to promise the world [2/4]
T O K Y O , J A P A N
✈︎
The doors of the train open with impatient passengers surging forward and moving in a rush to each of their destinations. Kyungsoo steps down just as the door closes and the train leaves, making his own way out of the station and taking the proper exit.
Kyungsoo had become quite better at planning and a little more equipped with research. A backpack had sufficed to carry everything he needed for another overnight stay, and soon enough he found himself starting his day in the streets of Yokohama, then travelling next to Shibuya in the afternoon.
The weather was perfect outside, and Kyungsoo can already see Hachiko standing meters away as he heads toward it. It took three days for him to prepare this trip, and now he stands in front of the statue, smiling sadly as he remembers the film that led him to this moment, with memories of Hachiko still playing like a reel in his head-scenes of the Akita standing in front of the train station every day, waiting for his owner to come back.
A wretched feeling resonates in Kyungsoo-the kind of feeling that brings questions to mind as to why things happened the way they did and why things didn’t happen the way they wanted it to. Hachiko waited nine years for an answer, but Kyungsoo had stopped searching for his own ever since, thinking maybe there was no other way to explain things other than this phenomenon called life and the many unprecedented events that come along with it.
One of them is a voice that suddenly asks, “Have you ever waited for something that you know might never happen again?”
Kyungsoo turns to Jongin standing a few feet behind him, hands fitted inside the pockets of his coat and looking over Hachiko’s statue with indecipherable eyes. An encounter with Jongin in a foreign place no longer surprises him, but it still leaves him wondering exactly why they were bound to meet as if their gravity were pulling them towards each other.
The last time he’d seen the pilot was a week ago in Seogwipo. After the sunrise, Jongin took him back to the campsite then left for his flight duty, and since then he couldn’t deny that he didn’t think about him and their encounters and how one way or another, they’d created even the littlest impact in his life.
“Have you?” is what Kyungsoo asks. Thinking before speaking wasn’t his strongest feat-he realizes this just as Jongin’s face changes. Maybe this isn’t about the nine years of Hachiko’s life anymore, and Kyungsoo wishes he hadn’t returned the question at all.
Before he could even apologize, Jongin only offers a small wilted smile.
“Yes,” Jongin says quietly, “Yes, I have.”
Kyungsoo and Jongin dine inside an intimate ramen shop nearby, its walls decorated in light wooden panels and cursive katana writings. Three tables are occupied with locals chatting away in lively conversations while a waiter serves their ramen bowls and a plate of aji tamago. The waiter takes a bow and walks away from them, and the silence becomes palpable between them.
He watches Jongin move first-lifting his chopsticks to take an egg off the plate and bringing it between his teeth, then swallowing before he speaks.
“You seem to travel a lot these days.” Jongin tells him.
Kyungsoo follows suit and slices his own soft boiled egg with a spoon, scooping half of it into his mouth then answering back.
“Just trying to get to as many cities as possible.” Kyungsoo answers nonchalantly.
Jongin quietly observes the way Kyungsoo takes another spoonful of the egg and washes it down with a bottle of sapporo beer. He smiles.
“And how many cities have you been to so far?” Jongin asks.
“Not a lot,” He answers truthfully. “Maybe not enough.”
“You say that as if you’re planning to travel the world.”
Kyungsoo looks up at Jongin with unabashed eyes.
“Maybe I am.”
“Yeah?” Jongin asks, taking another bite before speaking, “Anyone can say that, but at what cost?”
“At any cost.”
Jongin pauses. He tilts his head to the side, looking into his eyes with intrigue.
“You can’t be serious,” Jongin says. “I already knew you traveled on a whim when I first met you, but it’s not as grand as you think when you don’t know where you’re going.”
“I honestly can’t tell if you’re being serious when you make a living out of it,” Kyungsoo counters, “You might not be able to understand, but it’s just something I need to do.”
“Well, I am serious.”
“Then so am I.”
They make room for another period of silence. The beer leaves a bitter taste on Kyungsoo’s tongue when he takes a long sip, placing the bottle down just as Jongin’s voice invades the quiet.
“You’re right. I guess I don’t understand.”
Kyungsoo shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal.”
“I can try to understand,” Jongin tells him. “It’d be interesting to know what it would feel like to live in your shoes.”
“I don’t think you’d want that.” He dismisses.
“Why not?” Jongin asks, “It’s not a big deal, just like you said.”
“That’s precisely why we shouldn’t talk about it.”
Jongin stares, looking at him as if he knows him.
“That’s not how I see things. The way I see it, there’s a reason why you’re running off to places as far as Paris.”
Kyungsoo stops eating and places his chopsticks down on the table, focusing on Jongin and the way he’s looking at him searching for answers he didn’t want him to find. Kyungsoo was tired and hungry, and sane enough to snap at Jongin.
“Perhaps there is. But, tell me, Captain,” Kyungsoo strains the word, then speaks somewhat irritably, “What would you have done if your dead parents kept a shitload of money under your name? Would you have quit your job and moved to a bigger city? Would you have flown across the country the same way I did?”
The weight of Kyungsoo’s words catches Jongin off guard, refraining him from saying anything else.
The abrupt silence makes Kyungsoo uncomfortable. He takes a deep breath and brushes his fingers through his hair in mild frustration, then he distracts himself by taking his chopsticks once again and mixing the noodles on his ramen. Jongin leaves his food untouched.
“Was it a plane crash?” He asks carefully.
Kyungsoo continues to stir the noodles on his bowl, avoiding his eyes.
“Car accident.”
“I see.”
Kyungsoo knows he’s said too much, at least more than what he’s shared with anyone else, let alone Baekhyun. He didn’t want to see the pity in people’s eyes, because that’s not what he needs.
“What were they like?” Jongin asks inquisitively.
“I wouldn’t know,” Kyungsoo tells him, “I didn’t know them.”
When Kyungsoo dares to look up and into Jongin’s eyes, sympathy is the last thing he sees. The pilot doesn’t look away from him, eyes staying completely trained on his as if they were staring deep into pieces of him he intended to keep hidden.
But for the first time in his life, Kyungsoo doesn’t stop talking.
“I lived in a small house at Ilsan with Miyoung, my foster mother, and her son, Sungsoo. Things were peaceful back then. She never spoke to me about my real parents, and I never brought it up. Things seemed easier that way.”
Jongin listens intently to Kyungsoo just as he continues speaking.
“I found out about their death the same time Miyoung had. She cried nonstop through the other end of the line when I saw her in the kitchen. I didn’t know who she was speaking to, but it must have been someone important. It didn’t matter to me then, because I realized that not only did I have to grieve for my father and my mother, but she would also have to grieve for her brother and someone that had been a part of her family.”
“It was three days later when she told me about the money. It turned out they had been sending money every year to a bank account under my name. They’ve been putting my name on most of their savings stated in my father’s will. Could you imagine that all this time I was left to think that someone else had paid for my school tuition and paid for the food on my plate? Miyoung had kept all those secrets from me, but I couldn’t be angry at her. She was lovely, treated me kindly, and it was useless to talk about it at this point. But as soon as I found out, I did the only thing I thought I could do-I left.”
“I thought about my parents, and whether or not I should blame them for the lie I’ve been trapped inside. I knew nothing about them, but I always thought it was enough for me to know that they threw me away, as if I was some piece of trash they just couldn’t deal with. Not only that, they even tried to make up for it with gold.”
