It’s just a truth that he’s aware of, a statement of who he is now. But this isn’t how he explains it to Ricky. He talks about how it felt to feel love and happiness from other people, how it felt suffocating to suddenly be alive and to feel all of those past memories enter him — juxtaposed against wanting to savor the ones he’s making for himself, to be felt and coveted for the first time.
As he talks, it sinks in that he’s explaining all of this to someone who loved Gyuvin, and doesn’t love him. It shouldn’t feel bad — Gyuvin talked a big game about being essentially Gyuvin anyway when he confessed his existence to Ricky, but he’s experienced enough to make him feel out of place that he doesn’t feel secure about it anymore. Is he going to tell Ricky that? Absolutely not, but it breaks his heart how he has to admit it — Ricky hates him, but Gyuvin has no choice but to carry on, even if that means losing Ricky in the process.
It’s then that he sees it for himself. It’s not just a memory replayed. Gyuvin can feel it in the soft pad of Ricky’s thumbs, even if one’s coated in coagulated chocolate and strawberry jelly. Ricky looks at him like his heart is breaking all over again, and it’s in the pain that he feels at being the cause — and being so selfish as to want the look to be for him and not the boy he’s taken over.
Cast over the sorrow of the moment, however, is the realization for himself that falling into Gyuvin’s adoration of this other boy is easy. Just like he keeps saying — with practice, he’ll truly become Gyuvin. In the case of Ricky, this is a completed exercise. Loving the boy has always been there, in Gyuvin’s thoughts and feelings, but now the line of separation between the two of them is completely gone.
If he hadn’t just stopped crying, the sight of Ricky’s eyes crinkling and his shocked, gummy smile as Gyuvin brings his hand up to his mouth would easily bring him to pieces once again.
( high school, year two )
Ricky was the one who drew, but Gyuvin studied him like he was a subject to be illustrated. Someone would one day, he was sure — especially if Ricky went to some art school. He was a boy destined to live out his life like he was the main character in a drama. His older female professor would take an interest in him, at first for his striking features and then for his soft kindness. She would ask him to stay after class and request he model for her; Ricky’s face would be one she would commit to memory and recreate enough to host an exhibit, solely of his portraits in charcoal, pastels and watercolors. He would notice her coffee order and leave offerings of her drinks of choice on her desk before she arrived to the studio. Maybe their age gap was somewhat inappropriate, but their attraction for each other would blossom into a love that narratively couldn’t be argued with.
— Or, another plot: he would be partnered with another student to draw each other, a guy. The combination of Ricky’s beauty and his ability to capture the fine features of the other man would create this odd chemistry between them. Ricky would move on to other subjects, but he would stay implanted in the mind of his new friend — photographed, sketched and sculpted. Who wouldn’t be infatuated with his appearance? The coyness Ricky would exhibit would be too much for things to stay fully platonic. It wouldn’t help matters that they meet by chance over and over again. A mixer, a convenience store, the subway. It would mean something to them, especially Ricky who always seemed the type to believe in things like fate and destiny. Eventually, with persistence and continued worship, his affections would be caught.
One day Gyuvin paused to reflect on why he made Ricky bisexual in these little plot synopsis. No other friend of his got imagined into scenarios with both men and women — well, truthfully no other friend of his was imagined in this way at all. Still, it was as easy to imagine Ricky in a passionate kiss with his female professor as it was to think of him hesitantly succumbing to the embrace of his male contemporary. It was an interesting thought experiment, but no answer floated to the surface.
Gyuvin simply knew either scenario to be plausible because he was so far removed from anything related to art — his stick figures came out with a scientifically impossible number of limbs, somehow — and yet if he could obsess over Ricky to the point of artistic madness then he surely would. Ricky’s straight nose invaded his thoughts, or how he would fumble trying to tuck black locks of his lengthening hair behind his ear when he was trying to focus and failing. His skin was clear consistently, which was maddening considering Gyuvin knew Ricky’s skincare routine. Every sleepover, no matter whose house, he’d wash his skin with room temperature water, slather on some moisturizer and headband his hair out of his face — a completely simple ritual that was unfair in the face of five other teenage boys dealing with the hormonal blemishes residual from the end of puberty. Gyuvin cursed the day Ricky was ever born every time he had to steal one of his sister’s star-shaped pimple patches before bed.
Ricky was special because even the most mundane of features on other people were noteworthy on him. Maybe Gyuvin wasn’t as good a friend as he thought — he certainly couldn’t tell someone what was remarkable about Yuneseo’s eyebrows compared to Junhyeon’s. Gunwook’s were thicker, but eyebrows were eyebrows— except on Ricky. They laid straight atop his browbones, trimmed and long. His ears were basically perfect, the default ear anyone would think of if they imagined one.
It seemed like a normal thought process, based on how any comments he made about Ricky outside of his presence were parrotted by the rest of the group.
“I would never take him to a mixer, that’s for sure. I’m a catch, but I’m not a manhwa character.” Junhyeon grumbled once, spearing a boxed coffee a little too forcefully. Maybe the main difference was other people seemed to harbor some sort of underlying spite about Ricky, if anything. It wasn’t ever something that raised a red flag, no one ever mistreated him that Gyuvin could tell, but he never looked at Ricky with jealousy. Just appreciation. It was a lightness that would swell into prideful happiness. That was his friend. Beautiful, lovely and always within reach. Sometimes it felt unbelievable that such a thing could be true.
Things have shifted, rapidly. Gyuvin has fully adapted to Gyuvin’s personality trait where action is necessary; he doesn’t feel comfortable just sitting on his hands, letting sleeping dogs lie. He’s gone through so many memories of Ricky, knows and sees the trepidation Gyuvin had previously — but Gyuvin is operating on looking at the big picture, knowing that life has stakes that shouldn’t be taken for granted. He has to come up with a plan to confess. There have to be some technical steps to this, though: Ricky may not reciprocate, but Gyuvin wants him to. He wants to be better, to be so much like Gyuvin and for Ricky to see that he’s no different. Enough so that his feelings slot into place perfectly, knowledge of Gyuvin’s situation be damned.
He considers the timeline of things…maybe during their summer trip to Jeju, less than twenty-four hours away, Gyuvin can showcase he’s just as fun-loving and charismatic as his predecessor. He’s currently in the middle of sitting at his iMac in his room, curating a playlist for the bus ride tomorrow. At first the goal was just to make one of fun summer songs he could play throughout the trip for everyone to enjoy, but the longer he thought about his idea to tell Ricky about his feelings, the more sappy R&B ended up getting added. Now it’s a Ricky-centric playlist, and it becomes the groundwork in trying to shove rose-colored glasses onto his face.
Confessing is also a decision that’s easier to make when he considers that the feelings are decidedly mutual.
Gyuvin knew that Ricky liked him — at least, the inkling was there. There were certainly more absolute truths in Gyuvin’s life, but now that the memories can all be examined without that same bias and insecurity? Gyuvin can say for sure that it’s a crush that’s reciprocated, even if only from a distance.
It actually makes him feel like a third wheel at times, not at all like the boy previously in this body who went back and forth on whether or not he should say something, or if he was reading all the signs and signals wrong. How foolish he would feel if all of the hints he’d taken note of were because of some cultural difference he had no idea of, or that Ricky was staring past him instead of right into him like Gyuvin had previously thought. Gyuvin finds a lot of explanations for why it isn’t true stuffed in corners of his collection of stolen thoughts and feelings. There’s a whole web of conspiracy in there that Ricky’s actually in love with Gunwook instead, and Gyuvin laughs with his gift of true hindsight.
Gyuvin doesn’t realize how loud the music is in his headphones, and when a hand settles onto his shoulder he yelps in alarm. Usually the only sibling that bothers him in his room as of late is Gyuri, and he swears before spinning about. “Shit, what’s wrong with you?”
“Excuse me?” It’s his mother instead, stepping backwards to sit on his bed across from his desk. Gyuvin’s mouth dries at the realization as he turns around fully in his chair, but her face is comedic. “Don’t tell me you talk to your siblings like that?”
He clumsily mutes his computer, sliding his headphones down to hang tight around his neck. “Mom, of course not. I thought Gunwookie was over, and he’d deserve it.” It’s a quick save, not that he thinks she would care. “What’s up, though?”
“I was just making sure you had everything you needed. If not, I can run to the store.” She’s a lithe woman, and she tucks her legs up onto the bed and arranges her long skirt over them enough that she basically disappears into the fabric. All Gyuvin can see of them is the ball of a socked foot peeking out to her side. “I’ve got my neck pillow I can lend you. Oh, and take your father’s motion sickness medication.”
Gyuvin wracks his brain quickly, comes up empty. He’s got his bags packed and to the side of his closet already. All that’s missing are his daily affects: cell phone, Airpods, wallet. “I’ve got everything…it’s just Jeju. A few days.”
“Do you remember the last time we all went?” His mother smiles and scoots closer to him, eyes unfocused as she laughs and recalls their last trip. He does — five years ago, and it’s a joy to recap. He got to take a whole box of mangoes back home since they went on a ferry, not a plane. The younger kids were fussy about it, but watching the water carry them back home suited Gyuvin just fine. It’s how he, Gyuvin, knows how to think of himself at all, and he hopes the iridescence of the water doesn’t make him homesick for something he barely knows. “Oh, Gyuwon got so sunburnt on accident, and I was freaking out…I thought I told you to make sure he had enough sunscreen on when we were at the beach, but it just. Slipped my mind.” Now she looks at her son lovingly, much softer in tone. “You would have done it if I told you. I think you even asked me about it.”
She nods, and settles in. Gyuvin realizes that this likely won’t be a casual visit just to ask him for any grocery shopping additions. “I think this will be good for you. You need a break.”
He waits for her to keep speaking, the desire to do so obvious on her face. He’s proven right when she shifts and clears her throat softly, looking at his floor with dampening eyes before steeling herself to look him head on. “Gyuvinnie…if you need to talk to someone, I think it would be a good idea. I know it has to hurt, to have to change your university plans. I know how hard you practiced with tennis, and if you still wanted to get into a school with a good team, they’d let you on once you felt comfortable enough to play again.”
Gyuvin lets her talk and the words hit him square in the chest before he can mentally deflect them. He isn’t thinking about this. There’s already so much going on in his life. There’s school, Ricky, his other day to day chores and tasks. He missed his last tennis season, and there’s nothing he can do about it. “It doesn’t bother me.”
His mother licks her lips and purses them, nodding softly before she fidgets, smoothing her skirt fabric out before continuing. “Gyuri and Gyuwon are seeing someone. Just a few times, maybe. But you wouldn’t be alone.” Her next sentence is quieter. “I’m going to, too.”
This makes Gyuvin’s stomach tighten. This is his fault. How does he fix it? Caving in to her perceived helpfulness? Making a bigger problem of himself? He owes this woman more than that. “I’m totally okay, mom. If you think it’s a good idea for you, then I think it’s great!” He tries to relieve the tension in his throat, hoping it will keep his voice from sharpening with emotion. It doesn’t help. “Thanks for worrying, but I’m fine.”
She looks at him, long and lovingly. Her nods this time are bigger, more accepting. “Okay. Okay.” His mother shifts her legs forward to come off the bed, standing and twisting her neck side to side. Gyuvin hears a soft crack, and it’s like the joint she popped released a string previously pulled taut. Suddenly his mother looks tired, older. He remains quiet. “This is your last year…and I know university is an issue — I’m not going to mention it again — but I do want you to have a fun time at school. You can think your mom is overdramatic, but I wanted to share with you…I really thought I lost you for a little while. Before your dad even called to let me know something happened, I just felt it. When they told me you were fine, I felt so relieved, it was like a miracle.”
When she starts, she talks with acceptance and is to the point. As she continues, she can’t keep the grief from her face and voice. As far as she knows, she didn’t have to live in it…but grief touched her, and that period of time can’t ever be taken away. Gyuvin’s eyes widen, never having heard this before. He briefly realizes this is adjacent to how Ricky feels, and it’s an emotion he does have to live with every day. Not at the level of a mother losing her child, but still at a point where a heart was broken.
“We’ve always put a lot on you. I’m sorry I was scared for you, and I know things have been harder because of it. I just wanted you to know. And that I hope you have a fun time.” She dabs at her eyes before stepping to hug him; Gyuvin wraps arms around her waist and mid-section tightly, pressing his face into her side and breathing deeply. Her perfume tickles his nose; it’s never smelled so good. Gyuvin is further comforted when she pets his hair down, warmth from her hand reaching his scalp. “Every moment we have has to be taken advantage of, my baby. That’s what I want for you.”
( high school, year two )
Gyuvin hated feeling like a child, even if it was objectively still true. An immediate sense of immaturity would set in when he nicked himself shaving — there was barely any stubble to get rid of anyway, and yet he still couldn’t perfect shaving without hurting himself. Only once did it require a plaster; a small dot of toilet paper usually stuck to his skin and stopped the bleeding, edges blending in enough with the murky rust color that it didn’t end up very noticeable.
He became aware of just how much Ricky noticed him when he came back to the classroom with canned drinks for himself and Gunwook, the others off grabbing their own lunch foods. Ricky’s writing notebook was left open, and Gyuvin spied a bleed of color on the usually black and white pages: a murky red in the margins of the edge closest to his desk.
It wasn’t his business. Ricky didn’t like talking about his art, be it doodles or full pieces he apparently worked on at home. Still, the pull of curiosity was too strong. Gyuvin, a drink in each hand, leaned down before taking his seat.
The small doodle was of a small and lopsided square, red blooming in the middle and dying in intensity as the color moved to the edges. Surrounding it was a suggestion of flesh, lightly textured. Ricky turned his head and drew Gyuvin’s shaving mistake in great detail, even getting the awkward shape of the makeshift bandage and how he couldn’t go over the patch of skin again to get a clean shave, small black stubble more present surrounding the cut than the other, less detailed part of his neck he managed to draw. How many times had he turned to get all of that right? Or did he stare the whole time, Gyuvin blissfully unaware as he paid attention to the reading exercise they just completed?
He didn’t know where Ricky was or how soon he’d come back. Gyuvin casually slid into his desk and clinked juices with Gunwook once he handed him his drink. He wondered how many other small drawings Ricky had made of him. He also questioned if they were coveted because they were his art, or if the subject betrayed something more than just casual doodling. It was the first time he noticed that Ricky paid attention to him, cautiously and carefully, but it wouldn’t be the last.
The longer Gyuvin inhabits Gyuvin’s consciousness, the easier it becomes to slip into revisiting the more private moments. Every memory means every memory. Every feeling means every feeling. He can easily pull up the last time Gyuvin puked and feel residual queasiness, feel the chunkiness of the cubed meat and slippery cabbage skin leave his mouth. Every shit he’d ever taken is in there with easy enough access if he wanted to go into the recesses of his brain and rifle through enough gross memories.
It isn’t just the gross aspects of human living that become easier to pull up and reexamine. There are the lewd ones. Gyuvin had to become acquainted with memories of “his” first boner, the embarrassing and awkward moments of getting hard in class or at home randomly and not being able to take care of them in the obvious, quickest way.
Then there are the feelings associated with other people. He had fledgling sexual fantasies centered around a female idol, then a girl in middle school — the one Gyuvin knows his original shared a first kiss with. His most recent object of desire…well, it really comes at no surprise.
There are a few stored fantasies of other men in his brain, needing to toy with the idea of being with another guy and feel out how far down the rabbit hole he should go concerning it. There are sexual scenarios involving other friends of his, but they come with an instinctual urge to stop where the original Gyuvin had started. For instance, an experimental vision of Yunseo about to kiss him goes nowhere, only eliciting an uncomfortable sourness in Gyuvin’s brain and stomach. A couple male celebrities have more in-depth scenarios that were revisited, but the obvious feelings associated with those are ones of practice, exploring the mechanics away from imaginations that meant Gyuvin wouldn’t be able to look his best friend in the eye for a while. Somewhere along the line, though, horniness won out — and it’s now very easy to playback explicit fantasies of Ricky, with incredible variety and flavor.
It’s close to midnight and all the lights are off, all the rooms still. His hand slips past the band of his boxers and Gyuvin palms himself under his comforter, already coming out of his flaccid state. The vision of Ricky in his mind is used to playing with him under two conditions. One is soft and romantic, and Gyuvin kisses into his neck as he strokes the two of them together. The scenarios are usually on a bed or in some liminal space somewhere, the details less important than focusing on the sensations — the tautness of his stomach, the way that his thighs throb with the want of motion. It’s all slow and luxurious, and the most extreme it ever gets is the pain he imagines in his skin when Ricky digs nails into his back and scalp.
The other is much less considerate, reveling in the way Ricky’s usually deep voice pitches up to a high breathiness as he pushes him down, sliding in and out of him with strength and power. The latter is what Gyuvin tunes into now, imagining holding the long back in front of him in place, fucking him from behind like pain isn’t real in this simulated universe. In reality, he would never hurt Ricky — unless he wanted Gyuvin to, and in that case he’d try his damnedest to please him. The sound of Ricky climaxing, the way his voice would barely make it out of his throat while the pleasure rolled through his body, brings Gyuvin to orgasm himself.
It’s an effective way to fall asleep easily when he’s getting on a plane the next day. It used to feel like he was eavesdropping, intruding. Now it’s as natural as if he made the feelings himself.
( high school, year two )
In his second year of middle school, Gyuvin kissed Son Hyemin, one of the prettiest girls in school. Long black hair, full lips, wide eyes and dimpled cheeks that rounded when she smiled widely. They’d been dating for a month and a half, so all of his friends had already made the rounds of being in disbelief, high-fiving and congratulating him on the catch, but it all started up again when he made the decision to quite literally kiss and tell.
Her lips were small and round, and the experience was sticky. She paused their session after two small pecks to reapply her peach lip gloss and kissed him again, again, again. Gyuvin remembered watching her, how the sheen of the gloss was so present in the dim light of an alcove in school. In hindsight, they were all very awkward; the two of them pressed their mouths together in one haphazard pattern or another, pulled apart then did it again like they could find a way to make it feel correct. It didn’t. They broke up a couple weeks later, amicably and mutually in a way befitting young teenagers.
“We don’t have to be boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. Just friends.” Hyemin was decent enough to tell him in person.
In return, Gyuvin was decent enough to put on a bothered pout. “Ah, I understand.”
Gyuvin didn’t like to lie. When his friends pressed him for details, he said plainly: she’s pretty, it was nice, they kissed a few times. He left out the more embarrassing bits. How it felt like play-acting, making his palms clammy and muscles tense in ways he knew were wrong.
This kind of love didn’t ooze out of his pores like platonic and familial love did. Boys around him talked about having crushes on girls, at varying degrees of intensity. Gyuvin didn’t abide by the gross talk of wanting to squeeze breasts and look under skirts, so he gained the reputation of a prude — it wasn’t a title anyone ever placed on him maliciously. Gyuvin tended to agree…he wasn’t interested in dating past that experience, and that didn’t change as he moved up in grades. His close knit group of friends in high school would talk about potentially getting girlfriends, going to mixers, but no one ever really acted on anything (as least as far as any of them ever let spill). University he was sure would awaken the dating beast in some of them; Junhyeon in particular was basically chomping at the bit, but others like Gunwook and Seungeon were very obviously into their studies and passions more than the fairer sex.
