Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At that time, life was so simple.

“I did it, I did it!” Junsu raced home, up the landing and into his family’s two-floored rental. He was waving something—if he was like any other middle school kid, perhaps it would be an aced test or a certificate of achievement. His legs bounded up each step, buoyed by indescribable happiness.

His mother was in her bedroom, fussing with an earring in the mirror. She looked, and a smile turned up on her face.

“Well, my little shining star, you are on your way,” she said, bundling him in her arms and pressing a kiss to his cheek. She was still quite a bit taller than him, and probably could’ve spun him around in her arms, but Junsu wouldn’t like that—he wasn’t a little kid anymore. No, as this slip of paper was a testament, this was the beginning of something new.

He called friends and family, each individually, and the reaction was unanimous. They all seemed… proud, but, no, it was more than that. They were finally satisfied. They talked as though Junsu’s skill was a given, that at any moment he would see the payoff, and now, he’d gotten it. There were the ones he didn’t call. Hyukjae was losing sleep over his audition, which was in a little less than a week; he had all of Junsu’s nerves and then some, because he was a less experienced performer. Junsu’s dad was doubtlessly busy with work, and Junho was at soccer practice. After the school bell they converged for a brief moment, and Junho joked that this was the first time Junsu would be skipping soccer, while Junho was usually the one putting more effort into his arts endeavours than into a sport he hardly enjoyed. It was difficult for him, Junsu knew, and he never wanted to upset his brother.

His finger wavered for a second, and then he dialled the last person that he intended to call. He gazed ahead, at the baby-blue wallpaper that desperately needed a new coat of paint, lounging on an old bean bag chair by the bed.

“Hyung?”

“Yes?”

Junsu grinned. “Guess what…?”

“Oh, I dunno… what?”

“I got it!”

It was as if their sports team had taken home the season title—for Junsu and his best friend, this was their world series, and he couldn’t contain his energy. He jumped up and down on the creaky floorboards, whisper-shouting just so his mother wouldn’t come and tell him to quiet down, ruining their fun. Junsu was absolutely certain that Yunho, on the other end, was also celebrating, but he had to be even more restrained.

“I knew you would,” Yunho said, as they both came back down from the high.

Junsu’s cheeks glowed. He could practically see Yunho’s grin through the receiver. “So… what does that mean?”

“It means we’ll be in an idol group soon,” Yunho said, always quick to answer Junsu’s aimless questions. “You can sing, I can dance. It works well.”

“I can dance, too.” Junsu felt obliged to remind Yunho of this whenever they bantered.

“Uh huh,” Yunho said, still sounding boyish, even as he was gaining height. His voice would probably crack soon. “Well, I need to work on my singing.”

“If you got in, then they saw potential. Not just in dance, in all of it,” Junsu reminded him.

“Mm… thinking about it right now… what if we really landed in the same group? We’d be the stars. We’d hang out like we always do. And… who really cares about the other guys?”

Junsu laughed in surprise. “Whaaat? We couldn’t close ourselves off like that. It’d be a mess.”

Yunho laughed, and Junsu did, too, and the joy was almost too much to bear. It left Junsu with an inexplicable hurt, one he was too young to really understand.

“Life’s gonna be different, huh,” Yunho said, putting into words what Junsu was thinking at that moment.

“Yeah. Depending on what happens, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hang around Hyukjae very often.”

Yunho didn’t say anything.

“...Obviously, I believe in him! He’s talented. He has a great personality, but, well, not just him… all of our friends. We won’t be with them as much.”

“Yes,” Yunho said, a little too quickly. “But this is what we wanted. That’s the point of sacrifice.”

“You’re so confident, hyung.”

Yunho made an incredulous sound. Junsu wondered where he was in his home. His parents had their own property, a tall narrow house that was squeezed in too tightly with its neighbours, the endless rows of suburban gridlock propagating only despair. Junsu always felt claustrophobic in their neighbourhood, even inside Yunho’s house, and it was a lot of house. Every room had a telephone, so he could be anywhere—although, Yunho had recently gotten a new cell phone for his twelfth birthday, so he was probably using that, hauled up in his too-big bedroom with its own loft. That room was the best part of the Jungs’ household, no question. Yunho’s parents insisted on filling the common rooms with artificial scents that made Junsu a little light-headed if he was there for too long, but they never forced Yunho to put freshener in his bedroom, so it smelled familiar and warm.

“Our days of fun are over,” Junsu said. “We’re gonna be grown up soon. We’ll have jobs.”

“We’ll be making money,” Yunho agreed. “Well, congrats, Junsu.”

“Congrats, Yunho-hyung.”

“You said that last week.”

“And I’ll say it again, ‘cause you deserve it!” Junsu retorted, lolling his head back to stare at the ceiling. “We’re gonna be rich. Rich and famous.”

“I’m gonna have a big family. And a nice, big house, with a tennis court!”

Junsu considered this version of Yunho, playing in tennis whites on a smooth blue court. “Yeah, well, I’m gonna have a penthouse right in the city! The paparazzi will follow me everywhere.”

“Haa…”

“Hmmm…”

This wasn’t a time to fall back on teasing or crack a half-hearted joke. This was real. As real as it could get for middle schoolers.

“I’ll see you at school,” Junsu said.

“See you, too.”

“We’re gonna be rich… rich…” Junsu’s voice lifted like he was conceptualizing a melody. Rich and famous, we’re gonna be riiiiiiich. The musical notes streamed out of his mouth, as biological as sweating or tensing a muscle, tapping into the section of his brain that was solely reserved for this.

The phone went silent, as it always did when Junsu treated Yunho to a little impromptu singing. Junsu’s voice was like a blazing ring of fire or a waterfall pulsing with life; when people bore witness to it, those who had never known it could not believe they had missed it, that their inferior minds hadn’t been searching for something so vital. But, as soon as the fleeting became normal—say, living beside that same waterfall your entire life, hearing that voice every year in the Christmas recital—it was derivative, unimpressive. To most people.

After a hundred times, Yunho was just as taken with his voice as he’d been when he first noticed Junsu in the children’s choir all those years ago. Junsu used to think he was joking, or that it was a sign of something wrong with Yunho, the workings of a dim, forgetful mind. He’d been a fool. Yunho was only ever like this with him. Junsu knew when he was putting on a front, and when he was being genuine.

“I’d be clapping right now, if you were here,” Yunho said.

“Ha. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“It feels awesome… fucking awesome!”

“Fucking awesome…!” Junsu repeated. Fuck-this, fucking-that, fuck-fuck-fuck, that was Yunho’s new pet word. He didn’t really know what it meant, but he overheard his dad using it sometimes, and claimed that it ended conversations with impact. While, in Junsu’s case, he heard his slightly older friend say it, ergo, it was cool to him, too. Except it wasn’t a good word to use around adults for reasons Yunho couldn’t quite explain.

“Hell yeah!”

That was his old favourite word. Now second-favourite.

“Hell-yeah!” Junsue echoed. He was less keen on hell because he knew from church that it was a very bad place, and invoking it gave him a little pang of fear—but, Yunho went to church, too, so it probably wasn’t a big deal. He’d never say this to Yunho. Not because he was intimidated by him, but because it was Yunho.

Yunho and Junsu.

What a pair they were gonna be.

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“I thought it was gonna be my turn! I really did.”

The weather hadn’t quite turned yet, and Hyukjae insisted on eating at an outdoor table while the sun was still out and the snow had yet to fall. The air tasted nippy, even in their layered school uniforms, but they both managed; their shared lunches were an opportunity to socialize, filling the conversational lulls with strategic bites of rice balls and tofu. They always scoped out the same little table, part of a hidden nook near a school entrance that very few people normally used. Every so often a person might pass them by, but rarely come close.

Junsu patted his shoulder. “You know what that means, right? Your life should be about something greater than singing and dancing. You can be whatever you want.”

“But I wanted to be…” Hyukjae stopped, his voice turning flat, like he wasn’t really sure. When Junsu had auditioned, there were kids like that, the ones who thought idol life would be fun in theory, a mere pipe dream, but tended to not know what they really wanted.

Not like him and Yunho. They were a rare type of person, the sort with a dream, predestined from a very young age to go in a given direction.

“You could still get into an arts high school, y’know, and find another path,” Junsu reasoned. In truth, he wasn’t a stranger to these hard conversations, though it had been slightly different with Junho. He and Junho were always following each other around, one-upping each other, in that spirited competition of twin lives. Junho was always there, and Junsu couldn’t imagine his future without Junho alongside. Unlike Hyukjae, Junho made a decision, maybe folly, or good sense, Junsu didn’t know. But he saw the toll it took on his brother, and knew Junho would’ve been there for him if their places were reversed.

“Really, Hyukjae, you’re smart, funny, you’re a good person to be around,” Junsu said. “You can listen to me, or you can do what you want… who cares? It’s your life.”

“I dunno, my parents will probably have things to say about it…” Hyukjae craned his neck, nearly dropping the riceball trapped by two chopsticks. “Hang on… check that out!”

Junsu’s eyes tracked a silhouette, backlit by the sun, close to a brick wall. Before he knew what was going on, before the sun fully ducked under the roof so he could get a clearer picture of the person’s face, he knew it was Yunho. It wasn’t even a matter of the characteristic way he moved. Even something as particular as his hands, or his wrists, that wasn’t it. It was before Junsu saw any part of his body, as though he could sense Yunho’s magnetic aura, unfolding in a 360-degree radius like wavelengths of sound.

“Ey, Junsu! Wait up!” Hyukjae called out.

Junsu’s legs were carrying him, and he forgot about the morsels of food left over, his halfway hunger. Before he knew it, Yunho was there, too, meeting him in the middle of the clearing. Hyukjae arrived a little after, panting his breaths, so Junsu felt each one on his shoulder.

Yunho had left his blazer and pullover by the wall, so all he had on was a collared white tee, trousers, and those chunky basketball shoes the principal always commented on snidely. He hadn’t broken a sweat, but he rarely did, unless he was really pushing himself. He was smiling, energetic, cheeks a little flushed.

Junsu smiled. “Hey.”

Yunho tipped his head in acknowledgement.

“Hyung,” Hyukjae added.

“You guys caught me,” Yunho said, petting a few flyaways into place. His tousled hair and stripped-down outfit made him look like a delinquent. “I was practicing.” His eyes bore holes into Junsu’s, and his protruding canines caught on his bottom lip as he smiled.

Before Junsu or Hyukjae could speak, Yunho added, “We need to work hard, right? The easy part’s over. Now we need to be better, much better.”

“Don’t get too one-track-minded,” Junsu cautioned.

“No, I won’t.” Finally, Yunho turned his attention to Hyukjae. “Junsu’s a great singer. Great dancer. I need more practice than him.”

Junsu wanted him to stop. Hyukjae said, “Actually, we were talking about that. I think I’ll need more practice. More than either of you.”

“Hmm…?”

“I auditioned, too,” Hyukjae said. As always when he was upset, he masked it with a genial, yet phlegmatic attitude. “I made it to the final round. I didn’t get in, though.”

Junsu took a step forward. “Hyukjae hasn’t done as many auditions as you and I. He has less training… but I bet he’ll make it one day, soon, if he keeps trying.”

“Of course,” Yunho said. Junsu didn’t like the look in Yunho’s eyes. Up, down, his eyes sliced like daggers, dispensing silent, critical judgments—did he know that sort of thing could really mess with a person? Eventually, he turned away, mumbling. “Wow… this school’s full of young talent, huh…?”

“I’ll see you around,” Junsu said. It was a constant push and pull. He knew Yunho meant no harm; it was a feature of his new fixation, what Junsu might teasingly name future-idol-mode-Jung-Yunho. Really, he was a lot softer than he let on, not that anyone besides his closest friends could speak to his character from personal knowledge.

Junsu turned back to Hyukjae, hoping he wouldn’t be upset. He felt pretty pathetic; if someone had so impetuously jumped to defend him, he would’ve been pissed.

But Hyukjae wasn’t the same as Junsu. The rest of their lunch passed by in ambient silence. Hyukjae waved goodbye as they parted, and Junsu smiled back. They were on good terms. He wouldn’t ruin that.

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Adeste fideles læti triumphantes

Venite, venite in Bethlehem

Natum videte

Regem angelorum…

“Oh, Junsu, that’s very nice… How about you just skip to your solo…?”

In his grandparents’ overcrowded parlour, Junsu’s mom and a woman introduced as Mrs. Jang (family through marriage?) sat on upholstered chairs, the velvet fabric like blood, while Junsu’s voice cut through the revelry of Christmas Eve. Glasses clinked, people exchanged gaudy jokes, things were being spilled or cracked or unaccounted for, but in spite of it all, his voice rose to the ceiling, as pure as a bell. He’d performed this song with the choir on the last day of school before break, dressed in an amorphous blob of a church robe, so this was light fare. He hardly had to think, apart from one thing, maintaining eye contact—politely but not overbearingly. That hadn’t been a problem at his performance—the crowd had been swollen from the front pews to the back of the mezzanine at the farewell Christmas mass; three different schools were in attendance, and Junsu had felt a sense of calm as he presided over them all. They looked more like toy mice than individual people from a distance. On the other hand, singing in front of only two people, one being his hawk-eyed mother, Junsu fought the urge to stare above or below, and he had to pinch his arm behind his back.

His mother whispered something to Mrs. Jang. A little more, he counted each successive note, keeping at least a full bar ahead. Cantet nunc aula cælestium. Junsu looked down at his Christmas outfit—somewhere, likely folded up in his room, Junho had a matching one, tailored a few centimetres longer in the legs and arms—and he felt stupid. Conscious of it all. The guests whooped and hollered, Junsu’s dad was probably swaying on his feet from a half-bottle of beer, his mom would soon head back to the kitchen and fuss over the meal prep, though she had no business cooking anything, Junho was living a life of his own, hundreds of kilometres away, and Junsu was here. Gloria… in… excelsis… Deo…

“Oh, bravo, bravo!” Mrs. Jang pinched his cheek and gave him a hug, and his nose landed on her shoulder, becoming plugged with the cologne she’d packed on.

She pulled away, beaming, and the ladies’ conversation went on, about him and not to him. And Junsu felt like a doll put back on his perch. The isn’t he sooo darling…? A classic. Followed by any exclamation about his voice, how good it was, and this woman’s chosen adjective was spectacular. Junsu stopped listening, as the drawn out, high-frequency vowels followed the two women down the hall.

