(no subject)
fukuoka
changmin/kyuhyun, pg, 3620ⓦ
Note: Lyrics by Piano Music.
And I've got space in my heart
For the next twenty years
So don't think there's a rush
Just come on over sometime
*
Have a safe trip, love you, Jaejoong's text reads. A flight attendant is speaking, light Japanese syllables over the whispered sounds of conversation. He catches the tail end of her welcome before there is a crackle and the announcement begins again, this time in Korean. Beside him, Kyuhyun is tapping out a staccato rhythm on his armrest. Changmin follows his gaze out the window, where the edge of the airplane wing is visible against the morning sun. The window is slightly foggy with cold; it blurs the lights flashing on the tarmac.
The flight isn't long enough for anyone to sleep; he shares earphones with Kyuhyun and cycles through the same few songs on his iPod, right hand tangled in the strap of his guitar case resting in the aisle seat. He chews ice out of his complimentary cup of water, watching Kyuhyun play Tetris with the sound muted until the plane staggers its way onto Japanese soil.
January means slightly sunny, slightly cold; on the horizon of change. For Changmin, it promises something new. The apartment is a blank slate: empty cupboards, plain walls, no toothbrushes by the bathroom sink. Nothing seems ready to be touched, made real: he stands in the doorway, breathing in the city, taste touch sight sound feel. When he opens his eyes, it is to an odd silence from Kyuhyun, who has stacked their luggage by the refrigerator (Changmin had called him hyung, bottom lip stuck out). "What?" Changmin says, kicking off his shoes.
"This is so wrong," Kyuhyun says hollowly, a touch horrified, possibly a little disgusted. He's holding the refrigerator door open. Changmin edges in behind him to look, imagining a zombie invasion, frozen body parts and the Donner Party. The refrigerator is empty. "We're going shopping," Kyuhyun announces.
When he catches up with a loaf of white bread, Kyuhyun is half an aisle ahead of him, contemplating jam. His hood is pulled up to hide his uncombed hair. "Strawberry," Changmin says, snatching the first jar out of Kyuhyun's hand.
He stoops to pick up the shopping basket lying at Kyuhyun's feet, shifting it to the crook of his arm as he makes room for the bread. He elbows Kyuhyun into a Kewpie display when Kyuhyun tries and fails to hide his smirk in his sleeve. "Censure in private," Kyuhyun scowls, before picking a loofah out of a conveniently-located hamper and throwing it at Changmin's head. He misses. Changmin snickers, and flees.
Kyuhyun divides his time between home and the university, lingering in the studios until he is a shadow in the dark. At home, he has a tendency to curl up at the corner of his bed with a CD player and creased sheet music, right hand playing treble clef on the blankets as he sings old ballads. He always complains that it's not the same, no piano keys or foot pedals to press down. Changmin hums noncommittally in response, turning tuning pegs on his guitar while the coffee machine hisses.
When the apartment is empty, Changmin pulls the furniture toward the window for the sunlight, curling into chairs with his guitar like a cat. The table becomes an island; their chairs end up pushed against the far wall, sun-yellowed books with creased pages titled "Edelweiss" and "Eleanor Rigby" stacked on top, coffee rings intersecting staff lines on sheets belatedly taped to the back of one chair in a makeshift stand.
It starts one morning with "I Wanna Be Loved." The studios are closed on Sundays, so Kyuhyun sleeps in, as if it'll do any good for the shadows under his eyes he accumulates the other six days of the week. Today, it's nearly midday when he finally shows signs of life, grinding coffee beans in a hazy stupor while Changmin's practicing. "Hey," Kyuhyun says, in a moment of sudden clarity, when Changmin's in the middle of two chords. When Changmin spares him a disparaging glance, Kyuhyun is licking foam off his fingers. "Eric Benét?"
"Make me coffee and maybe I'll tell you," Changmin says, voice raised so Kyuhyun can hear him; he replays the chord and frowns. He looks up when he smells coffee, sharp and dark; Kyuhyun is leaning over his shoulder, mug in hand. He ignores Kyuhyun's smug "It is," and is peering appraisingly into the cup when Kyuhyun moves behind him, out of range.
Changmin makes a moue Kyuhyun can't see, an elbow propped up on his guitar. "These are weird," Kyuhyun is saying, pointing to the notes. "Try a flat, here-" Changmin shifts his guitar obligingly and plays the line, and Kyuhyun sings it: I had almost reached heaven just to feel it slip away.
"There, that's better," Kyuhyun says, and takes a victory sip out of his mug.
Changmin's throat is dry. "Yeah."
They pool money for an instant camera, for their birthdays. "Un-birthday," Kyuhyun habitually corrects, because February is technically still a calendar page away. Changmin keeps the Polaroids in an old airmail envelope, fringed with red and blue barber stripes and covered in stamps. Within the first few days, there are a dozen-odd photographs of Changmin playing guitar on his bed and Kyuhyun reading. ("I don't see why you need all this proof," Kyuhyun says, affronted, as he shuffles through the photos. "I do things besides video games all the time. Also, the Internet connection isn't working.")
