i really like you
i really like you
winner, jinwoo/seungyoon
pg, 6293w
when the ceiling of jinwoo’s american apartment caves in, he moves in with seungyoon, a failed musician who lives downstairs.
--written for hyukbins for winnerexchange 2015.
--carly rae jepsen, "i really like you"
ao3 mirror
The plumber and Ms. Rana, the apartment superintendent, are talking at the same time in their heavy Boston English, the plumber to Ms. Rana and Ms. Rana to Jinwoo, but Jinwoo can’t hear anything either of them are saying. The only thing he can focus on is what’s behind them, visible just over the plumber’s right shoulder: a pile of plaster and busted drywall and insulation, heaped on the floor of his apartment right under the big, rotten hole that’s been torn open in the ceiling, like an animal that’s chosen that exact spot to die.
The drywall carcass sits in the exact centre of the single-room apartment, the same distance from the front door to his bed and from the kitchenette to the bathroom door. If they were back on Imja-do, Mrs. Yu who raises chickens would probably tell Jinwoo that it was a harmonious arrangement, to have it happen right in the middle of the floor. Her husband would tell her that was nonsense, and then he’d help Jinwoo’s father get the older men together to fix whoever’s ceiling it was. If they were in Gwangju, Jinwoo would be telling Taehyun this, and Taehyun would make some crack about people in Imja-do not even having ceilings in their houses. But here, he doesn’t have anyone to tell this to.
“Did you hear what I said?” Ms. Rana snaps her fingers like a schoolteacher, and Jinwoo turns his head as a reflex, suddenly awake. “Do you understand?”
“Sorry,” he says, barely remembering to use English. “I wasn’t listening.”
“I know,” she replies. “Okay, I’m not going to repeat myself again.” She pauses, glances down the hallway, and then says, “Just a minute, I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” Jinwoo stands with the plumber helplessly and watches as Ms. Rana, in her brightly patterned shawl and running shoes, disappears around the corner of the hallway. He hears her talking on the phone as the door of the staircase opens and shuts. He’d been on his way to an information session at his new school when she’d called to tell him about a leak in the ceiling. It had taken him almost half an hour to find the nearest subway station to campus, and just as long to get back to his apartment building from the station, and by the time he’d arrived, the ceiling had given up entirely.
They wait in silence for a few minutes, and then Ms. Rana returns around the corner with a young Korean guy dressed in all black, with dishevelled black hair and puffy eyes and lips like he just woke up. He’s handsome, Jinwoo notices right away, letting his eyes linger on the line of his neck, his slim legs.
The tall guy tips forward slightly and waves when he sees Jinwoo. “Hi, I’m Seungyoon.” Jinwoo returns the gesture instinctively. They’re either the same age or he’s a little older than Jinwoo.
“Can you translate for us?” Ms. Rana tells him, only looking at Jinwoo sideways as she gestures. “I need to make sure he understands.”
“Sure,” he replies. I understand, Jinwoo thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Seungyoon leans over to see the inside of Jinwoo’s apartment and he makes a hissing noise. “Oh, wow, that’s...”
“Yeah. I know. Don’t be alarmed, it shouldn’t affect your place. It’s a leak in the storage attic or something.” He stares for another moment, then returns to Ms. Rana’s side as she starts talking. “So, I’m going to call Mr. Zarrella, who owns the building. I’m going to tell him everything that happened. It should take about three days to get a ksdjfhgh for the ceiling repair, and the repair should take about two weeks.”
She pauses to let Seungyoon finish his loose translation. “What’s a ksdjfhgh?” Jinwoo asks him.
“Uh, contractor?” he says. “Someone to do the repairs.” Now Jinwoo notices the slight accent in his Korean, and the little pauses he makes between words.
“We won’t charge you rent for that time period, but you’ll be responsible for finding a place to stay in the meantime. I know it’s short notice, but this is the best we can offer you. The whole building’s rented out.”
Seungyoon looks at her, then at Jinwoo. Instead of translating, he says, “You understood at least the first thing she said, right?” Jinwoo nods. “So, call your friends and see if you can stay with them.”
Jinwoo hesitates before he says, “I don’t have friends here to call.”
“You don’t? Oh...” Seungyoon turns away, and Jinwoo feels a cold creeping up his back.
“I’m an exchange student,” he adds quickly. “I just got here a week ago.”
“I see.” Seungyoon peers back inside the apartment, as if the wreck might have disappeared in the time they’ve been talking, which it hasn’t. “Then you can stay with me.”
The cold in Jinwoo’s back quickly turns into a burning across his face. “Oh, no, that’s not-”
“Everything okay?” asks Ms. Rana.
“Yes, ma’am,” Seungyoon says in English, leaning away from the apartment door. “We were just talking about the person he was going to stay with.”
“All right. Well, look, we’ll go settle up some stuff, and why don’t you help him get his things out of there. And,” she adds, addressing Jinwoo for the first time since Seungyoon arrived, “if you decide whether you want to stay, you have to let me know so I can talk to Mr. Zarrella and we can go over the lease. Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll call you.” Ms. Rana and the plumber step away, and Jinwoo glances at Seungyoon. “Are you sure about this?” he asks him in Korean. “Thank you, but you really don’t have to-”
“Where else are you going to stay? It’s fine. Just for a few days while you decide what to do.”
“I’ll pay half of the rent.”
“Well, only if it’s longer than a couple days.” Seungyoon takes a step into the apartment gingerly, even though he’s far from where the mess is, and looks around. “Is this everything?”
All Jinwoo’s brought with him is a single suitcase of clothes and his textbooks for the semester, which he’d bought off another economics student who’d gone on exchange the year before. Most of his clothes are still in the open suitcase next to the bed, sprinkled with a thin dust of plaster. “This is everything.” All he’d had in his room in Gwangju was his clothes and textbooks, too. “Oh, and there’s something in the fridge.”
“Food from home?” Seungyoon asks as he hefts the suitcase.
With his bag of textbooks under one arm, Jinwoo opens up the refrigerator under the kitchen counter. It’s empty except for a six-pack of American beer he’d bought on a whim on his first night, still unopened.
“Oh,” says Seungyoon.
They leave the door open behind them. Seungyoon carries the suitcase down the stairs with both hands and Jinwoo takes his books and the beer. The door of Seungyoon’s apartment is unlocked when he opens it, and both of them take off their shoes by the door. It’s also a one-room apartment, but the layout is slightly different from Jinwoo’s, with the kitchenette next to the bathroom door instead of across from it. It’s not much more furnished, either: there’s a single couch covered with a navy blue sheet, a cheap coffee table, a TV on another low table next to a rack of CDs, and no bed. There’s a few posters on the walls, and a large, framed painting of some flowers that looks old and out of place, like it might have been left by the last tenant.
“Where do you sleep?” asks Jinwoo.
Seungyoon sets the suitcase down. “On the futon,” he says.
“What’s a...” Jinwoo trails off, trying to think of the word Seungyoon just said.
“Is there a Korean word? I don’t know. It’s this.” Seungyoon walks over to the couch and pushes on the back, and suddenly it unfolds into a flat surface and it’s a double bed. He beams at Jinwoo like he’s just done something amazing.
Jinwoo doesn’t know if he’s actually impressed or just shocked. “Is it comfortable, or is it more like a couch?”
Seungyoon sits down on it. “Comfortable,” he says, though it’s not convincing. “I was thinking you would take the bed, and I’ll just sleep on the floor. I don’t mind, I hear it’s good for your back.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Jinwoo says, frowning. “I’ll sleep on the floor. As long as you have a floor mattress or something like that, I’m fine with it.”
“I mean, we could both sleep on the bed, if you’re okay with that.” Seungyoon bounces on the mattress of the foldout couch. Jinwoo’s stomach bounces, too. Seungyoon’s long, slim legs are bent out in front of him, his bare feet flexed, and his messy hair is falling over his eyes a little.