He glanced all around him. The parlour smelled of platters of cinnamon tea and chocolatey dried fruit, placed on doily-clad wooden surfaces. Every so often, if someone dislodged a pillow or brushed a curtain, dust particles burst into the air, bringing the conversations to a halt better than Junsu’s carols ever could. Otherwise, the scene was sublime. Gold accents glittered from candleholders and window grills, each shelf was polished to a shine, not a hair seemed out of place, except for the dust that was released in a bizarre, ongoing, accidental ritual, followed by a murmured apology from the perpetrator. When one of his younger cousins plucked up a throw blanket and turned it around to use as a cape, a snowfall of lint came over her. The bombastic preacher Mr. Woo, who was so-and-so’s husband, segued into a conversation about the communicable nature of the holy spirit and how befitting a reminder this was, especially for the pleasure-fuelled holidays: for dust you are and back to dust…

The cousin started crying, lots of adults began to bristle but didn’t say anything outright in that infuriating way of adults, and Junsu decided he’d had enough of this party. His hunger took a backseat to the restless urge, the static that seemed to accumulate in his extremities: fingers, toes, ears, lips, nose, gahh, he’d had enough. This was his Christmas Eve, this absolute waste. He wanted to switch places with Junho—no matter where he was, he surely wasn’t as bored as his twin.

The doorbell rang, and Junsu shadowed the hosts, his grandparents, on the way. He approached the foyer, just as a hand patted his shoulder once, twice, ripping his attention away.

“Eh?!”

Yunho’s eyes widened a little. “Hey, I was meaning to find you. Tell you I arrived.”

Yunho was dressed similarly to Junsu, in one of those thematic red and gold suits picked from a seasonal catalogue several months in advance. Well, Junsu’s family didn’t get a catalogue like that, they just went to the store, and foremost to the sales section, but Yunho’s family definitely had one of those European-style ones with the yellowed, curling pages. Tailoring was another thing that the Jung family probably took for granted, because each crisp suit edge hung so perfectly, the line where his body began was blurred. It was his armour, a second skin, and Yunho had not one hair out of place. He smelled perfect, light and insubstantial, like a woman’s natural scent—definitely a result of mixing various high-end colognes.

Junsu’s bones ached. His mouth was tired, not from singing, but from feigning a smile for hours. Right. Yunho’s parents were busy on a business trip, so he and his sister had been dropped off here, and would be spending the holidays with Junsu’s family.

“Come. Let’s get out of here for a little while.”

Yunho furrowed his eyebrows. “Dinner’s in an hour…”

Yunho sounded just like Junsu’s stiff-backed younger cousins, and the other kids always gave them ribbings as a result. He almost defaulted to one of those sharp rebukes, but he collected himself. Not Yunho.

He tried a different strategy. Junsu went upstairs and after some searching, found an empty room, his grandfather’s antiquated study. He locked the door. Yunho leaned on the wall, so Junsu assumed the chair, drawing it out of the Baroque-style desk. That felt wrong, though, to be sitting while Yunho loomed over him, so he eased back to his feet, rushing back against a wall as he sought Yunho’s gaze once more. Yunho couldn’t look him in the eye.

In most respects, they were equal enough to be mutually well-challenged. Stubbornness, though, Yunho had him beat in spades. It was a quality that fascinated Junsu; he wanted to see the pride Yunho held flush to his chest, study it and dismember it piece by piece under a microscope. Junsu knew he’d give in first, as always. “What? This is boring. Let’s go.”

Yunho rolled his shoulder back, unevenly on the wall. His eyes flitted about, as though a disruption was messing with the predetermined strings of code in his internal processing. While these things were trained and teased out of Junsu, Yunho had them knocked violently from his system, and the memories lingered. His stubbornness reared its ugly head, though Junsu could admit to himself—begrudgingly—that Yunho had good reason to be tentative.

Past the door, the noise reached fever pitch. Junsu swerved his head, mildly curious. Was dinner finally being served? Had the soju and beer kicked in at last? It sounded like they were dancing. Someone was playing music, or, no, it was the other set of twins in the family, Junsu’s thirty-something year old cousins who played a menagerie of woodwind instruments.

He wanted to speak. They could fix this indeterminate silence, no, Junsu alone could. Yunho would love it. The twins broke out the sax and clarinet just for this occasion, and now everyone was dancing like a folk celebration. When did something so whimsical, so offensively simple in its joy, happen to Junsu? Or to Yunho?

“Let’s go,” Junsu repeated. He wanted to pounce on the opportunity right now, before the sensible side of his brain claimed the rest of him. “What are we doing here? It’s boring.”

Yunho finally stared at him. A chill rushed Junsu all at once like the second wind of a crowd. Yunho straightened purposefully, and with that little lift in height he assumed authority. Junsu knew he was no match. He looked down, and one of Yunho’s hands was working the right suit cuff back, showing a flash of Junsu’s light, rosy flesh. Yunho cupped his wrist by the underside in one hand, and used his other to brush the veins beneath his forearms, veins like bluish-green rivers poking through snowy ravines of arm.

One of Yunho’s hands effortlessly enclosed Junsu’s lower arm. He was just longer, thicker, stronger. Bigger. Could it all be hand-waved away by a meager ten-month gap?

“Hyung…”

Junsu brought his free arm out and placed his hand palm-down on Yunho’s. Hands layered on hands on hands. It felt as though they were conjoined, that Junsu could acutely feel each signal Yunho’s brain fired off—to touch, and smell, and see. Their blood surged in a warring dance of disparate types, A antigen on B antigen.

Junsu felt how pivotal it was. They were tucked away, forgotten in a footnote on the house plan. The feeble light began its retreat, and soon there would be nothing but darkness and the two of them. Yunho was older, taller, stronger. He was the guy. Junsu knew he was more like the girl, though his understanding of the female sex was little more than a summation of the leading roles in the few dramas he was permitted to watch. He knew the girl was slight and pretty while the guy was big and handsome. Sometimes, often, she was his dongsaeng, following him around the seniors’ hallway like a puppy wagging its tail, chanting oppa. Oppa, oppa, oppa. Whether on TV or in his parents’ marriage, Junsu only ever heard the word used in romantic contexts, a saccharine voice, the little wink or head tilt on the pop of the second syllable.

So he said hyung like that, beseechingly, like a woman on the brink of her lust. Yunho’s pupils dilated menacingly, and with his lightning-quick, catlike reflexes, he cuffed Junsu by the arm and dragged him to the window.

The cutesy act came undone as the panic rose up in Junsu’s gullet. “Hyung…! What the hell are you doing…?!”

Yunho squeezed him harder. A gust of violent, brackish air coursed through the room, turning Junsu’s brain foggy. It happened at once, all of it: Yunho pulling the window rail up, Yunho hooking his leg over the sill, Yunho heaving them both down at once, and the bitter undeniability of solid ground rocking Junsu’s whole body as he landed, flat and prone. He rose to his hands and knees, brushing the earthen grit from his stomach.

Yunho got to his feet first, always one step ahead. He’d cast his blazer aside, rolled up the sleeves of his white collared shirt. Junsu reached for his own lapels, but Yunho came up behind him. He smoothed the shoulder pads, each breath slow and featherlight on Junsu’s nape, as if this was a religious moment shared between just them, a mirror of what might come twenty or so years down the road of a groom-to-be with his faithful best man standing behind him, appraising his outfit, basking in their last hours of togetherness.

Yunho looked so different right now, his hair tossed roguishly, his shirt haphazard, his eyes glowing like primordial oceans. Now, finally, Junsu could see the man his best friend had become. He would make no concessions, no issues, nothing beyond the neutral acknowledgement of it.

Thinking nothing, Junsu stretched his hand. Yunho took it, nodding to him.

They both walked off, away from a house where every window glowed with merriment and good company, every window except for one.

“Do you think we’ll find an animal? A wolf?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Yunho’s voice pinched towards the end.

Their journey took them winding through the unexplored, dull terrain, the lay of Yunho’s land. The darkness managed to trip them up, as they traced a path of encircling cul-de-sacs, backstepping and side-stepping to the crossing they’d missed. The promise of fresh, savage, natural nighttime air was suspended all around them. The sense of derealization was not lost to either of them, in the late nightscape and all that it could feasibly contain. The overhead swoop of maybe-bats. The bristle of maybe-rosebushes, with their maybe-thorns primed like wasp stingers. The maybe-cry of a maybe-lupine animal, prowling to the edges of suburbia.

Yunho let the silence stretch, and Junsu followed suit. Although they were more talkative than any other pair of male friends Junsu knew, they were equally content to let the time pass in sweetened quiet.

Finally, they came close to a forested outcrop. It was bordered by freeways and rotting, yet inhabited houses, but it was as close to nature as they could manage. Besides, the animal sounds were loud enough to lure them in from a distance. They warred with the bassy, inorganic blare of car engines, playing the top note—in a song, most of the time, one picked out the high note first. Yunho cut a path through two oak trees, massive and arching into each other like a gothic arcade. Junsu bowed past, marvelling at the sudden drop of temperature. Real or imagined, it caused his skin to rise in goosebumps.

“Hyung. Yunho-hyung.”

He disappeared from Junsu’s sightline for a split second, and Junsu nearly bowled him over. Yunho breathed hard through his nose, managing to collect himself. Those quick dancer feet, always at work.

Junsu could’ve asked what he wanted to do now. They could find a store that was open late, grab a snack, find a high ledge from where they could kick their feet back and watch Christmas day unravel. He could’ve made a joke about it being us versus them, set down a half-hearted plan on the off chance a hungry bear showed up.

But he didn’t. He didn’t want to hear his voice, feel it through his diaphragm and throat, turning this mundane.

Yunho turned to him. “Do you hear that?”

“There’s a lot to hear,” Junsu said.

Yunho laughed drily. “I guess. No, it’s the… owl. Can you hear it? Sounds like singing.”

As if Yunho had imparted it, Junsu picked out the sound of the animal. He sang in harmony with the owl, and then stepped into a simple tritonic scale. His singing partner ought to have been commended—the owl’s sonorous voice was as faultless as something a computer might generate. Its tone gave a haunting edge to the song.

Yunho watched him, mesmerized.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Junsu huffed, quickly becoming self-conscious. Yunho’s self-assured words, his audacious yearning, was all far too much.

“No one sings the way you sing.”

“You’re the only one who thinks that way.”

His mother was truly proud only when she brought someone new to see him, a several-times-removed relative or a work friend, one who’d never heard Junsu sing before. The cycle began, starting with the sweetest point: the inception. Much like religion, the moment of being saved and declaring your devotion, that was the high, and from there, things settled, the holy became monotony, and faith was like a bored, domesticated animal. Those who didn’t have the luxury of travelling back in time to relive their baptism were content to feed off the awe of the new convert. In this way, the devout, empowering themselves to sainthood, a hop-step above the rest, were different. They were the only ones who felt it, swore by it.

Yunho.

The whole way back, Junsu thought about him. As they came tumbling from the window on the way there, graceless and uncertain, they returned from the sojourn with newfound confidence, each stride making a meaningful impression onto the ground below. As if the gods of fortune had pulled the curtain to keep them hidden, no one noticed their absence when they re-emerged through the front door, claiming they’d gone on a walk. Junsu blanched at the sight of his drunk father attempting to slow-dance with his giggling mother.

At a little past midnight, Junsu’s family, Yunho, and Jihye got home. Jihye predictably got the guest bedroom—a tidied version of Junho’s—for herself, while Junsu and Yunho slept on futons in Junsu’s smaller bedroom. Yunho hardly said a word. Sleep managed to find them both quickly.

Junsu dreamed of the non-things, the un-happenings. A person could live their whole life on the earth, tending to it and cultivating it, but only when they dug deep, entombing themselves in the mineralized caverns, that was an entirely other world, a new place. He wanted to know Yunho’s subterranean feelings, peel him back like the superficial crust of the earth, and behold his core. The way magma flowed in him, making him hot, and his deepest, iciest waters. He thought of touching, kissing, feeling those hands dragged across his face, mapping the topography of his rough skin and his raised, pulsing veins. He imagined the salty taste of a fingertip, just the fingertip, passing through his lips, pushing his tongue to the nail bed. Whatever Yunho did was a mystery—Junsu alternately imagined him cussing, moaning, breathing only a little heavier than normal, but he couldn’t know. That wasn’t the point. He wanted Yunho’s elegantly long neck. Wrapping his fingers around it, taking the initiative with a kiss. That would be… nice… wouldn’t it…?

On Christmas morning, they crawled out of the futon and raced downstairs. Yunho’s parents arranged everything so he and his sister found their gifts by the fireplace, wrapped in fancy silver paper with delicate bows. Junsu and Junho had always received a small gift, usually food of some kind, plus a big gift, which was, of course, from Santa. Junsu explained this to Yunho’s wide-eyed little sister.

“Santa?” Jihye said. She was holding a newly-unwrapped pink sweater.

Junsu nodded.

“Santa’s not real.”

Yunho and Junsu’s parents had to get involved, and Jihye was the most confused of all, but too well-behaved to outright say anything. Junsu sat by the fire with his gift from Santa, a high-quality CD player. Santa. That was what the tag said, so, surely it was from him…?

When he asked Yunho later, he was tense. “Well…”

“Just say,” Junsu insisted.

“Aren’t you a little old to be having this talk?”

“No!” Junsu huffed. “It’s actually pretty hard to believe that he’s not real.”

“Junsu, come on, think of all the kids in the world… you think an old man has time to…”

“Okay, okay, I get it!”

Life during the winter holidays unspooled like a dream, and no one was happier than Yunho. During the Christmas day dinner, he spoke proudly about his and Junsu’s accomplishments, but his tone changed later on, becoming contemplative. His sister Jihye played with Junsu’s younger cousins, while Junsu and Yunho camped in Junsu’s room to watch Christmas special reruns. Yunho’s corneas mirrored the stop-motion snowmen and elves with a wistful glint. Junsu couldn’t put a name to the exact emotion back then, but he was sure he knew what Yunho was missing.

Junsu liked his gift, but Yunho’s were way more impressive. He got CDs (obviously he was ahead of Junsu on owning a CD player), a bunch of computer games that Junsu had his eye on, a Sherpa jacket that made him look way older, exercise equipment, and a plasma ball. Maybe that was the moment it all crumbled on Junsu. There was no benevolent Santa Claus, just parents using whatever money had. Some Santas gave a gift, others managed four or five.

The Jungs readily welcomed Junsu to spend some time at their house when Yunho’s parents returned, about halfway through the winter holiday. It was a good time to get a head-start on final exams, and a better time to put Yunho’s new gifts to use. They hung around in Yunho’s bedroom, various textbooks spread between them for Junsu’s Year 2 subjects and Yunho’s analogous Year 3 ones. Junsu wrinkled his nose. His legs, dangling past the frame of the loft, paddled out his annoyance. He threw his mechanical pencil on the ground. There was the benefit of a potential tutor in Yunho, but they inevitably butted heads with their disparate learning styles, and Yunho was beleaguered with his own studies.

