The Scattered Stars Effect part six
Pairing: HimUp
Rated: PG13
Length: 7K
song
part five
Sometimes things that change your entire life can happen in only a moment. A tiny flicker in time that feels like the entire world should have felt it. A stranger bumping into you on a train that apologizes with a smile that makes your breath catch. Letting someone go ahead of you in line and meeting the person behind you who ends up sharing drawers in your dresser and space in your closet.
A man that walks through your front door holding the hand of the most beautiful little girl in the world.
But other times the rules can change one night and everything falls apart. A car that speeds up to make it through a yellow light. Lighting that chose the exact spot you were standing to strike the Earth.
A phone call that brings your entire world to pieces.
Jongup didn’t know how to go back, he would give anything to take it all back.
“Hello?” No one ever called his cell phone besides Himchan. He wasn’t even sure that anyone else had the number because he didn’t have anyone to give it out to anyways. The caller ID said ‘unlisted’ so instead of letting it roll to voicemail he hesitantly answered.
“Did you really think running away would keep me from finding you?”
The voice on the other end was one he would recognize anywhere and it caused him to inhale so sharply that even Hayoung lifted her head from his lap to blink sleepily.
He tried to smile but she wasn’t stupid and frowned up at him. “Papa?”
“Hold on just a second sweetheart, okay? I’ll be right back to finish the movie.” He replaced his leg with a pillow and patted her gently before he walked into the bathroom and shut the door. “How did you find me?”
The loud laughter still made his skin crawl.
“That’s my job, Moon. I find things. I would have found you easier if I had known you were stupid enough to move back to Korea.”
He had known this could never last forever, that he would have to give up everything that he loved, but he had hoped he would have more time. All he wanted was a little bit more time with them.
“What do you want, Youngjae?” He pressed his forehead against the cold wall and breathed heavily into his elbow. “I did enough for them. Why can’t they find someone else?”
The voice in his ear sighed, but not out of pity, Jongup already knew there wasn’t an ounce of humanity left in Youngjae’s soul. “You know why, Moon.” He answered him happily. “You’re the best there is.”
--
When Himchan came home later that evening he was exhausted from having to work overtime but he was happy that at least it was Friday and Hayoung was being taken care of and was probably already fed, bathed and in bed by now.
“Daddy!” Even though it was an hour past her bedtime she flew into his arms and tugged on his jacket sleeves. “Something’s wrong with him!”
“What? Where is he?”
She pointed to the bathroom. “He was crying and he won’t come out and he promised to watch TV with me!”
Himchan looked worriedly at the closed door. “Go on to your room Hayoung. Daddy will be in there in a minute to tuck you in.” She opened her mouth to argue but he held a hand up first. “Don’t argue.”
After she huffily slammed her bedroom door he carefully stepped over to the bathroom and pressed his ear to listen for any sounds coming from inside. When he heard nothing he turned the knob to go inside. “Jongup?”
The red-eyed boy sitting against the bathtub lifted his head and wiped clumsily at the tears still running over his swollen face. “It’s all over.” He told him, voice cracking in pain. “All of it.”
This was the first time he had ever seen Jongup break down and the shock of it had him frozen for a moment. When he finally snapped out of it he tried to take a step towards him but Jongup curled in tighter on himself and shook his head.
“Come out, Jongup. Let me take you to the bedroom so Hayoung won’t see you like this.”
Jongup grabbed frantically at the hand reaching out and pulled him closer, cheek skimming across the soft skin. “I’m not ready to go yet.”
“Go?” Himchan stiffened under his touch and terror filled his expression. “You’re not going anywhere, Jongup. We won’t let you.” He tried again to help Jongup to his feet. “I need to get Hayoung to bed so get up and go to my bedroom. We’ll figure out what’s wrong and fix it together. I’m all yours for the rest of the night, I promise.”
“No you’re not.” The elbow he was trying to hold on to was jerked out of his hands as Jongup looked at him in remorse. “And you never will be.” He left before Himchan could even comprehend the venom in his words.
The front door slammed shut a few moments before Hayoung careened out of her bedroom in worry. “Did Papa leave?”
He nodded, brow furrowed in confusion. “Yes honey. Papa left because he was sad.” With a tired smile he held his hand out to his daughter. “What do you think about spending the night with grandma tonight?”
--
It was close to an hour later by the time Himchan had Hayoung satisfied that he would do everything possible to make Jongup feel better. He had to promise her a dozen times as he tucked her into the bed in his mother’s spare bedroom.
“Hold his hand.” She ordered, pointing her finger towards him. “And rub his head like you do with me.”
“I can’t take care of him if you won’t let me leave.” He reminded her, trying once again to edge away before she remembered something else he needed to do.
Hayoung finally relented and gave him once more kiss before Himchan slipped out the door and ran for the elevator. Now that his daughter was out of his sight he didn’t have to keep holding up the mask of a straight face. Concern for Jongup was in every pore of his skin and he could no longer hide the worry he felt over what could possibly make their strong and dependable Jongup behave like this.
The lights weren’t on in the apartment as he raced down the alley but he knew Jongup had nowhere else to go so he had to be hiding inside. “Open the door, Jongup.” He pressed his palms against it and knocked for the fourth time. “Please, please let me in.” The door remained closed but he could hear shuffling inside as Jongup leaned against the door on the other side. “We can’t take seeing you so upset. Just let me in and I can help you.”
The door cracked and Himchan’s heart sunk a little more when he saw the defeated eyes staring out at him. “You shouldn’t be here.” His voice was already a rasp of its former self. “He’s just going to use you against me.”
“Who is?” Himchan pressed forward but even when he wasn’t himself, Jongup was still too strong for him to move. “No one’s going to use me against you. I won’t abandon you, Jongup. You should know that by now.”
He breathed a sigh of relief when Jongup finally opened the door to let him inside. The always clean apartment had been trashed beyond recognition. Drawers hung open from the kitchen cabinets and the table that they had just eaten supper at a few nights before was flipped over on its side.
“It was my stuff or yours. Your stuff is more important so I chose mine.” Jongup told him quietly, kicking a cracked dish out of the way so that he could lean against the counter. He rubbed his red eyes and took a tired breath. “Where’s Hayoung?”
“My mom’s.” Himchan was still looking around in amazement at the complete devastation of Jongup’s apartment. “Do you want to tell me what made you so upset?”
Jongup tried to smile for him but it came out as a grimace. “No. Do you want to watch me drink myself into a fourteen hour sleep?”
“Only if you let me join you.”
This time the curl of his lips was real as Jongup gazed over at him through lowered eyes. “Okay then.” He looked at Himchan for a moment longer before nodding and pointing to the closed door behind where the table used to sit. “Pick your poison.”
He had always meant to ask where Jongup found so many exotic flavors and ornate bottles of wine. An artist’s salary should have barely kept him afloat but Jongup was constantly showing up with presents and surprises for the two of them. Over time he had learned to accept it but seeing the full closet stocked with what had to be close to a thousand dollar’s worth of alcohol still made him curious. “Which ones get you drunk the fastest?”
“The ones in the drawer.” Jongup replied wryly.
When Himchan pulled the bottom drawer out he understood the sarcasm. “I didn’t think you liked drinking anything but the fancy wine.”
Jongup reached around him to grab the three-fourths full bottle of bourbon out of his hands and shrugged. “Sometimes drinking myself to death’s door is a better alternative to staying up all night and just thinking until I go insane.”
“What do you think about that makes you that upset?”
The bottle was handed over to him after Jongup had taken a long pull from it. “Why’s and how’s and endless possibilities.”
The answer was nonsense, but Himchan didn’t mind because sometimes Jongup himself was nonsense and he wouldn’t want him to change for anything.
They drank quietly together with the only sound the clicking of the upside down clock in the sink. After the bottle was down to only a quarter full and Himchan’s muscles were heavy and thick, he managed to push Jongup’s hands away when he tried to give him his turn.
“Uh-uh. Need a break.”
Jongup looked up at him with a grin and Himchan was struck with the realization that he had never before noticed how the smiles he gave him and Hayoung were so much brighter than the ones used for others. He wished he was a painter too and he could capture them all so that the warmth they made in his veins could be relived anytime he needed it.
“You make me happy.”