Changmin picks a safe one to send, a snapshot of him looking out the window. His hair is tousled from the wind, and his face is cut off mid-laugh by the window, a cloudy pane of glass. "Artistic," Kyuhyun had called it, just after he'd taken it. "Your arrogance is not attractive," Changmin had said, mouth twitching.
At the convenience store, the most generic card he can find is one with a cartoon character he doesn't recognize. It says happy days in English on the front; he picks it mostly because it's girly and sort of garish, Jaejoong's type. He scrawls happy birthday inside and Jaejoong's name on the envelope, licks the seal and slides the Polaroid in. It arrives on the 26th, right on time.
February is a small bridge between January and spring, a go-between. The trees are still bare; with each day, it takes fractionally longer for the sun to set, but the difference is always negligible. The only times that matter are laundry days, birth dates, and class timetables.
They walk on opposite sides of the train track, tightrope-walking their way home down the line. In Changmin's pocket, two hundred-yen coins compete for space with matches and a pack of candles, blue one missing. He jumps down from the rail, shoes uneven on gray-white rock and wooden sleepers, and Kyuhyun's gaze teeters up from his feet at the sound.
Changmin shields his face from the sun with a hand, hitching his school bag more securely on his shoulder. "Hey, princess," Changmin says, wrinkling his nose at the gelato cup in Kyuhyun's right hand. "Your present is melting."
On the stone ledge, there is a slim line of shade where green vines and leaves are beginning to crawl their way across from the other side. Changmin turns the flat matchbook around in his hand, forefinger and thumbs opening and closing. Beside him, Kyuhyun hollows out an island around the blue candle in his gelato cup. "Your birthday," Changmin shrugs when Kyuhyun offers to share. He studies his fingernails, the stones, Kyuhyun's wrist. He runs a hand across the damp skin at the nape of his neck, a little restless in the heat. Kyuhyun shifts, and his knee touches Changmin's for a moment before they both move away.
Jaejoong calls on his birthday. Changmin scratches an itch on his right foot with the toe of his left foot, and leans down, scoping out the contents of their tiny refrigerator. Jaejoong sounds like clouds, light and airy and oblivious to the way his voice goes straight through Changmin - always has, always does. Changmin decides on milk, waterfalls straight from the carton because it's his birthday (Kyuhyun doesn't need to know). Jaejoong is telling a story; he supposes it's meant to be funny. He hmms because he's afraid to speak: Jaejoong's always had a talent for pulling his heart out onto his sleeve.
Kyuhyun appears just after the refrigerator door swings shut, hair mussed in a sleepy halo. "'Morning," he mumbles as he shuffles past Changmin and into the bathroom.
Jaejoong's voice goes soft just as the bathroom faucet begins to run, a muffled, closed-off sound. "Come back soon," Jaejoong says, as if he has a choice in the matter. His voice sounds close, smothered; Changmin guesses he has the phone cradled to his ear. "I miss you."
Changmin fights down the knot in his chest and whispers, "Okay." Jaejoong takes it all in stride with another non sequitur.
It reminds him of his first kiss back in Seoul, how dry his throat had been when he'd said, "Okay." Only if you're sure, Jaejoong had said. Only if you're sure. Jaejoong had curved a hand behind his neck and kissed him, lips moving soft and careful, wet where Changmin had licked his lips before.
It had only lasted a moment, but with his eyes closed, it had felt like minutes before Jaejoong moved away, eyes lit up. "There," he'd said, and then it had been like nothing had happened at all: Jaejoong had resumed watching people drifting down sidewalks and into the night as Changmin filed the moment away, taking in the foreign taste on his lips, barely there. He never says thank you, and Jaejoong doesn't seem to expect it. A kiss, after all, is not a contract, even if Changmin wants it to be.
March is when they start inventing weekends out of weekdays, disappearing from wooden seats and lecture halls and auditoriums. Kyuhyun has a predictable penchant for anarchy, ignoring rules as best befits his wants and needs. For the school records, Kyuhyun invents illnesses; for Changmin, Kyuhyun never needs to use more than a smile.
Some time before the shrill starting bell, Kyuhyun has left a red paper crane on his desk. Changmin eyes it as he sits back down, peeling the wing back gently. In cramped Korean, Kyuhyun has written, catch me if you can. Changmin exhales, blowing his bangs back, and leans back surreptitiously in his chair. Kyuhyun's desk is empty.
It is easier than he expects, with renovations on the auditorium underway. There are always classes relocated, canceled, rescheduled; once outside, Changmin finds it laughably easy to weave his way around the workers in yellow hard hats, shouting over the cranking and beeping of heavy machinery. In between clouds of dust and plaster, he is there, and then gone.