Yunho, ensconced in his practice booklet, looked up only when Junsu made a huffy sound.

“This is the worst way to spend our break.”

Yunho sighed. “This is what it’s gonna be like from now on.”

Junsu hated it. He hated that Yunho was the voice of reason to his childish frustration. His eyes began to glaze over with fragments of theorem and rules of syntax, particles to pythagoras. He climbed down from the loft, joining Yunho on the rug, where he’d slowly migrated to from his desk.

“Hey,” Yunho said, elbowing Junsu in a chummy way. “Should we take it out?”

“Take what out?”

Yunho got up, to the walk-in closet, and returned with a box. He could hear the chafe as Yunho opened the cardboard flap to the plasma ball, and all of Junsu’s frustration was forgotten. He’d only ever seen a plasma ball on TV, and it looked like the most incredible thing ever. It was one step away from magic, real and yet incomprehensible.

Yunho set it up and turned the lights off. Then, he flicked the switch. The rays of energy flickered to life immediately, creating a soft purplish-pink glow that filled the room. They oohed and aahed. It was even more exhilarating up close.

“We’re missing the best part,” Yunho said.

“What?”

“Touch it. With your finger.”

Junsu slowly brought his finger to the glowing sphere, and he let out a gasp. The plasma met his fingertip on the other side of the glass wall, as if it was his own power, expressed into the vessel of electricity.

“It’s really hot,” he said.

“I wanna try,” Yunho pushed his finger down, and the plasma ball did the same thing to him. His eyes glowed with frenetic pink and purple. “Whoa…”

“What do you think’ll happen if we…?” Junsu put his finger down, on the opposite side, and the effect was ruined. Apparently the energy didn’t know how to respond to two touches on different parts of the ball, so it returned to its mindless pattern of crackles.

“Ouch!” Junsu tried lifting his finger, and felt a static prick.

Yunho laughed. “I’ll let you borrow it, if you want.”

“Really?”

“Any of my gifts, if you want to use them.” He shrugged. “It looked cool on TV… and it’s still cool… but, I don’t care that much. Sometimes I just pick gifts from the catalogue at random, because my parents always get on me to do it.”

“That must be nice. My parents just ask me for one gift idea, and if I don’t have one, I get something from the community centre donation bin.” Junsu shuddered at the memory of the cat hair filled, spider egg infested jumper two years ago.

Yunho smiling, him smiling. It felt pleasant just to be lost in the moment.

“Wait.” Junsu got up. “About those video games…”

Yunho was lucky. He had at least two desktop computers, one of which he never saw that belonged in his dad’s room. The other was easily accessible in the half-basement, and mainly used by Yunho. They pattered down several flights of stairs, past Yunho’s mom whistling as she cooked and Jihye practicing piano. Junsu carefully inserted the CD, and his heart skipped a beat as the game booted up. He lost himself in this pixel-world where nothing mattered, just the linear structure of the game, using the sum of all his focus.

“I like this one,” Junsu said. “I really like this one.”

“It’s the first one you tried, though.” Yunho watched, standing behind him.

He took a little while to get into the groove of it, but with the main mechanics down, it became intuitive. It was the most intricate, eye-catching game Junsu had played thus far.

“How do you know what’s going on?!”

“I won,” Junsu’s hand relaxed on the mouse, palm drenched in sweat, but he’d won. The tutorial, and then the first battle. It was likely meant as an introductory challenge that any new player could complete with ease, but Yunho acted as though he’d done something unfathomable.

“Wow, you’re so good!” He clapped. “Really. My eyes just glaze over when I watch you.”

“No, it’s amazing.” Junsu quit the game and ejected the CD. The title shimmered as it caught on the light. “StarCraft. I heard it’s won awards this year.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know it was that kind of game.” Yunho sounded sheepish. He liked Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario, games where you could mash buttons thoughtlessly, but Junsu wanted a hard-won challenge. Part of him thought of swiping the game and running home, but his family computer was a janky old thing, certainly not the same make as Yunho’s.

“I expect you to be winning championships in a month from now,” Yunho said, as Junsu gingerly clicked the CD back into the plastic case.

“Ha.”

“Seriously.”

He shrugged. “Who knows. We’ll see about it.”

“Hey…”

Yunho. Yunho? Was that him? Hand clamped around Junsu’s bicep like a vice…? Why hadn’t he worn a full sleeve shirt? The touch of Yunho’s hand enclosing Junsu’s bony arm was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. His fingers closed tighter, pushing Junsu’s flesh out of position, making him grow hot.

“Hyung…”

Yunho tore his arm away, the culmination of careless violence, and Junsu made a sad, animal-like sound, gripping his arm. As Yunho let him go, he clawed Junsu’s skin, leaving red marks that stood out a little against the already darkened clouds of skin where Yunho’s touch had been.

His heart beat wildly, all out of rhythm. “I’m leaving.”

He couldn’t even look Yunho in the eye as he left. At first this was what he thought he wanted, for Yunho to make it as easy as possible for him to leave. No shouted apologies, chasing him back up the stairs. He stood there, like a zombie, utterly lifeless, and somehow that was even worse.

What did Yunho want from him? Really?

.

.

.

He and Yunho couldn’t train together, but they found ways to socialize in between grueling practices. Those moments were few and far in between, but they treated time as the precious resource it now was—not like Junsu’s new dorm-mate and his friends, who bemoaned their apparent lack of free time while spending it out on the town, at the arcade or a club which they were definitely too young for.

The SM trainees had a modified school schedule, which allowed them to attend practice each weeknight, and then do two full days of practice on the weekend. One of the new trainees asked if they’d get holidays off, and the manager laughed.

But those who had made it this far, who were insane enough to agree to the terms, accepted the new turn of their lives on the condition that it hopefully wouldn’t last for more than a few years. An investment for a greater long-term payoff. The first kids Junsu met were a nine-year-old who had joined alongside him and a nineteen-year-old (twenty in a few months, he said) who had been in trainee purgatory for seven years. He relayed all of this to Yunho, on their first Saturday night together, camped out in one of the back tables at a cheap ramen shop.

“I couldn’t believe it. Remember, I told you I wanted to audition when I was nine or ten, right?” Junsu said, almost breathless. Clouds of salty steam emerged all around them, from the kitchens and the piping bowls of noodles.

“And it’s good I didn’t let you,” Yunho retorted. “And the nineteen year old?”

“Yeah, he… I dunno. He claimed he was supposed to be in several groups through the years, but none of them ever actually debuted… so he’s still pushing.”

Yunho shook his head. “I’d rather they shoot me than be like that.”

“Ach, Yunho…!” Junsu leaned across the table to swat him, and his abdominals twisted with pain.

“I’m serious,” Yunho shrugged. “That old, no group in sight… what’s the point?”

Junsu shrugged, blowing on his ramen. He felt the smothered buzz of the other patrons, the onomatopoeic noises of cooking oil, salt shakers, and knives cutting through meat. There was Japanese memorabilia stuffed in every corner of the place, inoffensive stuff like postcards, painted banners, and a little figurine at the front desk. When Yunho’d asked, the man said it was the mascot of his hometown, somewhere in Northern Japan. Yunho had shook his head, sighed, keeping a respectful smile. Privately to Junsu he’d murmured, Japanese and their mascots, I don’t get it.

He already looked grown-up, with the wood lattice wall behind him and the bowl of ramen before him, how small it looked compared to him. The chopsticks were almost too small for his hands, but he managed perfectly with them, looping the fat noodles around several times and dragging them past his lips without a spot of broth getting on the table. Junsu had a harder time.

“Did you think about it? That guy?”

“The thing is, he has no other experience. His only other option is quitting and getting a dead-end job.”

The longer Junsu pondered it, the worse he felt, a sinking leaden weight in his stomach. He did empathize, but it was more than that—it was his own personal fear of ending up in that situation, as Yunho had said. The hopelessness. The unknowing.

The shame.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll debut, hyung.”

Yunho made a noise of approval. “Yeah. We’re both talented, hard-working, and hot.”

“Hot?” Junsu cocked his head. They were both still baby-faced, and hadn't grown into their adult bodies at all. Their voices hadn’t even dropped yet. Well, Junsu’s hadn’t.

“My mom always said that. She said I’d be smoking hot when I grew up.”

“Your mom sounds like she has a complex…”

Yunho hit him, good-naturedly of course. “Your face is heating up,” he observed. “I mean, from the food.”

Junsu pushed the bowl away. “Really… Y’know, this time I got the healthy options… the low-salt broth, the thinner noodles, and green onion, that’s it. Nothing else!” Yunho laughed, and Junsu looked at his bowl wearily. Yunho had taken all the toppings the bowl could fit: a boiled egg, kimchi, pork, spicy peppers, carrots, and greens, because he had a normal stomach that didn’t make him as red and swollen as a bumped toe whenever he had a few sprinkles of salt.

Yunho finished his ramen, cupping the bowl to his lips to drink the broth as if it was a small breast. Junsu twirled his chopsticks around, making the strands of ramen come loose.

Actually, Yunho’s genes were a good combination, not just his strong stomach. He was tall—tall like dad while his mom was short, picture-perfect—and slim-faced. Even when he gained weight, no one could tell because of that face. There were the hands, obviously. He was a good dancer. His teeth were imperfect, but they were clean, so it wasn’t a huge deal… In fact, it gave him a little boost the way imperfections can.

Since Junsu could remember, he carried that sentiment with him. It was a marvel that Yunho had been his friend for so long, that someone as amazing as he was—a year older, exceptional in many ways—cherished Junsu. Even his parents and Junho were less impressed with him nowadays. People would always talk, Yunho frequently reminded him, when their ears got hot from hearing the whispers. The same kids who laughed at them didn’t know what a difference it was to have someone who might disagree with you, bitch at you or even hate you, who was nonetheless as unshakable as the ground beneath your feet. Junsu whistled, his eyes blurring around the rows of floodlights in the night sky, until he could barely see.

They both showered at the same time after practice. They both took their meals at the same hour, as a means of bonding in the cafeteria. They both went lights-out at the same time. Two night owls, they were normally incapable of falling asleep at a normal hour—until the new training regimen, and their heads conked out as soon as they hit the pillow.

Yunho lodged with a guy who was two years his senior. “He’s like a cat,” Yunho explained. Jongwoon was his name. He was the type you could talk to and forget about completely afterwards, and when later on he revealed how much he knew about you, it was a shock. “He likes people. He’s not shy. But he’s not outgoing, either.”

Junsu’s opposite, he admitted. Yunho agreed, saying he felt the same way: they both shone in the limelight, but agreed that people, as a genus, the broad sweep of homo sapiens, were always irritating to various degrees. When Yunho pointed the guy out when they were all together, Junsu found himself biting his tongue in frustration.

“So that’s his name,” he said afterwards, when they were out on the bus, taking the rare trip back to Yunho’s family home for a day off.

“Do you not like him, or something?”

“He’s good. Good like me and Ryeowook and Hyesung-sunbaenim. And…”

“Hm?”

“He’s much more handsome up close.”

Yunho couldn’t control his laughter. A murmur of irritation swelled from the nearby passengers as he took a second to catch his breath. The man across from them, in a trenchcoat, glared evilly. Yunho reddened—he was easily embarrassed, especially when he disturbed the peace of older people—a satisfying karmic punishment, Junsu thought. He happily resigned to an uneventful, quiet bus ride for the rest of the way, with Yunho stewing in his admonishment.

“You have a crush on Jongwoon-hyung?”

“Shut up, hyung!” Junsu hissed. What the hell was he thinking?! Soon, the bus chimed and they’d arrived at their stop. He didn’t look back at Yunho as he pushed through the people, disembarking alone.

Yunho ran up behind him, and quickly caught up. “Junsu… you… you’re in love… with him?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Eh, but you’re cuter. You’re definitely a better dancer. What’re you thinking?”

“Just shut up!” Junsu walked, but there was no hope of escaping when against Yunho’s long-legged stride. He felt hyper-conscious of the world around him, sort of in the way his parents described. Now, he looked at Yunho, his hyung, with the contempt of a true grown-up.

He knew Yunho too well, and Junsu could feel his infuriating grin even as he looked at his feet. He’d always been like this. At school—when around any adults, really—he was as stern as a decorated soldier. His inappropriate behaviour emerged when he was left to his friends, the only ones with whom he could be free. Actually, friend, singular. It was only ever Junsu.

“You’re gay, Junsu,” Yunho sang under his breath.

Junsu held his breath. The song went on and on, like a terrible radio jingle.

“Shut up,” he huffed, elbowing Yunho in the side. And, with a dramatic flair, Yunho stumbled, clutching his ribs like he’d been stabbed. What was the point of it? Who was he trying to charm? Pitiful, Junsu thought. But he’d never say that to Yunho’s face.

Part of his so-called wild side was his uninhibited affection. Yunho got back up on the footpath and swung an arm around Junsu’s shoulders as they walked. He ignored the boundaries of personal space depending on his whims, which were as unpredictable as the wind. Out of nowhere, his arm moved down.

“...So, if I was Jonghoon, you’d want me to do this…”

“Huh…?”

Yunho slapped him clean on the ass, and gave the cheek an extra squeeze.

“What the fuck?!” Junsu couldn’t contain his anger now. Yunho was beside himself with laughter, no doubt attracting the attention of onlookers. Moronic little child. Idiot!

And even worse was the fact that it had actually hurt. Junsu rubbed the site of the injustice. Yunho wasn’t poor. Perhaps a sexual harassment settlement would ease the pain.

“Aish, I should be calling you gay,” Junsu hit him back, but not hard. As a kid he was disciplined infrequently but strongly, and so the urge to resort to his fists had been trained out of him. “I don’t wanna fuck Jonghoon or any other guy!”

“No, no, I think you’re in love with him.”

“I think it’s your imagination. You’re trying to twist things… making them gay when they’re not!”

“Okay, stop saying gay,” Yunho walked up to the front porch and took out his spare house key. “I know it’s all jokes and stuff, but…”

“You called me gay first. It’s your fault.”

“You sound like a little kid, you know.”

“You touched my ass.”

“Hmph. All the girls touch it. Squeeze it. Stick their fingers…”

“Okay, that’s different! They’re girls!”

Yunho made a tsking noise. “Well, so much for equality. All humans, no matter the gender, the age, the race… et cetera… should have the right to touch this… sweet… piece… of ass.”