Blinking in surprise, Jongup parted his lips as he turned the words over in his hazy brain. “You make me happy, too.” He finally replied. His shoulders slumped in relief and the bottle was tilted back and finished in a few long drags. “I want to show you something.”
A brand new full bottle was grabbed before he held out a hand to pull Himchan up.
“What is it?” Himchan accepted this bottle eagerly now that the nausea that had been creeping up the back of his throat had eased. He took a drink as he tripped after Jongup, thankful the steady hand still attached to his own was keeping him upright.
“What I do when I go home at night.” Jongup replied matter-of-factly when they stopped in front of his bedroom door. He opened the door and turned the light on with no other explanation, letting Himchan take in the view on his own.
He narrowed his eyes because for a half a second he thought he room was covered in dozens of mirrors, all of them reflecting his own face back at him. Images of him smiling, eyes closed and dimple on full view. One of him sleeping on the couch with a book in his lap and the corner of his mouth opened. Only when he concentrated hard enough to see that Hayoung was in almost all of them with him did he realize that they were actually drawings, just one-dimensional scratches on blank paper that Jongup had done when they weren’t together.
“Even when you and Hayoung aren’t with me I can still have a part of you.” Jongup murmured quietly from behind him. “Himchan, I need to tell you something.”
“These are amazing.” Himchan didn’t hear him as he spun around the room in awe. “I’ve only ever seen you do the squiggly lines and dots and what do you call it?”
“Abstract.” Jongup answered. “Listen, you need to know-“
Himchan took another drink of the bourbon and pointed it at Jongup. “Yeah, abstract. I’ve just seen that kind so I didn’t even know you could do faces.”
Jongup sighed as he took the bottle away from Himchan and set it on the dresser. “You’re too drunk to even remember tomorrow what I need to tell you.”
The bottle was picked back up and pushed into his chest. “Then maybe you’re not drunk enough for me to remember to tell you.” Himchan licked his lips and cocked an eyebrow up. “Right?”
“No.” A small laugh escaped even though Jongup was trying to be serious. “Not right at all. But it’s okay.” He took one last drink, a longer one than Himchan could dream of taking, and when he turned back it was with red cheeks and a soft smile. “Better?”
Himchan nodded as he fell backwards onto Jongup’s oversized bed. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the silky sheets. “Why didn’t you tell me your bed was so nice?” The need to know what Jongup had been so upset over earlier was quickly being drowned out by the yearning to fall asleep in his luxurious bed. “Come lay with me and see how nice it is.”
“I know how nice it is. That’s why I sleep in it every night.” Jongup told him in amusement as he threw himself down beside Himchan anyway. “You’re a talkative drunk.” A pillow was thrown into his face in response.
“Touch these sheets.” Himchan ordered, rolling over onto his stomach and leaning on his elbows over Jongup’s chest. “Put them on your face.”
Jongup complied, his eyes trained onto Himchan’s as he picked up a corner and pressed it to his cheek. Afterwards he reached a hand up to sweep the smooth cloth across Himchan’s flushed skin. “Good?” Himchan nodded but Jongup could see that even through the drunken haze his brain was still trying hard to work through what they were doing and why it wasn’t normal. He smoothed it across the red-bitten lips, not able to hide the way his gaze dropped even if he had tried to. “Better?”
Himchan had never been this drunk in his entire twenty-six years of life. Not even when Soojin had died and he was left alone with a baby and would have given anything for a chance to run away and scream until he was hoarse and raw. Ninety percent of it was the alcohol. He wasn’t positive what the other ten percent was tonight.
“What did you want to tell me?” He grabbed the corner of the sheet from Jongup’s grip and lazily ran it down the bridge of Jongup’s nose and across his jaw.
“I don’t remember.” Jongup hadn’t removed his hand from Himchan’s face, his fingertips walking their way to the nape of his neck where he could feel the dampness forming under his collar, the bourbon making him overheat.
“You make me happy.” Himchan repeated as his head dropped in sleepiness. He was caught by the palm of Jongup’s hand and his head rested there for a moment while he whimpered.
Jongup was still looking at him so seriously and so intently that it made Himchan’s heart flutter. “You already said that.” He told him quietly.
He shrugged, grinning into the soft skin over his mouth. “You make me miss you when you’re not there.” He pressed a kiss into the waiting palm, but his eyes were locked onto Jongup’s wary ones. “You make my chest hurt when I see you with Hayoung.” Another kiss, this one to the pounding pulse in Jongup’s wrist. “You make me forget.”
“Forget what?”
“I don’t remember.” His own reply was thrown back at him with a shy smile before Himchan collapsed onto his back and curled his body into one of the overstuffed pillows. “I’m taking these sheets home with me tomorrow.” He told Jongup with a yawn.
“You can have them. I won’t need them where I’m going anyways.”
Before he fell asleep he felt an arm circle around his waist and Jongup’s breath hot against the back of his neck.
--
Jongup wasn’t beside him anymore when he awoke the next morning. The curtains over the window were thick enough that he couldn’t tell what time of day it was outside but he was pretty certain it had to be verging past lunch by how sluggish he felt.
“Hey.” His rolling around in the bed and stuffing a pillow over his head must have alerted Jongup that he was finally awake. “I got breakfast earlier if you’re hungry.”
“No food.” Himchan grumbled, his stomach still angry at him from what he had done to it the night before. “Ever.”
The fingers carding through his matted hair were gentle enough to ease the trauma of waking up hungover and annoyed. He hummed in relief as Jongup’s hands smoothed away everything until the only thought in his mind was how good it felt to have someone else take care of him.
“I have to go somewhere.” Jongup told him hesitantly. “For a while.”
“Okay.” Himchan reached blindly behind him he found Jongup’s waist and curled a fist into his t-shirt. “I’ll probably still be here feeling sorry for myself when you get back.”
“No.” The hand in his hair disappeared making Himchan whine in disappointment. “No Himchan. That’s not what I meant.”
The serious tone in Jongup’s voice caught his attention even through the pounding headache. He rolled over and sat up on his elbows, not liking the way Jongup’s always bright eyes were pulled together in a frown. “This is about yesterday right?”
Jongup nodded slowly. “A man I used to work for is looking for me and I have to do him a favor. But I’m coming back. I swear I’m coming home after it’s done.”
He wanted to believe him because Jongup never lied to him, but the worry evident in every breath he took was hard to look past.
“Are you okay? Should I be nervous?”
The hesitation gave him his answer but Jongup shook his head and smiled brightly to cover it up. “Of course not. It’s just something little that I forgot to do before I left. I’ll be right in and right out.”
The lie sat in front of Himchan thicker and heavier than the memory of how Jongup’s skin felt against his own last night.
Maybe they both had secrets.
---
Things between them had changed that night but Himchan didn’t know if it was because he was already mentally preparing for when Jongup left or for other reasons. Reasons that made him fuzzy-headed and confused.
Gone were the easy smiles and touches as they passed each other in the apartment. No longer did Jongup stay long after Hayoung was asleep, instead slipping out of the door while Himchan kissed her goodnight. Even at six years old she could see the tension between her two favorite people.
“Did you and daddy have a fight?” She asked a week after Jongup’s life-altering phone call had came.
“What?” He sat down beside her on the bed and brushed her hair out of her worried eyes. “Of course not. Why do you think that?”
She looked down at her doll and tugged angrily on the thick black hair. “If it wasn’t a fight then did I do something wrong again?” When she looked back up at Jongup it was through tear-filled eyes and he felt his heart drop all the way to his stomach. “I’ve tried to be good.”
“Oh no, Hayoung, no.” Jongup forgot all about tucking her into her bed and pulled the blankets off so that he could lift her onto his lap where she wrapped tiny arms around him and sniffled into his neck. “We’re not angry at you sweetheart. Please don’t think that.”
“Then why don’t you love daddy anymore?”
Her tiny sobs had morphed into louder cries, making Himchan rush in from the living room. “What happened?”
“I promise I won’t run away again.” She pleaded, hot tears soaking into Jongup’s shirt. “I’ll do anything papa, anything.”
Himchan furrowed his brow at an equally baffled Jongup who shrugged his shoulders as he shushed her. “What’s she talking about?”
“She thinks we’re fighting because of her.”