A single tear falls to his cheek, and when Kyungsoo suddenly realizes this with Jongin watching him, he quickly uses the back of his hand to wipe it away and break contact with the other’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo laughs bitterly, accompanied with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, “It’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? How surviving in this world and depending on their money is the only thing that will remind me of them? It’s not like they gave me anything else.”
Jongin’s stare is unreadable at this point.
“Do you want me to tell you what I think?”
Kyungsoo sniffs, glancing quickly at him as he wrinkles his nose. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” Jongin leans forward across the table, seeking Kyungsoo’s eyes to catch his attention. “I think…that you’re not giving you and your parents enough credit.”
Kyungsoo crosses his arms, regarding him with a cautious look.
“Your parents might not have been the best, in fact, they might not have been anything to you at all, but maybe they’ve given you something much more valuable than you realize.”
Kyungsoo laughs haughtily, less than convinced. “Which is?”
He tries to hide the shock that strikes through him when Jongin suddenly reaches for his hand, bringing it to his.
“Life,” Jongin says simply, “So, rather than surviving, wouldn’t you say that you’re living?”
Their ramen bowls have turned forgotten and cold, but the warmth in Jongin’s hand remains.
They pass the time and stand before the Scramble Crossing. Every few minutes when the lights turn green, the intersection is filled with noises of pedestrians swarming every corner while buildings burst with neon advertisements. Kyungsoo continues to watch locals weave and dodge through the busy road, thinking he would have to take the train back to Yokohoma again.
“Are you heading that way?” Jongin asks, pointing across the intersection and to the train station where Hachiko stays.
“Yeah.” Kyungsoo faces him. “I should probably leave now before it closes.”
He answers with a nod. “Have you thought about where you would be off to next?”
Kyungsoo tugs on both of his backpack straps, staring at the neon lights above them. “Not yet, but I guess that’s the plan. Somewhere far? New? Who knows where I’ll be going?”
Strangely enough, Kyungsoo feels lighter somehow, as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulder. The lights are blinding but pleasant, and Jongin is looking at him with a smile that’s familiar and pure.
“Good,” Jongin tells him. “That means I can look forward to doing this again next time.”
He grins before bidding Jongin goodbye with a playful bow and a laugh escaping the pilot. As soon as they separate and Kyungsoo crosses the intersection, a tinge feeling of excitement rushes through him, already thinking about the next time he and the pilot would cross paths.
S E O U L , S O U T H K O R E A
✈︎
The next time Baekhyun visits Kyungsoo to gaze at stars outside his balcony, Kyungsoo doesn’t expect him to bring up a topic such as the pilot’s whereabouts.
“So, Jongin stopped by the other day to drop off some stuff I lent to him,” Baekhyun tells him.
“Oh?” Kyungsoo asks, glancing casually at the other while he drinks from his beer bottle.
“Uh-huh,” Baekhyun quips. “He mentioned that you guys met and hung out a week ago at Tokyo.”
“It was just one dinner,” Kyungsoo confirms, then quickly notices his neighbour’s probing eyes before asking, “Why are you looking at me like that? You know that wasn’t the first time that I bumped into him.”
Baekhyun lets out a bitter laugh before mocking him. “Yeah, I should know, except you forgot to mention that it was his taxi you took at Paris!”
It takes a while before Kyungsoo responds, stilling at the memory of their first encounter.
“He told you that?”
“Only because you didn’t,” Baekhyun counters.
“But I didn’t know who he was at that time,” Kyungsoo reasons out. “I barely even recognised his face the second time I met him at Jeju.”
“Were you even planning on saying anything as soon as you realized it was him?”
“Why would I?” Kyungsoo asks, “I didn’t think it would matter.”
Baekhyun shakes his head. “Not to you, it didn’t. But, apparently, it matters to other people.”
Kyungsoo wants to ask him what he means by that, but it doesn’t take long before Baekhyun pulls something out from his button-up shirt-a rectangular piece of paper tucked unruly on his breast pocket. He flattens the paper in his hands before handing it to Kyungsoo and smiling apologetically at how he’d almost ruined it.
“It was pretty late when he came to my unit. I’m guessing he would have given it directly to you if he had more time, but he had a flight to catch. That boy never stays in the same place.”
Kyungsoo takes unsure glances between Baekhyun and the paper he is holding out to him and wonders if he was mistaken for someone else, taking it only when the other returns an expectant gaze and a shrug.
He looks at the postcard in his hands. The photo catches his eye in an instant, drawing him in with a grid of beautiful and unfamiliar landscapes. In the middle of the photo grid is a ribbon with a name printed in bold and cursive six letters.
“Glasgow, huh?” Baekhyun asks, “Why would he give you a postcard from Glasgow? You’ve never even been there before.”
At the back of the postcard is a list of places scribbled in bullet points. Below them are a date and time written as flight details along with a message-three words, the same words he’d used the first time they’d met:
Don’t be late.
“You’re right,” Kyungsoo agrees. “But I think that’s why he gave it to me.”
Kyungsoo meets Baekhyun’s questionable look and concludes, “This is where he’s leading me.”
His eyes still linger on the card when Baekhyun peeks next to him, reading the same message.
“Why would he do that?” Baekhyun asks, “It doesn’t really make sense that he would do something like this.”
Kyungsoo wants to agree with Baekhyun, but he stays tight lipped with thoughts floating high like the stars in the quiet night.
“Well, are you going?”
Kyungsoo contemplates, looking at the postcard one more time before shooting it inside the back pocket of his jeans. “I don’t see why not,” Kyungsoo says. “I don’t have anything to lose, don’t I?”
“So, that’s it? You’re telling me that you’re going to Glasgow and taking Jongin’s flight just because he asked you to?” Baekhyun asks, eyes wide in surprise and disbelief. “Wow, this wasn’t what I expected at all.”
He downs his bottle before returning a question, “What did you expect then? I’m always alone anyway, you said so yourself.”
“I know what I said, but that doesn’t mean it’s not surprising to see how quickly you’ve warmed up to Jongin, just as much as he did to you.”
Baekhyun isn’t the only one that has noticed the sudden change. Even Kyungsoo knows how different he’s become and how his mindset about the world had no longer been limited to his own. As soon as Kyungsoo opened up to Jongin in Tokyo about his life, he realized he had already given him the power to break down his walls, little by little.
“Look,” Baekhyun starts, “It’s great that you and Jongin share more things than just taxi cabs. His intentions may be good, but… Maybe you shouldn’t expect anything else.”
Kyungsoo turns to face Baekhyun as concern marred the latter’s face. Kyungsoo knows Baekhyun is thinking of something malicious, but he quickly dismisses the idea.
“Okay, whatever it is that you’re thinking of right now, please stop because it’s not what you think.”
“I can’t help it,” Baekhyun reasons out, “You may not think anything about it now, but when something does happen, it will become all that you will think about. I just don’t want you to feel disappointed in the end.”
“Baekhyun,” he calls out, “I don’t.. I don’t see him in the way that you think I do, so what on earth could I possibly be disappointed about?”
Baekhyun pauses, hesitant at first.
“Jongin...he’s been through stuff.”
“So have I,” Kyungsoo defends. “What does that have to do with Glasgow?”
“Nothing,” Baekhyun mutters before shaking his head. “You know what? I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not even my business, but you and Jongin are my friends. I’ve never seen him this excited in a while, so I guess I should just thank you for that. I’ve known Jongin for a very long time, and the things that happened to him in the past really broke him.”
They sit in silence. Despite Kyungsoo’s spontaneous escapades with Jongin, he realizes that the pilot knows things about him that most people don’t know about when in return he knows so little about him.