“I’m surprised you never got a girlfriend actually, Gyuvin.” Yunseo told the group while all six of them were camped around Gunwook’s dining room table, gesturing his bowl of cup noodles in Gyuvin’s direction. He’d just griped about how his little sister was starting to date and complaining how she hadn’t been so like-minded as her eldest brother. Kids these days, coming from the mouth of a seventeen-year-old. Gyuvin lowered his chopsticks to give his friend a quizzical look. “Well, besides the one. Son…Son something, right?”
“That was ancient history.” Gyuvin went back to twirling melted cheese stick around a massacred piece of corn dog in his own cardboard bowl, blowing on non-existent steam to stave off the awkwardness he suddenly felt. He couldn’t say something like it was a stupid mistake of youth, even as a joke — he and Hyemin didn’t last, but she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. “Tennis is the only lover I need anymore.”
“You had a girlfriend?”
Ricky, unlike his other degenerate and sloppy friends, ate a convenience store sandwich half speared on a plastic fork like a dignified prince. He was making his way around the triangle of white bread, cabbage, tomato and egg salad in a circle of small nibbles; Gyuvin took note of a small smear of off-yellow above his upper lip, his dangling cross earring glinted in the natural light of the room. His eyes were wide and scanning, scooting tighter to the table to look Gyuvin closer in the eye.
“Oh yeah, in middle school. You weren’t here, Ricky — thank God.” Junhyeon’s mouth was half full, not looking up but eager to disseminate this information. “No offense, just.” A hard swallow. “Gyuvin wouldn’t have stood a chance if you were on the market.”
“Did you ever have braces Ricky? Or an ugly haircut? Something to give us hope?” Yunseo joked before the rest of the gang laughed comfortably. Ricky being unnaturally good-looking had been a joke for months still. Busan had taken away his blonde hair and piercings (most of the time; a dangling cross was currently catching the light from Gunwook’s living room window), but it hadn’t succeeded to dulling his natural shine. Even going to back to a small-mouthed bite of tacky bread and egg salad, he glimmered with closed eyes and high cheekbones.
Gyuvin chewed at a bite of noodles and considered dropping the subject, more than capabale of spending more of the evening talking about what a third rate loser his sister’s new boyfriend was — maybe it was just because he was so observant and attentive to his friends and their mannerisms, very empathic to the mood of the room, but something tickled his brain at how Ricky had asked. When he’d looked up, Ricky’s expression wasn’t incredulous or teasing, and the way he’d asked…there was a lilt to the end of his sentence. Expectant, maybe.
Ricky was still grasping natural Korean cadence. He was also still new to the group and not yet aware of all of their history. He could easily have been astutely stating this newly unearthed bit of Gyuvin lore to catalog in his brain, something he’d never heard before about his new friend.
“I really liked Son Hyemin.” Gyuvin never fully got why he instinctively defended it so strongly. “She was a really cute girl…and she was nice to me. Nice to everyone.” He was looking right into Ricky’s forehead until his friend looked up at him, catching their gazes together tightly. “We were a good couple. I liked being with her.”
An awkward silence fell for a few seconds longer than normal while everyone chewed and examined what Gyuvin had just said. Typical, Junhyeon finally snorted. “Are you entering your romantic drama protagonist arc or something? Trying to get the girl back?”
“No.” Gyuvin answered quickly. He noticed Ricky had licked his egg salad smear away, dull smudge of yellow replaced by a slight sheen of saliva.
The first day of Jeju starts without any hitches. The bus ride is long but comfortable, and the first part of his plan is set into motion. While trying to seem as nonchalant as possible, Gyuvin observed Ricky out of the corner of his eyes as they shared Airpods, his meticulously curated playlist playing between them. His eyes were closed, and occasionally he would smirk, small and cheeky, or mouth a few of the words for songs he was already familiar with.
Unfortunately, they didn’t get drawn to be roommates, and it’s not the only information the monitors give him. Jeon Sejoon slides an additional keycard into his hand and leans in tight to whisper nearly into his ear.
“We all know what you guys get up to, every year.” Like there’s a grand tradition Gyuvin isn’t aware of, though he’s sure it’s just some form of teenage debauchery that occurs like clockwork. “I know you’re straight-laced, so if anyone gets sick from drinking, I trust you to help them before anyone else.”
He’d like to push back, to say it’s just shoving hard work and potential criminal involvement onto a student when there should be school adults around to handle the situation — but the whole idea that she’d look to do such a thing is why he takes the keycard and nods, trusting himself more than the adult in front of him. So he takes his things, settles his bags into his room and begins his vacation.
Following Ricky is natural, something Gyuvin does on autopilot. There’s some disappointment that he doesn’t hang back, attach himself to Gyuvin’s hip like he has in the past — but he gets a bit of grace, all things considered. It leaves open an opportunity to observe him in his natural habitat: a shopping mall.
Gyuvin wonders if Ricky’s aware that he makes small faces when he’s thinking. His gaze is caught by a sheer, black scarf and he fingers the material with downturned eyebrows and slanted lips; it’s a kiosk of obvious brand name knock-offs that he’s obviously sussed out as being fake.
He’s lingered too long — Ricky’s caught the attention of the older woman running the stall, who taps him on the arm and smiles brightly, not picking up on his negative opinion of her garments. Maybe it’s because his demeanor shifts almost immediately, softly smiling at her and chatting about the color and style of a few scarves she shows him. She says something that flusters him; it’s incredible how someone who must obviously know they have such an elevated visual still gets shy when it’s pointed out. The stall keeper tries very hard to sell him on a few pieces, but he politely declines over and over, softly bowing and apologizing for his unwillingness.
Next he stops by a fruit stall — one of the million in the marketplace — and has a habit of grabbing everything he sees. For as much as he doesn’t like skinship, Ricky becomes intimately familiar with apricots, tangerines and mandarines. Gyuvin’s mother does the same thing, he’s noticed when shopping with her. Judging the softness, texture and smell. Ricky brings a pomelo to his nose, touching rind to skin. His eyebrows crinkle and he puts it back, obviously not impressed; Ricky’s long and straight nose crinkles in on itself.
The only fruit Ricky doesn’t manhandle is an overripe mango, nearly all soft yellow in color with only a hint of red left. Two fingers rest on it lightly, and Gyuvin studies his face. Wistful, and his lips pinch in on one another.
Eventually, he disturbs the scene, breaking the unspoken rule of not disturbing wildlife in its natural habitat. He’d rather be an active participant, hanging out and feeding his best friend, enjoying the moment without any underlying pretense. Just two friends on vacation, even if he smirks wickedly at watching the boy eat from his hand.
When he says it to Ricky — “You love everything about me,” — he studies the other boy’s expression once he’s taken a bite of his dessert bread. Gyuvin can see, easily, the love that exists there, and knows it to be true. The sadness he makes for himself is also a new experience, thinking of how in Ricky’s eyes, ‘ me’ is a boy that’s long since passed on.
( middle school, year three )
The first time Gyuvin realized he was exhausted, he was in middle school. He was the top athlete on his junior football team, and he’d had to transition directly from an after school match to a late night recital for his sister and her extracurricular ballet class. His youngest sibling was wriggling and threatening to erupt into a tantrum, and as the ever-doting brother Gyuvin offered to take him out of the auditorium when his fussy whines threatened to turn into screams, his mother blowing a quick kiss thank you as he darted outside. Obliging his four-year-old brother in a piggyback ride in a small circle, he got to watch his sister perform through glass smudged from the greasy noses and grimy hands of elementary schoolers every time they rounded the door, upset that he could still smell remnants of sweat through his haphazard washing up in the school sink, followed by a layer of his father’s cologne.
This was his job. His mother and father worked hard with four children. They deserved to see the fruits of their labor. The way his knees groaned from his gentle bouncing, both from growing pains and nearly three hours of constant football, had to be shoved to the back of his mind.
His sister deserved his time, even if his shins and feet ached, side soon sporting a bruise from an awkwardly angled slide on hard turf. She counted on him, just as all of his siblings did. No night was too late or morning too early to care for them.
He’d had to silence his phone — a standard practice for any performance, but absolutely necessary. Gyuvin was sure that once he checked his notifications in the car, he’d have upwards of twenty messages across a variety of platforms. Football teammates talking about the game, high school exams coming up, the impending year ten season. His core group of friends would have blown up their group chat, having gone to the game but not getting any time to congratulate him on his two goals before he had to be whisked off to his sister’s recital.
All of them had families. All of them had friends they had to tend to. Gyuvin loved them, dearly. He told them as such nearly every day, in volumes approaching irritating.
By the time he got home, showered appropriately and tucked his three younger siblings into bed, Gyuvin’s brain was a wall of white noise. He was right: twenty-one KKTs, eighty-four new group chat messages, thirty Instagram notifications. It felt wrong — he took the MBTI test every other month whenever someone broached the topic, and the result was always the same. He was an ‘E,’ with the bar indicating as such nearly filled with color sans a small transparent gap at the end. The number of people more extroverted than he was could probably be reasonably counted with some time and data recording, a truly negligible number.
Gyuvin knew the amount of love that everyone around him deserved from him, and how much he was inherently disposed to give and give and give, usually readily and with no complaints. The first time he thought that he didn’t want to, that he simply couldn’t give anymore of himself to anyone in that moment, he fell asleep with a tear-stained pillow.
Gyuvin doesn’t realize just how long he’s been in the restroom until someone knocks on the door with enough ferocity to make him think something is terribly wrong. His face falls from one of readiness and shock to confusion when he sees Junhyeon staring at him through the crack he’s made, face scrunched in aggravation.
“I knew you weren’t taking a shit in there.” He sighs and sucks his tongue, pushing the rest of the door out of Gyuvin’s grasp. “Are we not exciting enough for you?”
“What are you talking about?” Gyuvin takes the time to step back into the hotel room, feet dodging the limbs of a few other students on the ground and skirting around Junhyeon himself.
“You’ve been in there half an hour.” Gunwook chimes in, though looking much less concerned from his criss-cross position between the two full beds. His tone is more measured than Junhyeon’s, like he’s trying to stop a fight before it starts. “We didn’t want to bother you, but eventually I couldn’t convince Jun you weren’t dead.”
“Seoyoung had to go pee in our room.” Jiwon, one of the girls from other class, pipes up from the floor behind the bed furthest from him, her hoodied-head barely visible above the mattress. Her tone is sour, and it’s then that Gyuvin feels bashful.
“Sorry. I didn’t think I’d be in there that long. I’ll text Seoyoung-ah an apology.” Gyuvin adjusts the rim of his own hoodie to better conceal his quickeningly flushing face. In his absence, all the space in the room appears to be taken. Where he once was on the first bed there are now two other girls from different classes, having migrated from the floor to make room for the snack circle Gunwook is guarding on the ground. Right, the snack exchange. He’d had a desire to try and swap a couple of choco pies for fruit leather. Once his mind had locked onto the opportunity to talk to Ricky, everything else was lost to tunnel vision.
“So what were you up to in there?” Gyuvin turns to see Junhyeon still behind him, still looking at him inquisitively — he’s never been a subtle boy, and the suspicious irritation is blooming into his expression quickly. “Something dirty?”
The devilish smirk is a put on, obvious by how cartoonish it is, and there’s no actual belief behind the accusation. The girls in the room giggle, expecting a bigger reaction than he gives. “Just texting.” Gyuvin shrugs, not taking the bait. He doesn’t have the desire to put on a show of comical shame, to bite into the joke instead of being honest. “Rik didn’t come, so I was saying goodnight.”
His other friends all have some form of reaction, Gyuvin notices, as he scans the room. Junhyeon’s face falls back into obvious annoyance, Gunwook looks exasperated suddenly — they’re roommates, and he’s sure Junhyeon will bitch about this to him later. They’re pretty close as a duo, and if Gyuvin was in the mood to have an argument he’d jab at how if they’re allowed to be close, play favorites, he reserves the same right. Yunseo is looking at his phone with increasing interest, previously half-chuckling at Junhyeon’s attempt at a dirty joke. Seungeon looks resigned, but Gyuvin is pulled back into the conversation before he can examine him closer.
“It takes you thirty minutes to tell him goodnight?” He’s still trying to be goodnatured, but failing miserably. “Just get married already.” In the moment, Gyuvin finds it annoying — once he’s away from the situation, he’ll care a little less, replace the aggravation for pity. He knows Junhyeon takes it harder than others that he has Ricky on a pedestal, even if he’s never said anything about it. Maybe that’s what’s so bothersome about it — it’s just one more thing that Gyuvin danced around in an effort to maintain his friendships as they were, when just talking it out would be the better option.
He decides to lean into this particular Gyuvin attribute again, just to escape for the evening. Gyuvin playfully puhses his shoulder into Junhyeon with a small smile. “You’ll be the first one to get the invite, Junjun.”
Gyuvin’s Jeju roommate is Son Hajoon, and he vaguely knows him as a football player, maybe a goalie. He’s on the shorter side, usually eats lunch alone and always seems to go home right after school. They interact cordially in class, but they aren’t close by any means. Hajoon is very obviously introverted, and Gyuvin is sure he and his semi-large friend group scare him off. When he returns from the get together, he finds Hajoon already in bed but not sleeping. He very obviously jumped when Gyuvin entered the room, but he’s quickly back to barely acting like the room is essentially his alone. Hajoon’s hair is up from his face, lifted by a shower headband, and he’s in the middle of a skincare routine. His feet wiggle rhythmically underneath his duvet, and it makes Gyuvin chuckle.
“Have fun?” He asks, pressing a sheetmask into his skin. Gyuvin simply shrugs and throws a bag of apple jellies onto his own bed; it’s the last of the snacks left from the exchange, Gyuvin going last as an act of forced repentance. He hadn’t stayed much longer after leaving the bathroom, basically having to prop himself against the door as the only place left to stand comfortably.
“A blast.” His heart is pounding, but it certainly isn’t from a raucous evening. Once he was outside of the hotel room, the reality of his semi-confession sunk in. “Am I good to shower?”
“Yeah, I already did hours ago.” Hajoon waves him on before stuttering to a stop. He gestures the remote at the TV, currently in the middle of a variety episode. “Do you mind…?”
The answer is a shrug. That’s fine as far as Gyuvin is concerned. He can fall asleep with headphones in to drown out the noise, and that’s if he can find it in him to sleep anyway. Things are shifting in his favor, and he can feel it.
Gyuvin undresses and he feels the weight of his plans sinking in, past his brain and into his abdomen, stomach tightening. Fuck. Part of him wishes he could just run down the hall and get this over with, and that all of the pieces would fall into place seamlessly. His happily ever after, finally realized. Unfortunately, there’s still some preparation to do. Ricky sees him as an invader, still, and it’s something he has to ease him away from. He still misses Gyuvin, and it’s hard to imagine he’ll ever stop — but the way he looks at him is changing, little by little. He’s forgetting himself, and that’s exactly how it needs to be.
He doesn’t have a right to complain that this is taking forever. Gyuvin’s new here, even if day by day he naturally feels more and more like the teenager he’s replaced. Still, he feels the need to act, to take charge — Gyuvin’s natural impulsivity is a hard instinct to quell at times, and having to constantly keep the ball in Ricky’s court is stifling. Necessary, but stifling. It doesn’t keep him from thinking about how Ricky is meters away, only a few doors and a hallway between them. If the monitors think so highly of him, maybe he can convince them to reset the room plans — Seungeon and Hajoon get along, right? They could be perfect roommates, and Gyuvin and Ricky would live life like a constant sleepover. Jeju be damned.
Gyuvin steps into the shower once the water is hot enough and pictures it even more clearly — too clearly. It’s not his intention, to swerve things into the territory of erotic, but his brain is so infatuated with the idea of their togetherness. It’s inevitable, and indulging in it a little early isn’t a crime, right?
( It’s a hotel, and that lends itself to the convenience of fucking with little concern. Seungeon isn’t there — doesn’t exist in this pocket universe, Hajoon or not. It’s so stupid, how big they are and how big their beds aren’t. Ricky squawks at him for throwing them up and onto the mattress, concerned that they’ll break it and cause too much noise with how the wooden frame thuds against the wall and carpet. That small amount of noise and force will be the least of their concerns once things get going. )
There’s still time to abandon ship. Gyuvin stands with his neck arched backwards, heavy spray of the shower bouncing off his chin and threatening to go up and into his nose.
( The first kiss is teasing — almost like a nip, like Ricky’s daring him to be naughty. It’s inviting enough that Gyuvin returns the cloying favor, kissing into Ricky’s cheeks and nose bridge, wet and sloppy. The third time is the charm, and they kiss for real, when Gyuvin covers them in the safety of the comforter. )
He dribbles a trail of body wash onto his washcloth and closes his eyes once more. Hajoon is in the other room, and he’s never done this in such close proximity to someone else. The thin fibers make his eager skin tingle as he rubs at his skin, more teasing than scrubbing. Gyuvin can be quiet, with some thought and effort.
( Stray and roaming hands tickle one another more than seduce. Ricky’s black cable knit absorbs his regular perfume like a sponge, and Gyuvin presses his face fully to the chest beneath it to inhale. Patchouli, tobacco leaf, musk. There’s a faint hint of— )
He tries to will away the overwhelming smell of antiseptic hotel soap and the aftermath of his own washing up, ocean-y suds from his home-brought body wash pooling at his feet and not yet fully destroyed by the shower spray. Ricky wouldn’t smell so cheap and average. He washes himself in orchids and amber, milk and honey.
( His stomach is lean but soft, and Gyuvin cushions his nose against the divot of Ricky’s bellybutton as he kisses the expanse of abdomen he’s revealed by lewdly pushing up his sweater. Gyuvin gives him enough freedom to sit up, and Ricky’s waist is pulled tightly to his own. There’s a curve, so slight, and he can’t help but snake his hand down to grab the fatty flesh of Ricky’s ass. )
It’s too much, and he touches himself. Gyuvin is already half-hard, dick now hot in his hand as he grabs it from the base, like a solid enough warning grip will somehow shut it off. His brain doesn’t get the memo.
( He turns Ricky on his side, and even mostly out of view Gyuvin can still see the redness across the edge of his cheeks, shoulders turning pink as the flush moves down his body. There’s no lube; in this universe, they don’t need it. Gyuvin still spits on his hand for good measure; he hears a soft and cross voice call his name, but somehow Gyuvin knows the nastiness made Ricky’s dick twitch. )
It took months to learn the subtleties of Gyuvin’s movements and expressions. Maybe it speaks to a secret perverse nature that the muscle memory required for jerking off comes so naturally.
( A hand picks up Ricky’s leg, while another shoves fingers into his mouth. A third gets comfortable scissoring him open, at home in the warm and tight space. His breathing is pornographic — haa , haa , uhnm — and that’s without a dick in him. )
Anatomy becomes lost; small scenes flashing into his head at a rapid pace to chase the high of more and more intense pleasure. Gyuvin’s grip tightens; he thinks if he strokes himself any more taut and the head of his dick will pop off.
( He’s in him now. Ricky’s back is to his chest and Gyuvin can see a small tear of strain threatening to roll past the waterline. He wants to kiss it, thinks to do so, but instead nuzzles his nose into the bared shoulder before him. )
He shouldn’t want him this badly, this darkly. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. He shouldn’t, but he’s so close, fuck, fuck.