“Sure, if you’re okay with it,” Jinwoo says eventually. “That’s the easiest thing to do, right?”
“Totally.” Seungyoon grins, and Jinwoo smiles back, because he doesn’t know what to say.
Even after giving up and taking a cab from his apartment building, Jinwoo is an hour late to the information session for exchange students. The meeting room is empty when he arrives except for a tall Asian boy with brown hair who’s bent over a desk, gathering some papers together. He has a nametag on his chest that says Seunghoon, with a happy face drawn inside the S.
“Hi,” he says when he sees Jinwoo. “Can I help you?”
“I missed the meeting for exchange students,” Jinwoo says, because he can’t remember what information session is in English. “Sorry, the ceiling of my apartment broke, so I’m late.”
“What?” Seunghoon straightens from his papers with a look of concern. “Are you living in student housing or off-campus?” When Jinwoo blinks, he repeats in careful Korean, “On the school property or do you live-”
“Off the campus, off the campus,” Jinwoo says. “The landlady said it will be two weeks before I can move back in, but I’m living with someone downstairs.”
“Well, just so you know, if something goes wrong or the landlady breaks her promises, we have an advocacy group for international students here on campus, including access to a lawyer, so you can always talk to us. Here, this is all our information.” Seunghoon picks out two of the sheets from the pile in front of him and hands them to Jinwoo, who takes them silently. “Just remember that you don’t have to put up with anything just because you’re not from here, okay? We’re here to support you.”
Seunghoon sounds and looks serious, but the face on his nametag is still happy. Like Seungyoon, always smiling, Jinwoo thinks involuntarily. “Okay,” he says, stuffing the papers into his backpack without reading them. “Thank you.”
It takes him another hour to get back to the apartment building from campus. He goes to the wrong floor at first, and gets all the way up to the door of his apartment before he remembers. It’s eerily quiet on the other side of the door.
He goes down one flight of stairs, only to find the door of Seungyoon’s apartment is locked. Jinwoo waits, then knocks on the door, then again a little more urgently. He paces in front of the apartment door, trying to fight the feeling of panic rising in his chest and arms. He pulls out the sheets Seunghoon had handed him and scans through them, though his eyes glide over most of the words. Seungyoon had seemed so nice, and he was so cute. Then again, Taehyun probably would hate him. Then again, Taehyun hated most people.
The staircase door swings open with a sound of crinkling plastic bags. “Oh my God,” Seungyoon says, and he rushes toward the door. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeats in Korean. “I was just going out to make you a key, actually. And I got food. Have you eaten?”
“No,” Jinwoo replies, overwhelmed. Everyone here talks a lot, and no matter what language it’s in, it’s making him tired. He stuffs the papers from Seunghoon back into his bag, after he sees Seungyoon looking at them. “But it’s okay, I don’t want to eat your dinner-”
“It’s for both of us! You can get the next one.” Seungyoon smiles at him, lips pursed like a fish, and Jinwoo looks down at his hands opening the lock together, red at the fingertips and white where the plastic bag of takeout is pulling on them.
Seungyoon’s dinner is some greasy fried noodles with bean sprouts and beef. It goes well with the beer from Jinwoo’s fridge, so he can’t complain, not that he would anyway. The only place to sit is on the folded-up futon, balancing their plates on their legs. “So, tell me about you,” Seungyoon says.
Jinwoo stirs his noodles around with the wooden takeout chopsticks. “Like what?”
“Everything! What are you studying, why did you pick U Mass, what do you like to do. What your last name is.”
“It’s Kim, Kim Jinwoo.”
“Oh. I probably could have guessed that one.”
“There’s not much to talk about,” Jinwoo says. “I finished my military service and started university, and someone told me the exchange program in America was nice so I wanted to try it.” And I wanted to get away, he thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it.
“You were in the army?” Seungyoon gapes at him. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Seriously?” Seungyoon leans forward, making the futon shift a little. “You look so young, I thought you were my age.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.” He grins at Jinwoo. “Do I have you call you hyung now?”
“Oh,” Jinwoo replies, taken aback. “Only if you want to. We’re not in Korea.” He’s the same age as Taehyun. Jinwoo lifts his chopsticks to his mouth, only to find there’s nothing in them. “So, what do you do? Are you a student?”
“No. I wanted to do music, but it didn’t really work out. So right now I have a job painting people’s houses, and I work in a grocery store, too. Do you want another beer?”
“Sure,” Jinwoo says. Seungyoon holds it out to him, and it takes a moment before he realizes and takes the can. “Why did you stop doing music?”
Seungyoon cracks open a can of beer for himself before answering. “A few years ago, I was on... Do you know Idol? It’s a TV show for singers. I was eliminated after three rounds. So I thought, okay, it happens. Then I failed my audition for music school, and so that made me realize I probably wasn’t meant to do this. I still play sometimes, but I don’t perform anymore.” He shrugs. “I didn’t have the money to go to school, anyway.”
Jinwoo hums. “Maybe you should move to Korea, like John Park.”
“He was on my season!” Seungyoon exclaims. “I heard he was doing well there now, is he really that famous?”
“Yeah, he’s on TV all the time. But your Korean is much better than his, and you have a better face, so you would probably do well there.”
Seungyoon laughs. “You haven’t even heard me sing. You really like my face that much?”
Jinwoo’s own face flushes. “I’m just saying, in Korea it’s all about the visual,” he replies, concentrating on a particularly slippery bean sprout on his plate.
“You would know.” Jinwoo looks up and for a brief moment, Seungyoon's eyes catch his over the rim of his beer can, before he looks away.
It’s a relief that they get along, but Jinwoo still feels apprehensive watching Seungyoon unfold the futon and set out two pillows and two blankets. He’s not the best sleeper. In the army he’d been too overwhelmed by everything to worry about where he was sleeping, and then too exhausted, and at school in Gwangju he’d had his own small gositel room with no window to the outside, which had helped. But since he’d arrived in Boston, he’d had trouble sleeping every night in his own apartment, never mind a stranger’s. Or a handsome stranger’s.
“Are you sure about this,” he asks one last time. “I can try to find a hotel or something...”
“I’m sure,” Seungyoon says. He turns out the lights and lies down almost right against the wall, taking the thinner of the two blankets. “What, I bought you dinner and you won’t sleep with me?”
Jinwoo’s nails stab into his palms. He’s joking, he reminds himself, taking two deep breaths. “Is that any way to talk to someone older than you?” he says, trying to keep his tone light.
Seungyoon laughs softly, turning over. “Good night, hyung.”
Jinwoo lies down, but just as he expected, he can’t sleep. He can feel every twitch Seungyoon makes next to him, and his own body seems to radiate energy from the inside, shutting out sleep. He waits in the dark for what feels like an hour before he gives up and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. When he looks at his phone, eye-searing blue in the darkness, he sees it’s only been 20 minutes.
He sits down in the bathtub and, after a moment of hesitation, searches Seungyoon’s first name on his phone in English letters. He has to try a few spellings before he finds anything. There are three videos with his name in the title, and he picks the one named Seungyoon Kang - American Idol Audition cut.
In the video, Seungyoon introduces himself: “I’m Seungyoon Kang. I’m sixteen years old, from Cambridge, Massachusetts.” He looks like a cartoon version of himself now, both skinnier and rounder, with hair that’s short in the front and goes halfway down his neck in the back. “My mom always supported my dreams and believed in me, no matter what. It’s my dream to be able to give her back all the support that she gave to me.”
When he starts playing guitar and singing in front of the judges, Jinwoo’s breath catches a little. He’s the kind of person who listens to music without thinking about it, but even he can tell that there’s something different in Seungyoon’s voice, some raw quality that is his and his alone. It doesn’t matter that he’s awkward talking to the judges after or that he doesn’t close his eyes all the way when he sings. He’s charming, and even the judges seem surprised by his voice, enough to overlook everything else.