Changmin finds Kyuhyun at the record store, sitting at the end of a shelf of albums with his feet pulled close to avoid human traffic. The wire of the store's sampler headphones is tangled, curlicues looping down from the top of the shelf. He's flipping through a CD booklet, lips moving occasionally as he mouths the lyrics in time with a song Changmin can't hear. The light on the player flashes as the song ends, and Changmin turns the volume all the way down just as another song begins.
Kyuhyun glances up, a lopsided smile. He's startled: Changmin can tell by the way he pauses and loses track of the beat. When he recognises Changmin, his eyes are bright, unguarded. It makes Changmin stop for a moment, forget what he'd meant to say. The store is empty save the two of them and the cashier, who is surreptitiously flipping through a comic book at the counter. Changmin looks both ways anyway - crossing streets, heart in his pocket - before he kneels opposite Kyuhyun. "Delinquent," he says, lowering his voice. "Hungry?"
They say you can't get lost if you have nowhere to go, no home to return to. Homesickness is an easy emotion for Changmin, something that fits like a glove. By May, the cherry blossoms are a dime a dozen and school holidays give him a better excuse than any to wander. On off days, he meanders, hands jammed in his pockets, following anonymous streets for as long as the fading sunlight permits. On odd-numbered days, he takes a left at crossroads; on even ones, he goes right. At nightfall, he traces bus routes back home, dozing off on peeling pleather seats until he has routed his way home. He wastes his change on the pay phone at the corner, calling Jaejoong at bad hours just to hear his voice when it says, Hi, you've reached Kim Jaejoong. I'm not available right now….
He finds the place on a Tuesday, an odd-numbered day. It is picturesque, something that has Hollywood film locale written all over it. Mothers with children, picnic blankets and romantic dates are strewn over the entire area. He snaps a photo of it, spring greens and unbroken sky.
Kyuhyun is listening half-heartedly to the clack of chalk on the board when Changmin drops a yellow crane onto his desk and ducks out the door, a blur of motion and a smirk. Kyuhyun doesn't stop to read what Changmin has written, but catches Changmin by the wrist outside of the gates of the music wing.
At the top of the grassy hill there is a large tree, branches sprawling and lazy. The sky is pure blue, the world around them a sea of greens. Changmin unpacks neat triangle sandwiches, peeling back plastic and barcoded convenience store stickers. Kyuhyun is still standing, tracing the bark of the tree like a spine. There are a dozen carvings on the trunk, names enclosed in clumsily-cut out hearts, as if for safekeeping. "Trees die like this, you know." In the name of posterity. He offers Changmin a quick smile.
"Sentimentalise later," Changmin says, around a mouthful of sandwich. "I'm going to eat your food if you don't hurry up." But he offers up a sandwich like a peace treaty, and Kyuhyun takes it with a look that says, eat first, insult later. Changmin mentally compliments his priorities.
It occurs to him that Jaejoong would have watched the clouds, turned them into a butterfly and a Volkswagen and a lizard. In his absence, Changmin lies flat on his back, watching them move like stop-motion film: blink, and the movement happens. Beside him, Kyuhyun props his elbows up on his knees, hands folded together. When he blows, mouth pressed to his thumbs, it makes a willowy, monotone sound. When Changmin closes his eyes, the sky is a burnt sienna, black shapes floating in a serene orange sky.
In his dream, he is driftwood, a faint, dark blemish in the sea. Water runs through him like fingers, tendrils, sloshing through. The fingers are Jaejoong's, and his voice is slow, oblong, dragging out the syllables. Changmin tries to compress the sounds into words and finds he can't. "Stop it," Changmin says, frustrated, and Jaejoong disappears.
He wakes up to a tickling sensation on the palm of his right hand, tracing out wake up in Korean, ileona in messy circles and lines. Changmin snatches Kyuhyun's hand in the middle of him writing jagiya for good measure, fingers closing like shutters, and Kyuhyun laughs without shaking free.
June means storms, overcast and unhappy. When it rains, Changmin stays inside. His bare feet curl against the edge of the wooden chair. All around him is the sound of rice paper, precipitation like light bird feet on the roof. His heart aches like a phantom limb - invisible, microscopic, empty. The clothesline is still hanging by the window, paper wings pinned by two yellow clips. Kyuhyun's red crane is tilted toward Changmin's, proximity by proxy.
The calendar on the wall is halfway covered in Kyuhyun's red, diagonal slashes marking the passage of days. The day's square is circled. He had read in a biology textbook, once, that the cells of the human body completely regenerate in seven years. Two years since a musky night with clear skies, and Changmin is almost a third of the way to living without Jaejoong somewhere on his skin.