( Gyuvin bites him, hard, like a stud holding a bitch in place by the scruff. He tastes blood in his mouth as he remains there, motionless until he’s sure that Ricky knows an untenable truth: he’s his, he’s his, he’s his. )
Gyuvin cums with a loud gasp. He eases it all out, blinking his eyes open hard when he realizes he’s drooling. There’s an obvious and ugly scene below him: the results of his little fantasy, but also murky dots of red. Gyuvin spits and realizes he’s bit his tongue.
Three nights and four days isn’t a very long time to make sure that someone falls in love with a person. Only one day has passed, but even that feels like time wasted — the pessimistic way to look at it, anyway, if he considers that he wakes up and Ricky isn’t in bed with him, and they aren’t married with four children.
Gyuvin, however, chooses optimism. What he has done is subliminally sent vibes out via a playlist targeted at romantic intention, and a silly little story detailing how he’s in awe of Ricky’s presence around him and how much better his companionship makes every day of his life.
Ideally Gyuvin would just blurt it out at breakfast, but unfortunately the two of them exist in a specific and precarious situation. It’s one that’s bettering, Gyuvin knows — he sees how Ricky looks at him, and sometimes seems to forget himself with how he laughs and smiles, flusters himself in the presence of this boy he’s allegedly not interested in any longer due. He also knows how Ricky is wrestling with grief and complicated feelings — but if only he would let Gyuvin try and ease them, to take them away.
— At least, that’s the responsible way to think of things.
Maybe it’s post-nut delusion and his characteristic idealism, but Gyuvin bounces around in the bus seat he’s sharing with Junhyeon for their daily Jeju activity and smiles as he thinks that he might as well go for it. His mother told him, right? To make the most of every moment, and this would be effectively seizing the day. Maybe the best way to show that he’s really Gyuvin is to do the most Gyuvin thing possible. If he sets aside Gyuvin’s previous doubts, Gyuvin is certain that his predecessor would have taken the full and complete plunge.
The setting is ideal — in theory. The horse lighthouses are a tourist selling point, but are small and cramped with students milling about. Yunseo gets sick, the rest of his friends whine about wanting to go bike-riding like there isn’t something so much more important going on around them…Gyuvin tunes it out and wishes that he and Ricky could be alone.
Eventually, the throng of other students clears out as much as it could. This is his chance. He can’t blow this. It’s all or nothing at this point.
“I want to tell you something.” The way Gyuvin speaks is loud and awkward, mouth not caught up with the impulsive confidence his brain is trying to push through his body. Ricky doesn’t owe him shit — the old Gyuvin, maybe. But for Ricky to understand that he should let all of that go would mean he gave up on that big, suffocating love that makes Gyuvin like him so much. Both of them are stuck in place on this. The problem is that Ricky is going to hear Gyuvin’s voice say all this while knowing Gyuvin is the one doing the puppeteering, and that will sour everything.
He should give this up, honestly. It’s better for the both of them.
But his brain digresses. “Out loud. Officially, for real.”
Gyuvin’s concerns are realized in how Ricky essentially recoils from him — it’s not violent, not enough to cause a scene, but Ricky is purposeful. Even one measured step away from him means so much, a knife plunged into Gyuvin’s heart. His best friend tries so hard to keep a straight face, to hide that he’s panicking like a cornered cat looking at the dripping jowls of a mad dog it knows can only eat him.
This should be beautiful and heart-warming. Gyuvin hates that he’s made something so pure so ugly and rotten — just not enough to give up.
When Ricky runs away, off to go biking with the others, Gyuvin is surprised by how he can be grateful and devastated all at once.
Gyuvin runs through his memories with a quickness — at this point they feel so much a part of him it was if they were never two separate entities, needing time to meld together. This feeling is new, however, and Gyuvin can’t find any instances that replicate how bashful and on edge he feels. Gyuvin had been embarrassed before, and he’d been shy. The culmination of the two of the feelings at once, with a twist of simmering caustic negativity swirling in his stomach…this isn’t a namable emotion. Yunseo, looking kind of green, steps quickly over to him and still finds it in himself to ask his friend,
“Are you seasick too, Gyuvin?”
He shakes his head, clapping Yunseo on the back as they leave the vicinity of the lighthouse. The swirling acid that seeps out of his stomach, crawling under his skin commands that he move, move, move. Gyuvin wishes that they were the pair biking instead, that maybe the furious motion of pedaling would banish the substance pulsing through him as if it were simply lactic acid.
There are a series of small stalls within walking distance, selling food and small trinkets. Yunseo talks, talks, talks — he’s trying to fill the silence, nervously looking at Gyuvin, the friend known for bridging the awkward gaps between all of them who now needs the service supplied to himself. There’s an obvious frog in his throat, slightly raw from the trauma of pushing up his breakfast.
“Are you hungry?” He asks, expectantly looking up to meet Gyuvin’seyes.
“Yunyun, you just puked your guts up. Why the hell do you want to eat right now?”
“Not me necessarily.” Yunseo shrugs. “But you only picked at breakfast today. You look like your stomach is upset; it could just be from eating itself.”
Gyuvinshakes his head, but steers them into the way of a small chicken stand; his body still feels there’s corrosive liquid bubbling under the surface of his skin, but the smell is hard to ignore as anything but welcome and delicious. “If you can stomach it I’ll split some with you. You need to eat to get through the rest of the day.”
Yunseo does the job of buying them a bag (Gyuvin frowns when he pulls bills from his wallet he’s sure come from Ricky’s daily allowance), small pieces readily scooped in and shaken in some lightly spiced garlic powder before it’s handed off to them. Gyuvin eats a piece readily, smiling despite his fear that nothing about the decadent flavor will quell his toxic feelings, as comforting as it smells. Despite Yunseo’s previous stomach upset, he readily wolfs down three large pieces, face betraying just how necessary the purchase was. Gyuvin recalls memories from his own childhood, like having a stomach flu and then slurping down bowls of his mother’s ox bone soup once his body had been run dry. Seeing Yunseo like this, even if it’s not some serious ailment, makes Gyuvinshrink in on himself more. Normally he—
—Who is “he ?” The original Gyuvin would coo and pull his friend close, feed him from his own hand and laugh through the cringe of coddling the nearly-grown boy like he was a toddler in his care. Gyuvin doesn’t feel like he can be that person, not right now. Not with how distracted he is, or how disconnected he suddenly feels from all the thoughts in his head. He knew Ricky was still caught up in the one glaring difference and got too over-excited. Just because he saw the opportunity doesn’t mean he should have taken it. He thinks back to cleaning out the hotel shower drain and feels another flush of emotion: shame.
“Can I tell you something, Gyu?” Yunseo sputters out, breaking Gyuvin out of his self-pity. They’ve just been ambling along, in the process of walking circles around the area until it’s time to move on. Yunseo turns to him, and Gyuvin finds his throat is too dry to talk suddenly. Instead, he nods emphatically, just so he’s sure Yunseo gets the hint.
“We’re going to university soon. Junhyeon is upset, you know. And—he told us that you’re going to Sinchon.” Yunseo stops, and Gyuvin halts with him to let him collect his thoughts. “You’re not the MC in my life, but if we all lose you things just won’t be the same. I’m not as mature as you or Wook, or...” He embarrassedly shakes the bag of chicken in his hands, looking down into it instead of at Gyuvin. “But no one will do stuff like this for me when you go. I just want you to know. You’re important to people.”
This frustrates Gyuvin to no end. “Aren’t we all important to one another?” He’s not being put on the same playing field as everyone else. He’s certainly not the only person leaving Busan, and it also feels like no one else is thinking about things from his perspective. “I’m losing people too, you know?” Friends, family. Gyuvin’s whole life has been in Busan, and there is a fear in leaving it, even if it’s mixed with excitement.
Yunseo looks at him and nods, small and astute. “I know. Ricky and Seungeon are both special to me.” He chews one side of his lip, then the other. “Ricky sends me webtoon recommendations and…he gave me a list of art stuff to buy. If I ever want to seriously start. He said he’d teach me, more than shitty YouTube tutorials could.”
Gyuvin didn’t know that. He never knew Ricky shared any kind of art interest with anyone in their group.
“Eon and I make playlists together and we thought about starting a band together once. I never sang in front of anyone until—”
Another thing Gyuvin didn’t know. Had absolutely no idea.
Yunseo’s voice wobbles a bit, skin still pale and eyes misty again. He swipes his sweatered forearm across them, flinching as the material scratches at his skin. “I know when they move away, maybe they’ll still talk to me about all of that once in a while…but I know it’ll slow down.”
“That’s what I mean. I’m losing you too, you know?” The upset floods Gyuvin’s voice easily, even if not wholly related to their current conversation. “You make food for me…my mom loves it when you come over! She says you’re a natural when you help her. And you always supported me, every tennis match. Do you guys think I won’t miss stuff like that? You’re all—”
But he’s cut off. “You know how to comfort people better than any of us, Gyu. It’s different.” Yunseo takes up walking again, stuffing a large piece of chicken in his mouth as if his voice wasn’t shaking with sadness only seconds before. He doesn’t have to explain further. It’s one thing to lose a friend who he connects with about a hobby, but someone he thought of as a safe space leaving him? It hits Gyuvin where it hurts. There is selfishness in leaving all of them, except for Ricky — he feels like he’s in middle school again, culling the herd at an alarming rate.
( high school, year two )
Gyuvin wanted to test his theory, but wasn’t sure how exactly. Their bus, his and Ricky’s, had come right on time, and it was an off day — no post-grocery shopping ahjummas to take up all the open seats. It wasn’t purposeful, boring a hole into Ricky as they sat on opposite sides of the rickety bus, but Gyuvin felt it might spark some inspiration within him, to really test the feelings he’d been rolling over and over in his brain.
He remembered, vividly, liking Son Hyemin. The little giggly feeling that started in his stomach and pushed it’s way up and out of him, rippling his blood and fluttering his eyelashes. The thrill of proclamation of the title — I got a girlfriend, I got a girlfriend, and it was the same jittering excitement as when he got exactly what he wanted for Christmas. It was light. Pocari Sweat, honey butter chips, mango bingsu.
His friends didn’t make him feel like that. Neither did Ricky — but he also didn’t feel the same magnetic pull to keep Yunseo within arms reach, or to press his nose to the nape of Gunwook’s neck like he thought it might slot there seamlessly.
When Ricky pulled the cord for his stop, grabbed his bag with a muffled English farewell, Gyuvin nearly tripped over himself following along, missing every step to plant his feet squarely on the ground next to Ricky’s.
“Inviting yourself over?” Ricky smirked, but simply shrugged his blazer and shoulder bag up before continuing to walk.
“No, just wanted some fresh air. It’s not far to my place.” It didn’t need explanation. He was sure Ricky had the route to his house memorized with how often he came over.
Ricky simply shrugged again, hands moving into his pockets. “Suit yourself.”
He began to talk — about something, Gyuvin knew, and tried to tune back into the conversation. It distracted him more than it should have — Gyuvin was nearly sure he could have played it off, taking Ricky’s hand and swinging it playfully for a few steps. He’d make it a big silly thing, then give in to Ricky’s irritated request to not dislocate his shoulder, but wouldn’t let go. Wasn’t that the best litmus test? Son Hyemin held his hand and his body covered itself in goosepimples. What would it do if he could hold Ricky’s?
Gyuvin carefully, precisely moved to graze his fingers into Ricky’s palm. The contact of skin with skin wasn’t bubbly, and it wasn’t corrosive — it was scalding, like the time he touched a warm burner on his home’s stove, but with the heat of magnetic pull. Kinetic energy, palpable.
That was all he managed, two fingers into the center of Ricky’s palm. For the second they were there, Gyuvin felt them his friend’s muscle tense and freeze. It was a touch too long to be accidental, and Gyuvin immediately swung his arm off it’s pendulum trajectory and up into his own hair.
Ricky’s reaction was to swing his wrist back and forth, an attempt to crack the bone before lightly slipping it into the pocket of his slacks. Whatever he’d been talking about, the conversation skipped — Gyuvin admittedly had been too focused on his goal to follow the thread, but it had frayed out to a small laugh and stuttering apologia that he’d forgotten the Korean word he was meaning to use.
Maybe it should have deterred him. But if it didn’t mean anything, it would have been played off. The unease they both felt meant something, and that was all the confirmation Gyuvin was looking for.
By the time everyone is back in the hotel from their lighthouse excursion and fruit market visit, Gyuvin has basically decided that Sinchon is out of the question. It should never have been an answer — Ricky isn’t the crux of his life, especially after the death of the true Gyuvin, and the gift he can still give his best friend is putting distance between them. It makes everyone else happy…he can still give himself to his friends and have a fun university life. He can focus on his studies, and his mother was right! He missed the last high school tennis season, but a school may still see his potential and bet on his post-injury skills enough to let him be on the team again. All isn’t totally lost.
Ricky’s run away from him, and maybe it is the less selfish option. It makes the most sense: Gyuvin was a boy born unto Earth to give love, and he’d found the limits of it enough to live a workable life. His family need him, his friends do too. It just makes sense to stay home, to be there for all of them. A safe harbor, and Gyuvin thinks that must be what his duty truly is, how he stays truest to Gyuvin’s original life path. After all, the boy was seemingly prepared to live a life never saying a word about his feelings.
— But he can’t even be without Ricky at one party; how Gyuvin can spend years at university without him, not to mention wherever his military service will slot into that timeline…it feels unimaginable. He sees Ricky standing in the doorframe of the hotel room everyone is gathered in, and it’s like he has to stifle a whine in his throat; he’s a dog waiting for his owner to acknowledge him. That’s why he’s saved him a seat, after all.
He only leaves because the atmosphere between them is awkward, and obviously so. It’s killing him. He has to rectify the situation, but he can’t in the middle of a crowded room of teenagers. Gyuvin doesn’t even go back to his own hotel room, hand reaching into his pocket for the monitor’s keycard and slipping into Ricky’s. It’s not what it was given to him for, and maybe that’s a betrayal of trust where the senior hall monitors are concerned — would the old Gyuvin have broken this rule? Is this new willingness to throw away these tenants what Ricky can’t stand about him anymore?
Ricky’s bed smells like him, despite it being a hotel room with turndown service. It’s how his cologne settles into the room, and the scent of him lingers on his things and diffuses into the spaces he inhabits, even temporarily. It takes a lot of willpower not to revisit the previous night’s fantasies, literally in Ricky’s bed and all that’s missing is the other boy.
Seungeon could come back first, and Gyuvin knows that…but he’s the kind of person to stay until the end. Ricky, however, is not. Gyuvin hopes they’re one in the same, needing to gravitate towards one another. His wish is fulfilled when less than half an hour later, Ricky enters and slams the door — if only his face wasn’t so taut and upset when he finally spies his intruder.
Gyuvin may have had plans to stay in Busan, but Gyuvin is taking the reigns now — every doubt of going to Sinchon he had in his mind evaporates when Ricky clamors onto him and he trembles with feelings he lets seep from his body. Gyuvin can’t leave him, and it becomes clear that it was part of his destiny. Yunseo says that everyone needs him, and maybe that’s true — Gyuvin also knows that this is true for his family. But none of them need him as much as Ricky, and death was cheated to make sure that need would be answered to.
Curled against his chest, vibrating with grief that’s nearly palpable, Ricky is vulnerable and perfect. Sometimes Gyuvin looks at Ricky and he wants to devour him. To completely absorb him. It’s the pull all over again, like he has no choice but to want to crawl into Ricky and inhabit his consciousness like the parasite his friend thinks he is. It feels dangerous, and not like any other feeling he’s rifled through in Gyuvin’s memories and emotions. This is Gyuvin’s doing, wholly, and that scares him. To prove Ricky right, to be a monster destined to devastate him, would be mutual assured destruction. Hurting Ricky would kill him, and Gyuvin can’t afford to die again.
Breakfast at the hotel is awkward to say the least. Gyuvinis actually the first person there, Gunwook arriving at their self-appointed usual table second and with a surprised look on his face.
“You’re here early.”
Gyuvin shrugs, spearing a piece of pineapple to pop into his mouth, chewing lazily. He’s been there about thirty minutes, and the once nearly icy fruit is now moist and oddly textured. The dining area is quiet for the most part, with only a few other students already in attendance, and other non-school-affiliated guests taking up little room in the space. It’s the kind of area where going out for breakfast is preferable to free hotel fare, most guests opting for grab and go options like bottled drinks or muffins. The emptiness gives every word an exaggerated echo; they’re basically shouting at one another, and Gyuvin’s loud swallow is akin to a scream. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Which is true. After Ricky left that night, Gyuvindid the same ten minutes later after breathing and collecting himself. Fucking himself out of Ricky’s affections twice in one day was a new record, and his tail is officially between his legs. The way that his voice raised, a rarity, and the look of pain on his face as he left…it’s making chewing on soft fruit feel like a laborious task. The whole trip has felt like two steps forward and then another two back.
The two sit in silence for a bit, unusual for them, until Gunwook finally coughs and stands again. “I’m going to get some toast at least — did you hear from Ricky last night?”
“Yeah.” That doesn’t feel dangerous to say. They talk basically every night, and as far as he’s aware no one thinks anything odd about him leaving and Ricky following suit shortly after. The awkwardness would be between him, Ricky and Seungeon only, if anything. Though he does wonder why Gunwook is even asking, now incapable of actually doing so as he’d made good on his word to wander off and get toast after Gyuvin’sresponse.
When Gunwook does sit back down, he’s reliable in not keeping him guessing for long. “I hope that was after Seungeon left. His mom called and texted a few times, and we still had his phone.”
“Oh?” Gyuvin’sconcern is genuine and immediate. That hadn’t come up in the awkward confrontation, and he’s assuming Ricky eventually found Seungeon. Otherwise he’d have kept his universal keycard as some form of petty punishment — it also explained why he showed up with such conviction to talk to Ricky. He files it away to ask Ricky once they’re on some neutral ground with one another again. “He didn’t mention it, but I’m sure Eon told him and it’s fine.”
Gunwook nods and digs into his buttered bread, hair messy and falling into his eyes. Gyuvin would normally be more talkative, but everything feels disjointed in his mind. He’d texted Ricky, been left on read — he feels bad about Seungeon, about whatever emotional moment he’d had at what he’d walked in on, but he’s also known Seungeon the longest. The memories of him all add up to Seungeon being the kind of person not to betray secrets. It’s safe to say he hasn’t immediately run off to make a separate four-man KKT chat about the gay love affair in their midst, catching the other two of their group red-handed in an emotional embrace. None of Gyuvin’sfriends would have been able to keep that to themselves.
Especially because it wasn’t that. Sort of.
“Did he tell you about what made him leave, at least?” Gunwook sips from his additionally snagged bottled orange juice, looking at Gyuvinwith a raised eyebrow.
Honestly, Ricky had come into his hotel room heated — but Gyuvinseemed to have that affect on him lately, so he hadn’t questioned there being a precursor. “No. Why?”
Gunwook answers blankly. “It was about you.”
“Mm.” This could open any number of cans of worms. “What about me?”