He thinks about what Baekhyun said, and it makes him all the more curious about Jongin.
“And I’m getting to know him,” Kyungsoo tells Baekhyun. “Maybe this is a good thing for both of us.”
Baekhyun smiles and takes his hand in comfort.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” Baekhyun asks. “Just don’t get hurt, okay?”
G L A S G O W , S C O T L A N D
✈︎
When Jongin is not a pilot, he happens to be a prepared traveler.
Kyungsoo pushes the trolley cart forward as its wheels turn underneath, in a hurry as he keeps in mind that he has to find him. When Kyungsoo exits the baggage claiming area, he catches him already standing by the arrival gate-face calm with a posture that poses an effortless confidence.
Despite the amount of people inside the airport, Jongin’s eyes quickly meet his own, a mix of surprise and anticipation suddenly playing in his smile and tugging his lips upward.
Whether it was because Kyungsoo was in a different country or because of the person standing a few steps away from him in an unfamiliar place, the excitement makes his heart race anyway.
“I see you got the postcard,” Jongin says when Kyungsoo makes it in front of him, watching him take his luggage out of the cart and pull it right next to him.
“I sure did,” he agrees, returning a small and shy smile while he continues to joke sarcastically. “I should warn you though, I’m not very good at spontaneity.”
The remark makes Jongin laugh a bit, his eyes shortly curving into thin crescent lines just like how he remembered them.
“I’m happy you came anyway,” Jongin answers. “There are a few places I thought we could visit that you might enjoy. We should be able to fit them all in one day to make the most out of the city.”
“I’ve got time,” Kyungsoo tells him. “I haven’t booked a return flight yet, so it doesn’t matter. I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t miss seeing what this side of the world has to offer.”
Jongin’s eyes shortly focus on something behind him, but says nothing about it. Instead, he reveals an even brighter smile.
“Well, I’m sure the world will definitely surprise you.”
Kyungsoo notices the sunrays that peek from the glass window above them, trying to compete with the light in Jongin’s smile. The lights casts a glow on his face that only does more to illuminate him, creating another wondrous kind of sunshine. He thinks for a moment that maybe it already has.
As they stand side by side and prepare to leave the airport, Jongin takes one more look at the yellow umbrella sticking out from Kyungsoo’s backpack, true to his promise.
“You can keep the umbrella, by the way,” Jongin tells Kyungsoo. “Just make sure you won’t poke someone with that thing on your back.”
On their first day in Glasgow, Kyungsoo learns that in order to define the future, you can never run away from the past.
They take a shuttle bus to the city centre and check in at a tiny hostel Jongin had booked before catching the subway that leads to the Kelvingrove Museum. As soon as they reach their destination, the day turns as busy as the locals and tourists swiftly making their way inside the momentous building to take a glimpse of the numerous art designed by the likes of Scottish colourists.
From the Kelvingrove Museum, they walk up to the West End and visit the Botanic Gardens, where tulips color the ground with the most vivid hues the same way exotic tropical plants catch their attention, showered with natural sunlight inside the Kibble Palace.
Kyungsoo wasn’t one to bring a camera and take much photos, and thinks it’s more than enough to see things with the naked eye. He watches Jongin lift his camera up to bring it to the same level as his face, quickly snapping a photo of wildflowers rooted on a garden patch.
“Beauty comes in unexpected places,” Jongin tells him. “It’s nice to be prepared and keep photographs to preserve them. Don’t we keep our memories the same way? We make sure they don’t disappear or fade, otherwise we easily forget them. Who knows when we would be able to see something as beautiful as this again?”
At one point, Kyungsoo pulls his phone out from his pocket while Jongin continues to take photos. He opens the camera app, framing Jongin’s back with the tree ferns surrounding him inside the glass house. He clicks on the shutter button, keeping his first memory in Scotland.
Soon afterwards, they grab late lunch at a little restaurant somewhere off the main street, enjoying the scent of fresh cilantro in the air and the taste of vietnamese banh mi. Once their stomachs are filled, they leave West End and make their way to George Square to pay homage to other Scottish greats, monumental statues and buildings situated around them.
The walking and running off from one place to another keep their conversations to a minimum. The city of Glasgow does the talking for the two, entertaining them with its Victorian buildings and wealth of Scottish art and culture.
“This day was pretty historic,” Kyungsoo says.
By the time they finish visiting the Glasgow Cathedral and walk along the Necropolis, the sun begins to set as they read the names carved on tombs and graves when they pass them.
“I bet we haven’t even seen half of the history created here,” Jongin comments.
He wasn’t wrong. It somehow frustrates Kyungsoo, how one can never really know everything about the history of a person or a place, no matter how much historians or theorists try to explain and prove the past. Perhaps people will only ever hear the history others constantly change.
Sometimes, Kyungsoo wishes he could erase his own history, to tear off the first few chapters of the book he was leading and wipe the slate clean, become a whole different person.
“Have you ever thought about changing your own history?” Kyungsoo suddenly asks.
Jongin has his hands in the pockets of his coat when he sneaks a glance at him, walking continuously down the hill. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he answers nonchalantly, staring down at their shoes as they take slower steps. “I just… I just think life would be better if some of the things that happened in my life didn’t happen at all.”
“Wouldn’t that be much more worse? Wouldn’t it be difficult for you? Throwing away parts of your history would be like taking away parts of yourself.”
“Your history must be really great, then,” Kyungsoo retorts.
“You don’t have to make this a competition, Kyungsoo,” Jongin tells him. “Just because we’ve been through different histories, it doesn’t mean someone’s past is better than the other.”
“So are you saying you’ve never even thought about it? You’ve never thought about taking past events in your life-especially the bad ones-and wished there was something you could have done to change them?”
Jongin doesn’t respond right away.
They let a few minutes of silence settle between them. Kyungsoo wonders if he’s struck another chord in Jongin and if he was angry about it. Instead, he answers him.
“Sometimes,” Jongin answers. “I wouldn’t exactly say I would change the past, but if I could go back to the most important days of my life, I’d make sure to relive them all, maybe feel some things twice. I would understand as much as I can about why sometimes things become beyond our control, then make the other days count before it ends. Before the good turns into the bad.”
Kyungsoo watches Jongin’s soft smile as it slowly detaches from his face, a hint of his history still hidden in his eyes.
It’s fascinating how Kyungsoo will never know for sure, that despite anything that Jongin says, there will still be things he may never know about him: what Jongin’s first word was. What Jongin felt when he learned how to fly his first plane. What Jongin’s first kiss tasted like.
It shouldn’t really bother Kyungsoo, but there is so much history in Jongin waiting to be discovered.
“Tell me your important days, Jongin,” Kyungsoo says. “The good and the bad.”
Jongin stays quiet for another moment. He shares Kyungsoo a deep and thoughtful look, before he enumerates.
“Well, there’s the day I was born. There’s the day I graduated from pilot training three years ago. I’ve been flying international flights since then. There’s also that day when Lily-my niece-turned eight and her nose bled for the first time. I’ve never seen anyone so brave.”
Jongin was looking at him like how he’d looked at him at Tokyo in front of Hachiko’s statue, one that was full of longing and remembrance.
Kyungsoo offers a smile, but it only falters the moment Jongin opens his mouth to speak once again.
“Then there was this girl I met five years ago.” Jongin tells him. “She was quiet, but her eyes spoke to me with a million words. She didn’t smile often, but her laugh was like christmas lights dancing all around. She was contagious. Being with her was thrilling, she knew how to take my breath away with the things she did. I remember I kept telling myself that someday I was going to marry her. On the first day of one beautiful April morning, that’s exactly what I did.”