He is leaning out the window when Kyuhyun comes home, a faint jangle of keys as he toes his shoes off and nudges them aside. There is someone smoking in the apartments below, blowing smoke into the fresh air. The air smells clean, sharp after the rain; the smoke, by contrast, is cloying, a cancerous haze of gray. Changmin breathes it all in. Kyuhyun's elbow touches his when he leans against Changmin, a quiet warmth.
Changmin lines their hands up next to each other, heels of their palms to the tip of their little fingers. Kyuhyun watches him flex his fingers, studying him like there is a medical condition on the tip of his tongue. Changmin waits, examining an old scar on the side of Kyuhyun's wrist - a bicycling accident at six years old. "If you're going to die of consumption," Kyuhyun says eventually, as if he has reached some resolution, "Can it be the kind with food?"
The sun is a glimmer in the purple sky, and the ends of Changmin's hair are golden, on fire in the fading light. Kyuhyun listens to the traffic, a bottle of Sapporo cradled in the crook of his arm. The liquid sloshes gently inside the bottle when he shifts, a dark cherry-wood color. Changmin is lying on his back near Kyuhyun's knee, counting stars he can't see with innocuous concentration when Kyuhyun says, off-hand, "Do you think you can let go?"
The question comes out too smoothly; it's been rehearsed and rephrased, refined but still awkward. Changmin's gaze slides up to meet Kyuhyun's, warm and blank. Quizzical. Changmin has never told Kyuhyun about Jaejoong; he is a nameless thing between them.
Kyuhyun looks away first. Maybe I- is on the tip of Changmin's tongue when Kyuhyun says without preamble, "I could wait." Changmin remembers, suddenly, that both of them hold their liquor a little too well. He closes his mouth again, running his tongue along the inside of his teeth like the taste of Kyuhyun's words is in his mouth, clashing with the alcohol. Kyuhyun stands to leave, reaching for Changmin's hand for a moment before he changes his mind, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I should warn you, though," Kyuhyun adds, after a quiet moment. Changmin is still on the grass, boneless, meeting Kyuhyun's eyes from his slanted sprawl. "I'm kind of impatient."
Changmin doesn't catch up until Kyuhyun's already hailed a taxi. Kyuhyun doesn't say anything when Changmin ducks his head and slides into the backseat next to him. On the ride home, Kyuhyun looks out the window with pretended interest. Changmin watches the driver glance at them through the rearview mirror, once to take in their inebriation, another for their rumpled clothes, one for their wine-red mouths.
July is when Kyuhyun takes to living in the studios, stealing ramen out of Changmin's stash and waiting for melodies to come into being. Changmin tapes highlighted music theory spreadsheets to the cabinets and biographies of composers to the mirror. Kyuhyun draws graffiti on them, a yellow lightning bolt on Beethoven's forehead and red circles on Dizzy Gillespie's cheeks.
Kyuhyun's composition final is scheduled a day after Changmin's last exam, a one-on-one in the auditorium. Changmin listens to him play through the open skylight, a faraway sound down below. It's pretty, a light tune with a few loose ends Kyuhyun hadn't worked through in time. He plays with his crane as he listens, tugging lightly on the wings to straighten them.
The sun is glaring down, a bright flare of white at the corner of his vision. He almost doesn't realize when the song ends, to be replaced with sudden quiet. He leans over and swears as his shoe slips against a loose shingle; the crane falls into the opening and out of sight.
"Very sneaky," Kyuhyun observes wryly, twirling the yellow crane by the tail. Ten minutes later and Kyuhyun is sitting by Changmin on the roof; Changmin takes the opportunity to elbow Kyuhyun in the ribs. Kyuhyun swears, and Changmin smiles.
"All in the master plan," Changmin says, with dignity, and Kyuhyun rolls his eyes, sitting up to unfold the crane. He starts from the head, smoothing the crease and pulling it down with the tail, nails unfolding the folds of the wings until he is holding a crumpled square of paper, still bent at the corner. There is writing on the uncoloured side, all quick slashes and lightning strokes, Changmin's unmistakeable hand.
01101001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110
01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101
"I hope you know-"
"Math Olympiad," Changmin counters.
"Just because I-"
"Square root of 7,569."
"Eighty-seven, shut up," Kyuhyun snaps.
Changmin leans forward on his elbows and kisses him full on the mouth. Kyuhyun says something muffled like huh and then he's kissing back, leaning into it like Changmin's pulling him off axis, derailing him. Changmin licks at the curve of his mouth and when he pulls away to breathe, it's in millimetres.
The smile tugging at Kyuhyun's mouth is bright, a little wider than Changmin can remember it ever being. "Can I," he says, moving toward Changmin and stopping again. His fingers are digging into the brick like he has an itch, an addiction; like the distance between them is insufferable.
"Yeah," Changmin says, leaning forward until their foreheads touch. Sunlight floods the corner of his vision; Changmin's smile reflects Kyuhyun's, brilliant and wondering. He curls his pinky finger around Kyuhyun's. "Anytime."
changmin/kyuhyun, pg, 3620ⓦ
Note: Lyrics by Piano Music.