“Remember when you, Junhyeon and I were buying carry-on bags a couple weeks ago? And you mentioned you were going to Yonsei, not some school in Busan?” Gunwook recounts the interaction factually, taking a small sip in between his sentences. “I put two and two together, honestly…but Jun hadn’t. Ricky told him where he was planning on going, and Jun was already upset and…”
“Junhyeon flipped shit on him, huh?” Gyuvin could picture it easily. He always took exception to Ricky — never malicious or aggressive, usually never to his face. But the feelings were there, bubbling under the surface lately.
“It was equally heated. Nothing crazy. Just some harsh words.” Gunwook takes careful time to wipe his fingers clean of crumbs and grease, each getting massaged by a clean spot in his cloth napkin. “I mean, if I’m going to be honest with you…I don’t get it either. I’m not as offended as Jun is about you ranking Ricky above us, but.”
It’s like he leaves a pause on purpose — gives Gyuvin an out to deny it. If he did, it would be a lie. Gunwook doesn’t seem upset, like he said, but still sighs at the confirmation. “University is a serious thing, Gyuvin. Yonsei is a great school, but is that the only reason you want to go? To follow Ricky?”
He shakes his head, though honestly — Ricky’s the only part of the equation needing to be factored in. He could go anywhere, get whatever degree. There’s no sports scholarship on the table anymore, so it’s not like he has some limited option of athletic schools to pick from, and mourning that opportunity feels small and insignificant in comparison to everything else going on. Gyuvinisn’t necessarily lying when he explains it all. “There’s more to it, Wookie. I promise. I have to rethink a bunch of shit too with my wrist screwing up my last tennis season.” That’s the practical aspect of it out of the way. The more emotionally loaded issue tightens his chest. “Are all six of us expected to just be in Busan forever? This campus is in Seoul, not Antarctica…and it’s not like Seungeon isn’t also going!”
This time Gunwook’s sigh is bigger. “That was the next round of the fight. At least Ricky’s mom cut that one short.” His orange juice is finished next, and he flips the bottle into the air and nearly misses catching it. A few soft thuds of it on the table don’t leave room for silence. “I’ll miss you. Sometimes I think it would be easier if we all did our own separate thing. Just three of us together, three of us somewhere else feels worse.”
The theory is tested by Junhyeon joining them next. He still has bed head, but unlike Gunwook he’s already gone through the continental breakfast line to bring his food to the table. He has two plates stacked with just about every option, though the spread doesn’t bring a smile to his face. “Did you wake me up?”
Obviously aimed at Gunwook. “Yes. Three times.”
“I only remember once.” Junhyeon digs into a fried egg, chewing as he talks. “Ah, Gyu. You missed some fireworks last night. By the way—”
“I already updated him.” Gunwook gives him a tired but patient look before reaching over to open the seal on the bottle of water he’d also brought over. “You need to apologize to Ricky.”
“I will, I will, let my brain start first.” Eventually Junhyeon seems to make good on his promise, stuffing his face with fruit and half a cinnamon roll before opening his phone, typing furiously and waving the result of his hard work in Gunwook’s face. “Happy now, Dad?”
“Not if you’re still being a dick about it.” Gunwook seems to let it go though. He’s diplomatic, Gyuvin knows, but also won’t completely shove himself into their interpersonal conflicts. Seemingly, he’ll let Junhyeon handle this one on his own from here. He pops another piece of pineapple into his mouth and lets it sit on his tongue until it tingles. Gyuvincould very easily address his own grievance with Junhyeon fighting Ricky, this being a good opportunity with a nice mediator between them. He simply can’t handle the atmosphere worsening at the moment.
Yunseo shows up next, the one on the outskirts of all the bickering the most, and his addition to the table actually evens out what remained of the sour mood. When Seungeon shows up at a little before 8:30, though, Gyuvin’sstomach wriggles itself into a knot tighter than when he sat down by himself.
“Is Rik behind you?” Gyuvinbarely registers the measured sigh Junhyeon pushes through his nose, not at all caring about how it looks that this is his main concern. Off and on he’d checked his KKT messages, expecting Ricky to be down eventually once he saw they were finally read. And yet no response, no Ricky.
Not to mention since they haven’t talked, what he’s going to tell Seungeon isn’t at all hashed out. He told Ricky it would be on him to make something up, to tie the pieces together, but he’s so far come up with nothing concrete — and if the two of them really did meet up last night, who knows how that conversation went?
Gyuvinhas no expectation that Ricky will tell another living soul about his secret, but he still feels some relief when Seungeon seems to look at him like he usually does — just a bit more worried when he shakes his head.
“I think he had a long night. He might not join us — I already told the hall monitor and they said it’s fine.” He pulls a chair out from a neighboring table to sit on it backwards, opening a granola bar with some trouble. Gyuvinwas already asleep whenever Ricky slipped his universal keycard under the door, so he’s not really sure how long they truly were out. The messages he sent were around one in the morning, so maybe before? After if Ricky was too tired or overwhelmed to flip through his notifications?
Everyone takes the next fifteen minutes to finish up their remaining breakfast and discuss beach plans, which Gyuvinhalf-heartedly engages in. They’re going souvenir shopping first and that’s frankly of no interest to him. What he really wants to do is stay behind — he can bring Ricky some of the last dregs of the breakfast bar and talk this all out. Fighting with Ricky drives him crazy, at least when it’s serious. The ill effects never last more than a couple of hours if he has any say in it. Maybe that’s all of the past half day he’s been conscious for, but the impatience of ironing it all out is an itch going unscratched.
— Staying, though, would very likely make Ricky more pissed. He can also feel Junhyeon about to boil over, and the smarter decision is to go look at stupid keychains and orange chocolate bars with his other friends.
When his phone vibrates with a notification, Gyuvinlifts it up with a quickness. It’s not a response from Ricky, but Seungeon; he shifts his gaze to his left to see his friend setting his phone down, laughing at something Yunseo is saying.
Back to the message:
EONEONEONNIE
you don’t have to pull me aside or talk about last night by the way
ricky found me and he explained a little bit
i think you should talk to him first. you don’t have to say anything to me at all then or now
hope you got some sleep :)
He feels like a dick. A pervasive feeling of being labeled the asshole settles into Gyuvin’sskin and he’s sure the flush from it is visible. He doesn’t owe Seungeon anything — his love and friendship, of course, but nothing with specifics to this situation. Ricky was right to feel conflicted about all of this — he can’t tell Seungeon the truth, because doing so would bring someone else into the fold of this secret. The contagion can’t spread. It’s a selfish act, to make it all Ricky’s burden, but it’s something neither of them can help at this point. Ricky is also correct that lying was never his strongest suit, and so he very likely took on the brunt of that burden too.
Gyuvin
thanks eon
sorry it was crazy for you on all sides last night
let’s get ugly matching bead bracelets?
Gyuvinsees Seungeon smile when he looks at the messages, though somehow sadly.
EONEONEONNIE
your treat
( high school, year two )
He studied Ricky, after their hands nearly clasped. At least, that’s what Gyuvin convinced himself happened — or didn’t happen, depending on the night. Sometimes he thought that he had to be right. That something was there, not just towards Ricky, but between them. He knew he was a subject of Ricky’s doodles and glances…but maybe that was just because he had the spirit of an artist. Maybe he’d simply missed all the times Ricky had stared at Yunseo and Junhyeon, and sketched out their shaving mistakes in his math workbook. Thoughts of not being the only person Ricky took inspiration from clawed at the inside of his stomach. He never thought violently, especially about his friends, but if he ever laid eyes on artwork of Ricky’s that focused on Gunwook’s jaw or Seungeon’s nose, Gyuvin was very capable of breaking either bone.
The unsure feeling intensified when Gyuvin noticed he and Ricky had an invisible forcefield around each of them. When they stood with each other at their bus stop, their usual close-but-not-too-close proximity had increased ten-fold. Gunwook and Yunseo both could stand between them and it wouldn’t be uncomfortable. It also wasn’t only on Ricky. Gyuvin, usually easily able to bridge the gap to initiate skinship or invade personal space, found a prickle of anxiety niggling up his throat any time he even thought of scooting closer.
That particular evening, it was the last crisp week of spring. They’d be going into their last year of high school soon, and the past few days had been spent planning out their last hurrahs of the summer before everything got serious. Ricky had been encouraging and thrown out ideas for others, but any time the subject came up of what his own plans were he simply shrugged them off. He wasn’t sure yet, and so he couldn’t accept any invites.
Gyuvin watched him, phone close to his face and the cheek he could see sucked in, being chewed. Ricky tapped out a few speedy messages. He lowered his phone for a moment, and Gyuvin eavesdropped. Chinese keyboard, WeChat.
Ricky spoke and it was like he was reporting a death in the family.
“This summer we’re going back to L.A.”
It occurred to Gyuvin that in Ricky’s seventeen years being alive, he’d lived in three countries. Mathematically, less than six years per place on average; that obviously wasn’t true to life since he’d only been in Busan a couple of years anyway. But even being generous, six years wasn’t enough. It would never be. It also occurred to Gyuvin that with Busan being such a new place, no real attachments chaining any of the family there, a summer trip to Los Angeles could mean never seeing him again when they decided there was no reason to ever go back to South Korea. To shitty little Busan with a new and fumbling language, where he had to dye his hair and take out his piercings and stifle feelings of being an outsider in front of everyone. Because Ricky was considerate, too much so, and didn’t speak up to anyone when they talked too fast or if he needed more time to order.
Gyuvin supplemented those things. Gyuvin explained colloquialisms, knew what Ricky wanted to eat and texted him what he’d missed in conversations. If Ricky went back to Los Angeles, he wouldn’t need him. How necessary could he ever be to someone who could take flight at a moment’s notice, beyond his skills and reach? To not be needed by Ricky— it didn’t give him butterflies, it punched a hole in his gut. And was he an asshole for wanting Ricky to be somewhat helpless so Gyuvin could swoop in for him? People around him naturally needed him, but his necessity for Ricky was situational — and Gyuvin had never felt so small in his life.
He wanted to ask a variety of questions:
“How long?”
Or to cut to the chase. “Forever?”
“Why can’t we be as close as we were?”
“Can I come with you?”
“When I tried to hold your hand, why did you shy away?”
“If I told you I liked you, could you still look at me afterwards?”
Instead, he settled on—
“Will you miss me?” It surprised even Gyuvin himself, that he asked — it sounded pathetic, whiny and clingy, and still not the most pitiful of the swirling questions still in his head. He tried to say it with a pronounced pout and forced chuff of laughter. Ricky looked over at him and Gyuvin prepared himself to begin digging a hole to crawl into, but what he was greeted with wasn’t smugness or condemnation.
It was a soft smile, searching eyes and an expression that flickered away fast enough that Gyuvin couldn’t get a read on it that well. The distance between them was suddenly bridged, a slim shoulder nudging against his own. A rare prize, Ricky initiating touch. The once thickly staticky air ignited with something thinner, comforting and perfumed.
Ricky put on a thick, syrupy lilt to his voice, but Gyuvin was sure it was to conceal something — or maybe he just hoped it, and only one of them got to practice self-preservation. “The most.”
The fireworks idea came to him while watching an anime with his youngest brother. It was a standard beach episode, nothing special or otherwise remarkable about it — fan-service scene, a monster of the day showed up out of nowhere and everyone celebrated its defeat with splashing in the ocean and watermelon slices. The finale was slightly more emotional, with the protagonist saying something vaguely romantic to his female love interest as large and bright fireworks lit up their faces with soft hues of color.
Fireworks . Their Jeju beach excursion definitely needed fireworks. They weren’t hard to come by on the island, with the only difficult part being buying them while their various monitors were distracted. Seungeon did well with that; Gyuvinhadn’t explained to him the day previous what he needed him to be a distraction for, but he’d instantly obliged by alerting to one monitor that he was hot, felt itchy and that he might have an allergy to dangyuja. Pretty soon all five that were readily available were examining Seungeon’s skin, calling in with the local hospital to potentially get a medic on site, or he may even need to go straight to the emergency center if it was serious enough.
One curt nod from Gyuvin after buying his necessary contraband at the fireworks stand and suddenly Seungeon was fine. He must not be totally acclimated to the Jeju humidity. Once the bottle rockets were stored under a large amount of gently placed produce, no one was the wiser. The monitors scolded a few students for purchases of sparklers, but it was basically overlooked — Gyuvinjust didn’t want to take the risk that they’d care for something a bit more extreme.
Being corny wasn’t his intention when he settled on making Ricky his sidekick. That was inevitable, regardless of how things were going. When he showed up in front of the hotel as everyone else was coming back from the last round of souvenir shopping, staring at them all somewhat blankly in a green cashmere sweater that cost as much as a car, it hit Gyuvin that Ricky could hate him. He saw him battling, constantly trying to tamper down treating Gyuvin like anything but a blight, and maybe after yesterday the grief and fear finally won out. No amount of reassuring him could get him to even keep the status quo anymore, let alone give Gyuvinhope for more. His texts remained unanswered, and his stomach flipped.
But instead, Ricky looked over his sunglasses at him with a smirk, asked for his assumed gift and slyly accepted an offering of a bright yellow pomelo. He peeled it with his fingers, abnormal for someone so against getting their hands dirty, and delicately ate each tender piece of the fruit with soft lips curved into an almost imperceptible smile.
There was a chance.
Gyuvin knows it to be true when he smiles at him again, over and over at the beach. Ricky looks him in the eyes and they twinkle, and Gyuvinknows he’s not trying to show it off. If he tells Ricky how obvious he’s being, he would be mortified. At first he thinks it’s all wishful thinking, but Ricky laughs, he complies with his every whim just like usual. There’s a tension that’s missing, and it’s actually a shock. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Ricky was screaming at him and storming out.
He falters one more time when they talk about Seungeon, Gyuvin not letting Ricky know that their friend has already texted his side (if it could be considered a ‘side’), and watches Ricky curl in on himself when faced with his own feelings — but the action in and of itself gives Gyuvin hope. Ricky can’t be conflicted without still standing between two choices. Which he’s leaning towards is the main question, though it’s answered by how Ricky’s body responds when Gyuvin closes the gap between them, joyous when he immediately falls into the action.
It feels silly, antithetical, but when Ricky stops him with a breathy “I’m not ready for this,” it’s music to Gyuvin’sears.
( high school, year three )
It was one of the times Gyuvin was sure Ricky would say something again, about how he didn’t like his personal space being so invaded. It was lunchtime, late into their eleventh school year. Previously Gyuvin had been laying on his back, stretched out and staring at the sky while Yunseo and Ricky argued about a movie they’d both recently seen. Clear, nearly cloudless, bright. It was getting to be hard to focus on the conversation, not able to see anything outside of the stray limb entering his frame in between squinting, and so he turned a bit — still blocked.
With a bit of maneuvering, he ducked upwards and rested his head on one of Ricky’s thighs instead, looking up with a small smile at his friend’s sudden notice of the weight in his lap. Wide eyes looked down at him briefly with a stutter in his speech. One hand was helping to prop up his sitting position, but the other was halfway to his mouth — Ricky was holding a small cube of orange, one of the mango jellies he’d been eating for essentially his whole meal. Somedays his sweet tooth was more noticeable than others, devoting the time period to a snack of a couple cups of pudding or flavored drinks.
Ricky quickly turned back to keep talking to Yunseo, and Gyuvin was grateful for his hunched frame and jaw helping to block the sun from his eyes. Instead of moving to put the jelly in his own mouth, Ricky’s hand diverted attention to bring the little cuboid of flavored sugar to Gyuvin’s lips, vision and attention still elsewhere. Gripping it easily with his teeth, he readily slid the candy into his mouth and chewed heartily, smile growing.
“My favorite.” He sing-songed upward. Ricky didn’t give indication if he noticed, and it only made Gyuvin’s grin grow wider.
Gunwook and Junhyeon left first, then Yunseo, and Seungeon trailed after him before long. It was just him and Ricky left, and Gyuvin had grown to prefer it that way at times. His neck was somewhat sore, not totally comfortable lying on his friend’s thin thigh, but it wasn’t a place he would be giving up so easily.
Ricky continued to eat jellies without talking to him much, or even looking down at him. The lack of interaction eventually prodded Gyuvin into trying to instigate the opposite. One of his hands swatted at Ricky’s chin, pawing him to notice.
“Rik. Rik!” After a few swipes, he instead switched to curling fingers to tickle at Ricky’s neck, crawling upwards. It finally got him the attention he was looking for.
“What, Gyuvin?” Ricky looked down at him, lips pursing on themselves and face tight. Gyuvin can feel the tension in the legs beneath him, and he doesn’t reply for a moment. He would have said it, right then, right there. If he could have.
Instead, he settled for something close. “Ricky-yah.” He smiled, voice soft and sincere. “Don’t leave me, okay?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” That wasn’t the right answer. They had class soon, and Ricky was never the kind to be late, Gyuvin be damned. It mad Gyuvin smile, not that his friend was looking at him. The schoolgrounds were suddenly more interesting. It was an answer that gave him hope—
Until Ricky continued. “But we’ve all got to leave. High school isn’t forever.”
And all hope was dashed. He knew what Ricky meant — they had each other now, but they wouldn’t always. Any chance that they could be more than what they currently existed as disappeared with Ricky’s lap when he stood up. Gyuvin had sat up, dazed by the response, and that was all it took for his friend to grab his bag and disappear into the school building. Gyuvin wanted to whip around, ask why the boy who said he would be what he missed most during summer vacation would ever try and run away from him, but Ricky proved to be very good at it, already gone and out of sight.
It’s more apparent than ever that their relationship as it exists is unsustainable. If he was the cool kind of unknown spirit, one with powers and supernatural wiles, Gyuvin would turn back time and somehow prevent this all — lie and tell Ricky he was weird, rag on him for a week for thinking somehow his friend had been replaced by what. An alien? A shapeshifter? It would have been a cruelty that lasted momentarily, not a lifetime.
He’s made progress, more than his predecessor ever had, but with each centimeter they step towards one another, the more Gyuvin’s skin prickles with alarm. Ricky is falling apart in front of him, collecting himself in between their meetings and all the mental glue melting in Gyuvin’spresence over and over again. It’s not good. For either of them.
And Ricky knows too. He prods at it, pokes at the idea that there has to be some final showdown. Gyuvinhas never been one to avoid a challenge, so when the final straw presents itself, he snaps it.
When Ricky cries, asks Gyuvinto swallow him whole, his body laughs — but his mind alights, considers the possibility. If he could, we would — consume him, unite them and end the suffering once and for all. He swears to himself that this is out of love, not hunger, but what’s the difference anymore?
Gyuvin hopes, cries out of desperation for what he wants. It makes sense to him, on paper, that this thing could work. Maybe it’s just the comfortable ambiance of the classroom, or the dusky light showing off every dust particle in the atmosphere. No argument could be made to him that it would be a bad idea, or morally corrupt to be together. It’s simple. Ricky likes Gyuvin , Gyuvinlikes Ricky, no outside forces would stop them.
They’re just teenagers? His mother and father started dating when they were fifteen and seventeen respectively, and now they live within an idyllic marriage, spanning decades. His father is a respected plastic surgeon, his mother a retired ballerina, they have four beautiful and loving children. They’re considering getting a dog once Gyuvinleaves, to help fill the empty space. The biggest challenge they’ll have ever faced is missing the son they send to a university whose tuition they’ll comfortably help pay for, and at a distance away that could be crossed in four hours, at its slowest.