He was talking just like those entitled girls—well, it was more so in middle school, before they’d matured, but a few female trainees liked to touch it as well. One even nicknamed it ‘Korea’s national treasure’. Junsu at best tolerated it unhappily, but what could he say? They were girls. He wasn’t afraid of them or anything.

Yunho, though…

“Are you drunk, hyung?”

He barked a laugh. “Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m bringing my stuff upstairs.” Junsu shook his head, muttering curses, the kinds of curses that might make his parents tug him away by the ear.

He settled in Yunho’s room, swinging his bag over his lap as he kicked his socked feet out on the bed. He sighed. That comforting scent came over him, enveloping him like the hug of a long-lost friend, overcoming the chaos in his head. Yunho had little love for worldly possessions, with the exception of photographs. That’s all there was to his room, mounted photos and sleek furniture dusted by the family maid.

A knock at the door. “Hey.”

Junsu wanted to sink into the coverlet like quicksand. He swallowed the ball in his throat.

Yunho flicked him on the cheek. “You’re not mad, are you?”

“No, it’s cool.”

“Okay, good.” He broke into a smile, a real, loving smile.

Junsu didn’t know what to do. He fidgeted with a corner of the blanket, and Yunho’s eyes began to follow him… follow his hands… his undersized hands.

They’re nimble, Yunho had once said, to make him feel better. Yunho’s had always been big, and he’d grown into them over time.

“Nice hands,” Yunho said. Like he was reading his mind.

Junsu snorted.

Then, they delved into a rather impassioned discussion about the merits of big hands and small hands.

“Obviously, big hands can grip basketballs, footballs, and other large things more effectively,” Junsu began.

“But small hands are more agile. They can… thread a needle, fix a hole!” Yunho replied.

“So I’m the housewife and you’re the athlete?!” Junsu said, in mock irritation.

“No, hey! Listen. Your hands can fit into smaller spaces. You’d be a good mechanic.”

“Yeah, but big hands are stronger. More surface mass. You’d be a good roofer.”

“Small hands… they make things look bigger! That can be good or bad.”

This was how they spent the night, letting the conversation segue into stupid, genius-level, hilarious, unfunny madness. Eventually, Yunho’s mom knocked on the door.

“It’s the middle of the night! Go to bed, you two!”

She closed the door, and Junsu, sitting on the bed, remarked to Yunho, sitting on the floor: “She definitely thinks we’re gay.”

They laughed their asses off until they were wheezing for air.

.

.

.

The halls were festooned in banners and long, curly-tailed streamers. Pots of flowers, azaleas and hyacinths, had been meticulously propped against each available nook. It was a madness unfamiliar to Junsu. His and Yunho’s primary school had been much smaller, but here, he sensed the oncoming flow of activity as the clock ticked closer to the beginning of the ceremony.

Junsu walked with Hyukjae, who kept his head low. As junior students, they could opt out of watching the ceremony, and most did, but Junsu insisted, as he had in primary school. To Hyukjae, this was nonsensical. “If you’ve gone to all his graduations, and he hasn’t gone to yours… why?” He’d asked, in a way that managed not to sound antagonistic but simply curious. Junsu, of course, said that it was a simple fact that Yunho was one year ahead. Hyukjae insisted that there was no rule against former students coming back to see their younger friends’ graduations, and Junsu had no rebuttal for that.

Not that it mattered. He was going, Hyukjae decided to tag along, and that was that.

They made their way past the growing numbers of parents, staff members, and students. The older students always seemed so much more adult, even though they were only one grade apart. Soon, they all found their seats, and the procession began. Junsu considered the other graduates, with whom Yunho fraternized, studied, and practiced his intramural sports. Apparently Yunho was the third-youngest in the whole graduating body, but he didn’t look it. He already carried himself with quiet strength, his shoulders rolled back, his almond-shaped eyes penetrating straight ahead. He wasn’t scared of anything.

Junsu gave him a big hug—unlike other guys, they had never gone through the adolescent phase where physical touch felt questionable.

“I’ll see you in a year,” Junsu said, and they both laughed at the obvious joke. Yunho’s beaming mother took a photo of them together, and soon Yunho was swept up by his fellow grads, his agemates, classmates. Junsu knew it was his cue to go. Hyukjae said his curt goodbye and made for the closest bus stop. Already they were coming apart, like a great sea splitting into two tributary rivers, forking their own paths. For the first time, Junsu didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t acknowledge Hyukjae, not at all, not apart from when they first met up before going into the school.

Outside, the air felt balmy. Deep in the thick of winter, the lightest dusting of snow coated the ground, the wet, slushy sort that dissolved under boots.

He strolled through the grounds, trying to avoid the larger groups of people, until he weaved back from where he arrived, and happened across a kid who was perched on a bench in a hidden alley. He balanced something on his lap, and mustered all his focus in the way he stared at it, his thick eyebrows furrowed. Everything about him together made it impossible to guess his age.

Junsu feigned his own form of indifferent confidence, leaning against a rail as he rooted through his winter coat. He found some change, an expired packet of candy, and a lighter. Damn, this was Yunho’s work—he wasn’t allowed to keep lighters on himself, and so there were times he slipped them into Junsu’s pockets, with the intention of claiming them later. Junsu wondered if he had a cigarette by any chance, not that he was taken to smoking in the way Yunho was. He cussed under his breath, that careless asshole, and pulled the limp roll out. Now, he had no excuse. He had to give it a try.

Junsu turned away from the kid and lit the cigarette. Maneuvering it in his hands was a little tricker than he’d expected; of course, none of his parents’ TV shows featured the charismatic leads fiddling with a smoke for the first time, unsure of what to do. He’d seen his dad smoke once or twice outside. It was simple, really. He drew the opening to his lips and was surprised by how hot it felt, hot enough to burn. His lips formed a suction-seal, more of a panicked response than anything else, and he made hurried, breathless gulps.

The smoke collected in the back of his mouth. When he swallowed it down, his throat tasted coarse and itchy, and now he was certain that he wasn’t doing this right. He felt it in his belly, imagined it coating his insides. It was smoke, of course, so as Junsu breathed, it naturally expelled through his mouth. He felt no better, though he knew now that he would never be a recreational smoker like Yunho seemed destined to be. He clasped a hand to his forehead, and a few straggly coughs escaped from deep in his lungs.

Grimacing, Junsu threw the bud down, and squashed it under his foot. That felt satisfying, at least.

He noticed now the absence of sound as he was trying to smoke, because it came back after he disposed of the cigarette. The game board in the boy’s lap looked vaguely familiar, with the green lining, the plastic racks arranged in a square formation, and the various tiles sprawled along the surface. Watching the boy, who perhaps was so immersed in his game he didn’t notice Junsu, was fascinating. He turned the tiles in his deft, short fingers, taking them one at a time from the plastic rack, and arranging them in complicated rows.

“What’s your problem?”

Junsu made a mock laugh, and then, when he saw the boy was serious, sat down beside him. “What’s this?”

The boy gave him another look and went back to his game. Up close, he looked older. He was gangly, too, probably Junsu’s height or taller. Junsu was initially fascinated by the way he rapidly moved his fingers, but it wore off. He knew now the game was mahjong—this young prodigy was playing by himself, against himself—but didn’t understand its workings.

“Are you someone’s dongsaeng?”

The boy grimaced.

“You must be here for the graduation ceremony, right?” The boy had gone back to his game, and that was fine by Junsu. He wanted it to feel casual. “That’s why I’m here. I’m here because my hyung’s graduating. I don’t know anyone else in his grade, though, so it was awkward. I guess the brightest minds found a way to slip out of the action.”

“I’m not here for that,” the boy said. “And your mind isn’t the brightest if you’re smoking, and on school property, in front of everyone who’s passing by.”

“I don’t smoke. I just… tried it. And this isn’t school property. You’re here, and you’re not at the school.”

“I said I wasn’t at the graduation ceremony, not that I wasn’t on school grounds.”

Yah… Talk about a smartass! “Anyways, my point is, it doesn’t matter. No one noticed, no one cares. There’s kids who smoke whenever they go outside for recess.”

The silence passed them by, and the boy finished his game. He took all the tiles and shuffled them in the center.

“...It’s just, not only is he graduating. He’s going to become an idol.”

The boy sighed, and stopped what he was doing.

Junsu could’ve found the right moment to bow out, and sense the kid just wanted to play his game, but he truly didn’t care. “He’s training at SM. Life’ll be different.”

“That’s a bad idea. I wouldn’t do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Being an idol… that’s a career full of pitfalls,” he said with a hum. “I wouldn’t be friends with someone who makes such a foolish decision.”

“You don’t know him. He’s really talented. He’ll be famous, a legend.”

“Pfft, famous to fourteen year old girls. If he wants to go into entertainment, he should train to be an actor. That’s a more respectable profession.”

Junsu bit his lip. “Well, a lot of idols make the jump to acting.”

The boy weighed a tile in his hand, the one with two vertical strips.

“I’m going to be an idol, too. I got into SM. I’ll be following him.”

Junsu sort of regretted saying it like that, implying he was being strung along by Yunho. He didn’t clarify, though. In their short conversation, he grew to be curious about what this very honest boy would tell him in response to his most unfiltered thoughts, how he would wound him—perhaps it was his own streak of masochism.

“Well then, good luck to you guys.”

“You said training as an idol is a bad idea. But what would you say for the people who are idols? They can’t just drop out and find a better job. What’d be the next best thing?”

“Well… there’s no easy fix for being an idol. In that case, you’d have to find the thing that’ll save you, keep you from going insane.”

Junsu listened, rapt.

Just then, a short, skinny woman in a blazer and a pencil skirt came hobbling over to the bench. Her hair was tied back in a severe low-bun.

The boy leaned in close to his ear.

“...Himitsu no koibito.”

“Ahem!”

He folded up his mahjong set, putting each of the tiles in its correct spot, and enclosed the board in a beautiful wooden box. The woman kept chirping at him, gently but firmly. Saying a word that Junsu had never heard before. Ma. Su. Oh.

Then, he was gone.

.

.

.

He wanted to know all about that kid.

Himitsu no koibito… the strange syllables flowed this way and that, until Junsu was no longer confident that he remembered how they were ordered. That boy, the boy with the mahjong set and a foreign-sounding name that his nanny had repeatedly called… he was lodged in Junsu’s mind and his gut, and how could he get him out?

When he whispered those words in his ear, sounding so husky and assured, Junsu had popped an erection. He took the bus home and sat in his bedroom, quietly, for a long time. It had half-deflated, but thoughts of the boy with his confident fingers brought him back to full hardness.

More than anything, it was embarrassing. The boy had struck him as interesting, even exhilarating in his sharp wit and astute intelligence. How did that translate to the moment becoming hot? His body becoming hot? To the boy or anyone else around, it was nothing more than a surprise erection. Only Junsu knew the truth. He looked in the mirror. He wanted this new life as a trainee to propel him to adulthood, whatever that entailed, but he felt himself being dragged back down to the prison of youth.

That boy playing mahjong on the bench was the first person Junsu had ever imagined in order to come. He’d worked himself up with others, envisioning a crush or a hot teacher, using porn once or twice (though it was forbidden in his household) but his fingers and the sensations took it from there. Never had he ridden those thoughts all the way, using them as fuel, the lifeblood of his orgasm. It was painful. He crawled to the bathroom to get a tissue, because it had been a spontaneous thing, and the turmoil became ten times worse after the fact. God. Jacking off to a dumb dork playing board games by himself? No, more than that. It was the precise feeling of his voice that had given Junsu literal chills, and the hidden message in his foreign tongue. As if it had been a trance-like drug trip, Junsu struggled to separate fact from his imagined reality. Had the boy grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him in close, or was that just the wind? His breath, had it been minty-cold or warm? He couldn’t even remember the shoes the boy was wearing, that Junsu stared down at nervously, unable to meet his big-eyed gaze.

The kid existed in his own universe apart from Junsu’s daily life. He was not a part of Korea, or any other country, he was just an entity, there and then gone, only in the corners of Junsu’s mind.

He wanted to be free. Free… gone… annihilated.

Now, was it himisa no koboita… himi… no… koibo? Koiboto…? Bito…?

Chapter Text

There were days when Junsu couldn’t see his best friend. At school, he was like an automation, doing the bare minimum to get the required grades, and then it was back to the dorm. Outside of their moments of freedom and the monthly training evals, in which everyone more or less congregated together, Junsu did his own thing, and Yunho did his own thing. He knew Yunho would focus on dancing, while Junsu spent more time with the vocal coach. The first time the word solo left his vocal teacher’s lips, it had been offhanded, and Junsu wondered if he’d misheard. No matter, he grasped onto that concept as though it was his lifeblood. He tried to tell himself that being a soloist wasn’t necessarily better than joining an idol group. He’d be missing that community, and all of it—his promotions, his performances and presentations—would fall on his shoulders. At the same time, soloists had freedom. Soloists couldn’t be upstaged, or bullied by their group-mates. Junsu hadn’t been endeared to his roommates from the start; he could sense that none of them was as decisive, as driven. He and Yunho were perhaps special, the special one percent talent- and personality-wise; they’d debut, and what was more than that, they’d debut in a star group, that didn’t lose itself in a sea of too many members, and they’d get the best vocal parts and the dance breaks and all the good songs that the company’s lesser groups had been passed over.

Junsu wondered about that flicker in Yunho’s eyes as he’d said it, so casually, like it was a given. Hot—what a strange way to think about their looks. Idol trainees weren’t ugly, that was a fact of the business, but hot, really? There was pretty, cute, those were the main descriptors ascribed to Junsu’s face, sometimes handsome, if only from a well-meaning older relative. Hot was mature. Yunho, already, was maturing into his facial features. He had the sharp angles that promised masculine beauty in the future; in fact, he already looked older than he was. Junho had initially mistaken him for being several years their senior.

Did he want to look like Yunho? Be like him? Glow with his gravitas, that natural thing no one could wipe away? Did he?

One Saturday, he pondered this while he took his lunch. Eventually, as he got used to the intense training regimen, the ache in his bones after practice became subdued, a nice little high. They managed his voice, too, to ensure that after long singing lessons he could still speak normally. He wondered how Yunho was handling it all. For as long as they were friends, they were rivals, and through his extra efforts Junsu eagerly surmounted the gap of age—which caused Yunho to shoot up first, and gain more muscle first—and he could always keep up with him. If he was initially sore all over and exhausted, was his hyung being pushed to the limit, too? Did he cry out in frustration?