And I've got space in my heart
For the next twenty years
So don't think there's a rush
Just come on over sometime
*
Have a safe trip, love you, Jaejoong's text reads. A flight attendant is speaking, light Japanese syllables over the whispered sounds of conversation. He catches the tail end of her welcome before there is a crackle and the announcement begins again, this time in Korean. Beside him, Kyuhyun is tapping out a staccato rhythm on his armrest. Changmin follows his gaze out the window, where the edge of the airplane wing is visible against the morning sun. The window is slightly foggy with cold; it blurs the lights flashing on the tarmac.
The flight isn't long enough for anyone to sleep; he shares earphones with Kyuhyun and cycles through the same few songs on his iPod, right hand tangled in the strap of his guitar case resting in the aisle seat. He chews ice out of his complimentary cup of water, watching Kyuhyun play Tetris with the sound muted until the plane staggers its way onto Japanese soil.
January means slightly sunny, slightly cold; on the horizon of change. For Changmin, it promises something new. The apartment is a blank slate: empty cupboards, plain walls, no toothbrushes by the bathroom sink. Nothing seems ready to be touched, made real: he stands in the doorway, breathing in the city, taste touch sight sound feel. When he opens his eyes, it is to an odd silence from Kyuhyun, who has stacked their luggage by the refrigerator (Changmin had called him hyung, bottom lip stuck out). "What?" Changmin says, kicking off his shoes.
"This is so wrong," Kyuhyun says hollowly, a touch horrified, possibly a little disgusted. He's holding the refrigerator door open. Changmin edges in behind him to look, imagining a zombie invasion, frozen body parts and the Donner Party. The refrigerator is empty. "We're going shopping," Kyuhyun announces.
When he catches up with a loaf of white bread, Kyuhyun is half an aisle ahead of him, contemplating jam. His hood is pulled up to hide his uncombed hair. "Strawberry," Changmin says, snatching the first jar out of Kyuhyun's hand.
He stoops to pick up the shopping basket lying at Kyuhyun's feet, shifting it to the crook of his arm as he makes room for the bread. He elbows Kyuhyun into a Kewpie display when Kyuhyun tries and fails to hide his smirk in his sleeve. "Censure in private," Kyuhyun scowls, before picking a loofah out of a conveniently-located hamper and throwing it at Changmin's head. He misses. Changmin snickers, and flees.
Kyuhyun divides his time between home and the university, lingering in the studios until he is a shadow in the dark. At home, he has a tendency to curl up at the corner of his bed with a CD player and creased sheet music, right hand playing treble clef on the blankets as he sings old ballads. He always complains that it's not the same, no piano keys or foot pedals to press down. Changmin hums noncommittally in response, turning tuning pegs on his guitar while the coffee machine hisses.
When the apartment is empty, Changmin pulls the furniture toward the window for the sunlight, curling into chairs with his guitar like a cat. The table becomes an island; their chairs end up pushed against the far wall, sun-yellowed books with creased pages titled "Edelweiss" and "Eleanor Rigby" stacked on top, coffee rings intersecting staff lines on sheets belatedly taped to the back of one chair in a makeshift stand.
It starts one morning with "I Wanna Be Loved." The studios are closed on Sundays, so Kyuhyun sleeps in, as if it'll do any good for the shadows under his eyes he accumulates the other six days of the week. Today, it's nearly midday when he finally shows signs of life, grinding coffee beans in a hazy stupor while Changmin's practicing. "Hey," Kyuhyun says, in a moment of sudden clarity, when Changmin's in the middle of two chords. When Changmin spares him a disparaging glance, Kyuhyun is licking foam off his fingers. "Eric Benét?"
"Make me coffee and maybe I'll tell you," Changmin says, voice raised so Kyuhyun can hear him; he replays the chord and frowns. He looks up when he smells coffee, sharp and dark; Kyuhyun is leaning over his shoulder, mug in hand. He ignores Kyuhyun's smug "It is," and is peering appraisingly into the cup when Kyuhyun moves behind him, out of range.
Changmin makes a moue Kyuhyun can't see, an elbow propped up on his guitar. "These are weird," Kyuhyun is saying, pointing to the notes. "Try a flat, here-" Changmin shifts his guitar obligingly and plays the line, and Kyuhyun sings it: I had almost reached heaven just to feel it slip away.
"There, that's better," Kyuhyun says, and takes a victory sip out of his mug.
Changmin's throat is dry. "Yeah."
They pool money for an instant camera, for their birthdays. "Un-birthday," Kyuhyun habitually corrects, because February is technically still a calendar page away. Changmin keeps the Polaroids in an old airmail envelope, fringed with red and blue barber stripes and covered in stamps. Within the first few days, there are a dozen-odd photographs of Changmin playing guitar on his bed and Kyuhyun reading. ("I don't see why you need all this proof," Kyuhyun says, affronted, as he shuffles through the photos. "I do things besides video games all the time. Also, the Internet connection isn't working.")