They’re two guys? Gyuvin’s God is a tolerant one, and He made Shen Ricky in the image of the seraphim themselves. Anyone who could ever love him would be welcomed in Heaven. Gyuvin knows love as unshakable, and nothing so obvious and imminent as this would be questioned by his parents, let alone cause a true rift. A wife isn’t necessary to have a child. Whatever laws might be in place, there are ways around them, Gyuvinis sure.
Gyuvin is dead? No, Gyuvin is right here. If Gyuvin can’t tell the difference himself anymore, fully intermingled in every atom of his host, then the only roadblock is simply that Ricky knows otherwise — it’s not a hurdle Gyuvin looks down on or belittles, but it can be worked on. If only Ricky could yield to it, just a bit.
But to be Gyuvin is to put Ricky first. As much as he wants and wishes, the final choice isn’t his to make. So he listens to every wail, counters every argument, indulges as much fantasy as he can take — then pours all of his love into Ricky, loudly, through tears spilling into his friend’s cupped palms. He hopes Ricky collects it all, cherishes it as he knows every bit of love Gyuvin can produce deserves to be. He has met the talents of his predecessor. Gyuvinknows how to give love until his body aches with the loss of it.
And when Ricky shakily says, staring right into Gyuvin’s bleary, tear-stained eyes — “I can’t be without you , Gyuvin.” — he fears the well of it all may overflow into oblivion.
Their bus driver looks at them with obvious concern that they’ve just been in an accident. It’s not totally unwarranted — Ricky looks as much of a mess as he possibly could, BB cream patchy and smeared from how he’d dragged away Gyuvin’s tears, then secretly turned to dab at his own waterline. Gyuvinobviously looks worse. He’s sure blood vessels have broken in his face somewhere from how hard he’d just wept for a solid ten minutes, letting all of the overwhelming relief and adoration spill out of him like water from a sieve.
The first few stops, they just look at each other, across the aisle in the seats closest to the back. They’re taking up two whole vertical chair rows, sitting sideways so their legs knock and crowd together. This is what it feels like to be in shock — he lets it wash over him. He’s mine . He’s mine.
It all feels so serious, truly a life or death acquisition, until Ricky puts his hand on his knee — no, just three tentative fingers before he retracts them, looks up at Gyuvin through fanned eyelashes and chokes on a laugh in his throat. Gyuvin looks at him, puzzled, and it earns him a gummy grin that’s unfortunately hidden behind a hand quicker than Gyuvincan commit it all to new memory.
The heft of emotion is still there. He knows that this is love because what else could it be? The only acceptable answer is something more, something unnamed and not yet invented. Being ‘in love,’ however, doesn’t mean he can’t also be ‘in like,’ too. There they are, the giddy bubbles of carbonated infatuation. He smiles and laughs — it sounds stupid to his own ears, and that makes him laugh more — then traps one of Ricky’s own knees between his own. He has Ricky now, and he’ll never let him go.
Gyuvin has never been to church by himself, and neither had his predecessor ever made the trek alone. Maybe that makes him a bad Christian, past and present, but there was also something sacred about it being a family activity. Togetherness and God go hand in hand, and it’s part of what intimidates him sitting in one of the back pews alone, dressed in baggy clothes to try and prevent being recognized by one of the few other stragglers or the assistant pastor.
The space is plain — it’s certainly not one of the fancy churches, ornate and old. Gyuvin figures most of those are European anyway, and his family’s boxy and modern church is pretty standard for Korea. There are definitely bigger places of worship, but this is where his mother and her family worshipped for all her life. They aren’t a family that came from wealth, only entering the upper-middle class when his father became a successful surgeon. It was a point of pride for Gyuvin, that his family retained certain modesties. God exists everywhere, in elaborate cathedrals and plain buildings; their crosses and pews look different but all serve the same purpose.
Gyuvin has felt God as a comforting presence, and all of these instances are there for Gyuvin to flip through and feel residual comfort from. Now, here as himself, those feelings are mirrored — but undeservedly. There’s nothing in the Bible about spiritual hosts overtaking a body in any context that’s positive. If anything, he’s due for an exorcism. He can’t help but think back to the first service he experienced for himself, how it made his skin crawl being adorned with love, both familial and holy. How his father looked at him with hope and gratitude, totally unaware God had left his prayers unanswered. There are no memories in Gyuvin’s body in which adoration felt caustic, and it’s nothing but an example of how Gyuvin is an outsider in this world.
His knuckles clench tight against his knees as he bows his head. There are only a handful of other people present. One of them is an older man he recognizes vaguely as being another regular church goer, a duo of older women who basically live there and a younger person sitting in a pew with quite a few bags and bundles of clothes — homeless, maybe. It’s still too many people to feel completely safe around, and so he holds back the tears pressing against his eyes.
He wants to indulge in this sense of serenity so badly…and would anyone know that he did? If God isn’t gatekeeping it from him, is it not something meant for him as well? Or maybe he’s just inventing the feeling from Gyuvin’s old memories, and he’s just not so atune to holiness that he recognizes there’s no place for him there. If he a spirit, just as worthy of God’s refuge as anyone? Or is he something more sinister and mystical? Gyuvin doesn’t know.
What he does know of God and religion is tolerant and loving. Gyuvin breathes in deeply and looks at the tiled ceiling, now wishing it was instead covered in Baroque cherubs and angels. Something more pleasant to look at and focus on.
He asks God for guidance, then permission, and lets the feeling of tranquility seep through him. If his origin is that he’s a soul, this could be a form of divine intervention. Gyuvin wonders if God’s decision making is absolute and immediate — someone like Ricky took convincing that he could be Gyuvin all over again, but God sees all. He hopes that God isn’t so indecisive, and then Gyuvin begins to pray.
They go out to eat dinner with one another every weekend now, “dates” without the actual title. This particular Saturday, the last meal they can share together before CSATs, Ricky requests tonkotsu noodles. The ramyeon place close to the beach is easier to get to than something closer to the city proper, but Gyuvin understands his aversion and doesn’t mention it as an option on the table. Instead, he directs them to a shop further away, closer to the city proper, and much more cramped. The air in the shop is humid and Gyuvin tastes it on his tongue, smelling less of sea air and more of salted broth.
The sun is already down when they arrive — they’ve just finished another four person cram session, awkwardness having faded away by now, and the skyline was already blossoming from orange to purple by the time they got onto their bus. The shop is nearly full save for a two-top table that feels destined for them. It’s less than fifteen minutes and they both have food and drink, readily eating and enjoying some silence save for the small talk around them. Gyuvin gives Ricky his egg, and he takes a scoop of scallions in exchange.
He also takes the moment to observe the boy across from him, tucking noodles into his mouth quietly and politely. They’re still in school uniforms, but Ricky’s wearing a plush navy cardigan and already donned all of his jewelry, the image of warmth as the steam rises from his noodles and tints his face a flush of pink. It’s a sight to see — how small his bites are, how long it takes for the entirety of the stream of noodles to finally end and slip past Ricky’s lips. If left to his own devices, he’d eat the whole of his meal in silence; his mind is one on a singular track. Ricky will readily join in a conversation once initiated, otherwise he’ll stay quiet and go about his business. It’s usually up to Gyuvin to start any kind of dialogue, and he scrolls through a list of topics in his brain.
“Any other plans before the big day?” Is what he lands on. Gyuvin himself has a totally free social calendar due to spending his last few days before CSATs cramming as much as he can. His father specifically forbade him from attending any other extracurricular activities the family had until his exams were over; his parents technically think this is a study session. He’s never been one to lie, but there’s an irony to it…what they don’t know won’t hurt them.
He is studying, in a sense. The question makes Ricky look up for a moment, eyes rolling up to search the calendar in his brain, and he pays careful attention to his friend’s expressions.
— ‘Friend .’ In response to the thought, he takes a long drink from his ice water, a cube painfully slipping down his throat. Frustrating. Gyuvin feels like he should get to expand upon that title, add a prefix of ‘ boy-’ to it, but also…having Ricky any way he can is the important part of all of this. They’ve just gotten past the part where he’s a replacement. Being pedantic about titles doesn’t matter as much.
Anyway— Gyuvin knows Ricky’s family isn’t as militant about grades and university, so they may not be as heavily invested in his hitting the books. If they don’t know he’s out to dinner with a friend, it’ll be more because they let Ricky wander on a long leash, not for the sake of secrecy. “You know about my sister’s cast.” Gyuvin does. She’s getting it cut off in a couple of days, and his family is going out to celebrate that with a dinner. Ricky considers something else but then shakes his head. “I had another plan but it fell through.”
A grin comes over his face as he’s busy fully submerging his shallots into the broth under his mound of noodles. Gyuvin likes them soggy. “Oh? Seeing someone on the side?”
He gets a swift kick to the shin under the table, and Gyuvin tries valiantly not to show any reaction to it. Ricky sucks his teeth. “Eon and I were going to see a movie the night before CSATs but he dropped out.” This is what he’s been studying — Ricky’s face looks more distant than unbothered, worried over disappointed.
They never really broached the topic fully. Seungeon had been normal for the most part, but with obvious moments of…weirdness. The two obvious examples of the Jeju and study group indicents come up, and Gyuvin never got to the bottom of what went on during his and Ricky’s little night out. He does know that Ricky and Seungeon had mentioned this movie outting before — Gunwook thought it was lunacy, but the two of them wanted to clear their minds and not be so on edge going into the exam. Seungeon had even looked up some pop psychology about what genre of movie would be best to mentally stimulate someone as a compromise. The title and genre evade him, but it was a known plan anyway. All he can do is shrug. “He’s been a little off lately. Probably pre-CSAT jitters.”
Ricky’s disposition shifts to dourness, and for a moment Gyuvin is sorry he ever broached the topic. There’s a strong bob of Ricky’s Adam’s apple as he drinks his cola quickly, mind obviously trying to focus more on his consumption of liquid versus the topic at hand. When he finally finishes and swallows, his voice is lower and more gravely than usual, and he’s still for a period of time; the only movement across the booth for about a minute is the delicate swaying of Ricky’s cross earring, and Gyuvin fixates on it.
“When you got your memories of Seungeon, did you notice anything…?” He trails off, and it’s suddenly clear why the vibe of the conversation shifted so suddenly. Ricky’s been forced to acknowledge something he doesn’t want to — it’s evident that instead of coming to terms with certain unsavory facts, Ricky’s version of acceptance is avoidance. Gyuvingives him grace. It’s still new, and the darkness of it will hopefully lighten with time.
Now he examines the actual half-question. Did he notice anything…? Anything what? By volume, there’s more memories of Seungeon in his mind compared to other friends, but there didn’t seem to be anything to glean from them out of the ordinary. He really didn’t even uncover anything new in Gyuvin’s mind when it came to Ricky, just decided to pick up the baton where his predecessor didn’t.
Gyuvin chews thoroughly, then drinks a few mouthfuls of broth to give himself time to be sure he’s not missing something obvious. “Is there something I should have put together?”
The sigh he gets in response isn’t a good sign. Ricky looks frustrated as he stumbles to get the appropriate amount of noodles into his chopsticks, obviously trying hard not to look thrown off kilter and failing miserably. So clumsy. Eventually he gives up and sets his utensils down, choosing to instead lean all the way back in his seat and prop his head up on one hand.
Another sigh, and then Ricky can’t find himself capable of looking Gyuvin in the eye. “He told me he likes you.”
He sputters immediately. “Eon? Eon said that?” If he thinks about it quickly, it kind of makes sense. Seungeon had looked so emotionally wrecked by seeing Ricky and Gyuvin embracing, and he’d assumed there was something not so specific about his feelings. It would be something shocking regardless, he muses, and since everyone was so heightened emotionally about their lives changing and people going their separate ways…now if he puts it into perspective that Seungeon did have feelings for him, the intensity feels understandable. It doesn’t fully answer the question of what he and Ricky talked about that night, but the assumptions he can make based on this information feel accurate.
It’s just still an oddly-shaped pill to swallow. “He doesn’t like you — he likes me ?” If every member of their friend group had a secret crush on Ricky, Gyuvin wouldn’t be shocked — furious, but not shocked. Himself being the object of affections never even occurred to him.
“Me?” Ricky’s smile is a shocked but genuine one, the idea genuinely hilarious. “Of course not. Of course it’s you.”
“‘Of course,’ my ass!” Gyuvin leans forward so that nearly the entirety of his torso is against or over the top of their table, threatening to tip his ramyeon bowl over. The shock is still reverberating through his body, now fully sinking in. How long had this been going on? And Ricky’s known this whole time? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ricky sucks his teeth and looks Gyuvin dead in the eyes, finally finding some semblance of baseline again. “It’s not actually your business.” There’s a little bit of bite to his tone, eyebrows canting downwards in an attempt to be stern. “I’m a dick for saying anything, so you definitely can’t.”
“I won’t, I won’t. That’s not the point.” Gyuvinthinks about what it would even look like to confront Seungeon on this and he balks. It definitely feels best to let sleeping dogs lie…but his need to address situations makes him feel action is necessary. His poor Seungeon — how many times has he accidentally hurt him, and over how long a span of time?
The blows keep coming; Ricky spits out words like they’ve been poisoning him for a long time. “He knows about— us. A little.” The ability to keep eye contact falls back away, and his posture slumps. “And he was… He was concerned about you.”
Now Gyuvin steels. “ Concerned?” Both tidbits of information are definitely big news, but one is much more immediately concerning.
“He didn’t know. About you.” Ricky shrugs his jacket up and closer to himself; he’s got a large frame but still looks small with how the thick fabric swallows him, the intended effect of shrinking in on himself to try and escape the large feeling of avoidance. His disjointed but careful speaking also betrays how little he wishes he was talking about this. “But he noticed something. We didn’t talk about that much.”
That’s…something. Honestly, Gyuvinhas long since moved past anyone else knowing the details of who he truly is and how he came to be; no one will ever know, and the likelihood that it’s found out accidentally fades as time passes. It sounds like Seungeon also had a general idea that Gyuvin behaved oddly for a while…if that’s still the case, he isn’t sure. It ironically doesn’t feel like the most pressing matter at hand, which is laughable considering the last few months. “Did you think I knew?”
“I don’t know.” Ricky goes back to picking up his chopsticks and eating normally, still looking comically small in his large and shuffled cardigan. He groans out a little sound of upset when a drop of broth lands on his sleeve; Gyuvin is already fetching an ice cube from his water glass to offer to blot at the spot before it stains. “He said he liked you for a long time and I thought…if you knew about me, you knew about him.”
Gyuvin’s back to sitting normally and drinking broth, staring over the rim when Ricky quietly slips out that last part and all attention quietly hones in on stain-removal. He’s thought about this, stewed on it for a while. Gyuvin licks his lips and places his bowl back down with a heavy clunk. A small smile comes to his lips; Gyuvinrealizes they’re chapped with how they crack at the gesture. “Do you think I thought about dating him?”
It’s a question intended to illicit a certain response, and it pays off. Ricky scoffs and squints, but a small, caught smile can’t help but creep into his expression. He’s bristling, busying himself with eating again and doesn’t even fully chew his food before he gurgles out an expletive. “Fuck off.” Unfounded jealousy. Greedy. Ricky couldn’t win a competition that didn’t exist, was never in any danger of not being chosen, and he still feels slighted by even the thought of someone being an optionbefore him. “I was just curious. Maybe you knew and never said anything.”
He can’t help himself but to scoot closer, and Gyuvin grabs Ricky’s face with both hands. Immediately his captive tries to wriggle away, chopsticks nearly clacking out of his hands and table shaking with his efforts — they’re in public, but nothing about this appears at all amorous, with how Gyuvin squishes at what fat he can pull from Ricky’s cheeks and coos at a high pitch. “Ricky-ah~ You know I only have eyes for you~”
After a few more moments, when Ricky finally stops trying to wriggle free, Gyuvin lets his grip go and laughs at how startled and internally furious his ‘friend’ looks.
It’s dark when they walk home, and the air is chilly enough that it makes sense they huddle closer together going towards the bus stop. Ricky offers to get a taxi for them, but Gyuvin shakes his head and takes Ricky’s hand to put in his jacket pocket. No fuss is made, and he rubs circles against the back of the warm hand in his; it makes Ricky laugh lightly and Gyuvin has never been more proud.
They won’t see each other again until after CSATs, and Gyuvin is sure he’s made the most of his last year of high school — just like his mother wanted.
Junhyeon texts him an S.O.S., and Gyuvin is over to his house with a quickness. There aren’t details about what’s wrong, just that he needs him as soon as possible, and he’s currently at his house.
Gyuvin arrives to knock roughly on the door, hopeful that he doesn’t scare one of Junhyeon’s parents, but their only son opens the door with a smile on his face, messy hair peeking out from under the bill of a ballcap.
“Oh, you really took it to heart.” He steps out of his doorframe, gesturing for Gyuvin to come in. “Take a load off.”
His breath is indeed ragged; Gyuvin had to take a bus to Junhyeon’s neighborhood and then jogged through the curving, long streets to get specifically to his doorstep. He can’t help but give him a dead stare before stepping inside and shrugging off his windbreaker. “You said S.O.S., what did you expect me to do?”
There’s no real emergency, but Gyuvin’s irritation at the fact is quickly replaced with gratitude when Junhyeon invites him upstairs to his bedroom. His eyes land on the bag of snacks that he’s offered first, rifling through the thin plastic — several bags of chips crinkle together in their shiny metal containers, and there’s also a strawberry cream sandwich and a bottle of mango juice. When he looks up and finally gets a look at the room, it’s in utter disarray. Items are strewn across Junhyeon’s desk, his floor, his bed. Clothes exist in piles that don’t appear to have any obvious rhyme or reason to them.
“I’m getting ready for apartment living. Universities are close, but not close enough to still stay at home, you know?”
It’s explained to Gyuvin like it isn’t common sense, and he realizes he accidentally upset a stack of comic book volumes on his way in, completely tunnel visioned on his now-assumed bribe. “Aren’t you a little early?” There’s barely any room to sit cross-legged on the floor, but Gyuvin manages when he pushes an overly-full backpack out of the way. “Getting a head start on things...I can at least say I’m proud.”
Junhyeon shoves his foot lightly into Gyuvin’s shoulder, smile widening. “Nah, the specifics don’t matter. No matter what our scores are, we’re going to the same place. Might as well start now.” Also without much space to sit, he haphazardly falls back onto a pile of clothes on his bed with an exaggerated exhale. “Not to mention my mom is on me to clear out my old stuff. That’s where you come in.”
He’d taken to thumbing through the stack of comic books he knocked over, cataloging whether he’d read them in his head. The other part of his brain thinks about how final things will be soon. Gunwook, Yunseo and Junhyeon going off and having their own little university adventure. Part of him wonders why he’s even a part of this activity — not that he’s actually complaining, despite the false pretenses. When the conversation becomes directed at him, Gyuvin stops, bemused. “ Soooo am I moving stuff, or am I deciding your dorm decor?”
“Both. Gunwookie and Yunyun are both busy studying, but I can’t read another page of anything or I’ll jump out the window.” CSATs are breathing down everyone’s necks at varying degrees. Gyuvin is sure everyone shares a similar sentiment, even if not all of them are actually letting the insanity stop their study streaks. “Were you studying?”