“Hayoung, we’re not fighting. Calm down and talk to us like a big girl.”
She worked hard to quiet herself down but until she was able to talk to them Jongup continued rubbing her back and whispering softly into her ear.
“What makes you think there’s something wrong with us?” Himchan set himself on the other side of her and reached for her clenched fist. “Jongup’s been here every night just like always.”
“But you don’t smile at him anymore.” She wiped at her eyes and pulled her doll closer. “And papa always looks sad."
Himchan looked at him across the top of her head. He knew things were strained but he didn’t know what to do to stop it. It wasn’t like it mattered anyways though. Jongup had already said he was leaving soon. “You need to tell her.”
“No.” Jongup tickled her cheek with the doll’s hair and made her smile. “Not yet.”
“She’s obviously not going to take it well no matter what.” He argued. “At least give her time to prepare.”
Hayoung watched them banter, her head moving from side to side as they fought.
“And be responsible for another running away incident? I’ll tell her the day it happens so she can’t follow me. Let me have these last couple of days with her.”
“What?” Himchan scrambled off of the bed, eyes wide and lips parted in shock. “Last couple of days? You said it would be at least a month!”
“I thought so, too. Apparently they want me to start immediately.”
Jongup had received another call from Youngjae the day before giving him flight details but he didn’t know how to bring it up and with Himchan freezing him out he decided to just keep it to himself.
“Papa?” Hayoung’s whisper-soft voice interrupted them and he looked down to see her stricken expression.
“Hayoung…” He hadn’t wanted her to find out this way. With him and Himchan yelling at each other across her bed and her caught in the middle. “I’m sorry.”
She swallowed as their conversation started to make sense and she finally understood why things had changed overnight in their happy little home.
“You’re leaving me?”
He lowered his forehead to hers and nodded slowly. “I’ll come back.” He murmured, kissing her lightly on the tip of her nose. “Nothing can take me away from you.”
They expected tantrums. Screaming and things being thrown through the air as her face turned purple until she finally exhausted herself and collapsed onto the bed.
But when she merely nodded and climbed off of his lap to put herself back into bed it broke Jongup’s heart into more tiny fragments than anything else ever could.
“Hayoung?”
“Go away.” She buried her face in her doll so that they couldn’t see her face. “I hate you.”
Himchan closed his eyes. “You don’t mean that.”
“I hate you both. I wish I had died with mommy. I wish we’d never met you!”
As she tried her hardest to hide her crying from them, Jongup opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Himchan held a hand up to stop him. “Let her get it out, Jongup. Come on.”
Jongup was proud of himself for waiting for the door to close before letting the brave face fall away as he fell into Himchan’s open arms. “She hates me?”
Himchan forgot all about their awkwardness and concentrated only on keeping Jongup upright and guiding him to the couch where he could hold him steady and rock him as he worked to calm himself down.
“She’s just mad. Nothing she said was true, Jongup. Hayoung loves you so much that she even draws you in her stick-figure family pictures. Daddy, Hayoung and Papa, all in a line holding hands. You’re everything to her. To us.” Himchan pressed his face into Jongup’s hair and breathed him in. “Don’t go? Stay here with us?”
He would give all the riches of the world to stay in their apartment forever, just the three of them. A happy family. No prize was greater than that for him.
“They’ll just come and drag me there.”
“Stay until you leave then. Don’t go home, just stay beside me. We can’t live without you.” Himchan pulled back and felt Jongup’s breath ghosting across his lips. “You’re a part of the routine, Jongup. How are we going to manage without you?”
“Very carefully.” Jongup replied with a bright false smile. “And when I get back everything can go back to normal.”
As he sat on the couch and watched Himchan fall asleep later that night with his feet up on the coffee table and his hands tight around Jongup’s heart he wished he had been brave enough to tell the truth.
---
“The time has come the walrus said.”
Hayoung kept her head down as they walked down the sidewalk. “To talk of many things.” She mumbled, not looking at anything but her toes.
“Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax.”
He waited a few moments for her to reply, elbowing her gently when it took too long.
“Of cabbages and kings.” Her voice was dull and uncaring when they entered the park’s gate.
Jongup squeezed around her fingers. “And why the sea is boiling hot.”
“Finish your own stupid poem. Daddy doesn’t even know them and you’ll find someone else to teach them to when you leave.” She told him suddenly, yanking her hand away from Jongup’s. “I’m going to play.”
They sat down at a bench in silence and watched her frantically run through the jungle gym over and over in the same pattern each time.
“She’s not even paying attention to what she’s doing.” Himchan remarked after the fifth go through. “She looks so angry.”
Jongup didn’t want to remember here like this. With red cheeks and flashing eyes and hatred in her expression. He had one picture in his bag, the first one he had ever taken of Hayoung and Himchan, their cheeks squished together and matching smiles on their faces. A million other photos could surround him and nothing would make him ache more than that one single image captured in time.
“She’ll be okay.” He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but he wanted five more minutes, thirty more seconds, anything he could get with his family before the real world crept inside their bubble. As soon as he entered the airport he had strict instructions to dispose of his old phone anyways. Just a little bit longer and he would be cut off from them and life was never fair to those that needed it. “You’ll take care of her by yourself. You always have.” He turned to look at Himchan’s profile as he watched his daughter exhaust herself on the playground.
The drunken touches and shy smiles from the week before were the last things Himchan had given him of himself before closing off from him, shutting the door and locking Jongup outside. He missed the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed and how soft his arm was when they sat together on the couch every night and the way Himchan would reach for his fingers and squeeze them tightly before Jongup went home.
“I bet she’ll be asleep by seven tonight if she doesn’t calm down.” Himchan tried to make small talk but it was useless because Jongup was so tired of talking. Talking didn’t take any effort, it wasn’t worth it. Eyes and smiles and the pads of his fingers were how he wanted to communicate to Himchan because those should have told him more than his words ever could. When he realized Jongup wasn’t listening Himchan turned to him with a hesitant frown. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Jongup always had a habit of staring him straight on and it made anxiety flutter inside Himchan’s chest.
“What is?”
Jongup turned away as if he knew his gaze made Himchan forget everything. “Living inside your box.” Himchan didn’t have the slightest idea what the other meant so he stayed quiet until Jongup continued. “Locking the door and never letting anyone in. I know you’re hurting, Himchan. A blind man could see it in your eyes.” His pinky hooked over top of Himchan’s palm and it was the first time they had touched on purpose in days, but his skin remembered the way they felt together and that small touch was more intimacy than he could take. The breath knocked out of his lungs and he had to pull his hand away to get air again. “But it also means you don’t give either of you a chance to experience real life.”
“I think we’ve had enough of real life to last an eternity.” Himchan wanted to go home. Grab his daughter off of the monkey bars and enclose them in their apartment, locking the door behind them. Safety and routines and always knowing what was coming next saved him when Soojin had died. When the mornings came and he was alone he always knew what to expect, where to step. Jongup had turned his calm orderly life into chaos and now he was just walking away, leaving him to pick up the pieces of their broken hearts for the second time. “How I raise Hayoung is none of your business, Jongup.”
His words stung deep and Himchan immediately regretted them. Jongup blinked a few times before nodding and raising himself up from the bench. “I’m not the bad guy here, Himchan. God knows I’ve been the bad guy for a lot of things in life, but not this time. This time I’m the one fighting for the good guy. And for her.” His hand reached for Himchan again but he caught himself, taking a step backwards and shaking his head. “I told you. Everything I’ve done over these months with the two of you have been real. They’re the realest things I have and you can’t just… You can’t just sweep me under the rug and pretend I never happened. That’s not fair.”
He was striding purposefully towards Hayoung before Himchan could reply. Whatever he was saying to the little girl was muffled by the crowds but Himchan saw his daughter throw her pride to the wind and burst into tears, wrapping her arms around Jongup’s waist. As much as he did for his daughter he would never give her everything that she deserved and needed, Himchan knew that. She craved limitless amounts of affection (a hundred kisses dutifully counted before bed), homemade breakfasts every morning (pancakes shaped like hearts) and someone who could kiss her boo-boo’s without sighing and checking the time beforehand.