He hated not having Yunho here—different training schedules today. It really dampened Junsu’s spirit. He hadn’t made any new friends because he was singularly focused on his training. As he ate alone in the cafeteria, it seemed to him that no one else had this problem. Every other person he saw was either chatting in a group, or waiting for a friend. It was how you survived.

He was ravenous, but the food didn’t look appetizing at all. It wasn’t nearly enough, either. What was the point? Eat some salad, stay full for a half hour, and then have the hunger come back in full force. He had nodded tersely to the kitchen worker as she piled his plate with rice, kimchi, and vinegar-drenched salad. He took his mostly-finished plate to the rack for dirty trays, myopic to anything in his vicinity that existed beyond the tray in his hands.

Oof!

A weight slammed into his side, knocking both Junsu and his food tray ajar. The overly sour vegetables he hadn’t eaten landed on his shirt and on the floor. A few people looked up to see what was going on, and some girls covered their mouths to laugh covertly.

Meanwhile, the cause of such a foolish moment stood before him—the trainee he’d collided with had, miraculously, avoided getting any of the food on himself. He was wide-eyed, long haired, clearly on the pretty side of the pretty-to-handsome trainee continuum.

The pretty-looking boy said something, a question Junsu didn’t quite hear. It was probably Who’re you? but it also could’ve been What happened to you? Junsu hedged his bet on the former.

“Junsu…?”

“Heechul,” the boy smiled, pointing to himself. “I’ll be right back.”

He returned, his mop of hair bouncing behind him, with a wad of paper towel. With zero hesitation, he pressed it to the stain. Junsu nodded affirmingly, unable to move or speak. Soon the stain was no longer dripping, just a damp chill across his front.

“We know you,” another, taller guy said, with a wry smile.

“Come,” Heechul steered him towards their table, and what could Junsu do? He sat there, amidst the guys and a few girls, all roughly high-school aged. For many, this was their high school experience. He never cared about missing out on it, but maybe he should’ve.

“We know you, Junsu,” the tall guy repeated. “Everyone knows.”

“Seriously, you’re good. I bet you’ll debut soon,” a girl sitting across from them said.

At first, Junsu felt shy. It had been drilled into him by every adult he came into contact with lately: be humble. Be a perfectionist. Own up to your mistakes. Never dwell on your achievements, always anticipate the next hurdle. He wasn’t dumb enough to act out in front of them, but amongst his brethren, he let that side of himself show.

“We’ll see. My voice is special, that’s true. And I can dance. I wonder if there’s anyone here who can match me…”

Heechul scoffed. “Ya know, you’re not the only one with a good voice. Have you met Ryeowook?”

Junsu blinked, just as a cute-faced guy with sharp eyebrows leaned over and waved his hand, a solemn self-introduction.

“He’s probably as good as you. Or better,” said the tall guy, who Junsu recalled as Jiwon—or was it Siwon? Regardless, his gloating struck Junsu as odd. Everyone’s proud looks on behalf of Ryeowook did. He hadn’t realized at that point that it was less about Ryeowook’s exemplary vocals and more about knocking the new kid down a peg.

Junsu gave Ryeowook a discerning look. “Can you dance?”

He shrugged, and Siwon—it was Siwon, definitely—piped up. “He’s decent.”

“Junsu’s not decent,” the girl from before said. “He’s super good.”

He puffed his chest, and the whole table went quiet. Junsu cast a grateful look to the girl, with her pretty face and dyed auburn hair, and she gave him a shy smile in return. It wasn’t missed by anyone, least of all Heechul and Siwon.

“Donghae can dance,” Heechul said, finally, but he sounded bored, like this little game had worn him out. “At the end of the day, though, it’s not all about competition. The most talented of us might throw our careers away after a few years. And the ones that seem weaker could improve and become the best of the best.”

Everyone else nodded, pacified, except Junsu. He didn’t like hearing that. He fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Really, though…” Heechul looked around, like he was afraid someone would be watching. “The best of us is definitely her.”

Junsu knew who he was talking about. Her. She had a sort of magnetism, an idol-quality that made her look older, more experienced, distanced from the other trainees. She made Junsu’s heart beat in double-time, whether from admiration or lust he was not certain. She was on his side, and now he was on hers. For some reason, the energy of the table started to feel stifling, and one by one, the other trainees left.

Junsu watched her leave, enraptured. She was shorter than most of the other girls, but carried herself with the confidence of a supermodel. Her long hair flew behind her. His new favourite colour.

Only Siwon and Heechul remained with Junsu. Choi Siwon, Junsu recalled a half-hearted introduction initiated by Yunho, is the most popular guy among the female trainees. There’s rumours that his dad’s a chaebol. He’s super rich.

The younger ones liked the pretty boys, who were in no short supply, but the older ones seemed to have more of a penchant for the tall, handsome, wide-jawed Siwon. Even Yunho looked twiggy compared to him. He was intimidating, especially to other males—the alpha dog of the intrasexual battlefield. Junsu stared at him, not breaking eye contact.

“Junsu, you should come to my house next Saturday. There’ll be a few of us. We can all carpool.”

He had to collect his jaw from the floor.

What? Siwon wanted to invite him to a houseparty? Junsu glanced at Heechul, looking for the signal that it was a joke.

“I…” his voice sounded tiny. Not from being intimidated, but being shocked.

“Siwon does this every so often. Only with the older trainees. The more experienced ones,” Heechul winked.

But none of them was experienced. Junsu was no longer a rookie, he was well on his way, but he was still deep in the valley of teenagerdom. He’d never drank before. He called his mom every day.

“Can I bring a friend?”

Siwon laughed, an awkward, rehearsed-sounding noise. “Sure.”

Heechul leaned in conspiratorially. “You can bring a max of one guy. However many girls you want.”

“Huh?”

“Because.” Heechul was talking to Junsu, but eyeing Siwon. “A lot of guys’ll be gunning for her.”

This was clearly real. Junsu had suspected it, in the way Siwon smiled a little too loudly whenever she talked, straightened his spine and shifted closer to her when Junsu was gawking. He would be courteous to their faces. He shot up, newly invigorated.

Junsu bided his time for a little while, shadowing his unlucky prey. He knew Yunho would’ve approved.

Ryeowook headed to his dorm, thoroughly beaten down by practice, his hair still a little wet from the shower. Out of nowhere, something blitzed by him.

No. At him.

His reflexes were too slow, and Junsu clinched his forearm. He opened the handle to the dorm—nobody locked their dorm unless they were leaving for a few days, all of them knew that—and rather easily pulled Ryeowook inside, then closed the door behind him. He hardly put up a fight, not that he had the frame for it. How could a kid like this handle doing the same training as Junsu?

Ryeowook stared at him like a nervous cat. Strange. Yunho would say, if you can’t face me man-to-man, then you’re not worth my words.

“I hear you’re a good singer.”

Ryeowook lowered his head. Scratched the back of his neck. “I’m always improving.”

He could sing, just like Junsu, but he was humble. How nice.

“How long have you been here?” Junsu asked.

“Two years.”

“Are you debuting soon?”

He crossed his arms, still not looking up. “I dunno.”

Junsu made himself comfortable in the small space. Most of the dorms, the single ones especially, were no nicer than an army bunker. The futon took up most of the space, so he sat on the edge of it, almost wanting to get a reaction out of the mild-mannered guy, something. But he was stoic, not even acknowledging Junsu when he tapped the bed, gesturing for him to come over.

“That girl. I’ve never seen her before.” He wasn’t sure why he went to that. He wasn’t even sure why he was here, in a stranger’s room, laying into him.

Ryeowook finally looked up. “Boa is a goddess, sure, we all knew that.”

Boa. What a pretty name. And a goddess, to boot. “Is she debuting soon?”

“You should ask Heechul. He knows everything,” Ryeowook shrugged. He was either useless with this type of thing, or more cunning than he let on.

“Thanks, Ryeowook.” Junsu patted his shoulder awkwardly. “What’s your real name?”

Ryeowook just stared at him.

“It’s Ryeowook.”

“Really?”

No response. Junsu cringed. He hoped he wouldn’t be debuting with this guy. “It sounds like a stage name. It’s cool. Your parents gave you a cool name.”

What he didn’t say was: How funny, a cool name for an unremarkable guy.

.

.

.

Here’s what Junsu remembered.

At roughly 8 o’clock, on Saturday, seven trainees would meet up for a BBQ meal at Siwon’s family house. Yunho, Boa, Siwon, Heechul and… forgotten names five-six-seven all RSVP’d. Maybe Ryeowook was there? Jongwoon wasn’t. An important aside: Boa was one of only two girls there. The other one was a shy wallflower, so she reaped almost all of the male attention.

Junsu arrived first with Heechul. He smiled, imagining how Yunho would have the novelty of feeling like a commoner in the castle, because Siwon was indeed ultra-rich. Junsu was expecting a nice house or multi-floor condo, in line with Yunho’s family, but Siwon was clearly several tax brackets above either of them. The mansion was out of the way of the urban center of Seoul, just far enough to feel like a lush frontier. The light-teal sky was cloudless, an infinite panorama, not dulled by crisscrossing electricity lines or factory smokestacks.

No one knew what his father did, and no one brought it up—maybe it was unfashionable to be direct about those things—but his large portrait greeted them at the upstairs landing. Siwon explained that his dad was at home in his study, apparently content with a whiskey-sour and no one to bother him. The rest of the house had been presented on a plate for the trainees.

Heechul and the other girl manned the electric grill in the kitchen while Siwon set everything up. He found a few 6 packs of soju, the basic name-brand, and then showed Boa how to open the wine cabinet. Junsu rolled his eyes at the ostentatiousness, especially when their chosen wine, an old pinot noir, didn’t elicit a single positive reaction from the people who were on-hand to taste test: Siwon and Boa, himself, Heechul, other forgotten people.

Yunho arrived late. Junsu rushed to the door with Siwon and Boa, giving a terse introduction. “Yunho, my friend, the one I was telling you about!”

The late-evening light filtered in behind Yunho. Rakishly tossing his car keys in his hand and pocketing them, he kicked off his combat boots and shrugged out of his brown leather jacket. He was glorious, so full of charisma, and not one of the trio knew how to react after Junsu’s announcement.

Yunho steepled his hands, smiling brightly as he bowed. “Thank you for having me.”

“This is Siwon, your senior,” Junsu said.

Yunho nodded him up-and-down once. “Smells good. I guess the BBQ is cooking?”

Various curt nods.

“We’re having soju,” Boa said, properly breaking the ice. Had she dressed down to keep the attention at bay? Her sweater and baggy jeans with unbrushed hair and not a spot of makeup felt deliberate, a move of subversion. But it only drew Junsu to her more. He suspected Siwon felt the same, because he kept making eyes at her as he joked around, anticipating her attention like a puppy.

Yunho took a bottle of soju, cognizant of the rest of the room going still to watch him. He took a few sips, betraying no reaction. Siwon and Boa sat on adjacent chairs, their soju bottles placed on the ground at the same respectful distance. His arm lolled to the side, glancing by her. Were they waiting until Junsu and Yunho went outside with the others, hoping to steal a moment together?

“C’mon,” Junsu said brusquely. Yunho followed him to the kitchen, having forgotten his soju in the living area.

A table had already been prepared with plates of sizzling barbeque. Junsu huffed the smell of salted pork, and it was like a high. The representation of the food groups was markedly skewed—there was ample pork meat and some lettuce to make a simple wrap if one wanted, but most people would probably take a pair of chopsticks and pick from the meat—though it was a meal being prepared by teenagers. No one volunteered to make some fancy side-dishes, particularly hot ssamjang.

Heechul waved to them both, and Junsu gave the obligatory greeting. No conversation ensued from there; Heechul was finishing the BBQ, talking to the nameless girl nearby, and Yunho took a seat to examine the sear on the pork.

Pork loin, pork belly, pork shoulder, the fatty oil simmered off it all. Yunho plucked a piece and swallowed it, not before making a blissed mmmm. Heechul chuckled.

“It’s well-ventilated in here, I hope?” Junsu paced around, cracking the window open a little more. “If the smoke doesn’t disperse, we might get lung cancer.”

Heechul scoffed. “Okay, mother.”

Yunho laughed, loudly enough to put Junsu a little on edge. “I can take over the grill, if you want.”

“Nah, it’s fine. Shoo.”

Before it was Siwon, and now, Heechul, the object of Junsu’s ire. He didn’t fully understand it. With Siwon, it was Boa they fought over.

Soon, the empty soju bottles littered the counter. Junsu, watching them drink in a spell of boredom, had perfectly lined them up. Siwon was the current leader with two, but they were small bottles. With his frame and the food, he didn’t seem tipsy or anything. Everyone else had had at least one full one or three-quarters. Yunho had just cracked open his second. Junsu alone was abstinent, cursed by his feeble ancestors.

The meat finished, everyone was full and deliriously happy. They migrated back to the gathering room with the 70-something inch flatscreen TV, where Siwon had extended his arm, possibly brushing his hand against the miniscule hairs on Boa’s knuckles as he did, verging no closer.

For the umpteenth time that night, Heechul was badgering Junsu about his alcohol allergy. He nursed a warm bottle of water from the back of Siwon’s pantry.

“Give mine a try!” Yunho thrust the neck of his second soju bottle in Junsu’s face, smiling widely. The liquid line sloshed, now reaching around halfway. Junsu froze up. Then, he took it, and sipped. Everyone whooped and cheered. He pulled away, revolted by the chemical piss taste, even wheezing a cough.

“You’re so dramatic,” Heechul said laxly.

Junsu rolled his eyes. He watched Yunho take another long swig with practiced efficiency, as though he’d studied drinking as an art form. His gorge bobbed up and down with each gulp, a tiny clear bead dribbling on the corner of his mouth, oozing down and magnifying his mole.

The newfound silence only became apparent when Siwon chuckled. “You’re gonna drink out of that?”

Yunho. His eyes were trained on Yunho.

There was none of the irreverent cheer like in the way Heechul had teased them both. Yunho lowered the bottle, and wiped his mouth.

But Siwon continued. “You gave him a drink, and then you had it again? That’s like kissing twice!” He didn’t so much laugh as he expelled a long, disbelieving noise. Haaaa…! He was the lofty ruler of his kingdom, the tallest, likely the oldest, and the others followed suit with smirks or hesitant laughs.

It seemed that as they got past the period of immaturity, around middle school, where being different was the most mortifying thing imaginable, things settled and the other students stopped caring about whatever existed between Yunho and Junsu. They’d been picked on, but never bullied. It never felt dangerous. This was hate, as black and gummy as bile. Boa was attempting to reorient the conversation, but Yunho stood up.