He snorts. “No, no, I was taking a break.” Like Junhyeon, he’d shoved a pile of mathematic notes off of his desk to take a quick cat nap — another formula or or equation would send him over the edge. Too bad his sleep had been put on hold for unexpected labor. “Just, uh. Point me to a pile.”
It’s not quick work. He knows Junhyeon, but can’t obviously make decisions for him on what he should and shouldn’t take to live with other friends in a place of their own. He makes a snap judgement on a pair of basketball shorts, frayed at the hem enough that he could probably unravel them faster than clean up the mess at hand, but Junhyeon quickly scolds him for assuming they’re unworthy enough to belong to a garbage pile. On top of that, it feels like every item Junhyeon touches becomes an opportunity for a walk down memory lane. A pair of yellowing socks turns into a story about a time he played Seungeon in a mock tennis match and by the end of it everyone was certain Junhyeon broke one of his fingers. He finds a random page in a notebook where he and Gyuvin had an hour long tic-tac-toe championship that ended in a stalemate; Gyuvin exhibits a massive amount of self-control not to start it up again and focus on work. He indulges his friend in the beginning, then looks at the quickly passing time on his phone screen and starts trying to redirect Junhyeon as more and more nostalgic stories pop up.
Eventually Gyuvin opens an obvious time sink waiting to happen: a plastic container filled with stacks of photographs, thrown in with no organization. He’s seen a lot of these before — childhood photos are scattered in with school pictures of themselves, all five and then six of them. Junhyeon, about five years old, holding a watermelon that’s about as big as he is. His mother and father holding him, photos of his late grandmother on his father’s side, a candid and goofy photo of he and Gunwook at a PC cafe. There’s no rhyme or reason to the order, just tossed in like the box itself is a brain.
“What do you want to do with these? Take them?” He shakes the container at Junhyeon, who looks over his shoulder and smiles at the content. Gyuvin will have to set a firm boundary if his friend wants to go through each individual one right now.
“Of course.” Junhyeon turns back to his closet, pulling out a ratty t-shirt that gets unceremoniously dropped to the floor; why that gets to be thrown away and not the tattered shorts is beyond Gyuvin’s comprehension. There’s a beat of silence before the smile fades from his voice, replaced with a vinegary bitter tone. “I’m gonna forget what you guys look like without them.”
The sigh that heaves out of Gyuvin’s chest is long and hefty. He snaps the lid back onto the container and roughly shoves it across the floor to the pile of other kept goods. He has made time for helping his friend with a chore, not for this kind of emotional labor. “We’re not fleeing the country, Jun. You act like your life is going to be over just because three of us are going to Seoul.”
Yet again there’s a pause, and Gyuvin waits along with it. He knows Junhyeon, well enough to know it takes him a beat to form a comeback. “Well. I’m going to see just as much of you whether you’re in Seoul or fucking Shanghai.”
Immediately Gyuvin’s skin is alight. “Leave Ricky out of this.” He’s not sure if there’s some kind of implication he should be picking up on; it makes him feel ill to even think Junhyeon would imply something bigoted. “Are you serious, right now?”
His quick glance up reveals a look of panic on Junhyeon’s face as he puts two and two together; both of his hands are holding clothes hangers and they shake back and forth almost violently with denial. “No, no, no, no, no! I just picked a city, Gyuvin. Not everything is about Ricky.” The sigh he lets out is hard, and he shoves the clothes hangers back into his small closet forcefully. Again, he apparently can’t help himself: “But that might be too hard for you to realize.”
It’s the last straw. Gyuvin stands up, re-energized by the growing irritation reverberating through his body. He waits for Junhyeon to turn around to face him fully before he narrows his eyes and sharpens his tone. “Did you invite me to your house just to rehash this bullshit?”
Junhyeon has the gall to scoff and shrug his shoulders, but not enough bravery to look him in the eye. “It’s not rehashing if I never gave you a piece of my mind in the first place.”
Gyuvin bridges the space between them with one long stride, not caring about knocking over the pile of comics again. The bedroom isn’t very big, and previously it felt cozy — there was always comfort in many big bodies trying to find room there, but now none of the fondness those memories should bring forward matter when he looks down at his friend, half a head shorter than he is. “Since when am I married to all of you?” He doesn’t like being angry. It takes a lot to push Gyuvin to a place like this, but he thinks of the small jabs here and there, and now this on top of it all…he can’t help but hiss into Junhyeon’s face. “I don’t bitch and moan when you and Gunwookie go out for hotpot or whatever together, or talk about dorm decorations in front of all of us in our group texts, like… You need to back. Off.”
“You don’t give a shit you’re leaving three of us behind!” It only fans the flames more when Junhyeon closes his eyes, only opening them when he can truly stare up at Gyuvin with barely concealed venom. His arms cross tight against his chest, muscles tensed. “The Gyuvin I know would care about all of us. Now you spend all of your time on the new kid—”
The hand Gyuvin places on Junhyeon’s shoulder is stabilizing, mostly for himself — but if it’s taken as a threat, he currently can’t find it in himself to care; Gyuvin punctuates it with terseness. “ Don’t you talk about Ricky like he’s not one of us.”
“ —and it doesn’t make sense to me.” Junhyeon refuses to be interrupted, raising his voice slightly instead of acknowledging the demand. “You used to be a real friend. You spent most of Jeju chasing after Ricky like a lost dog, and I had to make up some shit to even get you to come to my house today.” His face is flushing with exertion now, words coming out faster and more harsh with each syllable. “I always thought you wouldn’t abandon us. What happened to you?”
The question hits Gyuvin in the chest as if it has real physical force behind it, and his grip slackens. Junhyeon talks about him like he’s something that exists in past tense — not that Junhyeon knows. Gyuvin could probably tell him everything and Junhyeon would never believe him, or tell him he’s got an A+ sci-fi idea on his hands. He’s spacey like that, in a way that wouldn’t immediately make this all feel real and possible like Ricky had. But the change in himself…he has changed, right? And is that his fault? Is he not as much like Gyuvin as he’s tried to be? How can he be anyone other than a boy shaped by experiences that he had no choice but to absorb? But he knows the things pissing Junhyeon off are all related to the decisions Gyuvin himself has made, and his anger deflates in the face of the possibility for a betrayal he never meant. He knows that his free time has been spent on Ricky more than anyone else, and maybe it’s all been a bit uneven lately…
— But what has he done wrong, actually?
“Have you ever thought,” Gyuvin has to catch his shaking breath, almost choking on a gulp meant to suppress frustrated tears from coming up, “about how much has happened to me, lately?” Everyone is so stressed and anxious about their lives changing because high school is almost over, but Gyuvin has had to wrestle with so much more than that. “You guys want me to be there for all of you, but no one but—”
Ricky. Visited him, caught him, consumed him. Maybe it is preferential treatment, but Gyuvin won’t say the boy hasn’t earned it. It’s his to give, and he does. Always will.
“I was in the hospital! I thought I was hurt, and my family…” Junhyeon’s face is falling, and Gyuvin can easily see it despite his vision blurring with tears gathering at his waterline. He’s overwhelmed, thinking about it. Part of him wishes he could just tell Junhyeon everything, so maybe he could talk to someone about how hard this all is. He can’t hurt Ricky with his feelings anymore, and no one else deserves it all either—but if only.
If only so many things had or hadn’t happened. Gyuvin wishes he had a better way of handling everything, between his family, Ricky, himself. He’s entered the life of this boy, done the best he feels he could have given the circumstances, but even for all that he’s gained, there are also losses he can’t get back.
Namely; the floodgates finally burst:
“I wasted so much time on stupid fucking tennis and now it’s worthless.”
His coach wanted him to face it, so did his mother. No one else mentioned it, and subconsciously he was grateful. He never played a game as himself, only got to replay matches Gyuvin played, won and lost. All that practice wasn’t his own, and yet it’s his karmic lot to deal with the disappointed failure of how it will never fully come to fruition. Almost ten thousand hours of practice, and all he has to show for it are burgeoning calluses and a third of a last season that no university is going to give a shit about, especially with a previously-injured wrist. It’s not a breakdown he ever wanted to have, let alone in Junhyeon’s dusty, storm-swept room, but it’s happening and he can’t stop it.
Junhyeon’s face is no longer in his vision, only the worn mat of his bedroom floor. Both of his hands grasp clumsily on his friends shoulders, and he sobs into the space between them. He wishes he could say he was sorry, and that if he ever felt like Gyuvin neglected him it will be his cross to bear forever. The old Gyuvin eventually found exhaustion in years of siblings, massive friend groups, sports and school and more — as a new Gyuvin, he’s burnt out after a few months of upheaval.
He’s guided to sit on the edge of Junhyeon’s bed, and he hears his friend above him, speaking softly. All the tension in the room has fizzled out to hushed reassurances, as Junhyeon rubs his shoulders and claps his back. “Gyuvin, Gyuvin. Breathe, okay, huh?” Suddenly he’s being touched no longer, and Gyuvin needs to be supported by holding his neck in his hands, elbows on his knees as he stares at the tear-blurry floor. “Sit there, don’t move, I’ll go get—”
Socked footfalls hurry away from him, door opening and closing. It’s hard to tell how much time passes when Junhyeon brings him a bottle of water, sitting down next to him roughly. It’s exhausting, having to remove his hands from around himself and open even a small plastic cap in order to drink.
Half the bottle is gone before Gyuvin looks up, scrubs a hand roughly down his face and looks back at his friend — also close to teary, face fallen with concern. “I’m sorry, Hyeon. Most of that isn’t—” Tennis isn’t Junhyeon’s cross to bear, even if Gyuvin could level some apt and actual criticism. It doesn’t feel like the time. He just wants to be sad and comforted by a friend who cares. Who should also know the opposite is true. He asks, to be certain. “You have to know I care about you, right? Everyone.”
“No, I— we’ve all been wrapped up in our own shit, okay?” He roughly rubs his hands together and shoves them both into his hoodie pocket, obviously not sure what to do with them in the face of the vulnerability dropped at his doorstep. “You know I don’t hate Ricky, or anything. We are friends. He needs you, and I’m— I’m a dick, I dunno.”
They’re quiet together for a long time. Gyuvin can’t find the energy to break the silence with anything other than pathetic hiccups. It’s Junhyeon that finally does it, scooting onto the floor and getting back to organizing his strewn things. “Who knew some guys we met in high school would get us so torn up, huh?” Gyuvin doesn’t answer, and Junhyeon turns to look at him with a wistful expression; an elbow collides with Gyuvin’s shin and it’s instinctive to kick his friend in the side, playfully. “Must mean we’re all pretty special, right?”
Gyuvin leaves about an hour later, but Junhyeon catches him at the door before he can fully leave. They’d long since gotten over their spat, but Junhyeon still looks sheepish when he slips a folded photograph into Gyuvin’s hand. He looks at it quickly — it’s printed on glossy paper, something he had to have gotten professionally pulled from his iPhone gallery. All six of them stand posing on the beach at Jeju, sun dusky and their skin slightly tanned. He remembers taking the photo; another student helped make sure they were all in frame, and the first take was more serious. This one shows them all making stupid faces, sans Ricky who is characteristically stoic and face-conscious. That’s what makes him all the funnier.
Junhyeon laughs. “So you don’t forget what we look like either, okay?” As if Gyuvin ever could.
Gyuvin sticks around after church to listen to Seungeon’s makeshift band practice. The days they can get together to play and rehearse for the upcoming church recital are numbered with CSATs coming up in only two days, and Gyuvin should realistically be studying — but one day away from the books and practice exams won’t kill him.
It’s all very light and melodious rock, as hardcore of music as most of the church crowd can handle. Seungeon’s voice is good, deep and resonant. Gyuvin does pay attention, unlike the assistant pastor that sits on his phone most of the time. He’s just there to make sure progress is made and the teens stay on task, but that’s never been a problem with this lot. Gyuvin can’t see him from his place in the front row, close to the small auditorium stage, trying to keep as still as possible to minimize the creaking of his old folding chair.
The auditorium is much less ornate than the church proper, which is saying something since the chapel area itself is plain and simple. The room has a wooden stage featuring two lifts made with basic plywood and two-by-fours, topped with velvet that doesn’t match the blood-red carpet below it. The band play through three short songs twice, small critiques and tweaks made after each performance — Seungeon wants to modify this bridge, the drummer wants to increase the tempo in this place and that, they have to take into consideration the acoustics of an empty room versus one with about fifty parishoners in it. Gyuvindoesn’t pretend to understand the mechanics of how music works, just if a song will or won’t go on any of his playlists. He still nods along to Seungeon’s directions in solidarity.
Altogether, the practice is an hour and some-odd minutes long, and as soon as it concludes Seungeon waves at him from the tiny stage. It’s fast and sharp, and Gyuvin returns the enthusiasm with a wide smile. This is his oldest friend, and nothing will take that title away. Even if things feel a little awkward and strained at the moment, some things never change. Time can’t be reversed, and Gyuvin’s feelings are steadfast.
“Let me help.” Gyuvin doesn’t wait for permission before he begins resetting the folding chairs in the auditorium, the last chore given to Seungeon before the assistant pastor ducked into the adjacent office. The other band members have already left. That seemed to be typical, and that’s very like Seungeon. He’s the last to leave, and cleans up after the mess.
—Though he doesn’t object to Gyuvin’s help, instead folding chairs and collecting them on his arm. “You don’t have to come to these. You have to study and—”
“I don’t have to do anything.” Gyuvin cuts him off with a wave of his hand. He’d already collected five folded chairs to place against the wall, a lot still left to get organized. “You’ve got to study too, but you’re here.”
“I’ll go insane if I look at another textbook today.” Seungeon laughs. “My mom and dad wanted me to skip service until it’s over, that’s how serious they’re taking it.”
Gyuvin whistles as he continues his work folding chairs, moving them repeating the process. Seungeon and his family definitely weren’t the kind to skip church, so it really was a testament to their commitment. Gyuvin has definitely seen him every Sunday, turning to smile at him from their essentially assigned pews. “You’ve got this in the bag, don’t worry.”
Seungeon looks back at him, messy bangs swaying with the motion. “You’re not worried?”
He definitely needed to worry more now that he wasn’t banking on any kind of support from his tennis efforts. But he’s never been a dunce, and his grades should be good enough as long as he gives the exams his all. “No. I may not be a genius, but I’ll make it.”
“It still doesn’t mean you have to be here.” Seungeon trails off, and Gyuvin notices the small trickle of hurt in his voice. He recognizes it as the pain of his proximity, hearing that same lilt poison Ricky’s voice more than a dozen times as of late.
It only makes him more invested in his current activity of helping Seungeon. Gyuvin jogs over to the furthest wall where his friend is trying to balance the rest of the folded chairs on his left arm to make one last trip to put them away, but not succeeding in balancing those and the other he has draped across his other side. Gyuvin hooks his forearm through a good five chairs and hefts them up lightly. “I’ve been an asshole to a couple of people lately. I’m trying to fix that.”
Seungeon is back to smiling with a false veneer of genuineness. He even adds a little laugh to sell it. “I can’t imagine you being an asshole.”
“Yeah you can. I think you’re just too nice to try.” Gyuvin stares down Seungeon and tries to telepathically push meaning through his gaze. Objectively looking through his memories, something Gyuvin couldn’t do as himself, it was easier to fit the puzzle pieces together — but also to look at the bias. Seungeon very obviously did things, said things, liked him in his own way: he got Gyuvin things he wanted, without asking. Seungeon looked at him in soft ways that he can only really see in hindsight. He stuck close to him more often than his other friends, but never close enough for it to be obvious — plausible deniability. If he went through Seungeon’s texts, some he could read a romantically affectionate tone to, even. But Gyuvin didn’t think of the possibility of Seungone’s love, and so it never really clicked together for him. Ricky never said anything either, also liking him passively in similar ways — but Gyuvin wanted that, hung onto every perceived sign and signal as some buried hope that it was true and possible.
Gyuvin doesn’t feel sorry that he has feelings for Ricky and not for Seungeon — but he could easily see how Seungeon could feel a certain way about his prolonged obliviousness.
Their years of friendship pay off in the worst way as it does dawn on Seungeon slowly. First he’s puzzled, but then the longer their gazes hold the more obvious it becomes to him. His face ends out in a mortified expression of vulnerability, ears suddenly reddening to the same color as the deep crimson carpet.
“I don’t want—” He stutters to a stop, looking around to make sure they’re alone now that he’s fully understanding their underlying conversation. Neither of them has said anything incriminating, but there’s still obvious worry that Seungeon has that someone could put the pieces of the puzzle together somehow. Once he’s sure, he postures himself closer to Gyuvin and speaks softly. Gentle, but harsh. “I don’t hold it against you, Gyuvin. It just stings. I don’t even want to talk about this.” There’s a breath, and Gyuvin attempts to open his mouth but Seungeon beats him too it with a jab. “It hurt you didn’t ask me if I was okay. Back in Jeju.”
And it’s a jab Gyuvin lets him get away with. “Yeah. I told you you could see me as an asshole if you tried.” He toes the leg of one of the chairs he’s holding, watching how the rubber stop is fraying to reveal even more scuffed metal underneath. It’s easier to focus on than Seungeon’s frazzled and glistening eyes. That’s not the kind of person Gyuvin wants to be, however, and instead looks to speak seriously and directly to his friend. “Could you still be my friend? Or Ricky’s?”
The auditorium goes quiet and Seungeon searches Gyuvin’s face with even further dawning realization. Based on what Ricky had told him, Seungeon knew about their situation somewhat…but the implication of it being something the two of them are on the same page about may be a new development for their love triangle’s neglected angle. The effort Seungeon takes to keep hurt out of his face is obvious, voice small. “So it’s official?”
Technically, no. But that’s not the answer that matters, Gyuvin knows, and it’s what makes him nod with confidence. There’s a pause afterwards, and Seungeon blinks like he’s never expected the initial question. “Of course.”
Gyuvin leans forward, observing the soft line of Seungeon’s profile shift from forced compliance to neutrality when he thinks he’s turned far enough away. This stings, almost worse than any fight with Ricky has. He may not be in love with Seungeon, but he’s a person who’s existed within Gyuvin’s ability to love longer than most people. He tries to keep the pleading out of his voice. “You know, Sinchon isn’t far off from where you’ll probably be in Seoul. It really can be us three and those three.”
“Yeah, it could be.” The way Seungeon says it, softly enough to nearly be drowned out by the last snap of a folding chair, means it never will.
Up until he leaves his house, Gyuvin isn’t sure if he’s going to tell Ricky what he’s doing. On one hand, it makes sense to — really, he’s an asshole if he doesn’t. On the other, Gyuvin’s been an asshole about enough as of late that one more mark against him wasn’t going to do much lasting karmic damage. Selfishly, he also worries it’s something that would recontextualize everything for Ricky and break their fledgling romantic bond.
He takes the bus like he usually would to go to school, but gets off two stops later than his usual school destination. Like he’s at risk of recognition, Gyuvin dons sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, Busan FC cap tightly pulled down his forehead and a mask concealing most of the rest of his face. It’s Sunday. The bus route is dead, and a soft R&B song cranked to max volume almost zones him out enough to miss his stop. It’s a beach trail, heading up a hill and into a park. Not popular, somewhat overgrown, a place where people take their dogs to do their business and they don’t feel so bad about not picking up after them.