As he goes through the clips of Seungyoon’s performances on the show, Jinwoo wonders why he would ever give this up. He’d seemed so decisive about it when he talked to Jinwoo, but the Seungyoon in the videos is a natural performer, even when he’s clearly out of his depth. If it had been him who had something he wanted that much, Jinwoo thinks, he would have fought for it, no matter how many times he was told no. But he can’t remember if he’s ever had anything he’s cared about that much. And when he does think of something, he feels sick, and he turns off his phone and lies down in the bathtub, closing his eyes for a moment.
He wakes up with a blast of cold water to his face, and he screams and sits bolt upright. Seungyoon also screams, clutching a towel around his waist, and quickly shuts the water off. They’re silent for a moment, with Jinwoo spluttering water out of his face and Seungyoon catching his breath.
“I’m sorry,” Jinwoo says, just as Seungyoon says, “I’m sorry,” and they both hesitate to let the other speak. “I’m sorry,” Seungyoon says again, and then, “If it’s really uncomfortable for you to share a bed, you can just tell me.” He looks down, and without thinking Jinwoo follows his gaze down his body, to the smooth, taut stretch of skin around his navel. “I feel like I kind of forced you to...”
“Uh-huh,” Jinwoo says absently. Seungyoon gathers the towel at his waist closer and higher, and Jinwoo looks away instinctively and clears his throat. “No, it’s fine. I just couldn’t sleep last night. I’m still getting used to this place.”
“I understand. Um, I was going to shower, would you be able to...”
“Oh. Yes.” Slowly Jinwoo stands up, his face and hair still dripping and his shirt stuck to him and heavy. He carefully avoids looking at Seungyoon's torso on his way out.
It was Lee Seunghyun who had told Jinwoo about the exchange program in America, after he’d personally decided that Jinwoo needed a change of scenery. “I did it two years ago. It’s pass-fail, so you can’t fuck it up. And the Koreans there are all gyopo or super chill. And lots of hot girls.” He raised his eyebrows at Jinwoo and Jinwoo laughed along politely, never sure of how to respond to that.
The first thing Jinwoo noticed in the photos was that the school was right on the water, and that was what made him decide to go. He could imagine the campus smelling like salt water, filled with the same warm-cool breeze that blew all over Imja-do, and a real ocean you couldn’t see the end of, not just the skinny tail end of the Yeongsan River that wound through Gwangju. Truthfully, what he really wanted was to just go back home to the island. But he’d worked hard to get to university, and his parents had worked hard, too. At least by going on exchange, he could get away for a bit without quitting school.
He’d been wrong about Boston being anything like Imja-do - aside from it being huge and a city, the trees are entirely different - but by Friday, his section of the city is starting to feel more familiar. He knows all the landmarks from the subway station to campus now, and he’s started being able to find his classrooms by instinct rather than counting the numbers next to each door to make sure he’s going the right way.
Going home from school takes half the time it used to now, and Jinwoo is almost home from the subway when his phone rings. He’d already missed a call from Ms. Rana while he was in class, threatening to update him on the repairs, so he’s quick to pick it up, without even looking at who it is.
“Ah, Jinwoo! Jinwoo hyung.” It’s Seungyoon, calling from somewhere noisy. “What are you doing right now?”
“Right now?” Jinwoo stops. “I’m almost home. I’m at the...blue house with the white star on it.”
“Come meet me! I’m at Tom’s.”
“Who’s Tom?”
“It’s a bar. You’re close to it.” Jinwoo is silent, thinking. He’d been planning to go home and start off the weekend by catching up with two weeks of dramas he’d missed, waiting for Seungyoon to come home so he could go to sleep. “Come on, it’s Friday! At least for a bit. Let’s hang out.”
After a week of living together, Jinwoo’s noticed that Seungyoon’s voice gets a little bit higher and throatier when he’s trying to get something he wants. Sometimes it’s grating, but right now it makes his stomach dip a little, in a pleasant way or a scary way.
“Okay. Send me the address, please.”
The directions to Tom’s involve turning back around the way he came. Jinwoo walks while staring at his phone to make sure he’s going the right way. He’s so absorbed in which way the blue arrow on his screen is pointing that he runs right into someone else and hits his shoulder hard.
He immediately stops and grips his shoulder with his free hand, cringing through the pain. The other person, who doesn’t seem to have been affected at all, doubles back right away. “Are you okay?” he asks. He’s taller and much more solidly built than Jinwoo, with a shaved head and thick black glasses, carrying a stack of pale orange papers. “Sorry, I totally smoked you.”
Jinwoo takes a breath through his teeth. “No, it’s okay. I wasn’t looking,” he replies, even though he doesn’t know what smoked means.
The other guy shuffles around the papers in his hand and gives one to Jinwoo. “Hey, if you like music, you should come up to Berklee next week,” he says, sounding almost sheepish. “We’re doing an open mic event. The organizer really wants musicians from outside the school to join too. It’s gonna be dope.”
Jinwoo’s ear catches one word. “Musician, okay.” He smiles. “Thank you very much.”
Eventually the little blue arrow points him to a bar with Tom written on the sign, a squat, squarish building set off from its neighbours. When he steps inside, the noise and the darkness hit him like a blast of wind, muffling his eyes, ears, and nose. The flashing slot machines near the windows seem to be providing most of the light, and there’s a random scattering of high tables and stools arranged around some billiards tables. Seungyoon’s at a table across from a girl with long, wavy hair, and Jinwoo immediately feels a grip on his heart - this is something he’s seen before.
He approaches the table and Seungyoon grins and greets him the moment he sees him. Jinwoo sits down across from the two of them, waiting for the inevitable introduction, but all the girl says is, “Oh, you did bring a cute boy!”
“I promised,” Seungyoon replies, and he smiles at her but his eyes go to Jinwoo. “How was school?” he asks in Korean.
“Fine,” Jinwoo replies. He feels small. He sits up, adjusting his position on the stool, and nods to the girl. “Hi, I’m Jinwoo,” he says to her in English.
The girl holds out her hand, so Jinwoo shakes it. Her grip is firmer than he expected. “Hi! I’m Dara. I heard about your ceiling, is everything okay?”
“No.” Dara laughs at that, but not a mean laugh. “I’m thinking about getting another apartment.”
“Living with Seungyoon is that bad?” Dara giggles and Jinwoo laughs with surprise, and Seungyoon pouts and picks up his drink. Jinwoo and Dara make eye contact and Dara smiles at him. Jinwoo feels the immediate urge to order a drink, so he does.
As they make their way through their beers, Jinwoo learns more about Dara: she’s older than him, but won’t say by how much; she grew up in the Philippines and came to America to study acting; her mother and Seungyoon’s mother had been classmates back in Busan, and when Dara moved to Boston Seungyoon’s mother had set up a meeting between them. Jinwoo hardly has to say anything, so he just keeps drinking, and orders a third drink when the waitress comes by. He hasn’t had dinner yet, but he feels the need to catch up to the other two.
“Oh,” he says to Seungyoon during a break in the conversation, and digs for the orange piece of paper in his shorts pocket. “You should do this.”
Seungyoon picks up the paper from the table, his brow furrowed. “What is this?” He unfolds it and immediately laughs, a little awkwardly. “Where did you get this?” he asks in English.
“What is it?” Dara leans over, and her mouth goes into an O. “Are you gonna go to this? You should totally go!”
Seungyoon reads over the paper again, then he folds it up and puts it back down on the table. “I’m not a music student,” he says.
“No, it’s for everybody, not just music students,” Jinwoo says. He tries to recall the attitude the boy with the shaved head had, lowering his eyelids and his voice and slouching back a little. “It will be dope.”
“What did you say?” Seungyoon shrieks in Korean.
Jinwoo frowns and shushes him. Seungyoon must be drunk to be yelling like that. “‘It will be dope’,” he repeats.
Seungyoon bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, that’s...” He takes a sip of beer to calm down, and then he chokes on it with a laugh and gets some on his clothes. Jinwoo’s face is suddenly hot, and he has to fan himself. “Oh my God. I’ll be back.”