Changmin picks a safe one to send, a snapshot of him looking out the window. His hair is tousled from the wind, and his face is cut off mid-laugh by the window, a cloudy pane of glass. "Artistic," Kyuhyun had called it, just after he'd taken it. "Your arrogance is not attractive," Changmin had said, mouth twitching.
At the convenience store, the most generic card he can find is one with a cartoon character he doesn't recognize. It says happy days in English on the front; he picks it mostly because it's girly and sort of garish, Jaejoong's type. He scrawls happy birthday inside and Jaejoong's name on the envelope, licks the seal and slides the Polaroid in. It arrives on the 26th, right on time.
February is a small bridge between January and spring, a go-between. The trees are still bare; with each day, it takes fractionally longer for the sun to set, but the difference is always negligible. The only times that matter are laundry days, birth dates, and class timetables.
They walk on opposite sides of the train track, tightrope-walking their way home down the line. In Changmin's pocket, two hundred-yen coins compete for space with matches and a pack of candles, blue one missing. He jumps down from the rail, shoes uneven on gray-white rock and wooden sleepers, and Kyuhyun's gaze teeters up from his feet at the sound.
Changmin shields his face from the sun with a hand, hitching his school bag more securely on his shoulder. "Hey, princess," Changmin says, wrinkling his nose at the gelato cup in Kyuhyun's right hand. "Your present is melting."
On the stone ledge, there is a slim line of shade where green vines and leaves are beginning to crawl their way across from the other side. Changmin turns the flat matchbook around in his hand, forefinger and thumbs opening and closing. Beside him, Kyuhyun hollows out an island around the blue candle in his gelato cup. "Your birthday," Changmin shrugs when Kyuhyun offers to share. He studies his fingernails, the stones, Kyuhyun's wrist. He runs a hand across the damp skin at the nape of his neck, a little restless in the heat. Kyuhyun shifts, and his knee touches Changmin's for a moment before they both move away.
Jaejoong calls on his birthday. Changmin scratches an itch on his right foot with the toe of his left foot, and leans down, scoping out the contents of their tiny refrigerator. Jaejoong sounds like clouds, light and airy and oblivious to the way his voice goes straight through Changmin - always has, always does. Changmin decides on milk, waterfalls straight from the carton because it's his birthday (Kyuhyun doesn't need to know). Jaejoong is telling a story; he supposes it's meant to be funny. He hmms because he's afraid to speak: Jaejoong's always had a talent for pulling his heart out onto his sleeve.
Kyuhyun appears just after the refrigerator door swings shut, hair mussed in a sleepy halo. "'Morning," he mumbles as he shuffles past Changmin and into the bathroom.
Jaejoong's voice goes soft just as the bathroom faucet begins to run, a muffled, closed-off sound. "Come back soon," Jaejoong says, as if he has a choice in the matter. His voice sounds close, smothered; Changmin guesses he has the phone cradled to his ear. "I miss you."
Changmin fights down the knot in his chest and whispers, "Okay." Jaejoong takes it all in stride with another non sequitur.
It reminds him of his first kiss back in Seoul, how dry his throat had been when he'd said, "Okay." Only if you're sure, Jaejoong had said. Only if you're sure. Jaejoong had curved a hand behind his neck and kissed him, lips moving soft and careful, wet where Changmin had licked his lips before.
It had only lasted a moment, but with his eyes closed, it had felt like minutes before Jaejoong moved away, eyes lit up. "There," he'd said, and then it had been like nothing had happened at all: Jaejoong had resumed watching people drifting down sidewalks and into the night as Changmin filed the moment away, taking in the foreign taste on his lips, barely there. He never says thank you, and Jaejoong doesn't seem to expect it. A kiss, after all, is not a contract, even if Changmin wants it to be.
March is when they start inventing weekends out of weekdays, disappearing from wooden seats and lecture halls and auditoriums. Kyuhyun has a predictable penchant for anarchy, ignoring rules as best befits his wants and needs. For the school records, Kyuhyun invents illnesses; for Changmin, Kyuhyun never needs to use more than a smile.
Some time before the shrill starting bell, Kyuhyun has left a red paper crane on his desk. Changmin eyes it as he sits back down, peeling the wing back gently. In cramped Korean, Kyuhyun has written, catch me if you can. Changmin exhales, blowing his bangs back, and leans back surreptitiously in his chair. Kyuhyun's desk is empty.
It is easier than he expects, with renovations on the auditorium underway. There are always classes relocated, canceled, rescheduled; once outside, Changmin finds it laughably easy to weave his way around the workers in yellow hard hats, shouting over the cranking and beeping of heavy machinery. In between clouds of dust and plaster, he is there, and then gone.