Gyuvin is upset this is where he has to do it, because Gyuvin deserves better than that. When he himself dies, he’s sure the wreaths will be massive and many. His grave will be well maintained, with the rest of his family in their selected plot; they’ve all forgone spaces in a columbarium to instead have true Christian burials. He will be loved and missed, truly mourned. Gyuvin isn’t afforded the same luxury — but he has to be afforded something.
He walks the trail until he gets to a denser area of the park, nearly at the top of the hill and not so disturbed. The small and tidy grass peters out into truly unkept weeds and shrubbery, and the trees get dense enough to almost swallow the walking path in places. When it gets thin enough, Gyuvinsteps from the worn down pathway into the thicker grassy brush and keeps moving, giving himself another ten minute’s journey before he settles on a location. It’s a thick tree, the widest around in the area even if he could still wrap his arms all the way around the trunk. The surrounding area is filled with tightly growing chinaroot, climbing up the smaller trees and bushes to make a carpet of green and red. It’s not perfect, but it will do.
Removing his backpack, Gyuvin takes out the supplies he’s already worked on. To make a small memorial site, it has to be… obscure. He can’t flat out create a makeshift grave for Kim Gyuvin, local resident whom someone could know, and then they could alert him or his family that some psychopath has randomly made a wreath for him in the woods. It’s not something that will give him away, but could still cause concern that couldn’t be explained easily. It would be just his luck that somehow it was discovered that he’d done it himself, and having to explain to his family why he made a faux burial plot for himself in a park…best to avoid it.
Gyuvinpulls out a small crown of fabric flowers he’d nabbed from his sister’s room, an old accessory she won’t miss, and circles it around two sticks he’d fashioned together in the shape of a cross with some leftover racket string. He shoves the end down into the dirt, sharpened with a kitchen knife, wiggling it to the side just slightly to avoid a large root. A few memorabilia are attached with flower-adorned masking tape — a copy of his year eleven tennis match scores (name and school blacked out with marker), that gifted puppy and bunny hairclip from Junhyeon and a lock of his hair he’d snatched up from his mother cutting it the week prior.
It feels a bit witchy, to do all of this. But that also feels par for the course.
Gyuvinsits in front of his small handiwork, cross-legging and pensive. He wishes he could have attached a polaroid. Even the days of birth and death — it would be too identifiable, and he assuages himself with how he’ll make sure to ask God to give all of his well-wishes and gifted sadness to the real Gyuvin when he dies.
“Gyuvin-ah.” He says out loud, before whipping his head around to make sure no one is still present. There’s a dog barking in the distance, but it’s not close enough to be worried about it or its owner. A few moments of silence confirm no one is approaching. “Even for me, this is a little…” Crazy. Talking to ‘himself.’
If he could see Gyuvin, what would he say?
He starts with the obvious, a prayer. Gyuvin isn’t the kind of Christian to have scripture memorized to recite immediately, but he’s revisited Romans recently. ‘ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ’ The verse is about living based on carnal desire versus spirtual righteousness, but he felt the words sink into his skin like a mark. Gyuvin now totally exists in spirit, and Gyuvin prays for that peace to come to him. It’s not like the first time in church — he feels a presence surrounding him, and he’s sure it’s not imagined. He can bring forth the feeling of God’s love readily, and his skin covers in goosepimples. He’s been accepted.
After he feels sufficiently pious, Gyuvin breathes in deeply and exhales slowly and quietly through his nose. There has to be more than this. He’s not sure if he could ever do enough for the makeshift memorial service to feel proper, but a few internal prayers is just not going to cut it.
“Everyone is…good.” Gyuvin is taking part in a self-fulfilling prophecy, thinking that nothing he could say is good enough and thus talking moronically in sentences an elementary schooler could regurgitate. He sucks on his tongue, pulls at the grass beside him enough to hear the roots pull under the ground. “ I worry a lot, so I don’t want you to worry a lot.”
That would be what Gyuvin worries about, in heaven. It’s supposed to be a place of serenity and peace, but he’d find a way to fidget and squirm thinking about how he has no control or immediate presence around everyone in his life, to ensure their feelings and safety. Especially knowing there’s a duplicate of him walking around in his skin — does Gyuvin know he means no harm? That he could never…?
“I wouldn’t hurt any of them.” But that’s not true. He hurt Ricky. He hurt Seungeon. He’s hurt his family, probably all of them. The realization hits him at once, and it’s easy to choke up and lose all decorum. Tears spill out of his eyes, roll down his cheeks and tickle his neck. “I didn’t mean to. I won’t.”
He thinks of the memories he’s gone through, over and over. Gyuvin being tired, pushing himself to so many different limits. With people, with sports, with himself. “Please rest well. They’re all in good hands.”
But ultimately, if there was a way for the original Gyuvin to come back, for Gyuvinto go wherever he came from or to be pushed to some other body somewhere — he would refuse.
“I’m sorry.” Gyuvinslides the edge of his hand across his upper lip, dragging a line of mucous along it like a snail’s trail. His eyes are big and puffy. Just like Gyuvin, he too is a crybaby. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Gyuvin falls away, and now it feels as if Gyuvin is all he ever was to begin with.
At graduation, everyone cries including Ricky. It’s for a very brief moment, and everyone gives him grace to dab at his waterline. Gyuvin will chide him about it later, privately. Alternatively, when Gyuvin cries there’s a collection of people taking turns to faux-wipe at his face with his yellow stole, fat tears darkening the already deep eggplant color of his graduation robe. The ceremony mostly takes place in the large assembly area, and after the cheering and whooping from the audience the entirety of the graduating class spill outside and into the entrance area. The temperature is balmy and windy, and the newly graduated teens are met by a wall of family and friends ready to hand off flowers and hugs for their great accomplishments.
Gyuvin’s family is in the crowd, and he can see his mother looking for him and his friends to give them bouquets. The six friends are in proximity to one another, but also within reach of a ton of other students. Their circle is expanding outward, as Yunseo is half hanging onto Seungeon but also talking to other students he sits closer to in class, with Gunwook and Junyeon also inching away to say separate goodbyes. They would all snap back together if they saw Gyuvin’s family looking for them — and he’s sure that soon their own families will come bustling forward in waves. It’s not that it feels overwhelming…but Gyuvin has taken a liking to more private moments during the last few months.
In a burst of impulsivity, he pulls Ricky in a direction away from his mother’s searching gaze and whispers harshly. He’s mostly looking around and bowing politely to the students he’s not as familiar with, but even in his state of inactivity Ricky looks shocked and bothered.
Not that Gyuvin pays that much mind. “Your mom didn’t come, hmm?”
Ricky shakes his head with a puzzled expression, only further confused when Gyuvin leads him away from the crowd of their peers, ducking down to try and hide his obvious height as much as possible as they leave the common hall.
They make it outside and to the sports area after only a minute of quick traveling. Gyuvin grabs his cap off, stiff and rouched fabric crinkling in his hands. They’re so silly looking, their school opting for the flattened chef hat look instead of the square and flat, traditional graduation cap. He looks back to see Ricky’s long since done the same, hat rolled into a clenched fist and gaze expectant. He’s been kidnapped, and yet he makes no true fuss as usual. Just questions. “Is my mom…?”
“No, no.” That that’s where Ricky’s brain goes first makes Gyuvin laugh. So silly. “My mom was looking for us.”
This only brings more confusion to Ricky’s face. Gyuvin takes him by the robe sleeve and drags him into jogging step beside him without giving further answer yet again. He goes, Ricky follows, as it should be.
It’s another minute of fast walking and they’re at the tennis courts. Gyuvin ducks behind the bleacher section to reach their final destination: the tennis shed is small and multi-purpose, with most of the space taken up by other sports equipment and accessories, a large cart for moving many standard school supplies or appliances at once and a few broken desks and lost and found items from years ago. Ricky often volunteered to dig around in one of the storage boxes for electrical tape or spare racket strings, usually emerging dusty and after a long time looking under heaps of containers and clutter.
In his quick look around, Gyuvin actually does see a few students lingering near the sports grounds, but no faculty or notable figures who would question what they’re doing — no one whose eyelines would linger underneath the small cluster of bleachers. Maybe he should think about it a bit more — but maybe he should let his dick do the thinking for once; it’s taken a backseat in his life long enough. He ushers Ricky in, who is as compliant as usual, smirking when he shuts the door behind them and leaves barely any room for their feet to move in the cramped space. The dark purple color of their robes becomes nearly black as the visibility is sucked out of the room with the vanishing light.
“What are we doing in here?” Ricky asks like he has an answer already prefabricated in his mind. It’s probably right.
“I didn’t want it to end just yet.” It’s genuine in its sentiment, but Gyuvin lays on a smarmy veneer to keep the overwhelming feeling of finality at bay. “I’m a sentimental guy.”
It’s dim, with only one window off to the side offering a small bit of light. The cheap sheen of the robes refacts only a minimal bit of light, but it’s still very easy to see the shine of Ricky’s teeth when he smiles, tiny and coy. “This isn’t a very high school activity.”
“What isn’t?” Gyuvin wonders if Ricky can also see his own bright smile, or if his position against the wall erases it completely. “We’re just standing in the sports shed. I need to find a racket I left here. Are you being pervy, Rik?”
There’s no answer, just the sound of shallow breathing and the settling of crates and equipment that swayed slightly with their rough entrance. They never really broached the topic, but Gyuvin is sometimes curious — does Ricky think of him as often or as intensely as it is the other way around? He’s not so initiative, and despite being teenage boys they didn’t often talk about anything that moved past being vaguely lewd in insinuation, and not about one another. Ever.
“I thought about doing this, you know.” He begins the confession, and he hopes that it becomes a mutual exchange. Gyuvin playfully swings Ricky’s robe sleeve back and forth, holding the fabric between only his thumb and index finger but still firmly. He tries to push the words out in a voice that’s husky, but they only leave him soft and sweet. “Going into the tennis shed and kissing you. Tons of times.”
“Kim Gyuvin, hopeless romantic.” Ricky looks at him slyly — Gyuvin will have to ask, when it wouldn’t ruin the mood, if Ricky knows his eyes default to those of the bedroom variety when he acts even slightly flirtatious. “Our hyenas would be right outside.”
Gyuvin shrugs. “I never really cared if they knew.”
“Then why do we need to be in the tennis shed?” It’s a soft question Ricky poses that answers itself in sentences neither of them want to really say. It does matter, and if Gyuvin can have Ricky without having any unnecessary baggage to immediately combat…he hopes that Ricky understands and knows that if he ever had to make choices, they wouldn’t be hard. That he’s the answer to every question anyone could ever pose to him.
The way the robe fabric slips together makes them laugh when they step closer to one another. Both of their hats are on the ground somewhere — it’s irresponsible if they want to keep up appearances later, hard to explain how both of them got dirty with the dark dust of the tennis shed. All of this is hard to explain, actually, but in the moment Gyuvin is very willing to commit to whatever future story gets his tongue into Ricky’s mouth.
They’ve kissed before this, but never at school. Twice in public actually: once at the school bus stop, very lightly, but Ricky backed out after a simple peck. The paranoia was visible on his face the rest of the ride, as if the older woman who’d gotten on who knows how many stops ahead of them had somehow seen them through the steel and wires of the bus frame three blocks away. She paid them no mind, listening to a drama OST at a volume high enough that Gyuvin could hear it through her wired headphones and scribbling furiously in a notebook, but Ricky couldn’t be convinced she wasn’t onto them.
Maybe Gyuvin should care more about being caught — but when the urge to kiss Ricky, always present, bubbles over and reaches an uncontrollable fever pitch, the when and where doesn’t feel relevant.
The only other time in public would have been out with the other guys at a celebratory post-CSAT noraebang — Ricky was going to the bathroom, Gyuvin was coming back and he couldn’t help himself but to kiss the top of Ricky’s nose. That one he was more good-natured about, even when he realized it was caught on camera when they left for the evening, Junhyeon turning to the black dome in the ceiling to make a funny face while Ricky’s blanched.
And then at their own homes. Many, many times there.
Never as desperate at this. Gyuvin planned to prop himself against the door as a tool to avoid any interruptions, but Ricky leans into him like he wants to shove him through it. Thin fingers etch Gyuvin’s round face, and eventually his hands fall from Ricky’s waist and trunk to let his friend settle into whatever position he wants them to wind up in. He traps Gyuvin’s mouth in his own, fatty bottom lip cushioning Gyuvin’s own thinner one into opening and closing again. Gyuvin twists his head just slightly so their noses slot comfortably against one another; he can feel Ricky’s heavy breaths against his skin even as his tongue pushes against his mouth, demanding entrance. It’s then he feels comfortable enough to place his hands back, lightly on Ricky’s shoulders, now able to give as good as he’s getting.
Ricky is no Son Hyemin, God bless her. There’s no fumbling and confusion — the first few times weren’t perfect by any means, but the awkwardness was like a rite of passage, not a sign to stop. Now they’re practiced enough that it’s good every time, and the mental acknowledgement makes Gyuvin abandon the momentum to smile; Ricky takes the moment of vulnerability to strike and nibble on his lip with kitten teeth.
His hands are feverish, and Gyuvin worries he’s gotten the wrong idea — this wasn’t supposed to lead into anything more than kissing, and while he’s consistently horny enough to be happy with the enthusiasm, he’s also not prepared. Gyuvin was looking for a romantic end to their school career that could double as something to get off to later that night, not tennis shed handjobs. As he’s getting ready to halt their progress, he susses out Ricky’s hand movements, noisy as he roughly slides them over the cheap and sheer robe fabric. It’s not overtly erotic: once he moved his hands across Gyuvin’s chest, but most of it is grabbing and caressing. Mapping him, his neck, his waist, his arms.
And in between all of that, any chance he has in their kissing Ricky uses to hold Gyuvin’s face. His thumbs slip in between them to swipe across the surface of Gyuvin’s cheek, like he’s wiping away tears that aren’t there. They’re pressed together, tightly now, and much more friction will mean that Gyuvin has to force this encounter to end before his modesty is completely gone. Fingers force themselves up the nape of his neck and into his hairline to tug, enough for Gyuvin to wince, and Ricky shudders out a breath — more overwhelmed than erotic.
It’s then Gyuvin realizes the chasm of difference between himself and the boy who he once was has shrunk, but isn’t fully gone. In the dark, back at school, he can be Gyuvin as he was before, and Ricky is trying his hardest to convince himself that this is exactly that. No tragedy has halted their coming of age, no supernatural crisis hiccupped their fledgling romance.
Gyuvin pushes him away softly, lips forming shh, shh, shh sounds making it harder to continue their kissing. In the dark, Ricky looks confused and startled, eyebrows canting downwards and mouth slacking in slight hurt. Gyuvin pulls him back with gentleness, never wanting his pretty prince to think he’s done wrong. He leads the kiss now, gentle and patient before breaking away. “It’s okay, Rik.” Another, on the side of his mouth while his arm holds him close, pulls them close enough to knock their foreheads together; another quick kiss makes their teeth clink and Gyuvin giggles. “I’ve got you.”
They leave the tennis shed shortly after. Gyuvin examines Ricky’s face and sees the faintest of tear streaks against his skin. He’s got both of their hats in one hand, and the other holds two canisters of tennis balls clunkily in splayed fingers. They come back to their other friends and Gyuvin’s family, dusted off and with the excuse of finding the tennis balls to sign and share together; Ricky’s the tennis shed expert since he was the unofficial team assistant. The quick and believable lie coming from Ricky surprises Gyuvin, before he remembers just how good his friend has gotten at the habit lately.
Gyuvin has done this to himself. He has no right to feel pissy and lonely being at his dorm when Ricky extended the offer to him to live together, and he just had to go and say no. He saves some money by deciding to get a double room, not a solo, and he’s seen his roommate…a handful of times? That might be hyperbolic. Gyuvin’s sure he sees him once or twice a week — but he certainly spends more nights at Ricky’s apartment than he does there, to the point that when he does stay in his dorm his roommate seems somewhat agitated to be disturbed by another person in what feels like their own space.
But it’s hard to stay away. The apartment is nice, loft style and closer to the city center. It’s small, not extravagant, but it has nice amenities and Ricky keeps it clean and presentable.
It’s Gyuvin that ruins it. The same can be said for today as he’s plopped into the large bed that takes up a great portion of the upper floor, previously with crisply made bedsheets and a fluffy comforter. He’s pretty sure Ricky also does that ridiculous thing where he karate chops the pillows to make them look like bowtie pasta noodles, and his feet kick against them while his head almost hangs off the end of the mattress. Gyuvin has been good so far and kept the impulsive thought to stand up and see if he can touch the ceiling from the mattress — he knows he can, has done it at least twelve times, but knowing doesn’t scratch the itch that doing it now would.
It’s at least not a school day, so there’s no stress of going to class. Midterms have recently come and gone, so homework has thinned out again — at least for Gyuvin, who routinely does it all soon after he gets it. He previously wasn’t the studious type, but the anxiety of the shoe eventually dropping and his workload getting the better of him puts pressure on him to try and keep his to-do list as empty as possible. Ricky, he’s sure, has at least one paper to write, a few hours of reading to do. Gyuvin will assist him once he’s home — oh, but he is home. What is he doing, while Gyuvin is waiting for him?
“Rik~” He sing-songs the name out, making sure his voice carries downstairs. He’s been starfished on the bed for about half an hour, and Ricky was busying around his kitchenette area when he arrived. They’re domestic now, past the need for a special occasion or invitation for Gyuvin to just arrive and know he’ll be entertained. He expected Ricky would follow him up quickly, but somehow his boyfriend still finds room to surprise him. This just happened to be a sour surprise. “Where are you?”
Gyuvin can hear him, sliding his chair out, padding around and up the stairs. It’s a small space with minimal background noise, and he’s often wondered how much any neighbors can hear them… — no one has complained, that he knows, so he assumes what the apartment lacks in internal sound muffling, it makes up for in thick walls. Ricky doesn’t climb all the way up, stalling where half of his head can be seen from where the loft floor juts out against the stairs. They lock eyes, Gyuvin’s head upside down, and he pouts at how Ricky raises his eyebrows like he’s been bothered. “Are you avoiding me?”
“I’m doing schoolwork.” Ricky’s voice is level, an audible sigh slipping through his teeth. “Staying away from the danger zone.”
Understandable. It’s likely that if they were both upstairs, productivity wouldn’t last very long. Gyuvin rolls over and shakes his head as the blood rushes through it. “Remember the favor you owe me?”
Ricky steps up a few more steps so his whole face can be seen, shoulders also visible and revealing he’s wearing one of his dress shirts. His university armor, meaning he really is getting down to business. His expression mirrors his resolute outfit, mouth slanting as his eyebrows narrow. “I don’t owe you shit.”
“Yes you do.” Gyuvin’s feet kick petulantly again. “Jeju, Jeju. I never cashed it in.”
Ricky’s expression squints and then falls — Gyuvin doesn’t usually bring up much about that summer of their lives, for this reason. Ricky had moved on from being upset about their time in Jeju, the before and after, but that was only if they were both committed to blurring over that part of their lives. Hopefully it’s not enough of an incident to sour the mood. Ever since he’s had to marinate in pre-made memories, he’s become elephant-like in his ability to recall pedantic moments of their tumultuous backstory.