Jongup slipped something into her pocket before swinging her around in the air with a grin, but Himchan was close enough to see the weariness beneath the mask. The tired eyes and thin lines around his eyes that Jongup never cared enough about to cover up betrayed his sleepless nights and uneasiness. He wondered if he was supposed to have inquired harder what was wrong. Was that what friends did?
Himchan sucked in his gut at the tender kiss pressed to his daughter’s forehead before Jongup left Hayoung sobbing by herself in the middle of the playground.
He had already left Himchan alone, but he was used to being by himself now. The lock was already clicking into place behind Jongup. Back to the routine.
---
“I don’t want to wear the pink bows.”
“Pink is your favorite color. You always wear the pink bows.”
“Pink is for babies. I’m not a baby!”
Himchan felt a headache coming on and hoped he could get Hayoung to his mother’s before he was late for work for the third time this week. “Then pick a color because I’m not going to fight with you over this.”
The slump she made at his words almost made him think she wanted him to argue with her. “Blue.” Hayoung’s lips trembled when Himchan grabbed the bows from the shelf. “Blue was his favorite color.”
They didn’t have to say his name to feel the echoes of Jongup in everything they did. He had inserted himself so deeply into their daily lives that his very presence was a part of their routines. For the first time since he had left three weeks ago, Himchan realized how deeply hurt Hayoung really was.
“He hasn’t died, baby.” Himchan snapped the second bow into place before leaning down to take his daughter’s cheeks between his hands. The skin under his palms was damp, making Himchan’s heart hurt for her. “Papa just had to go away for a little bit. He’s going to come back as soon as he can.”
She shook her head, fat droplets spilling from her innocent eyes. “No he isn’t.” Himchan found himself with an armful of weeping Hayoung. “He’s never coming home, daddy.”
This was news to Himchan who still expected Jongup to be on the other side of the door every time someone knocked. He had told them he was coming back and Himchan was waiting anxiously for the chance to fix whatever had broken between them. “What are you talking about, Hayoung?” He pulled her away from him and forced her chin up. “Why do you think that?”
“He told me.” Her bottom lip was sucked in between her teeth as she tried to stop crying to speak. “At the park. He said to t-take care of daddy because he might not get to anymore.”
Fresh tears filled her eyes, but Himchan didn’t try to shush her this time because he was filled with panic at her words. Jongup had told him he had just needed to leave for a short period to ‘take care of some stuff’. There was nothing about him leaving for good. He had been so sure that Jongup would come back to them as quickly as possible that this didn’t make sense to him.
“Maybe he just meant that by the time he comes home we’ll have found new friends and didn’t want us to wait for him.” Surely Jongup had realized that if they hadn’t bonded with anyone in the years since Soojin that in the short time he was gone they wouldn’t find someone else. But it was all Himchan had to grasp onto right now.
“Uh-uh.” Hayoung reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled something out, holding it tightly in her clenched fist. “He doesn’t want us to be with anyone else. He told me we’re his family now.” She opened her hand to show Himchan what Jongup must have slipped into her pocket the day he left.
“Shit.” The word that normally would have earned him five minutes in the time-out chair (because rules were rules and even daddies make mistakes) slid from between his lips in a puff of air.
Hayoung had held onto her treasure for eighteen days without breathing a word of it to her father. The safety deposit box key that was always present around Jongup’s neck, the chain long enough to keep the key hidden beneath his shirt, was in her tiny palm. Jongup had pulled it out numerous times to let Hayoung marvel at its shininess, but had never removed it no matter how many times she had begged to play with it.
“Let’s go.” He swung Hayoung’s backpack over his shoulder and marched her to the door where he hurriedly buckled her shoes and ushered her out the door. “Daddy will be a little bit late picking you up after school. Tell grandma.”
“Are you going to find papa?” His daughter was still just a baby, an innocent six year old who already had to walk through life without a mother. Himchan wasn’t going to let her lose another person she cared about. Not if he had anything to do with it.
He nodded determinedly, too focused on the task at hand to reply. There were seven banks in their neighborhood and if he hit them up starting with the ones nearest to Jongup’s apartment then he should be able to visit them all by closing time.
What was so important that Jongup had hidden it away? And why did he want them to have it?
---
Work lasted at least a dozen hours more than it usually did, Himchan felt. He stared at the clock for so long that even Yongguk noticed, coughing under his breath to alert him when their boss was coming.
“Are you okay?” Yongguk slid a sandwich across the desk and sat on the edge. His hand reached out tentatively before he changed his mind and pulled it back to his side. “You’ve been out of it all day.”
Himchan could still see the wounded way Jongup looked at him before he gently set Hayoung on the ground and walked away. Things wouldn’t have ended like that if he had thought Jongup wasn’t going to come back. Jongup was supposed to make things right between them because Jongup made everything better. Jongup fixed things. He was going to come back and fix them and they would be okay again, Himchan could breathe again.
He buried his head in his hands and took deep breaths trying to calm his racing heart. Everything had changed for them since Jongup entered their lives. He made them a family and Himchan was so stupid not to say it to him while he had the chance.
“I need to get out of here.” His voice shook roughly. The rocks in his throat threatened to choke him. “I have to go.”
Yongguk didn’t know what was happening but he didn’t have to because Himchan needed his help and in the eight years they had worked together he had never asked for anything. Not when his wife died and Himchan showed up looking like a zombie for months, not when his daughter broke her arm and cried all night until the cast came off, not even when she was in the hospital, nothing until now.
“Go.” Yongguk grabbed Himchan’s suit jacket off the back of his chair and shoved it into his arms. “I’ll cover for you.”
Himchan nodded, too caught up in his own thoughts to thank him but Yongguk didn’t mind. He knew his co-worker would remember later and would feel a rush of gratitude towards him and that’s all Yongguk needed. He wanted Himchan to think of him and feel something, anything. The man who showed up to work every day earlier than anyone else just so he could get home to his daughter by supper was frozen in time, his mind and his heart still sitting still from five years ago. Yongguk had hoped one day he would be the one to thaw it for him.
Jongup was all Himchan could concentrate on as he rushed out of the building and up the street towards the rough block where Jongup lived. The first bank was only two streets away from his apartment and it was a waste of time. Himchan could see from the second he walked in that they were too small to house security boxes.
The second and third banks had recently switched over to keyless entry pads and you had to have a password to enter them.
The fourth did use keys but they weren’t like Jongup’s.
Himchan was losing enthusiasm as he entered the fifth bank on his mental list. It was the nicest one he knew to be in their area and he figured there was no way Jongup would be able to afford a box in this bank. He had seen the condition of his neighborhood and he had no hope left in him as he showed the key to the checker.
“Sure, if you want to have a seat in the lobby I can look that box number up for you. What is your name, sir?”
He froze, the key clenched so tightly in his fist that he could feel the metal edges digging tiny trenches into his skin. “You mean this key goes to a box in this bank?”
Her lips thinned as she peered at him through the partition. “Yes, those are our keys. But I have to check the box to make sure you’re listed as a legitimate key holder.”
The balloon filling with eagerness in his chest burst at her words because of course he wasn’t listed as a key holder. Jongup had set this up long before they had even met. Discouraged, he dragged himself to the lobby and collapsed into the nearest seat. Even though this was a dead end at least he had the key. One tiny part of Jongup left for them.
“Sir?” The woman’s confused voice broke into his musings, causing him to jump in surprise. She held a shoebox sized box in her hands, the lid taped shut with Himchan’s name scrawled across the top in Jongup’s chicken scratch handwriting. “The key holder made changes on the account a few weeks ago informing us that whomever held the key was to take this home with them.” Her eyes narrowed in annoyance at the shabby box. “This is not how we normally do business, but Mr. Moon was one of our most valued customers so someone allowed the change to be processed.”
Himchan was still staring at his name on the tape, his arms trembling with want. He needed to know what Jongup had been hiding from them, what his secrets were, but a part of him felt anger that Jongup had even been keeping things from them. Their lives were an open book. Hayoung and work was all he had and Jongup knew it. Why would he lie about anything to them? How did he afford a box in this extravagant bank and still lived in squalor?