He gets up and disappears into the bathroom. Dara turns to Jinwoo and smiles, resting her elbows on the table, and she leans closer, her eyes dipping down to Jinwoo’s hands around his empty pint glass. Jinwoo has seen this before, too, but the beer’s catching up with him and he feels weighted down to the spot.
“You know,” she says, “you guys are really cute together.”
It takes Jinwoo a second before that registers, and when it does it’s like two puzzle pieces clicking together. “Oh, we’re not...” He shakes his head, sitting back. “Not together, no.”
“Oh.” Dara tilts her head. “You should think about it, though, just saying.”
Jinwoo frowns at her. “How did you...”
Before she can respond, Seungyoon returns to his seat and says, “How did she what?”
“Nothing,” Jinwoo says. He blinks and the whole room seems to blink just out of sync with him. “I need to go.”
“No, stay!” says Dara. “You’re so fun.”
Seungyoon grins at this, but when he looks at Jinwoo it falters a little. “Are you gonna be okay, hyung?” he asks in Korean. “I can call a taxi.”
Jinwoo waves him off. “It’s too early to take a taxi.” He steps down from the stool and bends his knees a little too far forward before he recovers. “It’s okay, I know where I’m going.”
“I’d better take you,” Seungyoon says, standing up. He looks to Dara. “Will you be okay for like half an hour?”
“Yeah, I’ll practice my pool shots or something,” says Dara. “This was fun, we should all hang out again!”
An arm falls around his shoulders, and Jinwoo feels himself being led out of the bar. The sun’s gone down now, but the night is still fresh and not cold. Seungyoon leads Jinwoo with his arm around him and one hand on his shoulder, steering him when necessary.
“Don’t worry, you weren’t that embarrassing,” he says to Jinwoo, when they’re a few blocks out from the bar. “Dara really liked you.”
“I was embarrassing?” Jinwoo asks drowsily. He leans into Seungyoon a little, and when Seungyoon doesn’t flinch away he stays there. Seungyoon’s shirt smells a little sweaty, covered up with cologne. Jinwoo feels like he’s daydreaming, making up a scene that’s not possible because it’s too perfect.
When they get home, Jinwoo flops down face first on the unfolded futon and lets the room spin back into place for a bit. Then he shucks off his shoes with each foot and curls deeper into the bedding. Seungyoon fills a glass with tap water and leaves it on the coffee table, then stands near the bed with his shoes still on.
“I think I’m going to do it,” Jinwoo hears him say. “But you have to come with me, since you told me about it.”
“Mmm,” Jinwoo replies, not really sure what he’s talking about. Seungyoon moves around the apartment for another few minutes, and then he goes out, closing the door behind him. He’s left all the lights on, but for once, Jinwoo feels too tired to get up and turn them off.
When Jinwoo left Gwangju a month before, Lee Seunghyun had dragged him out for a goodbye party with all of his own friends. It was fine; Jinwoo just listened to Seunghyun’s stories about America and let other people pay for his share of the tab. Taehyun wasn’t there, but that was probably a good thing, since he’d have brought his girlfriend. He’d sent Jinwoo a message before he left, saying good luck and don’t get lost! Jinwoo still hadn’t replied. The message had felt insensitive at the time, so flippant as to be pointedly cruel, just like Taehyun.
But Taehyun hadn’t known, Jinwoo thinks now, and there’s that feeling once again of everything lining up and clicking into place. Taehyun hadn’t known, and if Jinwoo thought Taehyun didn’t consider his feelings, it’s because Taehyun hadn’t known what those feelings were. “It’s so obvious,” Jinwoo mumbles into the futon. “It’s really, really obvious.”
He falls asleep with all the lights on. He wakes up briefly when they go out, and he can hear a guitar being played, note by note - first hesitant and spare, then more comfortably, and then a resonant humming - but when he wakes up next to Seungyoon in the morning, under separate blankets, and the room is silent, he thinks it might have been the television, or just a dream.
Seungyoon has a painting job over the weekend, so Jinwoo stays in the apartment, wrapped in his blanket, alternating between his textbook readings and watching old episodes of dramas when he starts to feel the English text gathering heavily in the front of his brain. It feels strange to have the whole room to himself, even after just a week of living with Seungyoon.
On Sunday, Ms. Rana calls, the call Jinwoo had been avoiding since Friday. “I’m so sorry,” he says, quickly hitting the space bar on his laptop to pause the video, but she doesn’t seem to care much for an excuse.
“Well, what I wanted to tell you is that we’ve found someone to do the repairs, and it will take until the end of this week for them to finish up and repaint the ceiling. We were very lucky to get someone to do it quickly.”
“Yes, very lucky,” Jinwoo echoes, looking around the corners of the ceiling.
“So, are you still interested in staying in this building? I spoke to Mr. Zarrella and he said there’s an apartment in another building he’s gonna offer you, if you’re worried about the situation in the ceiling. This building is much newer, and it’s an apartment with a different layout. Otherwise, if you wanted to stay here, he can give you up to fifty dollars off the rent for the week you were put out, toward your next month’s rent.” She waits. “Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Jinwoo says.
“If you need more time to decide that’s fine, but I need to know by the end of the day today if you’re going to move out or stay here. Okay?”
“Move out?” Jinwoo stares at the paused frame on his laptop screen, Lee Minho’s face close up, looking concerned. Seungyoon should be home soon; this is Seungyoon’s home. Even the blanket is Seungyoon’s. Jinwoo shrugs it off suddenly, then shoos it off of where it pools around his body.
Ms. Rana is still on the line. “So,” she says, “what are you going to do?”
The next evening is the open mic performance. Jinwoo meets Seungyoon after class, and they take the subway together heading north. The ride is quiet; they don’t talk about music, or the fact that this will be Seungyoon’s first time performing for someone since he failed his audition at that school.
“Tired?” Seungyoon asks Jinwoo, hefting the hard guitar case in his free hand. His tone is light, but his lips are a bit too tense to form a smile at the corners.
Jinwoo nods. “A little.”
Seungyoon leads them from the subway, not even needing to look at his phone for directions. They walk about five blocks from the station, and then Jinwoo says, “They offered me an apartment in another building, but I decided to stay in the same one.”
“Why’s that?”
Jinwoo inhales deeply and sticks his hands in his jacket pockets. “Because I want to be in the same building as you,” he says, trying to keep his tone light, even as the weight in his stomach is threatening to sink him into the sidewalk.
Seungyoon doesn’t look at him, but the corners of his mouth finally turn up. “And why’s that?” he asks.
In a drama, a confession always seems inevitable, like everything has come together to lead the protagonist to that perfect moment. But Jinwoo doesn’t have a script. He could tell Seungyoon, but he could just as easily not tell Seungyoon. And it would be easy, to decide that this isn’t the right moment and then keep waiting for a better one to come - easier than fighting for the words that won’t come out.
Jinwoo decides not to fight for them. They stop at the intersection for a red light, and Jinwoo takes a breath, then goes up on his toes a little and kisses Seungyoon on the cheek. It takes less than a second, but Jinwoo’s heart immediately starts racing. Someone could have seen them while walking by, or Seungyoon could kick him out of his apartment, and maybe he’d be justified for doing that.
The light turns green. Seungyoon turns his head, leans down and kisses Jinwoo back. It’s soft, like the threadbare blankets on his bed; it’s deep, like the timbre of his voice. When he lets go, he keeps his forehead against Jinwoo’s for a second. Then they both straighten, and make their way across the street. Jinwoo’s heart is still racing, but it’s making him feel lighter, like instead of walking the rest of the way he might fly.
“There’s a song I’m going to play tonight that I really want you to hear,” Seungyoon says.
“I can’t wait.”
Seungyoon smiles, looking down at his shoes. “I’m glad you’re not going.”