Changmin finds Kyuhyun at the record store, sitting at the end of a shelf of albums with his feet pulled close to avoid human traffic. The wire of the store's sampler headphones is tangled, curlicues looping down from the top of the shelf. He's flipping through a CD booklet, lips moving occasionally as he mouths the lyrics in time with a song Changmin can't hear. The light on the player flashes as the song ends, and Changmin turns the volume all the way down just as another song begins.
Kyuhyun glances up, a lopsided smile. He's startled: Changmin can tell by the way he pauses and loses track of the beat. When he recognises Changmin, his eyes are bright, unguarded. It makes Changmin stop for a moment, forget what he'd meant to say. The store is empty save the two of them and the cashier, who is surreptitiously flipping through a comic book at the counter. Changmin looks both ways anyway - crossing streets, heart in his pocket - before he kneels opposite Kyuhyun. "Delinquent," he says, lowering his voice. "Hungry?"
They say you can't get lost if you have nowhere to go, no home to return to. Homesickness is an easy emotion for Changmin, something that fits like a glove. By May, the cherry blossoms are a dime a dozen and school holidays give him a better excuse than any to wander. On off days, he meanders, hands jammed in his pockets, following anonymous streets for as long as the fading sunlight permits. On odd-numbered days, he takes a left at crossroads; on even ones, he goes right. At nightfall, he traces bus routes back home, dozing off on peeling pleather seats until he has routed his way home. He wastes his change on the pay phone at the corner, calling Jaejoong at bad hours just to hear his voice when it says, Hi, you've reached Kim Jaejoong. I'm not available right now….
He finds the place on a Tuesday, an odd-numbered day. It is picturesque, something that has Hollywood film locale written all over it. Mothers with children, picnic blankets and romantic dates are strewn over the entire area. He snaps a photo of it, spring greens and unbroken sky.
Kyuhyun is listening half-heartedly to the clack of chalk on the board when Changmin drops a yellow crane onto his desk and ducks out the door, a blur of motion and a smirk. Kyuhyun doesn't stop to read what Changmin has written, but catches Changmin by the wrist outside of the gates of the music wing.
At the top of the grassy hill there is a large tree, branches sprawling and lazy. The sky is pure blue, the world around them a sea of greens. Changmin unpacks neat triangle sandwiches, peeling back plastic and barcoded convenience store stickers. Kyuhyun is still standing, tracing the bark of the tree like a spine. There are a dozen carvings on the trunk, names enclosed in clumsily-cut out hearts, as if for safekeeping. "Trees die like this, you know." In the name of posterity. He offers Changmin a quick smile.
"Sentimentalise later," Changmin says, around a mouthful of sandwich. "I'm going to eat your food if you don't hurry up." But he offers up a sandwich like a peace treaty, and Kyuhyun takes it with a look that says, eat first, insult later. Changmin mentally compliments his priorities.
It occurs to him that Jaejoong would have watched the clouds, turned them into a butterfly and a Volkswagen and a lizard. In his absence, Changmin lies flat on his back, watching them move like stop-motion film: blink, and the movement happens. Beside him, Kyuhyun props his elbows up on his knees, hands folded together. When he blows, mouth pressed to his thumbs, it makes a willowy, monotone sound. When Changmin closes his eyes, the sky is a burnt sienna, black shapes floating in a serene orange sky.
In his dream, he is driftwood, a faint, dark blemish in the sea. Water runs through him like fingers, tendrils, sloshing through. The fingers are Jaejoong's, and his voice is slow, oblong, dragging out the syllables. Changmin tries to compress the sounds into words and finds he can't. "Stop it," Changmin says, frustrated, and Jaejoong disappears.
He wakes up to a tickling sensation on the palm of his right hand, tracing out wake up in Korean, ileona in messy circles and lines. Changmin snatches Kyuhyun's hand in the middle of him writing jagiya for good measure, fingers closing like shutters, and Kyuhyun laughs without shaking free.
June means storms, overcast and unhappy. When it rains, Changmin stays inside. His bare feet curl against the edge of the wooden chair. All around him is the sound of rice paper, precipitation like light bird feet on the roof. His heart aches like a phantom limb - invisible, microscopic, empty. The clothesline is still hanging by the window, paper wings pinned by two yellow clips. Kyuhyun's red crane is tilted toward Changmin's, proximity by proxy.
The calendar on the wall is halfway covered in Kyuhyun's red, diagonal slashes marking the passage of days. The day's square is circled. He had read in a biology textbook, once, that the cells of the human body completely regenerate in seven years. Two years since a musky night with clear skies, and Changmin is almost a third of the way to living without Jaejoong somewhere on his skin.