“Excuse me.”

He got up, went down the hall, and walked slowly up the first flight of stairs, down that hall. Pat-pat-pat, directly on top of them. They could hear his every decisive step, and soon, the whine of a door opening and closing.

Siwon was clearly incensed. Who did Yunho think he was, roaming around the place like he owned it? Yet, between the options of confronting him and staying here, keeping Boa within his reach, he chose the latter.

Junsu would always pick flight over fight. He knew he’d never win the game of puffing his chest against Siwon, and his despair was only deferred by the thought of going to see Yunho and escape this complicated mess.

“Give him some time to cool off,” Heechul said in an unaffected voice.

“That guy…” Siwon shook his head, running a hand through his hair. His jaw was set, his masculine eyebrows furrowed, and he looked like a Joseon warrior, needing to defend his honour. Boa’s eyes moved between the hallway and Siwon.

“...Who does he think he is? Junsu, you’re not mad, are you? No, you’re normal. You’d never kiss a guy.”

“Yunho-hyung is normal.”

Siwon scoffed. “Not normal enough to laugh when he hears a joke.”

“It wasn’t a joke! It was wrong!” Junsu couldn’t believe himself. Couldn’t believe he was doing this, as if he was watching someone else manning his body from a control center. “You weren’t joking, you were being a dick! He didn’t do anything wrong!”

“Then get out of my house! You guys can fuck each other somewhere else!”

Someone gasped. Amidst the cacophony of sound, Heechul was trying, albeit not very hard, to mediate. Junsu and Siwon’s voices rose in a whirlwind, one high and one low, each unafraid. Boa had somehow slipped away.

“You… you’re… gay…!”

“You’re nothing! NOTHING!”

Crash, whizz, huff, pang. The dogfight only truly began when they tussled, practically knocking the coffee table on its side in their haste to jump into the fray. Quantitative metrics like size, muscle size, and age didn’t matter. It was a fight, an ugly fight, and they were perfectly matched.

“Go fuck your boyfriend!” Siwon pushed him hard. Junsu dragged his nails on Siwon’s exposed forearms. Siwon tried to knee him in the crotch, a low move for a well-bred rich boy, unless he’d had his fair share of fights in the schoolyard. If he’d been big since he was a kid, he probably took advantage of it.

“You’re just mad ‘cause Boa doesn’t want your little dick!”

Siwon thumped him in the shoulder, rocking his head back against the wall. Junsu clutched his side, bleating agonized cries, but with so much adrenaline in his system, the fierce pain flashed out in a few seconds. He was able enough to drag himself away, bolt to the kitchen with destruction on his mind.

“Screw you and your fucking soju!”

One by one, Junsu grabbed the unopened soju bottles and cracked them on any available surface—on the ground, the wall, the island, and each one made an impossibly loud orgasmic sound, erupting with spurts of alcohol and chipped glass in every direction.

Siwon raced to him, staggering to a halt. This would be it. Junsu knew it, and yet he kept smashing bottles, marching to his noble death with no fear.

“You…” Siwon pointed a finger at him. Shaking, it was shaking. Junsu contemplated throwing the bottle at him, disfiguring his face forever so his visuals would no longer be a point of consideration in the trainee evals.

“Wait until Boa sees what you’ve done.” Siwon was giddy, like a child. He broke his back running the opposite way, and Junsu followed him. There had to be a finite amount of adrenaline one’s body could generate—how long could his heart continue like this until he collapsed?

“Boa? Boa?!”

Maybe if Siwon never found her, he’d stop remembering what he was upset about. Junsu could find a way to make it up to him. Cleaning the mess up, for one. He was fine with bestowing Boa to Siwon. The thought of her made him sick right now.

Junsu searched every door Siwon hadn’t. Upstairs, he opened each in a long series of doors, practically tearing them off their hinges by the knobs. Open, close. Open, close. Open. Close. Wait… Was that…?

He reopened it, and Yunho was there, holding a bottle of soju. Chatting away with Boa, as though a barrier had blocked the noise of the fight from them. Junsu blinked a few times. Yunho hadn’t brought his bottle upstairs.

Boa. Boa’s bottle. In Yunho’s hand.

Oh.

“Boa…!” Siwon ducked in, roughly nudging Junsu’s side.

Boa gasped. “Oh…!”

She was touching Yunho’s shoulder, rolling her palm languorously on it, down to the bicep.

“Boa! Why are you talking to him?! He’s gay!” Siwon faced her, opposite Yunho, who quickly backed out of Boa’s touches.

“I wondered if Yunho was upset, so I came to check on him…” Boa said, adjusting an auburn strand of hair that threatened to spill in front of her face. “He’s very mature. And he has good taste in alcohol.” She very pointedly looked at him, and Junsu sensed that this was an inside joke between them. Yunho shuffled on his feet, subtly adjusting his body closer to the doorway.

“I made a mistake. We both did.” Junsu pulled the neckline of his shirt to the side to show the swollen bump on his shoulder; an identical one was forming on the top of his head. Boa covered her mouth with her hands. Yunho gaped, the realization hitting him more slowly.

“Junsu broke a lot of soju bottles. We fought.” Siwon’s voice was remarkably calm. “It was… pretty bad. The house is a wreck.”

“I’ll clean it,” Junsu said immediately after. He looked up at him, Siwon, with the stripe of blood curdling on his forearm. Siwon nodded. Somehow it worked. “And sorry. I didn’t mean it, about your dick.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. You owe me.”

Some other people were already picking up the scraps of bottles, but Siwon ushered them away. No one needed context, they merely accepted that a truce had been reached. Junsu began his blue-collar work, head down. The glass sounds reverberated in his ears, disrupting the silence only a little. He waited for them to resume talking, pretending he wasn’t there.

“Are you guys gonna watch? This isn’t exactly interesting,” Junsu said.

“You should make this more fun. Throwing all that alcohol out is a waste,” Heechul replied.

“Drink it!” Yunho said.

Junsu picked up one of the seawater-green bottles. Through the angle of the crack, this one had some of the soju preserved in the bottle. Without thinking, he chugged it down.

Everyone was happy. Yunho, Boa, Heechul, and even Siwon. Junsu worked for hours, draining the bottles, dumping them in the glass bin, and taking a cleaning rag to every surface in the vicinity. No part of tonight had mattered except for this, Junsu, the good sport, paragon of humility. As if he was a decathlete on the last leg, they chanted, counting down the seconds until he could clock in his time. He was bloated and red by the end, his tongue tasted like a flickering flame in his mouth. Sweat ran down his face copiously, more than his body had ever shed in the most difficult workouts.

“Are you okay, Junsu?” Boa asked, and Yunho sprang up to help.

Only when Yunho uprighted him did Junsu realize that he’d lost his balance. Miniature bursts of white sparkles went off in his peripheral vision, and he slumped, taking solace in Yunho’s touch, his familiar smell.

“You weren’t wrong about that,” Siwon marvelled. Junsu barely heard him. Sounds were bogged down by a filter of white noise, coming in and out unevenly like the movement of a churning lake. His eyes twitched, trying to lock on to something, anything. Yunho said something. Junsu hggssnsnnnnnn later naaahssss sorrryyyyy… Junsu giggled, repeating him and stretching out the syllables even more.

“C’mon, Junsu,” Yunho sighed. He shifted to a modified soldier’s carry, looping his arm on Junsu’s back and walking him up the stairs one at a time. Step… breathe… in, and out, laugh it out… step… continue. “What’s so funny, huh?”

“Nothing!” Junsu laughed. His free hand came off the railing, and he saw the impending face-plant on the ground seconds before it hit him…– no, Yunho had rescued him in the nick of time. My heeeero.

Yunho looked at the portrait of Siwon’s dad, saying nothing. He pulled Junsu to a bedroom, and laid him down.

“Whoa…” Junsu raised an arm to the ceiling. His heart had never stopped pounding. Slowly, his vision was coming back to him, in short vignettes. I’m touching the ceiling…

“What were you thinking?! You idiot,” Yunho sat beside him. He looked ten feet tall from Junsu’s angle.

“Lay down,” Junsu said. He yearned for the touch of another warm body. A memory flashed through his mind, so recent yet so faraway, of Siwon wrinkling his nose and everyone laughing about those bottle kisses.

“We have to go. So, get better. Relax. Do you want food?”

Junsu stretched his body. “Yunho…! Just stay for a bit.”

“...But…”

“Isn’t it crazy that Siwon thought we were fucking?”

Yunho blinked mutely.

“Hyung... were you and Boa flirting…?”

“No,” Yunho insisted. “She tried to make a move on me, but…”

“Ah. I see.”

Junsu leaned in, his heart finally slowing. “Sorry, that was invasive. I don’ really care if you and Boa like each other… here, let me tell you something about me.”

“It’s not a big deal, Junsu.”

“Nonono…! Listen!”

They say alcohol releases inhibitions; it doesn’t make you into someone else, but with that protective skin discarded, it might feel that way. Yunho listened, austere as a monk, not quite believing it but boxing it away in his lower consciousness. He loved to be the best. Better than Junsu, smarter, more experienced, more friends, more toys, more, more, more. He’d gained something right now and lost something too. He had to admit now that they weren’t the same; Junsu was a ravenous, freewheeling soul disguised in socially-normative clothes. It was strange. It was funny. Junsu had finally told Yunho something he didn’t know.

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.

Life continued at a busy clip. Surrounded by other prospective idols, Junsu fed off their hopefulness, but he also insulated himself, not wanting to be lost in the masses. He counted on Yunho as always, and in spite of Junsu’s frosty disposition, a handful of new friends wove themselves into the web of his life, though on the periphery whereas Yunho was closer to the heart’s center. Whether it was by chance or something else, he found himself becoming a fixture of the group, an outer planet that orbited around the star, which was Heechul.

Heechul was renowned among the trainees for his unparalleled knowledge that bordered on suspicious—if ever someone quizzed him about his material, throwing around words like espionage or wiretapping, he just smiled serenely and the accuser gave up. According to Heechul, Junsu was primed to become a soloist while Yunho was going to be in a five-member boy group that focused on hip hop and aerial dancing.

“That makes sense,” Yunho replied. “We do a lot of lifts and jumps.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Junsu wasn’t really sure why he said it. Neither Heechul nor Yunho reacted. He shrugged, and finished his food.

Later on that week, Yunho and his group-to-be were showing off their monthly progress. The choreography was absurd. Of the five boys, not one seemed much older than Junsu or Yunho; they were so skinny and fresh-faced. They performed stunts with effortless grace and power: backflips, layouts, forward aerials, handstands, each time they were untethered in the air Junsu felt a prick of fear, but they always landed on both feet. And Yunho, he was there, training like a professional. Given how hard he worked and how good he was, it was a testament to the level of talent that he didn’t stand out much from the others. They were all so amazing.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder. Expecting it to be his dance instructor, Junsu looked up, but he was instead met with the face of Siwon.

“Let’s talk after tonight’s schedule, outside,” Siwon said. And as soon as he left, all the energy that had been vacuumed out of the room returned in full force. Junsu might’ve been well respected, but the others still delighted in chipping away at his ego.

“Seongsaengnim wants to have a taaaaalk with his student…”

“Even the staff’ll be gossiping about it, Junsu!”

“What could it be, Junsu? Starts with a B, ends with an A?”

“Shut up,” he snapped. Although the eightsome had agreed to keep the story under wraps, somehow a lascivious detail had wreathed its way through the dorms, that Boa had two handsome guys vying for her hand. Junsu resented the comparisons to the one-note characters of dramatic fiction—he was no knight, no wholesome prince to Siwon’s dashing rogue, he was betrothed to no one. He wasn’t even sure he could put a name to what he felt for her, and he hardly thought about it because of how time-consuming his schedule was. How did Siwon find the time to hang out with her? And Boa… What did she think? Who did she want?

Heechul smiled, and lowered his eyes.

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.

Siwon and Junsu ended up at one of the few nearby cafes that stayed up past 11 pm. Neither drank, apart from a glass of ice water each. It didn’t help that the place was sleepy at this hour, so an eavesdropper wouldn’t have to work hard to hear them.

Siwon distracted himself with his new cell phone, a big, bricky thing that probably cost more than any of Junsu’s personal assets. All of their ice had melted and Junsu’s drink was nearly done by the time he cleared his throat, prompting Siwon to lower his phone.

“What did you bring me here for?”

Siwon intertwined his fingers together, dropping his hands on the table. “How’d you get so popular?”

“Pfft… ha-ha-ha!!”

“Hey…! Show some respect!” Siwon’s brow furrowed with angst. No matter how vulnerable he felt, he glowed with harsh emotion, his sadness snaking its way back to macho anger. That face seemed to say I’m going to cry out my sorrows and then beat a bunch of guys up. “Also, you should call me hyung.”

“How come?”

“You call Yunho hyung. He’s only two months older than me.”

“Well, Yunho went to school with all the older kids. That’s just how it is.” Junsu shrugged. “Although, I wouldn’t focus much on age stuff. It’s kinda outdated.”

Siwon shook his head. “You creep me out.”

Well, that feeling was mutual. Siwon knew it, too, because he added, “I know everyone sees me as intimidating when they first meet me. But you really are, all the way through. The more I watch you, the creepier you become.”

Those semantics gave Junsu a twinge of irritation. Intimidating and creepy conjured different archetypes, and Siwon had assigned him the less respectable of the two. Regardless, a few trainees had made sideways comments to Junsu in a similar vein. Siwon was the first to say it directly.

“I don’t know what it is, but I’m not a weirdo or anything,” Junsu said, raising his hands in glib deference. “Maybe you find me creepy, or strange, or whatever, because you see how good I am. I’m one of the best singers and dancers in all of SM. I don’t know if it’s jealousy, or…”

Siwon slammed both his fists on the table in unison. “Why would I be jealous of you?! Look in the mirror!”

Junsu reeled from the unexpected turn. Sometimes the older boys picked on him for his girly looks, but no one ever insinuated he was bad-looking. “I’m not ugly, but even if I was, I’m still better than you! Everyone knows it.”

He wondered if steam would begin pouring out of Siwon’s nostrils and ears. He had technically proven the world that its first impression of him was correct, though not to the fullest extent. His fight with Junsu had been impassioned but not brutal, part-stage choreography, assured with a code of honour; they both minded themselves not to hit as hard as they could. Where did his animal side live, if it really did exist? Was he like a werewolf waiting to be changed, looking for the slightest opportunity to unleash his rage?