Jinwoo says, “Me too,” and it’s an answer to what Seungyoon’s said, and to what he doesn’t need to say.
winner, jinwoo/seungyoon
pg, 6293w
when the ceiling of jinwoo’s american apartment caves in, he moves in with seungyoon, a failed musician who lives downstairs.
--written for hyukbins for winnerexchange 2015.
--carly rae jepsen, "i really like you"
ao3 mirror
The plumber and Ms. Rana, the apartment superintendent, are talking at the same time in their heavy Boston English, the plumber to Ms. Rana and Ms. Rana to Jinwoo, but Jinwoo can’t hear anything either of them are saying. The only thing he can focus on is what’s behind them, visible just over the plumber’s right shoulder: a pile of plaster and busted drywall and insulation, heaped on the floor of his apartment right under the big, rotten hole that’s been torn open in the ceiling, like an animal that’s chosen that exact spot to die.
The drywall carcass sits in the exact centre of the single-room apartment, the same distance from the front door to his bed and from the kitchenette to the bathroom door. If they were back on Imja-do, Mrs. Yu who raises chickens would probably tell Jinwoo that it was a harmonious arrangement, to have it happen right in the middle of the floor. Her husband would tell her that was nonsense, and then he’d help Jinwoo’s father get the older men together to fix whoever’s ceiling it was. If they were in Gwangju, Jinwoo would be telling Taehyun this, and Taehyun would make some crack about people in Imja-do not even having ceilings in their houses. But here, he doesn’t have anyone to tell this to.
“Did you hear what I said?” Ms. Rana snaps her fingers like a schoolteacher, and Jinwoo turns his head as a reflex, suddenly awake. “Do you understand?”
“Sorry,” he says, barely remembering to use English. “I wasn’t listening.”
“I know,” she replies. “Okay, I’m not going to repeat myself again.” She pauses, glances down the hallway, and then says, “Just a minute, I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.” Jinwoo stands with the plumber helplessly and watches as Ms. Rana, in her brightly patterned shawl and running shoes, disappears around the corner of the hallway. He hears her talking on the phone as the door of the staircase opens and shuts. He’d been on his way to an information session at his new school when she’d called to tell him about a leak in the ceiling. It had taken him almost half an hour to find the nearest subway station to campus, and just as long to get back to his apartment building from the station, and by the time he’d arrived, the ceiling had given up entirely.
They wait in silence for a few minutes, and then Ms. Rana returns around the corner with a young Korean guy dressed in all black, with dishevelled black hair and puffy eyes and lips like he just woke up. He’s handsome, Jinwoo notices right away, letting his eyes linger on the line of his neck, his slim legs.
The tall guy tips forward slightly and waves when he sees Jinwoo. “Hi, I’m Seungyoon.” Jinwoo returns the gesture instinctively. They’re either the same age or he’s a little older than Jinwoo.
“Can you translate for us?” Ms. Rana tells him, only looking at Jinwoo sideways as she gestures. “I need to make sure he understands.”
“Sure,” he replies. I understand, Jinwoo thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Seungyoon leans over to see the inside of Jinwoo’s apartment and he makes a hissing noise. “Oh, wow, that’s...”
“Yeah. I know. Don’t be alarmed, it shouldn’t affect your place. It’s a leak in the storage attic or something.” He stares for another moment, then returns to Ms. Rana’s side as she starts talking. “So, I’m going to call Mr. Zarrella, who owns the building. I’m going to tell him everything that happened. It should take about three days to get a ksdjfhgh for the ceiling repair, and the repair should take about two weeks.”
She pauses to let Seungyoon finish his loose translation. “What’s a ksdjfhgh?” Jinwoo asks him.
“Uh, contractor?” he says. “Someone to do the repairs.” Now Jinwoo notices the slight accent in his Korean, and the little pauses he makes between words.
“We won’t charge you rent for that time period, but you’ll be responsible for finding a place to stay in the meantime. I know it’s short notice, but this is the best we can offer you. The whole building’s rented out.”
Seungyoon looks at her, then at Jinwoo. Instead of translating, he says, “You understood at least the first thing she said, right?” Jinwoo nods. “So, call your friends and see if you can stay with them.”
Jinwoo hesitates before he says, “I don’t have friends here to call.”
“You don’t? Oh...” Seungyoon turns away, and Jinwoo feels a cold creeping up his back.
“I’m an exchange student,” he adds quickly. “I just got here a week ago.”
“I see.” Seungyoon peers back inside the apartment, as if the wreck might have disappeared in the time they’ve been talking, which it hasn’t. “Then you can stay with me.”
The cold in Jinwoo’s back quickly turns into a burning across his face. “Oh, no, that’s not-”
“Everything okay?” asks Ms. Rana.
“Yes, ma’am,” Seungyoon says in English, leaning away from the apartment door. “We were just talking about the person he was going to stay with.”
“All right. Well, look, we’ll go settle up some stuff, and why don’t you help him get his things out of there. And,” she adds, addressing Jinwoo for the first time since Seungyoon arrived, “if you decide whether you want to stay, you have to let me know so I can talk to Mr. Zarrella and we can go over the lease. Okay?”
“Okay. I’ll call you.” Ms. Rana and the plumber step away, and Jinwoo glances at Seungyoon. “Are you sure about this?” he asks him in Korean. “Thank you, but you really don’t have to-”
“Where else are you going to stay? It’s fine. Just for a few days while you decide what to do.”
“I’ll pay half of the rent.”
“Well, only if it’s longer than a couple days.” Seungyoon takes a step into the apartment gingerly, even though he’s far from where the mess is, and looks around. “Is this everything?”
All Jinwoo’s brought with him is a single suitcase of clothes and his textbooks for the semester, which he’d bought off another economics student who’d gone on exchange the year before. Most of his clothes are still in the open suitcase next to the bed, sprinkled with a thin dust of plaster. “This is everything.” All he’d had in his room in Gwangju was his clothes and textbooks, too. “Oh, and there’s something in the fridge.”
“Food from home?” Seungyoon asks as he hefts the suitcase.
With his bag of textbooks under one arm, Jinwoo opens up the refrigerator under the kitchen counter. It’s empty except for a six-pack of American beer he’d bought on a whim on his first night, still unopened.
“Oh,” says Seungyoon.
They leave the door open behind them. Seungyoon carries the suitcase down the stairs with both hands and Jinwoo takes his books and the beer. The door of Seungyoon’s apartment is unlocked when he opens it, and both of them take off their shoes by the door. It’s also a one-room apartment, but the layout is slightly different from Jinwoo’s, with the kitchenette next to the bathroom door instead of across from it. It’s not much more furnished, either: there’s a single couch covered with a navy blue sheet, a cheap coffee table, a TV on another low table next to a rack of CDs, and no bed. There’s a few posters on the walls, and a large, framed painting of some flowers that looks old and out of place, like it might have been left by the last tenant.
“Where do you sleep?” asks Jinwoo.
Seungyoon sets the suitcase down. “On the futon,” he says.
“What’s a...” Jinwoo trails off, trying to think of the word Seungyoon just said.
“Is there a Korean word? I don’t know. It’s this.” Seungyoon walks over to the couch and pushes on the back, and suddenly it unfolds into a flat surface and it’s a double bed. He beams at Jinwoo like he’s just done something amazing.
Jinwoo doesn’t know if he’s actually impressed or just shocked. “Is it comfortable, or is it more like a couch?”
Seungyoon sits down on it. “Comfortable,” he says, though it’s not convincing. “I was thinking you would take the bed, and I’ll just sleep on the floor. I don’t mind, I hear it’s good for your back.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Jinwoo says, frowning. “I’ll sleep on the floor. As long as you have a floor mattress or something like that, I’m fine with it.”
“I mean, we could both sleep on the bed, if you’re okay with that.” Seungyoon bounces on the mattress of the foldout couch. Jinwoo’s stomach bounces, too. Seungyoon’s long, slim legs are bent out in front of him, his bare feet flexed, and his messy hair is falling over his eyes a little.
“Sure, if you’re okay with it,” Jinwoo says eventually. “That’s the easiest thing to do, right?”