He is leaning out the window when Kyuhyun comes home, a faint jangle of keys as he toes his shoes off and nudges them aside. There is someone smoking in the apartments below, blowing smoke into the fresh air. The air smells clean, sharp after the rain; the smoke, by contrast, is cloying, a cancerous haze of gray. Changmin breathes it all in. Kyuhyun's elbow touches his when he leans against Changmin, a quiet warmth.
Changmin lines their hands up next to each other, heels of their palms to the tip of their little fingers. Kyuhyun watches him flex his fingers, studying him like there is a medical condition on the tip of his tongue. Changmin waits, examining an old scar on the side of Kyuhyun's wrist - a bicycling accident at six years old. "If you're going to die of consumption," Kyuhyun says eventually, as if he has reached some resolution, "Can it be the kind with food?"
The sun is a glimmer in the purple sky, and the ends of Changmin's hair are golden, on fire in the fading light. Kyuhyun listens to the traffic, a bottle of Sapporo cradled in the crook of his arm. The liquid sloshes gently inside the bottle when he shifts, a dark cherry-wood color. Changmin is lying on his back near Kyuhyun's knee, counting stars he can't see with innocuous concentration when Kyuhyun says, off-hand, "Do you think you can let go?"
The question comes out too smoothly; it's been rehearsed and rephrased, refined but still awkward. Changmin's gaze slides up to meet Kyuhyun's, warm and blank. Quizzical. Changmin has never told Kyuhyun about Jaejoong; he is a nameless thing between them.
Kyuhyun looks away first. Maybe I- is on the tip of Changmin's tongue when Kyuhyun says without preamble, "I could wait." Changmin remembers, suddenly, that both of them hold their liquor a little too well. He closes his mouth again, running his tongue along the inside of his teeth like the taste of Kyuhyun's words is in his mouth, clashing with the alcohol. Kyuhyun stands to leave, reaching for Changmin's hand for a moment before he changes his mind, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I should warn you, though," Kyuhyun adds, after a quiet moment. Changmin is still on the grass, boneless, meeting Kyuhyun's eyes from his slanted sprawl. "I'm kind of impatient."
Changmin doesn't catch up until Kyuhyun's already hailed a taxi. Kyuhyun doesn't say anything when Changmin ducks his head and slides into the backseat next to him. On the ride home, Kyuhyun looks out the window with pretended interest. Changmin watches the driver glance at them through the rearview mirror, once to take in their inebriation, another for their rumpled clothes, one for their wine-red mouths.
July is when Kyuhyun takes to living in the studios, stealing ramen out of Changmin's stash and waiting for melodies to come into being. Changmin tapes highlighted music theory spreadsheets to the cabinets and biographies of composers to the mirror. Kyuhyun draws graffiti on them, a yellow lightning bolt on Beethoven's forehead and red circles on Dizzy Gillespie's cheeks.
Kyuhyun's composition final is scheduled a day after Changmin's last exam, a one-on-one in the auditorium. Changmin listens to him play through the open skylight, a faraway sound down below. It's pretty, a light tune with a few loose ends Kyuhyun hadn't worked through in time. He plays with his crane as he listens, tugging lightly on the wings to straighten them.
The sun is glaring down, a bright flare of white at the corner of his vision. He almost doesn't realize when the song ends, to be replaced with sudden quiet. He leans over and swears as his shoe slips against a loose shingle; the crane falls into the opening and out of sight.
"Very sneaky," Kyuhyun observes wryly, twirling the yellow crane by the tail. Ten minutes later and Kyuhyun is sitting by Changmin on the roof; Changmin takes the opportunity to elbow Kyuhyun in the ribs. Kyuhyun swears, and Changmin smiles.
"All in the master plan," Changmin says, with dignity, and Kyuhyun rolls his eyes, sitting up to unfold the crane. He starts from the head, smoothing the crease and pulling it down with the tail, nails unfolding the folds of the wings until he is holding a crumpled square of paper, still bent at the corner. There is writing on the uncoloured side, all quick slashes and lightning strokes, Changmin's unmistakeable hand.
01101001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110
01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101
"I hope you know-"
"Math Olympiad," Changmin counters.
"Just because I-"
"Square root of 7,569."
"Eighty-seven, shut up," Kyuhyun snaps.
Changmin leans forward on his elbows and kisses him full on the mouth. Kyuhyun says something muffled like huh and then he's kissing back, leaning into it like Changmin's pulling him off axis, derailing him. Changmin licks at the curve of his mouth and when he pulls away to breathe, it's in millimetres.
The smile tugging at Kyuhyun's mouth is bright, a little wider than Changmin can remember it ever being. "Can I," he says, moving toward Changmin and stopping again. His fingers are digging into the brick like he has an itch, an addiction; like the distance between them is insufferable.
"Yeah," Changmin says, leaning forward until their foreheads touch. Sunlight floods the corner of his vision; Changmin's smile reflects Kyuhyun's, brilliant and wondering. He curls his pinky finger around Kyuhyun's. "Anytime."