“Th-Thank you.” He shakily took the box and cradled it in his arms, finger tracing the letters of his name. Jongup had held this, Jongup had made it so that Himchan would find this. Everything led back to him. Jongup.
part seven
Rated: PG13
Length: 7K
song
part five
Sometimes things that change your entire life can happen in only a moment. A tiny flicker in time that feels like the entire world should have felt it. A stranger bumping into you on a train that apologizes with a smile that makes your breath catch. Letting someone go ahead of you in line and meeting the person behind you who ends up sharing drawers in your dresser and space in your closet.
A man that walks through your front door holding the hand of the most beautiful little girl in the world.
But other times the rules can change one night and everything falls apart. A car that speeds up to make it through a yellow light. Lighting that chose the exact spot you were standing to strike the Earth.
A phone call that brings your entire world to pieces.
Jongup didn’t know how to go back, he would give anything to take it all back.
“Hello?” No one ever called his cell phone besides Himchan. He wasn’t even sure that anyone else had the number because he didn’t have anyone to give it out to anyways. The caller ID said ‘unlisted’ so instead of letting it roll to voicemail he hesitantly answered.
“Did you really think running away would keep me from finding you?”
The voice on the other end was one he would recognize anywhere and it caused him to inhale so sharply that even Hayoung lifted her head from his lap to blink sleepily.
He tried to smile but she wasn’t stupid and frowned up at him. “Papa?”
“Hold on just a second sweetheart, okay? I’ll be right back to finish the movie.” He replaced his leg with a pillow and patted her gently before he walked into the bathroom and shut the door. “How did you find me?”
The loud laughter still made his skin crawl.
“That’s my job, Moon. I find things. I would have found you easier if I had known you were stupid enough to move back to Korea.”
He had known this could never last forever, that he would have to give up everything that he loved, but he had hoped he would have more time. All he wanted was a little bit more time with them.
“What do you want, Youngjae?” He pressed his forehead against the cold wall and breathed heavily into his elbow. “I did enough for them. Why can’t they find someone else?”
The voice in his ear sighed, but not out of pity, Jongup already knew there wasn’t an ounce of humanity left in Youngjae’s soul. “You know why, Moon.” He answered him happily. “You’re the best there is.”
--
When Himchan came home later that evening he was exhausted from having to work overtime but he was happy that at least it was Friday and Hayoung was being taken care of and was probably already fed, bathed and in bed by now.
“Daddy!” Even though it was an hour past her bedtime she flew into his arms and tugged on his jacket sleeves. “Something’s wrong with him!”
“What? Where is he?”
She pointed to the bathroom. “He was crying and he won’t come out and he promised to watch TV with me!”
Himchan looked worriedly at the closed door. “Go on to your room Hayoung. Daddy will be in there in a minute to tuck you in.” She opened her mouth to argue but he held a hand up first. “Don’t argue.”
After she huffily slammed her bedroom door he carefully stepped over to the bathroom and pressed his ear to listen for any sounds coming from inside. When he heard nothing he turned the knob to go inside. “Jongup?”
The red-eyed boy sitting against the bathtub lifted his head and wiped clumsily at the tears still running over his swollen face. “It’s all over.” He told him, voice cracking in pain. “All of it.”
This was the first time he had ever seen Jongup break down and the shock of it had him frozen for a moment. When he finally snapped out of it he tried to take a step towards him but Jongup curled in tighter on himself and shook his head.
“Come out, Jongup. Let me take you to the bedroom so Hayoung won’t see you like this.”
Jongup grabbed frantically at the hand reaching out and pulled him closer, cheek skimming across the soft skin. “I’m not ready to go yet.”
“Go?” Himchan stiffened under his touch and terror filled his expression. “You’re not going anywhere, Jongup. We won’t let you.” He tried again to help Jongup to his feet. “I need to get Hayoung to bed so get up and go to my bedroom. We’ll figure out what’s wrong and fix it together. I’m all yours for the rest of the night, I promise.”
“No you’re not.” The elbow he was trying to hold on to was jerked out of his hands as Jongup looked at him in remorse. “And you never will be.” He left before Himchan could even comprehend the venom in his words.
The front door slammed shut a few moments before Hayoung careened out of her bedroom in worry. “Did Papa leave?”
He nodded, brow furrowed in confusion. “Yes honey. Papa left because he was sad.” With a tired smile he held his hand out to his daughter. “What do you think about spending the night with grandma tonight?”
--
It was close to an hour later by the time Himchan had Hayoung satisfied that he would do everything possible to make Jongup feel better. He had to promise her a dozen times as he tucked her into the bed in his mother’s spare bedroom.
“Hold his hand.” She ordered, pointing her finger towards him. “And rub his head like you do with me.”
“I can’t take care of him if you won’t let me leave.” He reminded her, trying once again to edge away before she remembered something else he needed to do.
Hayoung finally relented and gave him once more kiss before Himchan slipped out the door and ran for the elevator. Now that his daughter was out of his sight he didn’t have to keep holding up the mask of a straight face. Concern for Jongup was in every pore of his skin and he could no longer hide the worry he felt over what could possibly make their strong and dependable Jongup behave like this.
The lights weren’t on in the apartment as he raced down the alley but he knew Jongup had nowhere else to go so he had to be hiding inside. “Open the door, Jongup.” He pressed his palms against it and knocked for the fourth time. “Please, please let me in.” The door remained closed but he could hear shuffling inside as Jongup leaned against the door on the other side. “We can’t take seeing you so upset. Just let me in and I can help you.”
The door cracked and Himchan’s heart sunk a little more when he saw the defeated eyes staring out at him. “You shouldn’t be here.” His voice was already a rasp of its former self. “He’s just going to use you against me.”
“Who is?” Himchan pressed forward but even when he wasn’t himself, Jongup was still too strong for him to move. “No one’s going to use me against you. I won’t abandon you, Jongup. You should know that by now.”
He breathed a sigh of relief when Jongup finally opened the door to let him inside. The always clean apartment had been trashed beyond recognition. Drawers hung open from the kitchen cabinets and the table that they had just eaten supper at a few nights before was flipped over on its side.
“It was my stuff or yours. Your stuff is more important so I chose mine.” Jongup told him quietly, kicking a cracked dish out of the way so that he could lean against the counter. He rubbed his red eyes and took a tired breath. “Where’s Hayoung?”
“My mom’s.” Himchan was still looking around in amazement at the complete devastation of Jongup’s apartment. “Do you want to tell me what made you so upset?”
Jongup tried to smile for him but it came out as a grimace. “No. Do you want to watch me drink myself into a fourteen hour sleep?”
“Only if you let me join you.”
This time the curl of his lips was real as Jongup gazed over at him through lowered eyes. “Okay then.” He looked at Himchan for a moment longer before nodding and pointing to the closed door behind where the table used to sit. “Pick your poison.”
He had always meant to ask where Jongup found so many exotic flavors and ornate bottles of wine. An artist’s salary should have barely kept him afloat but Jongup was constantly showing up with presents and surprises for the two of them. Over time he had learned to accept it but seeing the full closet stocked with what had to be close to a thousand dollar’s worth of alcohol still made him curious. “Which ones get you drunk the fastest?”
“The ones in the drawer.” Jongup replied wryly.
When Himchan pulled the bottom drawer out he understood the sarcasm. “I didn’t think you liked drinking anything but the fancy wine.”
Jongup reached around him to grab the three-fourths full bottle of bourbon out of his hands and shrugged. “Sometimes drinking myself to death’s door is a better alternative to staying up all night and just thinking until I go insane.”
“What do you think about that makes you that upset?”
The bottle was handed over to him after Jongup had taken a long pull from it. “Why’s and how’s and endless possibilities.”
The answer was nonsense, but Himchan didn’t mind because sometimes Jongup himself was nonsense and he wouldn’t want him to change for anything.
They drank quietly together with the only sound the clicking of the upside down clock in the sink. After the bottle was down to only a quarter full and Himchan’s muscles were heavy and thick, he managed to push Jongup’s hands away when he tried to give him his turn.
“Uh-uh. Need a break.”
Jongup looked up at him with a grin and Himchan was struck with the realization that he had never before noticed how the smiles he gave him and Hayoung were so much brighter than the ones used for others. He wished he was a painter too and he could capture them all so that the warmth they made in his veins could be relived anytime he needed it.
“You make me happy.”