“Totally.” Seungyoon grins, and Jinwoo smiles back, because he doesn’t know what to say.
Even after giving up and taking a cab from his apartment building, Jinwoo is an hour late to the information session for exchange students. The meeting room is empty when he arrives except for a tall Asian boy with brown hair who’s bent over a desk, gathering some papers together. He has a nametag on his chest that says Seunghoon, with a happy face drawn inside the S.
“Hi,” he says when he sees Jinwoo. “Can I help you?”
“I missed the meeting for exchange students,” Jinwoo says, because he can’t remember what information session is in English. “Sorry, the ceiling of my apartment broke, so I’m late.”
“What?” Seunghoon straightens from his papers with a look of concern. “Are you living in student housing or off-campus?” When Jinwoo blinks, he repeats in careful Korean, “On the school property or do you live-”
“Off the campus, off the campus,” Jinwoo says. “The landlady said it will be two weeks before I can move back in, but I’m living with someone downstairs.”
“Well, just so you know, if something goes wrong or the landlady breaks her promises, we have an advocacy group for international students here on campus, including access to a lawyer, so you can always talk to us. Here, this is all our information.” Seunghoon picks out two of the sheets from the pile in front of him and hands them to Jinwoo, who takes them silently. “Just remember that you don’t have to put up with anything just because you’re not from here, okay? We’re here to support you.”
Seunghoon sounds and looks serious, but the face on his nametag is still happy. Like Seungyoon, always smiling, Jinwoo thinks involuntarily. “Okay,” he says, stuffing the papers into his backpack without reading them. “Thank you.”
It takes him another hour to get back to the apartment building from campus. He goes to the wrong floor at first, and gets all the way up to the door of his apartment before he remembers. It’s eerily quiet on the other side of the door.
He goes down one flight of stairs, only to find the door of Seungyoon’s apartment is locked. Jinwoo waits, then knocks on the door, then again a little more urgently. He paces in front of the apartment door, trying to fight the feeling of panic rising in his chest and arms. He pulls out the sheets Seunghoon had handed him and scans through them, though his eyes glide over most of the words. Seungyoon had seemed so nice, and he was so cute. Then again, Taehyun probably would hate him. Then again, Taehyun hated most people.
The staircase door swings open with a sound of crinkling plastic bags. “Oh my God,” Seungyoon says, and he rushes toward the door. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeats in Korean. “I was just going out to make you a key, actually. And I got food. Have you eaten?”
“No,” Jinwoo replies, overwhelmed. Everyone here talks a lot, and no matter what language it’s in, it’s making him tired. He stuffs the papers from Seunghoon back into his bag, after he sees Seungyoon looking at them. “But it’s okay, I don’t want to eat your dinner-”
“It’s for both of us! You can get the next one.” Seungyoon smiles at him, lips pursed like a fish, and Jinwoo looks down at his hands opening the lock together, red at the fingertips and white where the plastic bag of takeout is pulling on them.
Seungyoon’s dinner is some greasy fried noodles with bean sprouts and beef. It goes well with the beer from Jinwoo’s fridge, so he can’t complain, not that he would anyway. The only place to sit is on the folded-up futon, balancing their plates on their legs. “So, tell me about you,” Seungyoon says.
Jinwoo stirs his noodles around with the wooden takeout chopsticks. “Like what?”
“Everything! What are you studying, why did you pick U Mass, what do you like to do. What your last name is.”
“It’s Kim, Kim Jinwoo.”
“Oh. I probably could have guessed that one.”
“There’s not much to talk about,” Jinwoo says. “I finished my military service and started university, and someone told me the exchange program in America was nice so I wanted to try it.” And I wanted to get away, he thinks, but he doesn’t dare say it.
“You were in the army?” Seungyoon gapes at him. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Seriously?” Seungyoon leans forward, making the futon shift a little. “You look so young, I thought you were my age.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.” He grins at Jinwoo. “Do I have you call you hyung now?”
“Oh,” Jinwoo replies, taken aback. “Only if you want to. We’re not in Korea.” He’s the same age as Taehyun. Jinwoo lifts his chopsticks to his mouth, only to find there’s nothing in them. “So, what do you do? Are you a student?”
“No. I wanted to do music, but it didn’t really work out. So right now I have a job painting people’s houses, and I work in a grocery store, too. Do you want another beer?”
“Sure,” Jinwoo says. Seungyoon holds it out to him, and it takes a moment before he realizes and takes the can. “Why did you stop doing music?”
Seungyoon cracks open a can of beer for himself before answering. “A few years ago, I was on... Do you know Idol? It’s a TV show for singers. I was eliminated after three rounds. So I thought, okay, it happens. Then I failed my audition for music school, and so that made me realize I probably wasn’t meant to do this. I still play sometimes, but I don’t perform anymore.” He shrugs. “I didn’t have the money to go to school, anyway.”
Jinwoo hums. “Maybe you should move to Korea, like John Park.”
“He was on my season!” Seungyoon exclaims. “I heard he was doing well there now, is he really that famous?”
“Yeah, he’s on TV all the time. But your Korean is much better than his, and you have a better face, so you would probably do well there.”
Seungyoon laughs. “You haven’t even heard me sing. You really like my face that much?”
Jinwoo’s own face flushes. “I’m just saying, in Korea it’s all about the visual,” he replies, concentrating on a particularly slippery bean sprout on his plate.
“You would know.” Jinwoo looks up and for a brief moment, Seungyoon's eyes catch his over the rim of his beer can, before he looks away.
It’s a relief that they get along, but Jinwoo still feels apprehensive watching Seungyoon unfold the futon and set out two pillows and two blankets. He’s not the best sleeper. In the army he’d been too overwhelmed by everything to worry about where he was sleeping, and then too exhausted, and at school in Gwangju he’d had his own small gositel room with no window to the outside, which had helped. But since he’d arrived in Boston, he’d had trouble sleeping every night in his own apartment, never mind a stranger’s. Or a handsome stranger’s.
“Are you sure about this,” he asks one last time. “I can try to find a hotel or something...”
“I’m sure,” Seungyoon says. He turns out the lights and lies down almost right against the wall, taking the thinner of the two blankets. “What, I bought you dinner and you won’t sleep with me?”
Jinwoo’s nails stab into his palms. He’s joking, he reminds himself, taking two deep breaths. “Is that any way to talk to someone older than you?” he says, trying to keep his tone light.
Seungyoon laughs softly, turning over. “Good night, hyung.”
Jinwoo lies down, but just as he expected, he can’t sleep. He can feel every twitch Seungyoon makes next to him, and his own body seems to radiate energy from the inside, shutting out sleep. He waits in the dark for what feels like an hour before he gives up and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. When he looks at his phone, eye-searing blue in the darkness, he sees it’s only been 20 minutes.
He sits down in the bathtub and, after a moment of hesitation, searches Seungyoon’s first name on his phone in English letters. He has to try a few spellings before he finds anything. There are three videos with his name in the title, and he picks the one named Seungyoon Kang - American Idol Audition cut.
In the video, Seungyoon introduces himself: “I’m Seungyoon Kang. I’m sixteen years old, from Cambridge, Massachusetts.” He looks like a cartoon version of himself now, both skinnier and rounder, with hair that’s short in the front and goes halfway down his neck in the back. “My mom always supported my dreams and believed in me, no matter what. It’s my dream to be able to give her back all the support that she gave to me.”
When he starts playing guitar and singing in front of the judges, Jinwoo’s breath catches a little. He’s the kind of person who listens to music without thinking about it, but even he can tell that there’s something different in Seungyoon’s voice, some raw quality that is his and his alone. It doesn’t matter that he’s awkward talking to the judges after or that he doesn’t close his eyes all the way when he sings. He’s charming, and even the judges seem surprised by his voice, enough to overlook everything else.