Logically, that wouldn’t happen, because Siwon, like all the trainees, was governed by a very extreme, explicitly-dictated system. The slightest hint of him having beaten a fellow trainee up, and he’d be sent packing, forever a non-graduate of the idol world. Junsu’s bruises hadn’t been visible, but he imagined Siwon had to make up something about his arm scratches to the staff—it was just a stray cat with an attitude. That said, there were other ways his anger might express itself.

“You’re not better than me!” Siwon said at last. A weak counter-attack.

“One day, I’ll be the best!” Junsu shouted. This would be a line that would make his future self cringe, several years down the road, but to his trainee self, it was an epic proclamation, his own blaze of glory. “And I don’t need anyone, not you, or Yunho-hyung, or even Boa…”

“That’s it!” Siwon growled. “Boa…!”

Ah, I was waiting for that. The reason that we’re doing something as pathetic as this. Junsu held his jaw tensely. He could feel the table shuddering ever-so-slightly, making the leftover water slosh back and forth in his drinking glass.

Siwon leaned in, like he was about to tell a life-changing secret. “I’ll have you know that before I came here, the two of us talked.”

Oh? “And what did she say?”

“That’s the thing. I pressed, on and on and on… all I wanted was an answer. You or me. Or even, neither of us! And do you know what she told me?”

Junsu leaned in a little more.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to choose. I like you guys, both of you’.”

Junsu found himself groaning a little, mirroring Siwon’s irritation. “Are you joking?”

One glance at Siwon proved that he was not, in fact, joking. “I don’t know what the hell is going on in that head of hers. Maybe she thinks she’ll be able to screw around with half the male trainees and just cast us aside, one by one… and debut like she did nothing.”

“No,” Junsu cut in. That wasn’t Boa. He was somehow very sure of it. “I think she’s mulling it over.” She probably wanted you to shut up because you were being such a dick about it, Junsu thought, snickering.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. So, she gave you a non-answer.”

“Yeah.”

“Well…” Junsu got up, trying to present as the charismatic human he would become. “I have some advice for you, hyung.”

Siwon’s eyes widened.

“Don’t let anyone—not even a girl—get in the way of what you’re after.”

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.

Junsu got back in a hurry, knowing well that there was no way he’d fall asleep. He considered some reps at the on-site gym, but was put off by the amount of people there—a few recognized him, and he slipped out before the friendly interrogation could begin. Away from Siwon, from the rest, he found an empty studio. There was an attached conference room with a clear glass partition, televising the sleepy-eyed executives congregating there. He sighed in frustration, unable to consider his own dorm, given the unideal company, and he took the elevator up to the top floor.

“Yunho, I’m here,” Junsu said, carelessly pushing the door open. “Siwon and I had a talk.”

He bristled at the gust of unfamiliar air. Save for a few small lamps, the room was swathed in darkness. Yunho wasn’t an insomniac, but he didn’t go to bed early by any standards, and besides, he’d never leave the lights on. Junsu wondered if he was showering or something. He stepped around the couch and looked into the small bedroom in the adjoining room, and jumped when he saw a body that was as still as a stone, hunched over on the ground, the moonlight of the window softening his hair in a whitish veil.

“You scared me,” Junsu said, trying to collect himself. He hated to be so absent-minded, forgetting that it wasn’t just Yunho but his dorm-mate who lived here, too, and it brought back a slew of old memories. Playing in the park, following Yunho’s lead, and if ever Junsu missed something or didn’t get the joke, Yunho laughed. You need to get a handle on things, so people will respect you, Yunho had said. He was no more than seven or eight, and scolded Junsu like the patriarch of a long-lived dynasty.

But Junsu would learn. He would.

“Is he around? Hyung?”

The light broke through, whip-like, as Jongwoon turned his head, illuminating the book his nose was shoved in. “How did the talk go?”

“Not good. But, are you going to answer my question? About Yunho?”

“Oh. Yes.” Jongwoon hummed. “I dunno. I don’t keep track of him. But, anyways, if you want to talk about it, I’m all ears. Why wasn’t it good, mm?”

Junsu tensed. He inevitably compared this strange boy to Yunho, his confidante, and they were so different. Yunho was brusque, but affectionate in his speech, even slipping in his parents’ Jeolla dialect that he barely knew, if only to make Junsu laugh. Where was he?

“...Boa said that she likes me and Siwon. She can’t choose one of us. It’s weird.”

“Maybe Boa just has her preferences… that’s all it comes down to.”

Junsu gave him a look. “We have nothing in common.”

Jongwoon shrugged, and lowered the book. How could he read in such low light? Junsu moved a little closer, making out the cover: a conversation book for Japanese learners. Language-learning had never been part of the trainee program, for Junsu at least, so he wondered if this was Jongwoon’s little hobby. Or a way to differentiate himself, earn his spot even among the best crop of vocalists.

“Maybe… she likes guys with the B blood type.”

“That’s not it.”

Jongwoon, unperturbed, continued on. “Guys who are tall. Taller than her.”

“I’m not tall. She’s just short! Of course, every guy here is taller than her.”

“Maybe…” he rubbed his temples, like he was trying to receive a psychic message. “...Guys born in 1986.”

“That’s not it.” Junsu sighed. “And get up. Why are you on the ground?”

He rubbed the nape of his neck and got up, placing the book on the windowsill. He was tall, taller than Junsu was expecting. “Well, I don’t know… What else do you have in common, huh?”

“Maybe she likes us for different reasons.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Siwon’s her muscle, the manly man,” Jongwoon smiled at Junsu’s snort of contempt. “And you’re the pretty, sensitive guy, the one she could visit the Han river with.”

“He’s the real man and I’m the loser?”

“Ey, calm down.”

“Dating two guys, there’s just no way. Imagine us! Boa’s two husbands?!”

Jongwoon laughed. “If I was you, I’d steer clear of Siwon and Boa for the next while. It might get weird, even just looking at them.”

“Yeah, no kidding, now I’ll think of the three of us in some weird half-gay love story! Screw you!” Junsu punched him in the side, and Jongwoon laughed some more.

“Is it true you’re going solo?”

The question took him off guard. Junsu looked around, making sure no one was listening, and Yunho’s voice came to him: idiot, no one else is here. “Heechul said that. And he knows everything.”

“He claims he does. But he’s wrong sometimes. Anyways, what do you think? If it is true?”

“Well…” Junsu had tried not to think about it. Every day he fought for his place, taking every compliment and critique in stride, and no one had used that special word, debut. If he was debuting, it probably wouldn’t be for months. “I want creative control. I don’t want to rely on others.”

This response shocked Jongwoon enough to make him cough down a laugh. “Mmh… well…” he sputtered, and Junsu felt really awkward. “...That’s intense. I want to be in a group, and I’m sure most of us do, because it’s easier. You get to share the burden with a bunch of other people.”

Junsu thought about Yunho—he really couldn’t help it. Yunho always reacted like a detonated bomb when people wanted to go down the simpler road, the one that wouldn’t be as troublesome. If all you want is easy, pack up your things! You don’t belong here. Junsu smiled at the idea of Yunho here, voicing a lot of Junsu’s innermost thoughts. Maybe they were becoming too alike.

“You’d be a good soloist.” Junsu wasn’t sure why he said it. It could’ve been the darkness of the night, or his exhaustion, or the remnants of the Siwon conversation, casting a dour mood over him, but he felt unusually self-aware about who he was as an idol-to-be. “Honestly, I’m not any better than you. Anything I can do, I’m sure you can do as well.”

Jongwoon looked away, but he was still smiling. “That’s unexpected from you.”

“I’m being honest. Being good at singing is the most important thing. And then it’s personality, which, you seem nice. The last part is looks, though nobody likes to talk about that part.” Junsu held in his breath, and felt it escape his body in a slow shudder. “You’re better looking than me. And you’re tall. You shouldn’t miss out on any opportunity.”

He was proving Yunho right. Junsu waited for an emotional response to pass over Jongwoon’s enigmatic face. He looked just like a fox, or a cat, some spectral being that had a rather intoxicating glint in its eyes, the look of the idols who graced magazines and red carpets. He felt uncomfortable, as though he was having to convince himself that it was an objective reality and not his own lust-tinged goggles clouding his judgment, like when Yunho had made those lewd comments in reference to Jongwoon.

He smiled. “I’m ugly, though.”

“What?! Who said that? Did someone tell you that?” Jongwoon was two years Junsu’s senior, and yet, Junsu felt older. “Don’t listen to anyone. They’re not happy with you unless you get a bunch of surgeries.”

He watched Jongwoon consider this. Junsu didn’t know if it was true, he was just trying to make Jongwoon feel better about himself without potentially revealing his complementary point of view.

But Jongwoon gracefully kept the conversation on, sparing Junsu from more embarrassment. “The thing about going solo is not having friends around you. Just staff.”

“I have friends. They’ll be separate from the idol life, though.”

Jongwoon eyed him. “...You don’t mix personal things and business?”

“You sound like an agent. But, yes, I think that’d be simpler.”

Look at you, Junsu. Using those kinds of words, easier, simpler, is your head screwed on right? You’ve been spending too much time with these nobodies. Kick your ass back into high gear.

“I might ask her for advice.”

Jongwoon nodded. Boa would be one of the first to debut in the pool of trainees Junsu had met, and she was going to be a soloist. Soon. Spotting her was becoming harder day by day. She was probably spending time with the seasoned SM artists, with her future backup dancers and stylists. It was strange to think, but it made perfect sense at the same time.

He hadn’t talked to Boa since then. And he didn’t want to.

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.

There was the old-Yunho, the one who embellished Junsu’s daydreams with notes of profound emotion: sadness, anger, longing, fear. Old-Yunho who cared a little too much about everything, to the point where his sense of passion became diluted. He was secretly timid, always concerned about his place in the world.

This Yunho was someone new. He had trainee friends, forming the last peak on his triangle of relationships, with his old classmates and Junsu forming the other ends—one day it would probably be a friendship octagon, where Junsu was lost among too many others. This Yunho was tall, one hundred eighty-two centimetres to be precise. He didn’t depend on his parents for anything. He did back layouts into twisting pikes, gravity-defying airflares, flips into somersaults, windmills, one-handed handstands, and on, and on, and on. He and his four teammates introduced the rest of the trainees to their handbook of moves across several dance disciplines: breakdance, hip hop, ballet, gymnastic dance.

In the rare gaps in his schedule when he could watch, Junsu felt a pulse under his skin like energy signals reaching his body, awakening it, and always when Yunho was in the center of the group formation. He was at his best when he rocked his body to the rhythm, bottling and transforming the audience’s cheering into kinetic energy, as though it nourished his bones. Junsu felt a little bad, because he always thought, I want Yunho to stay like this forever. When the music faded out, and he was no longer Yunho the charismatic dancer, he was just Yunho, the new Yunho, and a tar-like pit burned in the bottom of Junsu’s stomach.

Still, he gave himself to the moment, to Yunho, and every dance seemed to be more outrageous than the one before it. The boys performed enthusiastically, nailing each move while adding their own colour to it, like each vocalist might in a song. By the end they were covered in sweat, except for Yunho. The number of female trainees hovering over this group of boys multiplied exponentially each time Junsu showed up. Like male birds of paradise, the other four guys preened from the praise, making Yunho’s cold reproachments look even more deliberate. He spoke to them with businesslike severity, though Junsu noticed a tender inflection that was absent when Yunho dealt with male trainees.

Nonetheless, most of the girls were taken aback by his indifference. He cut an intimidating figure, with his hawk-eyed gaze and towering physique, although a few of them were curiously watchful, intrigued by the one boy who seemed so unflappable, like he was a dare.

Yunho gave Junsu a half-hug, clearing a berth for just the two of them. There go Yunho and Junsu, they were probably thinking, with the faint idea of a history that touched the two of them.

“How’ve you been?” Yunho asked.

“I’m all right.”

Yunho gave him a little look, and then, he went back to his group. He uttered something Junsu couldn’t make out, but sounded like the direction of a leader-in-training, and he herded Junsu back, and out, into the hallway.

“What’re you doing?” Junsu’s voice pitched high.

“I’m free to talk. So, c’mon, tell me. We have catching up to do.”

The thoughtless affection in his voice caught Junsu deeply off guard, as the images of those hopeful girls swirled in his head still. Yunho was kind of like the male version of Boa, blessed with a natural kind of magnetism that didn’t depend on fleeting bouts of self-confidence or good humour; it was coded into his DNA, bolstered, not tanked, by his spells of fragility and inadequacy.

Yunho led him to a courtyard. The younger trainees tended to study here, especially now that the summer weather shone like a beacon over them all. Today, it was all too quiet, with only one other person outside. A perpetual fixture in their dorm life was the groundskeeper, who stood hunched over a thicket with his garden shears. Yunho paid him no mind—the courtyard was expansive, and the man seemed to have selective hearing that only extended to his work parameters.

Junsu followed Yunho to a table, unquestioning, feeling the rare joy of life as it used to be when they were younger—flashes of Yunho doing what he wanted, when he wanted.

It was all too easy to pretend, so he did. “Siwon and I… it was inconclusive.”

“Fists?”

“No fists. Apparently Boa doesn’t know who she wants.” Junsu faltered. Boa… Junsu knew as well as anyone that her song demos would become fully-recorded singles very soon, that the older people she hung around would be her backup dancers, that she was getting extra fittings and styling appointments for a reason. That night when she was just one of them, partying at Siwon’s, floated further and further away. From that viewpoint, it all seemed so dumb.

He wasn’t going to tell Yunho that. Obviously. So, he relaxed his posture, not wanting to mimic Yunho but show his ease in his own way. “...I bet she likes me. I have a better personality than him. I’m more like her… y’know… but if she doesn’t want me, then who cares?”

Yunho nodded with that glint in his eyes, like a professor assessing his student. “You went to see Jongwoon after, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I wanted to see you… I found him sitting on the ground and reading in the moonlight. His head was sort of in the clouds.”

“He’s like that. Very AB-like.”

“That makes sense. Anyways, did he snitch about it?” Junsu didn’t care, though he kept his voice eager, insistent.

“He’s not like that. I figured it out on my own, mostly.” Yunho shrugged. “You must’ve come when I was working out.”

“Really? I swore I checked there, but I didn’t see you in the gym.”

It was strange. Yunho shrugged.

“We’re like old retirees,” Yunho observed.

Junsu laughed, and then he laughed, too.

“What do you think? About my group?”

“You’re really good. But, sometimes, it’s scary. I watch you guys and I just think you’re going to mess up, but you don’t. I don’t know how you do it.” Junsu shook his head.

“Why would we mess up?” Yunho said arrogantly, widening his legs as he sat, like he was claiming more space.