Blinking in surprise, Jongup parted his lips as he turned the words over in his hazy brain. “You make me happy, too.” He finally replied. His shoulders slumped in relief and the bottle was tilted back and finished in a few long drags. “I want to show you something.”
A brand new full bottle was grabbed before he held out a hand to pull Himchan up.
“What is it?” Himchan accepted this bottle eagerly now that the nausea that had been creeping up the back of his throat had eased. He took a drink as he tripped after Jongup, thankful the steady hand still attached to his own was keeping him upright.
“What I do when I go home at night.” Jongup replied matter-of-factly when they stopped in front of his bedroom door. He opened the door and turned the light on with no other explanation, letting Himchan take in the view on his own.
He narrowed his eyes because for a half a second he thought he room was covered in dozens of mirrors, all of them reflecting his own face back at him. Images of him smiling, eyes closed and dimple on full view. One of him sleeping on the couch with a book in his lap and the corner of his mouth opened. Only when he concentrated hard enough to see that Hayoung was in almost all of them with him did he realize that they were actually drawings, just one-dimensional scratches on blank paper that Jongup had done when they weren’t together.
“Even when you and Hayoung aren’t with me I can still have a part of you.” Jongup murmured quietly from behind him. “Himchan, I need to tell you something.”
“These are amazing.” Himchan didn’t hear him as he spun around the room in awe. “I’ve only ever seen you do the squiggly lines and dots and what do you call it?”
“Abstract.” Jongup answered. “Listen, you need to know-“
Himchan took another drink of the bourbon and pointed it at Jongup. “Yeah, abstract. I’ve just seen that kind so I didn’t even know you could do faces.”
Jongup sighed as he took the bottle away from Himchan and set it on the dresser. “You’re too drunk to even remember tomorrow what I need to tell you.”
The bottle was picked back up and pushed into his chest. “Then maybe you’re not drunk enough for me to remember to tell you.” Himchan licked his lips and cocked an eyebrow up. “Right?”
“No.” A small laugh escaped even though Jongup was trying to be serious. “Not right at all. But it’s okay.” He took one last drink, a longer one than Himchan could dream of taking, and when he turned back it was with red cheeks and a soft smile. “Better?”
Himchan nodded as he fell backwards onto Jongup’s oversized bed. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers over the silky sheets. “Why didn’t you tell me your bed was so nice?” The need to know what Jongup had been so upset over earlier was quickly being drowned out by the yearning to fall asleep in his luxurious bed. “Come lay with me and see how nice it is.”
“I know how nice it is. That’s why I sleep in it every night.” Jongup told him in amusement as he threw himself down beside Himchan anyway. “You’re a talkative drunk.” A pillow was thrown into his face in response.
“Touch these sheets.” Himchan ordered, rolling over onto his stomach and leaning on his elbows over Jongup’s chest. “Put them on your face.”
Jongup complied, his eyes trained onto Himchan’s as he picked up a corner and pressed it to his cheek. Afterwards he reached a hand up to sweep the smooth cloth across Himchan’s flushed skin. “Good?” Himchan nodded but Jongup could see that even through the drunken haze his brain was still trying hard to work through what they were doing and why it wasn’t normal. He smoothed it across the red-bitten lips, not able to hide the way his gaze dropped even if he had tried to. “Better?”
Himchan had never been this drunk in his entire twenty-six years of life. Not even when Soojin had died and he was left alone with a baby and would have given anything for a chance to run away and scream until he was hoarse and raw. Ninety percent of it was the alcohol. He wasn’t positive what the other ten percent was tonight.
“What did you want to tell me?” He grabbed the corner of the sheet from Jongup’s grip and lazily ran it down the bridge of Jongup’s nose and across his jaw.
“I don’t remember.” Jongup hadn’t removed his hand from Himchan’s face, his fingertips walking their way to the nape of his neck where he could feel the dampness forming under his collar, the bourbon making him overheat.
“You make me happy.” Himchan repeated as his head dropped in sleepiness. He was caught by the palm of Jongup’s hand and his head rested there for a moment while he whimpered.
Jongup was still looking at him so seriously and so intently that it made Himchan’s heart flutter. “You already said that.” He told him quietly.
He shrugged, grinning into the soft skin over his mouth. “You make me miss you when you’re not there.” He pressed a kiss into the waiting palm, but his eyes were locked onto Jongup’s wary ones. “You make my chest hurt when I see you with Hayoung.” Another kiss, this one to the pounding pulse in Jongup’s wrist. “You make me forget.”
“Forget what?”
“I don’t remember.” His own reply was thrown back at him with a shy smile before Himchan collapsed onto his back and curled his body into one of the overstuffed pillows. “I’m taking these sheets home with me tomorrow.” He told Jongup with a yawn.
“You can have them. I won’t need them where I’m going anyways.”
Before he fell asleep he felt an arm circle around his waist and Jongup’s breath hot against the back of his neck.
--
Jongup wasn’t beside him anymore when he awoke the next morning. The curtains over the window were thick enough that he couldn’t tell what time of day it was outside but he was pretty certain it had to be verging past lunch by how sluggish he felt.
“Hey.” His rolling around in the bed and stuffing a pillow over his head must have alerted Jongup that he was finally awake. “I got breakfast earlier if you’re hungry.”
“No food.” Himchan grumbled, his stomach still angry at him from what he had done to it the night before. “Ever.”
The fingers carding through his matted hair were gentle enough to ease the trauma of waking up hungover and annoyed. He hummed in relief as Jongup’s hands smoothed away everything until the only thought in his mind was how good it felt to have someone else take care of him.
“I have to go somewhere.” Jongup told him hesitantly. “For a while.”
“Okay.” Himchan reached blindly behind him he found Jongup’s waist and curled a fist into his t-shirt. “I’ll probably still be here feeling sorry for myself when you get back.”
“No.” The hand in his hair disappeared making Himchan whine in disappointment. “No Himchan. That’s not what I meant.”
The serious tone in Jongup’s voice caught his attention even through the pounding headache. He rolled over and sat up on his elbows, not liking the way Jongup’s always bright eyes were pulled together in a frown. “This is about yesterday right?”
Jongup nodded slowly. “A man I used to work for is looking for me and I have to do him a favor. But I’m coming back. I swear I’m coming home after it’s done.”
He wanted to believe him because Jongup never lied to him, but the worry evident in every breath he took was hard to look past.
“Are you okay? Should I be nervous?”
The hesitation gave him his answer but Jongup shook his head and smiled brightly to cover it up. “Of course not. It’s just something little that I forgot to do before I left. I’ll be right in and right out.”
The lie sat in front of Himchan thicker and heavier than the memory of how Jongup’s skin felt against his own last night.
Maybe they both had secrets.
---
Things between them had changed that night but Himchan didn’t know if it was because he was already mentally preparing for when Jongup left or for other reasons. Reasons that made him fuzzy-headed and confused.
Gone were the easy smiles and touches as they passed each other in the apartment. No longer did Jongup stay long after Hayoung was asleep, instead slipping out of the door while Himchan kissed her goodnight. Even at six years old she could see the tension between her two favorite people.
“Did you and daddy have a fight?” She asked a week after Jongup’s life-altering phone call had came.
“What?” He sat down beside her on the bed and brushed her hair out of her worried eyes. “Of course not. Why do you think that?”
She looked down at her doll and tugged angrily on the thick black hair. “If it wasn’t a fight then did I do something wrong again?” When she looked back up at Jongup it was through tear-filled eyes and he felt his heart drop all the way to his stomach. “I’ve tried to be good.”
“Oh no, Hayoung, no.” Jongup forgot all about tucking her into her bed and pulled the blankets off so that he could lift her onto his lap where she wrapped tiny arms around him and sniffled into his neck. “We’re not angry at you sweetheart. Please don’t think that.”
“Then why don’t you love daddy anymore?”
Her tiny sobs had morphed into louder cries, making Himchan rush in from the living room. “What happened?”
“I promise I won’t run away again.” She pleaded, hot tears soaking into Jongup’s shirt. “I’ll do anything papa, anything.”
Himchan furrowed his brow at an equally baffled Jongup who shrugged his shoulders as he shushed her. “What’s she talking about?”
“She thinks we’re fighting because of her.”