As he goes through the clips of Seungyoon’s performances on the show, Jinwoo wonders why he would ever give this up. He’d seemed so decisive about it when he talked to Jinwoo, but the Seungyoon in the videos is a natural performer, even when he’s clearly out of his depth. If it had been him who had something he wanted that much, Jinwoo thinks, he would have fought for it, no matter how many times he was told no. But he can’t remember if he’s ever had anything he’s cared about that much. And when he does think of something, he feels sick, and he turns off his phone and lies down in the bathtub, closing his eyes for a moment.
He wakes up with a blast of cold water to his face, and he screams and sits bolt upright. Seungyoon also screams, clutching a towel around his waist, and quickly shuts the water off. They’re silent for a moment, with Jinwoo spluttering water out of his face and Seungyoon catching his breath.
“I’m sorry,” Jinwoo says, just as Seungyoon says, “I’m sorry,” and they both hesitate to let the other speak. “I’m sorry,” Seungyoon says again, and then, “If it’s really uncomfortable for you to share a bed, you can just tell me.” He looks down, and without thinking Jinwoo follows his gaze down his body, to the smooth, taut stretch of skin around his navel. “I feel like I kind of forced you to...”
“Uh-huh,” Jinwoo says absently. Seungyoon gathers the towel at his waist closer and higher, and Jinwoo looks away instinctively and clears his throat. “No, it’s fine. I just couldn’t sleep last night. I’m still getting used to this place.”
“I understand. Um, I was going to shower, would you be able to...”
“Oh. Yes.” Slowly Jinwoo stands up, his face and hair still dripping and his shirt stuck to him and heavy. He carefully avoids looking at Seungyoon's torso on his way out.
It was Lee Seunghyun who had told Jinwoo about the exchange program in America, after he’d personally decided that Jinwoo needed a change of scenery. “I did it two years ago. It’s pass-fail, so you can’t fuck it up. And the Koreans there are all gyopo or super chill. And lots of hot girls.” He raised his eyebrows at Jinwoo and Jinwoo laughed along politely, never sure of how to respond to that.
The first thing Jinwoo noticed in the photos was that the school was right on the water, and that was what made him decide to go. He could imagine the campus smelling like salt water, filled with the same warm-cool breeze that blew all over Imja-do, and a real ocean you couldn’t see the end of, not just the skinny tail end of the Yeongsan River that wound through Gwangju. Truthfully, what he really wanted was to just go back home to the island. But he’d worked hard to get to university, and his parents had worked hard, too. At least by going on exchange, he could get away for a bit without quitting school.
He’d been wrong about Boston being anything like Imja-do - aside from it being huge and a city, the trees are entirely different - but by Friday, his section of the city is starting to feel more familiar. He knows all the landmarks from the subway station to campus now, and he’s started being able to find his classrooms by instinct rather than counting the numbers next to each door to make sure he’s going the right way.
Going home from school takes half the time it used to now, and Jinwoo is almost home from the subway when his phone rings. He’d already missed a call from Ms. Rana while he was in class, threatening to update him on the repairs, so he’s quick to pick it up, without even looking at who it is.
“Ah, Jinwoo! Jinwoo hyung.” It’s Seungyoon, calling from somewhere noisy. “What are you doing right now?”
“Right now?” Jinwoo stops. “I’m almost home. I’m at the...blue house with the white star on it.”
“Come meet me! I’m at Tom’s.”
“Who’s Tom?”
“It’s a bar. You’re close to it.” Jinwoo is silent, thinking. He’d been planning to go home and start off the weekend by catching up with two weeks of dramas he’d missed, waiting for Seungyoon to come home so he could go to sleep. “Come on, it’s Friday! At least for a bit. Let’s hang out.”
After a week of living together, Jinwoo’s noticed that Seungyoon’s voice gets a little bit higher and throatier when he’s trying to get something he wants. Sometimes it’s grating, but right now it makes his stomach dip a little, in a pleasant way or a scary way.
“Okay. Send me the address, please.”
The directions to Tom’s involve turning back around the way he came. Jinwoo walks while staring at his phone to make sure he’s going the right way. He’s so absorbed in which way the blue arrow on his screen is pointing that he runs right into someone else and hits his shoulder hard.
He immediately stops and grips his shoulder with his free hand, cringing through the pain. The other person, who doesn’t seem to have been affected at all, doubles back right away. “Are you okay?” he asks. He’s taller and much more solidly built than Jinwoo, with a shaved head and thick black glasses, carrying a stack of pale orange papers. “Sorry, I totally smoked you.”
Jinwoo takes a breath through his teeth. “No, it’s okay. I wasn’t looking,” he replies, even though he doesn’t know what smoked means.
The other guy shuffles around the papers in his hand and gives one to Jinwoo. “Hey, if you like music, you should come up to Berklee next week,” he says, sounding almost sheepish. “We’re doing an open mic event. The organizer really wants musicians from outside the school to join too. It’s gonna be dope.”
Jinwoo’s ear catches one word. “Musician, okay.” He smiles. “Thank you very much.”
Eventually the little blue arrow points him to a bar with Tom written on the sign, a squat, squarish building set off from its neighbours. When he steps inside, the noise and the darkness hit him like a blast of wind, muffling his eyes, ears, and nose. The flashing slot machines near the windows seem to be providing most of the light, and there’s a random scattering of high tables and stools arranged around some billiards tables. Seungyoon’s at a table across from a girl with long, wavy hair, and Jinwoo immediately feels a grip on his heart - this is something he’s seen before.
He approaches the table and Seungyoon grins and greets him the moment he sees him. Jinwoo sits down across from the two of them, waiting for the inevitable introduction, but all the girl says is, “Oh, you did bring a cute boy!”
“I promised,” Seungyoon replies, and he smiles at her but his eyes go to Jinwoo. “How was school?” he asks in Korean.
“Fine,” Jinwoo replies. He feels small. He sits up, adjusting his position on the stool, and nods to the girl. “Hi, I’m Jinwoo,” he says to her in English.
The girl holds out her hand, so Jinwoo shakes it. Her grip is firmer than he expected. “Hi! I’m Dara. I heard about your ceiling, is everything okay?”
“No.” Dara laughs at that, but not a mean laugh. “I’m thinking about getting another apartment.”
“Living with Seungyoon is that bad?” Dara giggles and Jinwoo laughs with surprise, and Seungyoon pouts and picks up his drink. Jinwoo and Dara make eye contact and Dara smiles at him. Jinwoo feels the immediate urge to order a drink, so he does.
As they make their way through their beers, Jinwoo learns more about Dara: she’s older than him, but won’t say by how much; she grew up in the Philippines and came to America to study acting; her mother and Seungyoon’s mother had been classmates back in Busan, and when Dara moved to Boston Seungyoon’s mother had set up a meeting between them. Jinwoo hardly has to say anything, so he just keeps drinking, and orders a third drink when the waitress comes by. He hasn’t had dinner yet, but he feels the need to catch up to the other two.
“Oh,” he says to Seungyoon during a break in the conversation, and digs for the orange piece of paper in his shorts pocket. “You should do this.”
Seungyoon picks up the paper from the table, his brow furrowed. “What is this?” He unfolds it and immediately laughs, a little awkwardly. “Where did you get this?” he asks in English.
“What is it?” Dara leans over, and her mouth goes into an O. “Are you gonna go to this? You should totally go!”
Seungyoon reads over the paper again, then he folds it up and puts it back down on the table. “I’m not a music student,” he says.
“No, it’s for everybody, not just music students,” Jinwoo says. He tries to recall the attitude the boy with the shaved head had, lowering his eyelids and his voice and slouching back a little. “It will be dope.”
“What did you say?” Seungyoon shrieks in Korean.
Jinwoo frowns and shushes him. Seungyoon must be drunk to be yelling like that. “‘It will be dope’,” he repeats.
Seungyoon bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, that’s...” He takes a sip of beer to calm down, and then he chokes on it with a laugh and gets some on his clothes. Jinwoo’s face is suddenly hot, and he has to fan himself. “Oh my God. I’ll be back.”