It catches Kyungsoo in surprise. He doesn’t register the words right away, not until Jongin combs his soft brown locks with his hand, the piece of silver around his ring finger in sight. He wonders how he never noticed. Now he can’t stop looking at it.
He has questions. There were quite a lot of them to ask, but he can only think of telling him one thing in this moment.
“I don’t think any of those days sounded bad,” Kyungsoo finally says.
“They weren’t,” Jongin agrees with eyes glistening, “Except for the rest of the days that followed when she left.”
They stop in front of a random monument to take in the dark surroundings. The sun had finished setting then, the wind blowing colder than before.
Jongin says it so well, that when Kyungsoo looks at him an impassive grin shows up on his face, looking back at him as if the words he’d just said no longer had a hold on him, like it had been just another chapter of his own book.
“I think that’s enough history for today,” Jongin says.
Before Kyungsoo can say anything else, Jongin walks ahead of him to leave the cemetery, and he is left alone with thoughts about grief and what losing someone feels like.
Their second day is just as busy as their first.
They leave the hotel after nine and join a tour to the Glasgow School of Art to see the new building while the old is in restoration from a fire that took place two years ago. The tour includes a fifteen minute talk about how the buildings were constructed and a rushed exhibition of furniture.
Kyungsoo thinks it’s interesting, and it was more than enough information to distract him from the past he learned from yesterday.
Jongin was the same person he was the last few times they’d met. Once in a while, he would talk to Kyungsoo casually about random stuff, his history forgotten, buried like the bodies in Necropolis.
Kyungsoo likes to think they were similar-like onions with layers. He wonders if he would be able to peel off more of Jongin’s layers. Was this the same feeling he had when he asked him about his own past? Were they both waiting to peel off layers they didn’t want to show?
After the tour, they take the closest train to Buchanan Street, strolling past high end shops and catching afternoon tea at the Willow Tea Rooms. Their White Dining Room is full of elegant high chairs and bright interior, with different homemade delicacies served on a 3-tiered stand, tea or coffee on the side.
They take turns in tasting pastries: Jongin grabs the buttered shortbread while Kyungsoo places a scone on his plate, both satisfied with their choices.
Kyungsoo scoops strawberry jam from a container with his knife, smearing it on his half-bitten scone when Jongin grows curious and asks, “Can I try some?”
He pauses, glancing at Jongin from under his lashes and placing the knife on his plate before he hands the scone from across the table and around the tier.
“Here.” Kyungsoo answers.
Some of the jam spills on one of his fingers, drooping from the scone. It’s sticky, staining Kyungsoo’s hand with strawberry red. He waits for Jongin to take the pastry.
Instead, Jongin holds his forearm, pulling him just as he leans forward and takes the scone to his mouth, the edges of his lips closing in on the tips of his fingers and painting his own lips with jam.
Kyungsoo doesn’t know what to do. He can’t see much from how the tier blocks his vision, but finds a space between the second and third level of the tier and catches Jongin staring back at him, biting slowly on the bread.
He pulls back in an instant, his insides turning rigid in panic. He looks at his hand to see what’s left of the scone, which isn’t much.
When Kyungsoo looks at Jongin, there’s a tight-lipped smile on his face, as if he was controlling himself not to burst out into fits of laughter.
Kyungsoo breaks first, laughing uncontrollably as he stares at the sad looking piece of bread. Jongin’s laugh follows like the second voice to a song, harmonizing with his own wave of chuckles. It feels like the ice had finally been broken.
In this short moment, history becomes irrelevant.
The night starts early with champagne from the tea room. Their schedule is empty for the rest of the day, but soon they agree to return to the West End when Jongin mentions a street where thrift shops and tiny pubs are located.
It’s a little past five in the afternoon once they set foot on Ashton Lane. They quickly find a bar and step inside, each ordering a pitcher of beer and swallowing them down before they stumble into another pub to start again. It turns into a cycle of bar hopping, with conversations between them growing louder and funnier.
By the time they make it to their seventh bar, they learn more and more things about each other, such as Jongin once wanting to be a dance instructor like his mom. At their eighth bar, Kyungsoo shares that his favorite color is gray, like the color of clouds when it starts to rain, or the color of stainless steel. Jongin asks him why he’s so specific, but earns a laugh for an answer.
They end up in the middle of the street somehow, lying with their backs against the cobblestone ground and staring up at fairy lights hanging above them.
They aren’t drunk, but their minds are a bit fuzzy. There’s not much people from the time they were there, but even if there were, they didn’t seem to pay attention.
If there is one thing that Kyungsoo likes about the silence that appears tonight, it’s one that is always comfortable. It just so happens that the quiet he finds pleasant and not deafening had always been with Jongin. He’s still trying to figure out why that is.
“So, I was thinking,” Jongin suddenly speaks, “That maybe it’s time to leave Scotland for now.”
“How soon?” Kyungsoo asks lazily, almost similar to a slur.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Jongin answers casually.
Kyungsoo continues to gaze up at the fairy lights, his blissed out face changing into something of mild confusion.
“Oh,” Kyungsoo says. “This is a bit surprising, considering how we’ve only been here for two days. I don’t want to sound so eager, but I thought we’d have more time to explore the city. Shouldn’t we be booking our flight by now? Are you even flying a plane? We just had more than two gallons of alcohol, for crying out loud.”
Jongin has the decency to laugh at his blabbering before he replies, “Take it easy. I wasn’t done talking. There’s actually something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
He turns his head to lock eyes with Jongin’s bright ones.
“If I promised you the world right now, even just portions of it, would you come with me to see it?”
Kyungsoo thinks his head is spinning. “What?”
“Is that weird?” Jongin asks. “Should I have phrased it better?”
“No, I understand, but-”
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin says, his name drawling out from his mouth so comfortably. “If there is one place you could go back to, what’s the first thing that comes into your head?”
Strangely, Kyungsoo thinks of taxi cabs and the french pocketbook that he’d never taken out of his bag, with Jongin’s yellow umbrella. He thinks of the eiffel tower, where all of this began.
“Paris,” he answers. “I want to go back to Paris.”
Jongin smiles.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Kyungsoo isn’t sure if what he heard is right.
“What do you mean?” He asks.
“Let’s just say that I’ve got train tickets that lead to two destinations. We can take a side trip to Amsterdam for a bit to rest, then hop into another train to Paris. Paris is always a good idea, don’t you think?” Jongin says this so easily, like going out of his way to book tickets in advance for him and a stranger he wasn’t even sure would make it is as easy as buying tickets to a movie.
Kyungsoo can’t think straight with his head throbbing and his heart beating loud in his ears. It just doesn’t make sense to him, and the only thing he could do is ask a straightforward, “Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know,” Jongin answers truthfully. “I just know that from the moment I met you, I knew I needed to do something to help you.”
“But why?” Kyungsoo asks again, “I haven’t done anything for you.”
Jongin pauses for a moment.
“Maybe I didn’t want to be too late, before someone walked away from me again.”
Kyungsoo had never-not even once-thought to be thankful for his life, or anything else for that matter. Maybe he should be, because if they hadn’t come to Glasgow, if they hadn’t watched the sunrise at Jeju, if he hadn’t stepped inside Jongin’s taxi cab in Paris, he wonders what kind of history would take place.