“Hayoung, we’re not fighting. Calm down and talk to us like a big girl.”
She worked hard to quiet herself down but until she was able to talk to them Jongup continued rubbing her back and whispering softly into her ear.
“What makes you think there’s something wrong with us?” Himchan set himself on the other side of her and reached for her clenched fist. “Jongup’s been here every night just like always.”
“But you don’t smile at him anymore.” She wiped at her eyes and pulled her doll closer. “And papa always looks sad."
Himchan looked at him across the top of her head. He knew things were strained but he didn’t know what to do to stop it. It wasn’t like it mattered anyways though. Jongup had already said he was leaving soon. “You need to tell her.”
“No.” Jongup tickled her cheek with the doll’s hair and made her smile. “Not yet.”
“She’s obviously not going to take it well no matter what.” He argued. “At least give her time to prepare.”
Hayoung watched them banter, her head moving from side to side as they fought.
“And be responsible for another running away incident? I’ll tell her the day it happens so she can’t follow me. Let me have these last couple of days with her.”
“What?” Himchan scrambled off of the bed, eyes wide and lips parted in shock. “Last couple of days? You said it would be at least a month!”
“I thought so, too. Apparently they want me to start immediately.”
Jongup had received another call from Youngjae the day before giving him flight details but he didn’t know how to bring it up and with Himchan freezing him out he decided to just keep it to himself.
“Papa?” Hayoung’s whisper-soft voice interrupted them and he looked down to see her stricken expression.
“Hayoung…” He hadn’t wanted her to find out this way. With him and Himchan yelling at each other across her bed and her caught in the middle. “I’m sorry.”
She swallowed as their conversation started to make sense and she finally understood why things had changed overnight in their happy little home.
“You’re leaving me?”
He lowered his forehead to hers and nodded slowly. “I’ll come back.” He murmured, kissing her lightly on the tip of her nose. “Nothing can take me away from you.”
They expected tantrums. Screaming and things being thrown through the air as her face turned purple until she finally exhausted herself and collapsed onto the bed.
But when she merely nodded and climbed off of his lap to put herself back into bed it broke Jongup’s heart into more tiny fragments than anything else ever could.
“Hayoung?”
“Go away.” She buried her face in her doll so that they couldn’t see her face. “I hate you.”
Himchan closed his eyes. “You don’t mean that.”
“I hate you both. I wish I had died with mommy. I wish we’d never met you!”
As she tried her hardest to hide her crying from them, Jongup opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Himchan held a hand up to stop him. “Let her get it out, Jongup. Come on.”
Jongup was proud of himself for waiting for the door to close before letting the brave face fall away as he fell into Himchan’s open arms. “She hates me?”
Himchan forgot all about their awkwardness and concentrated only on keeping Jongup upright and guiding him to the couch where he could hold him steady and rock him as he worked to calm himself down.
“She’s just mad. Nothing she said was true, Jongup. Hayoung loves you so much that she even draws you in her stick-figure family pictures. Daddy, Hayoung and Papa, all in a line holding hands. You’re everything to her. To us.” Himchan pressed his face into Jongup’s hair and breathed him in. “Don’t go? Stay here with us?”
He would give all the riches of the world to stay in their apartment forever, just the three of them. A happy family. No prize was greater than that for him.
“They’ll just come and drag me there.”
“Stay until you leave then. Don’t go home, just stay beside me. We can’t live without you.” Himchan pulled back and felt Jongup’s breath ghosting across his lips. “You’re a part of the routine, Jongup. How are we going to manage without you?”
“Very carefully.” Jongup replied with a bright false smile. “And when I get back everything can go back to normal.”
As he sat on the couch and watched Himchan fall asleep later that night with his feet up on the coffee table and his hands tight around Jongup’s heart he wished he had been brave enough to tell the truth.
---
“The time has come the walrus said.”
Hayoung kept her head down as they walked down the sidewalk. “To talk of many things.” She mumbled, not looking at anything but her toes.
“Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax.”
He waited a few moments for her to reply, elbowing her gently when it took too long.
“Of cabbages and kings.” Her voice was dull and uncaring when they entered the park’s gate.
Jongup squeezed around her fingers. “And why the sea is boiling hot.”
“Finish your own stupid poem. Daddy doesn’t even know them and you’ll find someone else to teach them to when you leave.” She told him suddenly, yanking her hand away from Jongup’s. “I’m going to play.”
They sat down at a bench in silence and watched her frantically run through the jungle gym over and over in the same pattern each time.
“She’s not even paying attention to what she’s doing.” Himchan remarked after the fifth go through. “She looks so angry.”
Jongup didn’t want to remember here like this. With red cheeks and flashing eyes and hatred in her expression. He had one picture in his bag, the first one he had ever taken of Hayoung and Himchan, their cheeks squished together and matching smiles on their faces. A million other photos could surround him and nothing would make him ache more than that one single image captured in time.
“She’ll be okay.” He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but he wanted five more minutes, thirty more seconds, anything he could get with his family before the real world crept inside their bubble. As soon as he entered the airport he had strict instructions to dispose of his old phone anyways. Just a little bit longer and he would be cut off from them and life was never fair to those that needed it. “You’ll take care of her by yourself. You always have.” He turned to look at Himchan’s profile as he watched his daughter exhaust herself on the playground.
The drunken touches and shy smiles from the week before were the last things Himchan had given him of himself before closing off from him, shutting the door and locking Jongup outside. He missed the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed and how soft his arm was when they sat together on the couch every night and the way Himchan would reach for his fingers and squeeze them tightly before Jongup went home.
“I bet she’ll be asleep by seven tonight if she doesn’t calm down.” Himchan tried to make small talk but it was useless because Jongup was so tired of talking. Talking didn’t take any effort, it wasn’t worth it. Eyes and smiles and the pads of his fingers were how he wanted to communicate to Himchan because those should have told him more than his words ever could. When he realized Jongup wasn’t listening Himchan turned to him with a hesitant frown. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Jongup always had a habit of staring him straight on and it made anxiety flutter inside Himchan’s chest.
“What is?”
Jongup turned away as if he knew his gaze made Himchan forget everything. “Living inside your box.” Himchan didn’t have the slightest idea what the other meant so he stayed quiet until Jongup continued. “Locking the door and never letting anyone in. I know you’re hurting, Himchan. A blind man could see it in your eyes.” His pinky hooked over top of Himchan’s palm and it was the first time they had touched on purpose in days, but his skin remembered the way they felt together and that small touch was more intimacy than he could take. The breath knocked out of his lungs and he had to pull his hand away to get air again. “But it also means you don’t give either of you a chance to experience real life.”
“I think we’ve had enough of real life to last an eternity.” Himchan wanted to go home. Grab his daughter off of the monkey bars and enclose them in their apartment, locking the door behind them. Safety and routines and always knowing what was coming next saved him when Soojin had died. When the mornings came and he was alone he always knew what to expect, where to step. Jongup had turned his calm orderly life into chaos and now he was just walking away, leaving him to pick up the pieces of their broken hearts for the second time. “How I raise Hayoung is none of your business, Jongup.”
His words stung deep and Himchan immediately regretted them. Jongup blinked a few times before nodding and raising himself up from the bench. “I’m not the bad guy here, Himchan. God knows I’ve been the bad guy for a lot of things in life, but not this time. This time I’m the one fighting for the good guy. And for her.” His hand reached for Himchan again but he caught himself, taking a step backwards and shaking his head. “I told you. Everything I’ve done over these months with the two of you have been real. They’re the realest things I have and you can’t just… You can’t just sweep me under the rug and pretend I never happened. That’s not fair.”
He was striding purposefully towards Hayoung before Himchan could reply. Whatever he was saying to the little girl was muffled by the crowds but Himchan saw his daughter throw her pride to the wind and burst into tears, wrapping her arms around Jongup’s waist. As much as he did for his daughter he would never give her everything that she deserved and needed, Himchan knew that. She craved limitless amounts of affection (a hundred kisses dutifully counted before bed), homemade breakfasts every morning (pancakes shaped like hearts) and someone who could kiss her boo-boo’s without sighing and checking the time beforehand.