Whether Ricky actually remembers what Gyuvin’s referencing, he relents after a few moments, fixing his face to an expression of softened surrender. “What is it?”
Gyuvin slides a tuft of hair behind his ear, modeling it for his boyfriend. “Pierce me.”
Ricky snorts, too surprised to care about hiding it. “What?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know how.” He kicks his legs back and forth from the knees, sliding so he can lift his chest off the end of the mattress like he’s an excited dog. His chin just out to gesture to Ricky’s own hardware. “You got all of those done at a shop?”
“Yes— well.” Ricky’s habit of his eyes roaming upwards to examine his own memory reveals itself, and Gyuvin can tell which piercings he’s recollecting based on how his head tilts and pupils dart from one upper side to the other. He lands on one and concedes, and Gyuvin’s curious about the story of the outlier. After he finds himself defeated, Ricky huffs. “I’ll take you to a shop. The one I’ve gone to in Korea.”
It’s the responsible thing to do, and Gyuvin’s sure he should agree and admit defeat. However. “No, no. The favor is you. You have to do it.”
The insistence forces Ricky further upstairs, climbing onto his bed to sit on his knees while Gyuvin rolls to face him. His arms are folded, and he looks at Gyuvin more like a parent than a partner. “You’ll get an infection. And you won’t have a favor left for me to take you to a clinic.”
“You’ll take care of me.” Gyuvin grabs one of Ricky’s thighs and pulls, watching as his whole body lurches forward in his grip. “And I know you’ll do a good job, anyway.”
Ricky’s eyes narrow, which causes one of Gyuvin’s eyebrows to quirk. They seem to be locked in a stalemate, even if Gyuvin himself isn’t a willing participant. After a few moments of tense silence, Ricky finally speaks. “Why do you want to do this out of nowhere?”
Gyuvin shrugs, not at all matching his boyfriend’s suspicious energy. “Not out of nowhere.” It’s true. He previously admired Ricky’s earrings, even while thinking it would never be something he would do himself. His conservatism has definitely worn down with age, finding that some indulgences he previously had a stalwart distaste for have become appealing. He’ll never drink or smoke, but he could be convinced to get a tattoo. After looking at Ricky sleeping, still wearing his jewelry more often than not, the dangling gross he typically sported stuck in his mind. In a way, he thinks of it a little like couple jewelry — even if this feels more of a commitment than matching rings would have been, but those also aren’t off the table. Gyuvin smirks at the thought. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
It’s not the best explanation, but it gets him what he wants.
Ricky is gone for almost an hour, and Gyuvin roams his apartment as he waits, impatient. He thought he might chicken out, but the excitement is actually staying and heightening It feels like he’s a young teen again, doing something he knows he shouldn’t — not that he broke rules or did many exciting things at that age in the first place. It’s making up for lost time, he supposed. Gyuvin circles the island in Ricky’s kitchenette, examines his written notes and corrects a few of his hangul. He pulls a sticky note from the little yellow pad that’s been left out and doodles on it, a little pawprint and a quick ‘wuv u rwik rwik,’ slapping it to a random page in the textbook that he flips to.
The fridge is sparse, and what is in there is expired — an old takeout container that Gyuvin would feel bad about leaving knowing that it’s basically radioactive, a half-drank latte whose pink tint is faded out into a gradient towards the semi-curdled top. Tomorrow he’ll buy groceries, surprise his boyfriend with a little dinner.
Where Gyuvin is openly sentimental, Ricky is privately so. He opens a few drawers of the dresser upstairs, revealing clothing, visa documents, but also a small selection of keepsakes. A thin mesh satchel betrays a hairclip, adorned with plastic frogs a kittens; a little porcelain jar, featuring blue and white waterliles and stamped with a Chinese character Gyuvin doesn’t recognize; a well-worn kneaded eraser.
There’s also a small stack of small photographs, which strikes him as an odd thing to have being a modern young adult. Curious, Gyuvin wiggles a finger into the puckering opening and pulls it apart, fishing out the photos. A couple are folded and worn, looking to be from a disposable camera. His mother, father, sister, himself — it’s Shanghai, Gyuvin can tell from the architecture, and all three photos of that type are smoothed and brittle with signs of repeated caresses. He wonders briefly how much of it has come from recent viewings, this being the first time he’s been in a position to not see his family very much.
The rest of the selections are polaroids, of both the square and rectangular variety. The square ones look like young teenagers; Gyuvin assumes the various people are friends from Los Angeles. There are less than Gyuvin can count on both hands, and the rectangular photos are numerous enough that he almost drops them as he’s shuffling through. Almost all of them are from their high school friend group, and they all feature a little jotted note in Mandarin — Seungeon with his mouth full of air and making dual peace signs in front of a movie poster, Junhyeon and Gunwook playing a boardgame at…Gyuvin squints at the details; it’s Gunwook’s carpet, so his house. Some are blurry and underdeveloped; one of Seungeon especially has a large spot of yellow gradient taking up three-fourths of the photo, and Gyuvin is sure someone else is in the picture the way he’s standing straight and leaning into frame.
One specific photo Gyuvin has purposefully skipped over to make sure he saves it for last. A few of the others are selfies, and it’s noticeable how they’re off-center when they’re in their first year of high school, gradually getting better as they age. They newest he can find is graduation after their second year — Gyuvin puts a pin in the thought to ask what happened to Ricky’s little camera he can remember he would occasionally trot out to take these, but not tonight. He shuffles through the stack again and finds the last photo to examine: a selfie, taken not too long before that graduation, of Ricky and himself on the school bleachers. He’s in his ridiculous tennis shorts, and Gyuvin is only able to tell because of how his knees jut out. He can also see his face, winking ridiculously and making a peace sign. To Ricky’s credit, he knows the money shot is his own face and so it takes up most of the photo. His black hair…Gyuvin misses it, but knows better than to say anything.
His Mandarin comprehension is minimal, mostly relegated to vocabulary he asks Ricky how to say right before falling asleep. Gyuvin can make out a few words and phrases when he hears him on the phone with family, but his reading ability is minimal. He sets the other stack of photos down to take out his phone to snap a quick photo of the polaroid before putting everything back in its place, planning on running the text through Papago.
He assumes it has to be embarrassing — 请原谅我 — but notices that it’s written in a different colored ink than the other notes he recalls seeing. The other polaroids are scribbled on with the cheap, gummy ink of a school pen. This writing is cleaner but bleeding, black and thick. Not unlike one of the more expensive ballpoint pens he’d just doodled on a post-it with.
Gyuvin decides Ricky deserves some semblance of privacy, and the cheap gag of goading him with evidence of his hidden affection can wait for another opportune moment. In exchange for not chickening out of getting an ear pierced, this will be the experience where he shows cowardice.
Ricky returns with arms laden with plastic bags, and arrives to find his obedient puppy of a boyfriend waiting at the door for him to help lighten the load. One bag Gyuvin can see is teeming with convenience store snacks, their assumed dinner for the evening. Another contains various drinks, bottles of water and sodas, but one bag sticks out as being different — the fabric is thicker, and sports the brand of a fabric shop Gyuvin has seen on his way through the area.
Ricky produces the necessary item and Gyuvin understands immediately — a needle, thick and long. “It’s not what piercers use, but you were warned.”
Gyuvin complies when he’s directed upstairs after situating the rest of the minor groceries, and Ricky wanders getting everything ready. The needle is brought upstairs, as well as a lighter, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a felt tip marker, and it all balances precariously on a textbook that jiggles when they climb onto the mattress. They don’t have a plain cloth, so Ricky grabs a clean white T-shirt to place over his lap, beckoning Gyuvin to lay his head there. He’s situated close to his nightstand, and so Gyuvin lays across him and vertically tight against the row of un-karate chopped pillows he’d wrecked earlier. The bridge of his nose is almost pressed to Ricky’s stomach before he’s pushed back, his boyfriend chortling a little.
“Am I piercing your ear, or are you blowing me?”
Gyuvin grins. “We can try for both.”
“Is this the one you want?” Ricky asks, gesturing to how he’s laying to reveal his right ear. In truth, Gyuvin didn’t think much about it — which he isn’t going to now, either, so he just nods his head, his cheek nuzzling further into his boyfriend’s lap.
“Lay still.” It means that he has to do exactly the opposite, continuing to wriggle. “I’m not fucking around, Gyuvin. Or I’ll pierce your neck.” In English: “Lots of blood.”
The next few steps are clinical. Ricky doesn’t have any surgical gloves, and so he has to settle for as freshly washed hands as possible topped off with a coat of alcohol; Gyuvin can smell the soft lavender scent underneath the harsh sting of antiseptic. Ricky moves around in his peripheral, and he can hear the flick of the lighter and hiss when the flame licks too closely to the flesh of fingers. He’s also embarrassed to say he flinches when Ricky remembers to mark the spot on his ear and then goes back to re-heating the needle after his mistake.
“Do you want a painkiller?” He’s asked, and Gyuvin shakes his head softly. The pain can’t be that bad. Ricky’s gotten a dozen of these things with no anesthetics. Millions of people get pierced all over every day and they aren’t babies who need a naproxen to get through it.
When Ricky doesn’t continue, Gyuvin clears his throat. “It’s not gonna kill me.”
“Suit yourself, crybaby.” Suddenly Gyuvin can feel the sharp tip of the needle press gently against the fatty lobe of his ear, right where the marker had previously been. Ricky lines everything up, but pauses again. “This is your last chance to back out.”
He almost shakes his head before he remembers himself, stilling and locking as many muscles as he can think of. “I want to do this.”
Gyuvin looks up and he can see Ricky wants to ask why, badly. Instead, he sighs and examines the moistened ear below him, rolling the needle in his fingers. “Just the one, right?”
“Baby steps.” Gyuvin assures him. “If I don’t freak out about this tomorrow, maybe more.”
It elicits a grin from Ricky. “Let’s do your nose next.”
Gyuvin chuffs out a laugh. “If you do your dick after.” Still, the sharp pain of the stab doesn’t come. Tens of seconds go by before Gyuvin goads him further, confused. “I knew you’d actually consider it. Perv.”
Nothing. Gyuvin takes the moment to shift his head slightly, feeling the needle press deeper into him as he looks upward. He finds Ricky staring at him, harder than he should be if he was actually offended by a tasteless joke. This is his first piercing, truly, how Ricky stabs through him with steely eyes. Gyuvin can’t find it in himself to break the atmosphere with further goofs — if anything, this is the first time he can truly say he’s seen Ricky be intimidating.
The heel of his boyfriend’s hand presses into his cheek and repositions his head back downward. Despite how penetrating Ricky’s gaze was — is, Gyuvin can still feel it as the needle is realigned — his voice comes out soft. Words spoken so they only stay in the space between them for a moment. “Gyuvin would never.”
The position is awkward, and Gyuvin thinks to protest before Ricky’s other hand is on the move and suddenly there’s a stabbing pain in his earlobe. No warning, just a puncture, and the pressure holds despite his loud gasp and flinch. Ricky pushes down slightly more, Gyuvin assumes to still him, and the sting subsides as quickly as it came. The needle doesn’t appear to be bloody, based on what he can see through his peripheral vision, but it’s retracted and discarded quickly. He can hear some tinkling and Ricky hissing through his teeth, but soon he brings back a glint of silver metal to replace the needle with. The second stab doesn’t hurt as much as the first did, and his neck relaxes once Ricky’s other hand fastens the placement clasp to the back. He feels a trickly of liquid move down his face, and Gyuvin hisses at the sting he feels as the alcohol does its job of disinfecting his new accessory.
“Done. It’s not so bad.” Ricky swipes at some residual alcohol that fell down his cheek. Gyuvin takes advantage of his freedom to shift his head and look upward — he finds a soft gaze and a thumb that grazes his cheekbone; Ricky’s dangling cross catches his eye. “You didn’t cry. I told you you would.”
Gyuvin rolls over to a more comfortable position, and his now free arm reaches up to play with the glinting jewelry. He doesn’t have proof, and God would never give it to him, he’s sure — but Gyuvin can’t help but theorize that Ricky saved him, saved the idea of the person he’s now fully become. He shrugs. “People change.”
( high school, year three )
He didn’t actually want to go. It was his father that insisted that all of the present children in the Kim household accompany him on a trip into the city. Gyuwon had done well on a recent math test — his worst subject — but Gyuvin was sure that his dad just wanted to spoil and impress his second son’s friend that had been home when he’d arrived. It was treatment Gyuvin had been given before. He and his five other main friends had frequently been treated to delivery chicken and movie tickets when his father saw them. If their family car could fit six grown teenagers and a middle-aged man all at once, they’d also probably be taken to dessert cafes on a whim.
“Get your orders ready,” Gyuvin instructed his sister before they piled into the car. “I texted you the website— help the kids with it.”
She was currently keeping a watchful eye on the two of them as they marched their way to the backseat. “Yeah, yeah. What are you getting?”
He bounced into the front seat and showed off a zoomed in screenshot of the menu to her as she clicked his youngest brother and his friend Jongsu into the backseat. The first selection was his go-to, mango bingsu, and Gyuri made a noise like she’d wondered why she even asked. “And—” Gyuvin slid his thumb to the left to reveal a two-tiered strawberry cream cake.
“You get two?” Gyuwon complained, kicking a heel into the seat of the car. “That’s not fair!”
“My money, my dessert.” He slid back into proper position into his seat, adjusting his knees so they weren’t so tucked under the dashboard. “It’s not for me, anyway.”
He hadn’t solidified any kind of plan, but showing up at Ricky’s unannounced was just how things worked. It wasn’t a two way street; Ricky always let him know when he was on his way, but Gyuvin was the kind of person who needed advanced notice. Ricky was dressed and proper around the clock, and Gyuvin was never turned away. His other friends didn’t get that kind of treatment, surprise desserts and undeclared home visits, but none of them were Ricky.
“For Ricky~” His sister sing-songed, knowing immediately; Gyuvin was distracted by his father finally getting into the car and giving him a puzzled look or he’d have found a way to pinch her.
“Where’s Gyutae?” His father asked, adjusting the rearview mirror. Their car could typically seat six, just enough space for all the Kim siblings and their parents, but their third child was decidedly absent.
“At a friend’s.” Gyuvin clicked his seatbelt into place, grimacing at his father once they made eye contact. “A girl, I think.” All of his siblings were at or reaching an age where they were dating, and Gyuvin didn’t think he’d ever fully come to terms with it. Gyutae was fifteen, so maybe it was reasonal. He could be goaded into agreeing that it made him stuffy, to be against it — and a hypocrite, considering Son Hyemin. Or Ricky.
He didn’t want to think about it at the moment.
The conversation continued, despite his desires. “Sung Nara.” Gyuri confirmed from the backseat, leaning forward to make sure her eldest brother and father heard loud and clear. “They’ve probably kissed already.”
Despite being the second oldest, the idea made Gyuwon giggle, and Jongsu elbowed him in the ribs at such an embarrassing show of immaturity — maybe someone was on his side, even he was eight-years-old. His siblings were all growing up, falling in love, having life experiences, and he wished he could put a pause to all of it. For as much as his family crowed about his leaving for university soon, his brothers and sister were all moving on and away from him just as quickly. Friends, too.
His father shook his head, fastened his own seatbelt and then turned over the engine. “You’re all lucky you have a father who’s so progressive and hip. So aware of young love.” He typed in something on his phone, and the car’s dashboard display screen pulled up a map showing it would be about fifteen minutes until they arrived at their destination.
“Shouldn’t they be focused on school?” Gyuvin couldn’t help but roll his eyes. His parents were decidedly progressive, and consistently let their children make their own life choices. He wished they would be a little more straight-laced when it came to the issue; Gyuri was about to start having dinner with her own boyfriend’s family on weekends, and Gyutae was likely giving a girl a hickey while they idled in their driveway. Nearly everyone in the car opened their mouth at once before Gyuvin cut them off with a pointed finger in the air. “I had a girlfriend for like three weeks. It barely counts.”
And Ricky didn’t count — if something were going to happen, it would have. They didn’t live in a world where it was easy for Gyuvin to just go for what he wanted. He considered being straightforward about things, taking the chance that feelings were mutual, but it felt too risky. Cowardice wasn’t an emotion Gyuvin was accustomed to, but he’d also never felt like he had so much on the line. He and Ricky would go to different universities, he was sure, and if he made things awkward and got rejected…he was selfish, too. He couldn’t bear to lose access to the potential that he could have a bad day and call up his best friend to sympathize with him. To push Ricky away would kill him. He had a world of fantasy carefully crafted, and that would get him through life until something more reasonable came up.
Gyuwon stayed out of the semi-argument, but Gyuri couldn’t help herself. “It counts!” She kicked the back of his seat hard; Gyuvin reached a long arm behind himself to swat at her knee. “Dad, tell him it counts!”
All he did was chuckle. As his father pressed the button to begin navigation, he leaned closer to his oldest son beside him. His tone was a whisper, but jovial. “Ah, Gyuvin. You’re the oldest. So you get how it is, more than them, to be scared to see baby birds fly away” Before he put his hands on the wheel to back them out of their driveway, he clasped a hand on his son’s shoulder. “But you’ll be flying away first. The way you feel, mom and I have to push it down every day. For you.”
It was a surprisingly sincere response that threw Gyuvin off guard, instead prepared for further teasing or ribbing. He stumbled, sucking on his teeth and not looking at his father directly. “I’m going to university. Not getting engaged—” A narrow eyed look was directed to Gyuri in the rearview mirror, and was returned with a stuck-out tongue, “like these twerps.”
His father’s hand was removed in order to start the ignition and pull out of their driveway, but he continued talking, more loudly. “Your mother and I dated in high school. If we didn’t, would you all be here? Who’s to say. You can’t let life pass you by. If you didn’t find the right person, eh. Fine.” With an exaggerated shrug, he turned onto the street. “But you’ll find them one day, if you haven’t already.”
The look Gyuvin’s father gave him was so loving and gentle, he nearly felt soft for how quickly it made him prickle with emotion. Not enough to cry, but to push him in the direction. He was sure his father hadn’t actually connected any dots. Even in the event that he had, he definitely wouldn’t know where the object of his affections laid. That was a chapter in his life he was nearly comfortable closing. He and Ricky had a friendship where he could gift him cake, watch him eat it sweetly and nothing more would ever come of it — so he thought, so he was sure of.
Maybe one more chance… but he already knew the outcome, same as always. Gyuvin would leave his family, proximately, for love one day — just not so soon.
Thankfully, the attention was finally taken off of him. His father gave his daughter a look in the rearview mirror that made Gyuvin snort. “Yoon Dawon, though. I’m not so sure.”
Gyuvin listened to Gyuri defend her boyfriend, father eventually backing down, and let himself fully melt into the car seat, closing his eyes to relax. It wasn’t that they all weren’t allowed to grow in life, to find other people that weren’t him to share it with — it was just that it was selfishly hard to imagine life without all of them, just as they were now. If time could stop, if he could just enjoy this last small bit of his time in school and with his family, his friends, without changes…it wasn’t a mature thing to wish for, not at all realistic or reasonable, but it didn’t stop Gyuvin from hoping that he didn’t have to exist in a world without everything being exactly as it was, at that very mo—