(3/4)
✈︎
The doors of the train open with impatient passengers surging forward and moving in a rush to each of their destinations. Kyungsoo steps down just as the door closes and the train leaves, making his own way out of the station and taking the proper exit.
Kyungsoo had become quite better at planning and a little more equipped with research. A backpack had sufficed to carry everything he needed for another overnight stay, and soon enough he found himself starting his day in the streets of Yokohama, then travelling next to Shibuya in the afternoon.
The weather was perfect outside, and Kyungsoo can already see Hachiko standing meters away as he heads toward it. It took three days for him to prepare this trip, and now he stands in front of the statue, smiling sadly as he remembers the film that led him to this moment, with memories of Hachiko still playing like a reel in his head-scenes of the Akita standing in front of the train station every day, waiting for his owner to come back.
A wretched feeling resonates in Kyungsoo-the kind of feeling that brings questions to mind as to why things happened the way they did and why things didn’t happen the way they wanted it to. Hachiko waited nine years for an answer, but Kyungsoo had stopped searching for his own ever since, thinking maybe there was no other way to explain things other than this phenomenon called life and the many unprecedented events that come along with it.
One of them is a voice that suddenly asks, “Have you ever waited for something that you know might never happen again?”
Kyungsoo turns to Jongin standing a few feet behind him, hands fitted inside the pockets of his coat and looking over Hachiko’s statue with indecipherable eyes. An encounter with Jongin in a foreign place no longer surprises him, but it still leaves him wondering exactly why they were bound to meet as if their gravity were pulling them towards each other.
The last time he’d seen the pilot was a week ago in Seogwipo. After the sunrise, Jongin took him back to the campsite then left for his flight duty, and since then he couldn’t deny that he didn’t think about him and their encounters and how one way or another, they’d created even the littlest impact in his life.
“Have you?” is what Kyungsoo asks. Thinking before speaking wasn’t his strongest feat-he realizes this just as Jongin’s face changes. Maybe this isn’t about the nine years of Hachiko’s life anymore, and Kyungsoo wishes he hadn’t returned the question at all.
Before he could even apologize, Jongin only offers a small wilted smile.
“Yes,” Jongin says quietly, “Yes, I have.”
Kyungsoo and Jongin dine inside an intimate ramen shop nearby, its walls decorated in light wooden panels and cursive katana writings. Three tables are occupied with locals chatting away in lively conversations while a waiter serves their ramen bowls and a plate of aji tamago. The waiter takes a bow and walks away from them, and the silence becomes palpable between them.
He watches Jongin move first-lifting his chopsticks to take an egg off the plate and bringing it between his teeth, then swallowing before he speaks.
“You seem to travel a lot these days.” Jongin tells him.
Kyungsoo follows suit and slices his own soft boiled egg with a spoon, scooping half of it into his mouth then answering back.
“Just trying to get to as many cities as possible.” Kyungsoo answers nonchalantly.
Jongin quietly observes the way Kyungsoo takes another spoonful of the egg and washes it down with a bottle of sapporo beer. He smiles.
“And how many cities have you been to so far?” Jongin asks.
“Not a lot,” He answers truthfully. “Maybe not enough.”
“You say that as if you’re planning to travel the world.”
Kyungsoo looks up at Jongin with unabashed eyes.
“Maybe I am.”
“Yeah?” Jongin asks, taking another bite before speaking, “Anyone can say that, but at what cost?”
“At any cost.”
Jongin pauses. He tilts his head to the side, looking into his eyes with intrigue.
“You can’t be serious,” Jongin says. “I already knew you traveled on a whim when I first met you, but it’s not as grand as you think when you don’t know where you’re going.”
“I honestly can’t tell if you’re being serious when you make a living out of it,” Kyungsoo counters, “You might not be able to understand, but it’s just something I need to do.”
“Well, I am serious.”
“Then so am I.”
They make room for another period of silence. The beer leaves a bitter taste on Kyungsoo’s tongue when he takes a long sip, placing the bottle down just as Jongin’s voice invades the quiet.
“You’re right. I guess I don’t understand.”
Kyungsoo shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal.”
“I can try to understand,” Jongin tells him. “It’d be interesting to know what it would feel like to live in your shoes.”
“I don’t think you’d want that.” He dismisses.
“Why not?” Jongin asks, “It’s not a big deal, just like you said.”
“That’s precisely why we shouldn’t talk about it.”
Jongin stares, looking at him as if he knows him.
“That’s not how I see things. The way I see it, there’s a reason why you’re running off to places as far as Paris.”
Kyungsoo stops eating and places his chopsticks down on the table, focusing on Jongin and the way he’s looking at him searching for answers he didn’t want him to find. Kyungsoo was tired and hungry, and sane enough to snap at Jongin.
“Perhaps there is. But, tell me, Captain,” Kyungsoo strains the word, then speaks somewhat irritably, “What would you have done if your dead parents kept a shitload of money under your name? Would you have quit your job and moved to a bigger city? Would you have flown across the country the same way I did?”
The weight of Kyungsoo’s words catches Jongin off guard, refraining him from saying anything else.
The abrupt silence makes Kyungsoo uncomfortable. He takes a deep breath and brushes his fingers through his hair in mild frustration, then he distracts himself by taking his chopsticks once again and mixing the noodles on his ramen. Jongin leaves his food untouched.
“Was it a plane crash?” He asks carefully.
Kyungsoo continues to stir the noodles on his bowl, avoiding his eyes.
“Car accident.”
“I see.”
Kyungsoo knows he’s said too much, at least more than what he’s shared with anyone else, let alone Baekhyun. He didn’t want to see the pity in people’s eyes, because that’s not what he needs.
“What were they like?” Jongin asks inquisitively.
“I wouldn’t know,” Kyungsoo tells him, “I didn’t know them.”
When Kyungsoo dares to look up and into Jongin’s eyes, sympathy is the last thing he sees. The pilot doesn’t look away from him, eyes staying completely trained on his as if they were staring deep into pieces of him he intended to keep hidden.
But for the first time in his life, Kyungsoo doesn’t stop talking.
“I lived in a small house at Ilsan with Miyoung, my foster mother, and her son, Sungsoo. Things were peaceful back then. She never spoke to me about my real parents, and I never brought it up. Things seemed easier that way.”
Jongin listens intently to Kyungsoo just as he continues speaking.
“I found out about their death the same time Miyoung had. She cried nonstop through the other end of the line when I saw her in the kitchen. I didn’t know who she was speaking to, but it must have been someone important. It didn’t matter to me then, because I realized that not only did I have to grieve for my father and my mother, but she would also have to grieve for her brother and someone that had been a part of her family.”
“It was three days later when she told me about the money. It turned out they had been sending money every year to a bank account under my name. They’ve been putting my name on most of their savings stated in my father’s will. Could you imagine that all this time I was left to think that someone else had paid for my school tuition and paid for the food on my plate? Miyoung had kept all those secrets from me, but I couldn’t be angry at her. She was lovely, treated me kindly, and it was useless to talk about it at this point. But as soon as I found out, I did the only thing I thought I could do-I left.”
“I thought about my parents, and whether or not I should blame them for the lie I’ve been trapped inside. I knew nothing about them, but I always thought it was enough for me to know that they threw me away, as if I was some piece of trash they just couldn’t deal with. Not only that, they even tried to make up for it with gold.”
A single tear falls to his cheek, and when Kyungsoo suddenly realizes this with Jongin watching him, he quickly uses the back of his hand to wipe it away and break contact with the other’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo laughs bitterly, accompanied with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, “It’s pretty pathetic, isn’t it? How surviving in this world and depending on their money is the only thing that will remind me of them? It’s not like they gave me anything else.”