He gets up and disappears into the bathroom. Dara turns to Jinwoo and smiles, resting her elbows on the table, and she leans closer, her eyes dipping down to Jinwoo’s hands around his empty pint glass. Jinwoo has seen this before, too, but the beer’s catching up with him and he feels weighted down to the spot.
“You know,” she says, “you guys are really cute together.”
It takes Jinwoo a second before that registers, and when it does it’s like two puzzle pieces clicking together. “Oh, we’re not...” He shakes his head, sitting back. “Not together, no.”
“Oh.” Dara tilts her head. “You should think about it, though, just saying.”
Jinwoo frowns at her. “How did you...”
Before she can respond, Seungyoon returns to his seat and says, “How did she what?”
“Nothing,” Jinwoo says. He blinks and the whole room seems to blink just out of sync with him. “I need to go.”
“No, stay!” says Dara. “You’re so fun.”
Seungyoon grins at this, but when he looks at Jinwoo it falters a little. “Are you gonna be okay, hyung?” he asks in Korean. “I can call a taxi.”
Jinwoo waves him off. “It’s too early to take a taxi.” He steps down from the stool and bends his knees a little too far forward before he recovers. “It’s okay, I know where I’m going.”
“I’d better take you,” Seungyoon says, standing up. He looks to Dara. “Will you be okay for like half an hour?”
“Yeah, I’ll practice my pool shots or something,” says Dara. “This was fun, we should all hang out again!”
An arm falls around his shoulders, and Jinwoo feels himself being led out of the bar. The sun’s gone down now, but the night is still fresh and not cold. Seungyoon leads Jinwoo with his arm around him and one hand on his shoulder, steering him when necessary.
“Don’t worry, you weren’t that embarrassing,” he says to Jinwoo, when they’re a few blocks out from the bar. “Dara really liked you.”
“I was embarrassing?” Jinwoo asks drowsily. He leans into Seungyoon a little, and when Seungyoon doesn’t flinch away he stays there. Seungyoon’s shirt smells a little sweaty, covered up with cologne. Jinwoo feels like he’s daydreaming, making up a scene that’s not possible because it’s too perfect.
When they get home, Jinwoo flops down face first on the unfolded futon and lets the room spin back into place for a bit. Then he shucks off his shoes with each foot and curls deeper into the bedding. Seungyoon fills a glass with tap water and leaves it on the coffee table, then stands near the bed with his shoes still on.
“I think I’m going to do it,” Jinwoo hears him say. “But you have to come with me, since you told me about it.”
“Mmm,” Jinwoo replies, not really sure what he’s talking about. Seungyoon moves around the apartment for another few minutes, and then he goes out, closing the door behind him. He’s left all the lights on, but for once, Jinwoo feels too tired to get up and turn them off.
When Jinwoo left Gwangju a month before, Lee Seunghyun had dragged him out for a goodbye party with all of his own friends. It was fine; Jinwoo just listened to Seunghyun’s stories about America and let other people pay for his share of the tab. Taehyun wasn’t there, but that was probably a good thing, since he’d have brought his girlfriend. He’d sent Jinwoo a message before he left, saying good luck and don’t get lost! Jinwoo still hadn’t replied. The message had felt insensitive at the time, so flippant as to be pointedly cruel, just like Taehyun.
But Taehyun hadn’t known, Jinwoo thinks now, and there’s that feeling once again of everything lining up and clicking into place. Taehyun hadn’t known, and if Jinwoo thought Taehyun didn’t consider his feelings, it’s because Taehyun hadn’t known what those feelings were. “It’s so obvious,” Jinwoo mumbles into the futon. “It’s really, really obvious.”
He falls asleep with all the lights on. He wakes up briefly when they go out, and he can hear a guitar being played, note by note - first hesitant and spare, then more comfortably, and then a resonant humming - but when he wakes up next to Seungyoon in the morning, under separate blankets, and the room is silent, he thinks it might have been the television, or just a dream.
Seungyoon has a painting job over the weekend, so Jinwoo stays in the apartment, wrapped in his blanket, alternating between his textbook readings and watching old episodes of dramas when he starts to feel the English text gathering heavily in the front of his brain. It feels strange to have the whole room to himself, even after just a week of living with Seungyoon.
On Sunday, Ms. Rana calls, the call Jinwoo had been avoiding since Friday. “I’m so sorry,” he says, quickly hitting the space bar on his laptop to pause the video, but she doesn’t seem to care much for an excuse.
“Well, what I wanted to tell you is that we’ve found someone to do the repairs, and it will take until the end of this week for them to finish up and repaint the ceiling. We were very lucky to get someone to do it quickly.”
“Yes, very lucky,” Jinwoo echoes, looking around the corners of the ceiling.
“So, are you still interested in staying in this building? I spoke to Mr. Zarrella and he said there’s an apartment in another building he’s gonna offer you, if you’re worried about the situation in the ceiling. This building is much newer, and it’s an apartment with a different layout. Otherwise, if you wanted to stay here, he can give you up to fifty dollars off the rent for the week you were put out, toward your next month’s rent.” She waits. “Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Jinwoo says.
“If you need more time to decide that’s fine, but I need to know by the end of the day today if you’re going to move out or stay here. Okay?”
“Move out?” Jinwoo stares at the paused frame on his laptop screen, Lee Minho’s face close up, looking concerned. Seungyoon should be home soon; this is Seungyoon’s home. Even the blanket is Seungyoon’s. Jinwoo shrugs it off suddenly, then shoos it off of where it pools around his body.
Ms. Rana is still on the line. “So,” she says, “what are you going to do?”
The next evening is the open mic performance. Jinwoo meets Seungyoon after class, and they take the subway together heading north. The ride is quiet; they don’t talk about music, or the fact that this will be Seungyoon’s first time performing for someone since he failed his audition at that school.
“Tired?” Seungyoon asks Jinwoo, hefting the hard guitar case in his free hand. His tone is light, but his lips are a bit too tense to form a smile at the corners.
Jinwoo nods. “A little.”
Seungyoon leads them from the subway, not even needing to look at his phone for directions. They walk about five blocks from the station, and then Jinwoo says, “They offered me an apartment in another building, but I decided to stay in the same one.”
“Why’s that?”
Jinwoo inhales deeply and sticks his hands in his jacket pockets. “Because I want to be in the same building as you,” he says, trying to keep his tone light, even as the weight in his stomach is threatening to sink him into the sidewalk.
Seungyoon doesn’t look at him, but the corners of his mouth finally turn up. “And why’s that?” he asks.
In a drama, a confession always seems inevitable, like everything has come together to lead the protagonist to that perfect moment. But Jinwoo doesn’t have a script. He could tell Seungyoon, but he could just as easily not tell Seungyoon. And it would be easy, to decide that this isn’t the right moment and then keep waiting for a better one to come - easier than fighting for the words that won’t come out.
Jinwoo decides not to fight for them. They stop at the intersection for a red light, and Jinwoo takes a breath, then goes up on his toes a little and kisses Seungyoon on the cheek. It takes less than a second, but Jinwoo’s heart immediately starts racing. Someone could have seen them while walking by, or Seungyoon could kick him out of his apartment, and maybe he’d be justified for doing that.
The light turns green. Seungyoon turns his head, leans down and kisses Jinwoo back. It’s soft, like the threadbare blankets on his bed; it’s deep, like the timbre of his voice. When he lets go, he keeps his forehead against Jinwoo’s for a second. Then they both straighten, and make their way across the street. Jinwoo’s heart is still racing, but it’s making him feel lighter, like instead of walking the rest of the way he might fly.
“There’s a song I’m going to play tonight that I really want you to hear,” Seungyoon says.
“I can’t wait.”
Seungyoon smiles, looking down at his shoes. “I’m glad you’re not going.”
Jinwoo says, “Me too,” and it’s an answer to what Seungyoon’s said, and to what he doesn’t need to say.