Jongup slipped something into her pocket before swinging her around in the air with a grin, but Himchan was close enough to see the weariness beneath the mask. The tired eyes and thin lines around his eyes that Jongup never cared enough about to cover up betrayed his sleepless nights and uneasiness. He wondered if he was supposed to have inquired harder what was wrong. Was that what friends did?
Himchan sucked in his gut at the tender kiss pressed to his daughter’s forehead before Jongup left Hayoung sobbing by herself in the middle of the playground.
He had already left Himchan alone, but he was used to being by himself now. The lock was already clicking into place behind Jongup. Back to the routine.
---
“I don’t want to wear the pink bows.”
“Pink is your favorite color. You always wear the pink bows.”
“Pink is for babies. I’m not a baby!”
Himchan felt a headache coming on and hoped he could get Hayoung to his mother’s before he was late for work for the third time this week. “Then pick a color because I’m not going to fight with you over this.”
The slump she made at his words almost made him think she wanted him to argue with her. “Blue.” Hayoung’s lips trembled when Himchan grabbed the bows from the shelf. “Blue was his favorite color.”
They didn’t have to say his name to feel the echoes of Jongup in everything they did. He had inserted himself so deeply into their daily lives that his very presence was a part of their routines. For the first time since he had left three weeks ago, Himchan realized how deeply hurt Hayoung really was.
“He hasn’t died, baby.” Himchan snapped the second bow into place before leaning down to take his daughter’s cheeks between his hands. The skin under his palms was damp, making Himchan’s heart hurt for her. “Papa just had to go away for a little bit. He’s going to come back as soon as he can.”
She shook her head, fat droplets spilling from her innocent eyes. “No he isn’t.” Himchan found himself with an armful of weeping Hayoung. “He’s never coming home, daddy.”
This was news to Himchan who still expected Jongup to be on the other side of the door every time someone knocked. He had told them he was coming back and Himchan was waiting anxiously for the chance to fix whatever had broken between them. “What are you talking about, Hayoung?” He pulled her away from him and forced her chin up. “Why do you think that?”
“He told me.” Her bottom lip was sucked in between her teeth as she tried to stop crying to speak. “At the park. He said to t-take care of daddy because he might not get to anymore.”
Fresh tears filled her eyes, but Himchan didn’t try to shush her this time because he was filled with panic at her words. Jongup had told him he had just needed to leave for a short period to ‘take care of some stuff’. There was nothing about him leaving for good. He had been so sure that Jongup would come back to them as quickly as possible that this didn’t make sense to him.
“Maybe he just meant that by the time he comes home we’ll have found new friends and didn’t want us to wait for him.” Surely Jongup had realized that if they hadn’t bonded with anyone in the years since Soojin that in the short time he was gone they wouldn’t find someone else. But it was all Himchan had to grasp onto right now.
“Uh-uh.” Hayoung reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled something out, holding it tightly in her clenched fist. “He doesn’t want us to be with anyone else. He told me we’re his family now.” She opened her hand to show Himchan what Jongup must have slipped into her pocket the day he left.
“Shit.” The word that normally would have earned him five minutes in the time-out chair (because rules were rules and even daddies make mistakes) slid from between his lips in a puff of air.
Hayoung had held onto her treasure for eighteen days without breathing a word of it to her father. The safety deposit box key that was always present around Jongup’s neck, the chain long enough to keep the key hidden beneath his shirt, was in her tiny palm. Jongup had pulled it out numerous times to let Hayoung marvel at its shininess, but had never removed it no matter how many times she had begged to play with it.
“Let’s go.” He swung Hayoung’s backpack over his shoulder and marched her to the door where he hurriedly buckled her shoes and ushered her out the door. “Daddy will be a little bit late picking you up after school. Tell grandma.”
“Are you going to find papa?” His daughter was still just a baby, an innocent six year old who already had to walk through life without a mother. Himchan wasn’t going to let her lose another person she cared about. Not if he had anything to do with it.
He nodded determinedly, too focused on the task at hand to reply. There were seven banks in their neighborhood and if he hit them up starting with the ones nearest to Jongup’s apartment then he should be able to visit them all by closing time.
What was so important that Jongup had hidden it away? And why did he want them to have it?
---
Work lasted at least a dozen hours more than it usually did, Himchan felt. He stared at the clock for so long that even Yongguk noticed, coughing under his breath to alert him when their boss was coming.
“Are you okay?” Yongguk slid a sandwich across the desk and sat on the edge. His hand reached out tentatively before he changed his mind and pulled it back to his side. “You’ve been out of it all day.”
Himchan could still see the wounded way Jongup looked at him before he gently set Hayoung on the ground and walked away. Things wouldn’t have ended like that if he had thought Jongup wasn’t going to come back. Jongup was supposed to make things right between them because Jongup made everything better. Jongup fixed things. He was going to come back and fix them and they would be okay again, Himchan could breathe again.
He buried his head in his hands and took deep breaths trying to calm his racing heart. Everything had changed for them since Jongup entered their lives. He made them a family and Himchan was so stupid not to say it to him while he had the chance.
“I need to get out of here.” His voice shook roughly. The rocks in his throat threatened to choke him. “I have to go.”
Yongguk didn’t know what was happening but he didn’t have to because Himchan needed his help and in the eight years they had worked together he had never asked for anything. Not when his wife died and Himchan showed up looking like a zombie for months, not when his daughter broke her arm and cried all night until the cast came off, not even when she was in the hospital, nothing until now.
“Go.” Yongguk grabbed Himchan’s suit jacket off the back of his chair and shoved it into his arms. “I’ll cover for you.”
Himchan nodded, too caught up in his own thoughts to thank him but Yongguk didn’t mind. He knew his co-worker would remember later and would feel a rush of gratitude towards him and that’s all Yongguk needed. He wanted Himchan to think of him and feel something, anything. The man who showed up to work every day earlier than anyone else just so he could get home to his daughter by supper was frozen in time, his mind and his heart still sitting still from five years ago. Yongguk had hoped one day he would be the one to thaw it for him.
Jongup was all Himchan could concentrate on as he rushed out of the building and up the street towards the rough block where Jongup lived. The first bank was only two streets away from his apartment and it was a waste of time. Himchan could see from the second he walked in that they were too small to house security boxes.
The second and third banks had recently switched over to keyless entry pads and you had to have a password to enter them.
The fourth did use keys but they weren’t like Jongup’s.
Himchan was losing enthusiasm as he entered the fifth bank on his mental list. It was the nicest one he knew to be in their area and he figured there was no way Jongup would be able to afford a box in this bank. He had seen the condition of his neighborhood and he had no hope left in him as he showed the key to the checker.
“Sure, if you want to have a seat in the lobby I can look that box number up for you. What is your name, sir?”
He froze, the key clenched so tightly in his fist that he could feel the metal edges digging tiny trenches into his skin. “You mean this key goes to a box in this bank?”
Her lips thinned as she peered at him through the partition. “Yes, those are our keys. But I have to check the box to make sure you’re listed as a legitimate key holder.”
The balloon filling with eagerness in his chest burst at her words because of course he wasn’t listed as a key holder. Jongup had set this up long before they had even met. Discouraged, he dragged himself to the lobby and collapsed into the nearest seat. Even though this was a dead end at least he had the key. One tiny part of Jongup left for them.
“Sir?” The woman’s confused voice broke into his musings, causing him to jump in surprise. She held a shoebox sized box in her hands, the lid taped shut with Himchan’s name scrawled across the top in Jongup’s chicken scratch handwriting. “The key holder made changes on the account a few weeks ago informing us that whomever held the key was to take this home with them.” Her eyes narrowed in annoyance at the shabby box. “This is not how we normally do business, but Mr. Moon was one of our most valued customers so someone allowed the change to be processed.”
Himchan was still staring at his name on the tape, his arms trembling with want. He needed to know what Jongup had been hiding from them, what his secrets were, but a part of him felt anger that Jongup had even been keeping things from them. Their lives were an open book. Hayoung and work was all he had and Jongup knew it. Why would he lie about anything to them? How did he afford a box in this extravagant bank and still lived in squalor?
“Th-Thank you.” He shakily took the box and cradled it in his arms, finger tracing the letters of his name. Jongup had held this, Jongup had made it so that Himchan would find this. Everything led back to him. Jongup.
part seven