Jongin’s stare is unreadable at this point.
“Do you want me to tell you what I think?”
Kyungsoo sniffs, glancing quickly at him as he wrinkles his nose. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” Jongin leans forward across the table, seeking Kyungsoo’s eyes to catch his attention. “I think…that you’re not giving you and your parents enough credit.”
Kyungsoo crosses his arms, regarding him with a cautious look.
“Your parents might not have been the best, in fact, they might not have been anything to you at all, but maybe they’ve given you something much more valuable than you realize.”
Kyungsoo laughs haughtily, less than convinced. “Which is?”
He tries to hide the shock that strikes through him when Jongin suddenly reaches for his hand, bringing it to his.
“Life,” Jongin says simply, “So, rather than surviving, wouldn’t you say that you’re living?”
Their ramen bowls have turned forgotten and cold, but the warmth in Jongin’s hand remains.
They pass the time and stand before the Scramble Crossing. Every few minutes when the lights turn green, the intersection is filled with noises of pedestrians swarming every corner while buildings burst with neon advertisements. Kyungsoo continues to watch locals weave and dodge through the busy road, thinking he would have to take the train back to Yokohoma again.
“Are you heading that way?” Jongin asks, pointing across the intersection and to the train station where Hachiko stays.
“Yeah.” Kyungsoo faces him. “I should probably leave now before it closes.”
He answers with a nod. “Have you thought about where you would be off to next?”
Kyungsoo tugs on both of his backpack straps, staring at the neon lights above them. “Not yet, but I guess that’s the plan. Somewhere far? New? Who knows where I’ll be going?”
Strangely enough, Kyungsoo feels lighter somehow, as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulder. The lights are blinding but pleasant, and Jongin is looking at him with a smile that’s familiar and pure.
“Good,” Jongin tells him. “That means I can look forward to doing this again next time.”
He grins before bidding Jongin goodbye with a playful bow and a laugh escaping the pilot. As soon as they separate and Kyungsoo crosses the intersection, a tinge feeling of excitement rushes through him, already thinking about the next time he and the pilot would cross paths.
S E O U L , S O U T H K O R E A
✈︎
The next time Baekhyun visits Kyungsoo to gaze at stars outside his balcony, Kyungsoo doesn’t expect him to bring up a topic such as the pilot’s whereabouts.
“So, Jongin stopped by the other day to drop off some stuff I lent to him,” Baekhyun tells him.
“Oh?” Kyungsoo asks, glancing casually at the other while he drinks from his beer bottle.
“Uh-huh,” Baekhyun quips. “He mentioned that you guys met and hung out a week ago at Tokyo.”
“It was just one dinner,” Kyungsoo confirms, then quickly notices his neighbour’s probing eyes before asking, “Why are you looking at me like that? You know that wasn’t the first time that I bumped into him.”
Baekhyun lets out a bitter laugh before mocking him. “Yeah, I should know, except you forgot to mention that it was his taxi you took at Paris!”
It takes a while before Kyungsoo responds, stilling at the memory of their first encounter.
“He told you that?”
“Only because you didn’t,” Baekhyun counters.
“But I didn’t know who he was at that time,” Kyungsoo reasons out. “I barely even recognised his face the second time I met him at Jeju.”
“Were you even planning on saying anything as soon as you realized it was him?”
“Why would I?” Kyungsoo asks, “I didn’t think it would matter.”
Baekhyun shakes his head. “Not to you, it didn’t. But, apparently, it matters to other people.”
Kyungsoo wants to ask him what he means by that, but it doesn’t take long before Baekhyun pulls something out from his button-up shirt-a rectangular piece of paper tucked unruly on his breast pocket. He flattens the paper in his hands before handing it to Kyungsoo and smiling apologetically at how he’d almost ruined it.
“It was pretty late when he came to my unit. I’m guessing he would have given it directly to you if he had more time, but he had a flight to catch. That boy never stays in the same place.”
Kyungsoo takes unsure glances between Baekhyun and the paper he is holding out to him and wonders if he was mistaken for someone else, taking it only when the other returns an expectant gaze and a shrug.
He looks at the postcard in his hands. The photo catches his eye in an instant, drawing him in with a grid of beautiful and unfamiliar landscapes. In the middle of the photo grid is a ribbon with a name printed in bold and cursive six letters.
“Glasgow, huh?” Baekhyun asks, “Why would he give you a postcard from Glasgow? You’ve never even been there before.”
At the back of the postcard is a list of places scribbled in bullet points. Below them are a date and time written as flight details along with a message-three words, the same words he’d used the first time they’d met:
Don’t be late.
“You’re right,” Kyungsoo agrees. “But I think that’s why he gave it to me.”
Kyungsoo meets Baekhyun’s questionable look and concludes, “This is where he’s leading me.”
His eyes still linger on the card when Baekhyun peeks next to him, reading the same message.
“Why would he do that?” Baekhyun asks, “It doesn’t really make sense that he would do something like this.”
Kyungsoo wants to agree with Baekhyun, but he stays tight lipped with thoughts floating high like the stars in the quiet night.
“Well, are you going?”
Kyungsoo contemplates, looking at the postcard one more time before shooting it inside the back pocket of his jeans. “I don’t see why not,” Kyungsoo says. “I don’t have anything to lose, don’t I?”
“So, that’s it? You’re telling me that you’re going to Glasgow and taking Jongin’s flight just because he asked you to?” Baekhyun asks, eyes wide in surprise and disbelief. “Wow, this wasn’t what I expected at all.”
He downs his bottle before returning a question, “What did you expect then? I’m always alone anyway, you said so yourself.”
“I know what I said, but that doesn’t mean it’s not surprising to see how quickly you’ve warmed up to Jongin, just as much as he did to you.”
Baekhyun isn’t the only one that has noticed the sudden change. Even Kyungsoo knows how different he’s become and how his mindset about the world had no longer been limited to his own. As soon as Kyungsoo opened up to Jongin in Tokyo about his life, he realized he had already given him the power to break down his walls, little by little.
“Look,” Baekhyun starts, “It’s great that you and Jongin share more things than just taxi cabs. His intentions may be good, but… Maybe you shouldn’t expect anything else.”
Kyungsoo turns to face Baekhyun as concern marred the latter’s face. Kyungsoo knows Baekhyun is thinking of something malicious, but he quickly dismisses the idea.
“Okay, whatever it is that you’re thinking of right now, please stop because it’s not what you think.”
“I can’t help it,” Baekhyun reasons out, “You may not think anything about it now, but when something does happen, it will become all that you will think about. I just don’t want you to feel disappointed in the end.”
“Baekhyun,” he calls out, “I don’t.. I don’t see him in the way that you think I do, so what on earth could I possibly be disappointed about?”
Baekhyun pauses, hesitant at first.
“Jongin...he’s been through stuff.”
“So have I,” Kyungsoo defends. “What does that have to do with Glasgow?”
“Nothing,” Baekhyun mutters before shaking his head. “You know what? I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not even my business, but you and Jongin are my friends. I’ve never seen him this excited in a while, so I guess I should just thank you for that. I’ve known Jongin for a very long time, and the things that happened to him in the past really broke him.”
They sit in silence. Despite Kyungsoo’s spontaneous escapades with Jongin, he realizes that the pilot knows things about him that most people don’t know about when in return he knows so little about him.
He thinks about what Baekhyun said, and it makes him all the more curious about Jongin.
“And I’m getting to know him,” Kyungsoo tells Baekhyun. “Maybe this is a good thing for both of us.”
Baekhyun smiles and takes his hand in comfort.
“Can I ask you for a favor?” Baekhyun asks. “Just don’t get hurt, okay?”
G L A S G O W , S C O T L A N D
✈︎
When Jongin is not a pilot, he happens to be a prepared traveler.
Kyungsoo pushes the trolley cart forward as its wheels turn underneath, in a hurry as he keeps in mind that he has to find him. When Kyungsoo exits the baggage claiming area, he catches him already standing by the arrival gate-face calm with a posture that poses an effortless confidence.
Despite the amount of people inside the airport, Jongin’s eyes quickly meet his own, a mix of surprise and anticipation suddenly playing in his smile and tugging his lips upward.
Whether it was because Kyungsoo was in a different country or because of the person standing a few steps away from him in an unfamiliar place, the excitement makes his heart race anyway.
“I see you got the postcard,” Jongin says when Kyungsoo makes it in front of him, watching him take his luggage out of the cart and pull it right next to him.
“I sure did,” he agrees, returning a small and shy smile while he continues to joke sarcastically. “I should warn you though, I’m not very good at spontaneity.”
The remark makes Jongin laugh a bit, his eyes shortly curving into thin crescent lines just like how he remembered them.
“I’m happy you came anyway,” Jongin answers. “There are a few places I thought we could visit that you might enjoy. We should be able to fit them all in one day to make the most out of the city.”
“I’ve got time,” Kyungsoo tells him. “I haven’t booked a return flight yet, so it doesn’t matter. I wanted to be sure I wouldn’t miss seeing what this side of the world has to offer.”
Jongin’s eyes shortly focus on something behind him, but says nothing about it. Instead, he reveals an even brighter smile.
“Well, I’m sure the world will definitely surprise you.”
Kyungsoo notices the sunrays that peek from the glass window above them, trying to compete with the light in Jongin’s smile. The lights casts a glow on his face that only does more to illuminate him, creating another wondrous kind of sunshine. He thinks for a moment that maybe it already has.
As they stand side by side and prepare to leave the airport, Jongin takes one more look at the yellow umbrella sticking out from Kyungsoo’s backpack, true to his promise.
“You can keep the umbrella, by the way,” Jongin tells Kyungsoo. “Just make sure you won’t poke someone with that thing on your back.”
On their first day in Glasgow, Kyungsoo learns that in order to define the future, you can never run away from the past.
They take a shuttle bus to the city centre and check in at a tiny hostel Jongin had booked before catching the subway that leads to the Kelvingrove Museum. As soon as they reach their destination, the day turns as busy as the locals and tourists swiftly making their way inside the momentous building to take a glimpse of the numerous art designed by the likes of Scottish colourists.
From the Kelvingrove Museum, they walk up to the West End and visit the Botanic Gardens, where tulips color the ground with the most vivid hues the same way exotic tropical plants catch their attention, showered with natural sunlight inside the Kibble Palace.
Kyungsoo wasn’t one to bring a camera and take much photos, and thinks it’s more than enough to see things with the naked eye. He watches Jongin lift his camera up to bring it to the same level as his face, quickly snapping a photo of wildflowers rooted on a garden patch.
“Beauty comes in unexpected places,” Jongin tells him. “It’s nice to be prepared and keep photographs to preserve them. Don’t we keep our memories the same way? We make sure they don’t disappear or fade, otherwise we easily forget them. Who knows when we would be able to see something as beautiful as this again?”
At one point, Kyungsoo pulls his phone out from his pocket while Jongin continues to take photos. He opens the camera app, framing Jongin’s back with the tree ferns surrounding him inside the glass house. He clicks on the shutter button, keeping his first memory in Scotland.
Soon afterwards, they grab late lunch at a little restaurant somewhere off the main street, enjoying the scent of fresh cilantro in the air and the taste of vietnamese banh mi. Once their stomachs are filled, they leave West End and make their way to George Square to pay homage to other Scottish greats, monumental statues and buildings situated around them.
The walking and running off from one place to another keep their conversations to a minimum. The city of Glasgow does the talking for the two, entertaining them with its Victorian buildings and wealth of Scottish art and culture.
“This day was pretty historic,” Kyungsoo says.
By the time they finish visiting the Glasgow Cathedral and walk along the Necropolis, the sun begins to set as they read the names carved on tombs and graves when they pass them.
“I bet we haven’t even seen half of the history created here,” Jongin comments.
He wasn’t wrong. It somehow frustrates Kyungsoo, how one can never really know everything about the history of a person or a place, no matter how much historians or theorists try to explain and prove the past. Perhaps people will only ever hear the history others constantly change.
Sometimes, Kyungsoo wishes he could erase his own history, to tear off the first few chapters of the book he was leading and wipe the slate clean, become a whole different person.
“Have you ever thought about changing your own history?” Kyungsoo suddenly asks.
Jongin has his hands in the pockets of his coat when he sneaks a glance at him, walking continuously down the hill. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he answers nonchalantly, staring down at their shoes as they take slower steps. “I just… I just think life would be better if some of the things that happened in my life didn’t happen at all.”
“Wouldn’t that be much more worse? Wouldn’t it be difficult for you? Throwing away parts of your history would be like taking away parts of yourself.”
“Your history must be really great, then,” Kyungsoo retorts.
“You don’t have to make this a competition, Kyungsoo,” Jongin tells him. “Just because we’ve been through different histories, it doesn’t mean someone’s past is better than the other.”
“So are you saying you’ve never even thought about it? You’ve never thought about taking past events in your life-especially the bad ones-and wished there was something you could have done to change them?”
Jongin doesn’t respond right away.
They let a few minutes of silence settle between them. Kyungsoo wonders if he’s struck another chord in Jongin and if he was angry about it. Instead, he answers him.
“Sometimes,” Jongin answers. “I wouldn’t exactly say I would change the past, but if I could go back to the most important days of my life, I’d make sure to relive them all, maybe feel some things twice. I would understand as much as I can about why sometimes things become beyond our control, then make the other days count before it ends. Before the good turns into the bad.”
Kyungsoo watches Jongin’s soft smile as it slowly detaches from his face, a hint of his history still hidden in his eyes.
It’s fascinating how Kyungsoo will never know for sure, that despite anything that Jongin says, there will still be things he may never know about him: what Jongin’s first word was. What Jongin felt when he learned how to fly his first plane. What Jongin’s first kiss tasted like.
It shouldn’t really bother Kyungsoo, but there is so much history in Jongin waiting to be discovered.
“Tell me your important days, Jongin,” Kyungsoo says. “The good and the bad.”
Jongin stays quiet for another moment. He shares Kyungsoo a deep and thoughtful look, before he enumerates.
“Well, there’s the day I was born. There’s the day I graduated from pilot training three years ago. I’ve been flying international flights since then. There’s also that day when Lily-my niece-turned eight and her nose bled for the first time. I’ve never seen anyone so brave.”
Jongin was looking at him like how he’d looked at him at Tokyo in front of Hachiko’s statue, one that was full of longing and remembrance.
Kyungsoo offers a smile, but it only falters the moment Jongin opens his mouth to speak once again.
“Then there was this girl I met five years ago.” Jongin tells him. “She was quiet, but her eyes spoke to me with a million words. She didn’t smile often, but her laugh was like christmas lights dancing all around. She was contagious. Being with her was thrilling, she knew how to take my breath away with the things she did. I remember I kept telling myself that someday I was going to marry her. On the first day of one beautiful April morning, that’s exactly what I did.”
It catches Kyungsoo in surprise. He doesn’t register the words right away, not until Jongin combs his soft brown locks with his hand, the piece of silver around his ring finger in sight. He wonders how he never noticed. Now he can’t stop looking at it.
He has questions. There were quite a lot of them to ask, but he can only think of telling him one thing in this moment.
“I don’t think any of those days sounded bad,” Kyungsoo finally says.
“They weren’t,” Jongin agrees with eyes glistening, “Except for the rest of the days that followed when she left.”
They stop in front of a random monument to take in the dark surroundings. The sun had finished setting then, the wind blowing colder than before.
Jongin says it so well, that when Kyungsoo looks at him an impassive grin shows up on his face, looking back at him as if the words he’d just said no longer had a hold on him, like it had been just another chapter of his own book.
“I think that’s enough history for today,” Jongin says.
Before Kyungsoo can say anything else, Jongin walks ahead of him to leave the cemetery, and he is left alone with thoughts about grief and what losing someone feels like.
Their second day is just as busy as their first.
They leave the hotel after nine and join a tour to the Glasgow School of Art to see the new building while the old is in restoration from a fire that took place two years ago. The tour includes a fifteen minute talk about how the buildings were constructed and a rushed exhibition of furniture.
Kyungsoo thinks it’s interesting, and it was more than enough information to distract him from the past he learned from yesterday.
Jongin was the same person he was the last few times they’d met. Once in a while, he would talk to Kyungsoo casually about random stuff, his history forgotten, buried like the bodies in Necropolis.
Kyungsoo likes to think they were similar-like onions with layers. He wonders if he would be able to peel off more of Jongin’s layers. Was this the same feeling he had when he asked him about his own past? Were they both waiting to peel off layers they didn’t want to show?
After the tour, they take the closest train to Buchanan Street, strolling past high end shops and catching afternoon tea at the Willow Tea Rooms. Their White Dining Room is full of elegant high chairs and bright interior, with different homemade delicacies served on a 3-tiered stand, tea or coffee on the side.
They take turns in tasting pastries: Jongin grabs the buttered shortbread while Kyungsoo places a scone on his plate, both satisfied with their choices.
Kyungsoo scoops strawberry jam from a container with his knife, smearing it on his half-bitten scone when Jongin grows curious and asks, “Can I try some?”
He pauses, glancing at Jongin from under his lashes and placing the knife on his plate before he hands the scone from across the table and around the tier.
“Here.” Kyungsoo answers.
Some of the jam spills on one of his fingers, drooping from the scone. It’s sticky, staining Kyungsoo’s hand with strawberry red. He waits for Jongin to take the pastry.
Instead, Jongin holds his forearm, pulling him just as he leans forward and takes the scone to his mouth, the edges of his lips closing in on the tips of his fingers and painting his own lips with jam.
Kyungsoo doesn’t know what to do. He can’t see much from how the tier blocks his vision, but finds a space between the second and third level of the tier and catches Jongin staring back at him, biting slowly on the bread.
He pulls back in an instant, his insides turning rigid in panic. He looks at his hand to see what’s left of the scone, which isn’t much.
When Kyungsoo looks at Jongin, there’s a tight-lipped smile on his face, as if he was controlling himself not to burst out into fits of laughter.
Kyungsoo breaks first, laughing uncontrollably as he stares at the sad looking piece of bread. Jongin’s laugh follows like the second voice to a song, harmonizing with his own wave of chuckles. It feels like the ice had finally been broken.
In this short moment, history becomes irrelevant.
The night starts early with champagne from the tea room. Their schedule is empty for the rest of the day, but soon they agree to return to the West End when Jongin mentions a street where thrift shops and tiny pubs are located.
It’s a little past five in the afternoon once they set foot on Ashton Lane. They quickly find a bar and step inside, each ordering a pitcher of beer and swallowing them down before they stumble into another pub to start again. It turns into a cycle of bar hopping, with conversations between them growing louder and funnier.
By the time they make it to their seventh bar, they learn more and more things about each other, such as Jongin once wanting to be a dance instructor like his mom. At their eighth bar, Kyungsoo shares that his favorite color is gray, like the color of clouds when it starts to rain, or the color of stainless steel. Jongin asks him why he’s so specific, but earns a laugh for an answer.
They end up in the middle of the street somehow, lying with their backs against the cobblestone ground and staring up at fairy lights hanging above them.
They aren’t drunk, but their minds are a bit fuzzy. There’s not much people from the time they were there, but even if there were, they didn’t seem to pay attention.
If there is one thing that Kyungsoo likes about the silence that appears tonight, it’s one that is always comfortable. It just so happens that the quiet he finds pleasant and not deafening had always been with Jongin. He’s still trying to figure out why that is.
“So, I was thinking,” Jongin suddenly speaks, “That maybe it’s time to leave Scotland for now.”
“How soon?” Kyungsoo asks lazily, almost similar to a slur.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Jongin answers casually.
Kyungsoo continues to gaze up at the fairy lights, his blissed out face changing into something of mild confusion.
“Oh,” Kyungsoo says. “This is a bit surprising, considering how we’ve only been here for two days. I don’t want to sound so eager, but I thought we’d have more time to explore the city. Shouldn’t we be booking our flight by now? Are you even flying a plane? We just had more than two gallons of alcohol, for crying out loud.”
Jongin has the decency to laugh at his blabbering before he replies, “Take it easy. I wasn’t done talking. There’s actually something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
He turns his head to lock eyes with Jongin’s bright ones.
“If I promised you the world right now, even just portions of it, would you come with me to see it?”
Kyungsoo thinks his head is spinning. “What?”
“Is that weird?” Jongin asks. “Should I have phrased it better?”
“No, I understand, but-”
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin says, his name drawling out from his mouth so comfortably. “If there is one place you could go back to, what’s the first thing that comes into your head?”
Strangely, Kyungsoo thinks of taxi cabs and the french pocketbook that he’d never taken out of his bag, with Jongin’s yellow umbrella. He thinks of the eiffel tower, where all of this began.
“Paris,” he answers. “I want to go back to Paris.”
Jongin smiles.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Kyungsoo isn’t sure if what he heard is right.
“What do you mean?” He asks.
“Let’s just say that I’ve got train tickets that lead to two destinations. We can take a side trip to Amsterdam for a bit to rest, then hop into another train to Paris. Paris is always a good idea, don’t you think?” Jongin says this so easily, like going out of his way to book tickets in advance for him and a stranger he wasn’t even sure would make it is as easy as buying tickets to a movie.
Kyungsoo can’t think straight with his head throbbing and his heart beating loud in his ears. It just doesn’t make sense to him, and the only thing he could do is ask a straightforward, “Why are you doing this?”
“I don’t know,” Jongin answers truthfully. “I just know that from the moment I met you, I knew I needed to do something to help you.”
“But why?” Kyungsoo asks again, “I haven’t done anything for you.”
Jongin pauses for a moment.
“Maybe I didn’t want to be too late, before someone walked away from me again.”
Kyungsoo had never-not even once-thought to be thankful for his life, or anything else for that matter. Maybe he should be, because if they hadn’t come to Glasgow, if they hadn’t watched the sunrise at Jeju, if he hadn’t stepped inside Jongin’s taxi cab in Paris, he wonders what kind of history would take place.
(3/4)