Junsu pinched the inside corner of his cheek. Say something, a part of his mind was telling him.

“Anyone can mess up. You haven’t even debuted yet, so don’t be narcissistic.”

Yunho scoffed, quirking one corner of his mouth to the side, so his mole disappeared.

“What is it? What the hell is it, now?”

“Calm down,” Yunho said, vaguely amused. “Don’t be immature. Girls don’t like immature guys.”

“Girls? Are you an expert on girls?”

“Eh, some gratitude would be nice. I know more than you.”

“Like you’ve ever had a girlfriend!”

“Are you done embarrassing yourself?” Yunho gestured to the arid grass, the groundskeeper who was, in fact, wearing earbuds, oblivious to their argument.

“There you go again! Holier-than-thou Yunho. God’s gift to man Yunho. Always right, always so perfect… that’s our Yunho! Never been wrong in his life! I am so unworthy of your blessings, my great father!”

As his performance started to deteriorate, Junsu realized he was flippantly mangling a passage from the Bible, one of the famous ones they always said before communion. His cheeks coloured. He wasn’t a believer, but he was Christian. He wanted an endlessly abundant god to exist, somewhere on a higher plane, to forgive the sins of his earthly son: Junsu’s lack of belief, his avarice, and now, mocking the Biblical word to make a point and safeguard his pride.

He was changing. He missed his mirth, the simple joy of being a child, a very young one. Before he knew what money was. Before earning your keep had been a given.

No one could be as upright as Yunho claimed to be. Every one of his declarations was a deflection, against what? There was some kind of degeneracy in his spirit. Junsu tried to imagine him praying, not just keeping his eyes closed and posture servile until he could sit up again, but truly praying, and believing, and he couldn’t. Yunho bowed to no god.

“Before you and Siwon started this little fight, did you ever stop to think? Just a little?” Yunho left no room for Junsu to consider, eagerly barrelling on. “When did Boa ever say she liked you? Or Siwon? And no, laughing at a joke doesn’t count. Smiling doesn’t count. When we were in that bedroom…”

Junsu shut his eyes. “I remember…”

“She was… Well… Coming onto me.”

Junsu winced, as though his mind had been bruised psychically.

“She gave me her drink. I think she wanted me drunk. We were alone there for a long time, and nobody thought to look for her.” Yunho’s charisma combined with his dull-eyed stare produced a chilling effect. He was impervious to Boa’s charms, Junsu could sense that much. It was as if he was rewinding to that night, combing through the footage, stitching shots together until he had a complete tableau of every guest’s character arc.

“That’s fine…”

Yunho sputtered a deep laugh. “So, why are you acting like a puppy in love?”

“I’m not!”

“Well, you’re not seeing what’s right in front of you!”

He was so audacious when it was just the two of them. It would be impossible to try and rein him in when he was like this; Yunho spoke as if an emperor, like his place in the world had never been questioned. A girl liked him—no, duh, that was commonplace. These two people Junsu was infatuated with, who seemed to draw endless crowds, well, they weren’t the same, because Yunho had triumphed over Boa. He’d won her over, but she hadn’t gotten him.

Junsu didn’t want Boa, or Yunho, or the foreign guy, Ma-Su-Oh. No one had a claim to him. Yunho was right. This solo life was made for him, it was his only option. He could not trust anyone in the world; no one was made of the same stuff as him. There would be no going back.

Yunho was his closest friend. That would never change. But he was not a brother. He was not a peer or a coworker, he would never be part of Junsu’s sleepless promotional cycles or his mindless, late-night escapades at a penthouse filled with beautiful people. Junsu would have to get used to his voice in the wavering film of a phone line, and their conversations would grow fewer and farther in between, because no one could outdo the darkness and the glamour of his tantalizing mistress, the night, the ritz.

.

.

.

Junsu’s premonition had been right; mere months later, Boa debuted to great fanfare. Everyone, top-down, from the executives to the janitorial staff, was running around like she was the company’s benediction of economic prosperity for years to come, their breaths bated as if they were holding out for double, triple wage increases. Even the trainees felt the celebratory air, and not at least because her debut seemed to coincide with Chuseok, which had sentimental value to the company as a whole, making the staff more lenient about the rules. So, when a group of trainees proposed a watch-party for Boa’s first KBS performance, all the SM staff and trainees gathered in the cafeteria to play a live broadcast. The tables had been pushed aside so they could sit on the floors or on chairs, like they were young students again.

The others saw something far-flung and unimaginable, but Junsu watched her with a more pragmatic lens. He considered all of it, like a sports team captain watching compilations of his next opponent. Her hair had been dyed a sandy bronze, and it flew around her like a whirlwind. She wore a tight silver bodysuit, not minding the stretch at all as she danced her heart out. Junsu and everyone knew she wasn’t singing live, but that would come later on—this was a display, like an advertisement, for her and her song to worm inside the open minds of Koreans everywhere.

There was so much missed in those four minutes. Junsu had the unshakeable urge to talk to her; he hadn’t seen her in over a month, and in the impending weeks before her departure, their relationship grew crude, ordinary. Or Boa became an adult, and everything was as Yunho had said: she was a circumstantial friend, nothing more than that. Junsu wanted to take her hand and look her in the eye and ask whether she still thought of Yunho, whether that night of them in Siwon’s bedroom was real.

So, while everyone else internalized Boa and her glittery outfit, her earworm of a song, Junsu thought about the vacant space, stretched thin in between. And of Yunho.

Junsu followed the ebb and flow of the trainees as they left. He thought he saw Heechul and his other friends up ahead, though they might’ve been other trainees. Yunho and his band of boy-servants were hanging around a central wall that enclosed both exits, making it difficult to avoid them as you walked by. Junsu watched the boys and girls lower their eyes solemnly as they left, because by now, Yunho’s impression had rubbed off on everyone.

Junsu was becoming more stuck in his head, and consequently prone to moments of spatial inattention. This time, though, it just had to be Yunho, of all the people to bump into.

He muttered an apology before looking up. Yunho was smiling.

“Hyung, everyone’s leaving,” Junsu said hesitantly. He fought the urge to wander his gaze to those guys, Yunho’s members-to-be, and some others Junsu didn’t recognize.

The term hyung pulled Yunho’s focus, like it was a reminder of something bygone. “Actually…” He clasped a hand on Junsu’s shoulder and squeezed hard, hard enough to threaten a bruise. Junsu tasted complex malt, vice, a bitter kind of sweetness on his jacket.

“We’re going to chainsmoke and drink,” Yunho said genially. “If they find out about it, we’ll be dead for sure. So if there’s anything you want to tell me just in case…?”

Junsu nodded emptily. This was the first time Yunho had given him permission. There was so much that hit him, all at once, and so badly he wanted to unload it all:

I don’t know if this is what I want and I must be missing something from life and I should’ve done the normal thing like everyone else and gone to college and I’ve put so much of myself into this enterprise but at what cost and I think we’ve ruined whatever special thing there once was between us.

“I’ll come with you.”

Yunho rolled his brow up. “I thought you don’t smoke.”

He was a little hurt by that. Things Yunho had known for certain became statements of doubt, now that their paths veered apart. There was time to resuscitate their bond, Junsu reminded himself, there was still that boy, that Jung Yunho, embedded in a filter of nostalgia.

Junsu just shrugged, and said nothing. That was good enough for Yunho.

Yunho’s party was a feat of clandestine organization besides almost certainly being illegal. It was hosted in the basement hovel of some homeowner in a suburban complex, where the drink was plenty. Siwon’s fancy wine cabinet couldn’t hold a candle to this stuff, the meat-and-potatoes of wannabe teenage drinkers: vodka, Japanese stout, distilled soju. Junsu appreciated it all from a distance. He had no one here to fraternize with, but he didn’t mind taking the role of a spectator. In these reprieves, he found he could entertain himself well enough and feel all the better—not having to deal with people, their whims and double-crosses.

Of all the people around, Junsu only ducked out of the way when Yunho surfaced nearby; because he didn’t want the night to unravel horrifically. That said, he observed Yunho from a distance. Every so often Yunho went upstairs, cigarette and lighter already primed in his hands, and when he came back, the stench of smoke wafted off him. He was treated as a god among men; if he set his empty can of beer aside, a new one spontaneously appeared moments after. He had so many friends, the way they layered around him made Junsu dizzy. Some reminded Junsu of his father’s evocative name for the young men who regularly appeared on the news channel: the scrounge of Korea. They wore bandanas and shadowy goatees, some had sunglasses on despite it being night, none had a belt even though it was a necessity with loose-hanging jeans like those. And the clean-shaven trainees, Yunho’s other friends, effortlessly mingled with the gangster-looking guys.

From just a few minutes of listening, Junsu managed to pull together his personal analysis of Jung Yunho’s relationships. It was a rulebook, and how befitting to Yunho, with his black-and-white mentality, his reign of unchallenged, sweeping statements. Rule one: Jung Yunho is your leader. He’s everywhere—even if he’s gone to get a smoke, don’t you dare say a bad word against him. Rule two: friends exist in the way nice furnishings serve to enhance a spectacular ballroom. They’re useful tools, like different outfits that can be worn to show Yunho’s range.

The third rule came to him just as Yunho was explaining how he’d bought his own motorcycle—no matter what Yunho says, not only is this the first time you’ve heard it (so react accordingly) but under no circumstances should you even think of challenging the veracity of his account, even if there are a lot of improbabilities.

Maybe it was the tedium of the party and Junsu’s mental state, or his revulsion at such a superfluous display, or the loosening effect of the two sips of soju he’d perfunctorily drunk. He crossed his arms. “Like SM would let you have a motorcycle.”

Yunho turned around, not missing a beat. He seemed to glow, as if he was waiting for someone to bite back and force him to defend himself.

“It’s true, Junsu. I don’t need to prove it to you, ‘cause, I mean, I really don’t care. But it’s true.”

And then, he drew his cigarette, to the perverse jeers of his friends. He let it dangle between two fingers, like a seed of inescapable doubt, the what-if, will-he, he wouldn’t smoke indoors with everyone around, would he?

“I don’t believe you,” Junsu said.

He thought he sensed a twinge of Yunho’s smooth veneer cracking. It should’ve frightened Junsu; Yunho didn’t implode, he exploded. His anger was inconvenient.

“You must be jealous. Have you ever kissed a girl? I picked one up yesterday and drove her around on my motorbike.”

“Yeah, well, all those girls, and you can’t have Boa. She’s moved on.”

“Who said anything about her?”

“Stop being like that! I’ll tell you something: Boa helped you, and she left you. Soon, I’m going to leave you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“There’s something wrong with you!”

Yunho blew a plume of smoke in his face that seemed to last forever. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite.”

“Me?” Junsu shivered, fanning the smoke away, but it was too late. His lungs felt noxious.

He nodded. “I’ll be honest, Junsu, it’s been hard to look at you since then.”

“Since…? What…?”

“Since you informed the world you rubbed your first nut out to a foreign boy playing chess.”

There wasn’t even a moment of bated breaths or mouse-like gasps, a faintly respectful pause before the laughter came pouring out. Junsu had no doubts that this story would be passed around for years to come, slowly warping like a game of telephone, perhaps jumping over oceans and spreading to islands like a contagion, and he was sure that down the road, when he was famous, eventually someone, somewhere would find him, with that glint of recollection in their eyes.

“What is wrong with you?”

“Look, I know we’re friends, but still. I don’t wanna hear about that.”

“No… who told you?!”

“You did. You were so fucking drunk at Siwon’s.” Yunho’s eyes seemed glazed over, robotic. “Sorry.”

So this was it, then. Anything for a laugh, for a modicum of respect. Humiliating your best friend, throwing something precious away, why the fuck not?

That dog.

Junsu couldn’t think. He wondered whether everyone was still laughing at him or if they’d moved on to another joke, and he was the pathetic, sad sack, brewing in his misery. He couldn’t see Yunho. He saw right through, past the lines that suggested the shape of a human body, which became feathered at the edges from his roiling tears. Junsu saw privilege, decadence, a commitment to nothing and no one but serving oneself, and he wondered if this crowd-shaped void was the best approximation of Yunho’s true personhood, beneath the down-permed hair and new set of veneers.

Junsu wasn’t sure how, but he fought the tears and the pain. He’d been through worse. “For your information, he was playing mahjong. Not chess.”

Yunho shrugged. “You said chess.”

“No I fucking did not!”

“Uh huh, you did.”

“You…” You… Are… No, not are… What word followed? You was too intimate. No matter what insult Junsu lashed him with, Yunho would smile, safe with the knowledge that Junsu knew him, and wanted to fix him.

Yunho didn’t matter. Junsu had to chant it in his head a few times, like he was mechanically working the gears of his brain to get the message through to him. In, out. He matched his footsteps to his breathing, and his demons chased him up the stairs, out the door, back on the bus.

Married people called it divorce. Lovers called it moving away. Horoscope columnists claimed the stars had their way of divulging fate, singers crooned about the sadness of a blue heart. Maybe in another life… That phrase seemingly only traced a path to deeper sorrow. No one did not find it damaging.

He thought about a TV broadcast that had caused an uproar in the family dining room when he was maybe thirteen. Junsu’d always had a penchant for eavesdropping, which could get him into trouble, but his father, as if becoming more aware of Junsu’s world-weariness—he would be a working member of society soon, after all—let him watch the whole thing. A woman had discovered that her husband was meeting different women every night, accumulating gifts to fund his high-flying lifestyle. The worthiest detail came in the second or third minute. The woman was in her fifties, and apparently she’d been duped for decades, since they got married. He recalled one quote, of the harried woman, looking aged beyond her years. ‘You think you know someone your whole life, and then you realize you never knew them at all.’

He’d brushed it off as dramatic, thinking her a silly old woman, but the words haunted him. Because they were true. There was no omniscient telescope that let you peer into someone’s heart. Had Yunho always been waiting to sabotage him, looking for a slanderous headline to brand him with forever? Yunho had always been prideful, but taking sadistic pleasure in engineering the downfall of Junsu, who held him so close to his heart, the one he’d never have suspected, if only to shatter the illusion of unbreakable trust, was he capable of that?

Junsu felt the Yunho-hole in his heart. It flared chronically. At mealtimes, as he tried to fall asleep, as he watched another trainee attempt a dance move that he knew Yunho was better at. He feared this was the end, that Yunho had dictated his entire life, and Junsu was just his digital pet-best-friend, shocked to life by an on button. When the boy cast his toy aside, the pixels fizzled out and the battery died, and the pet was no more.

He hated how inconsequential he sounded in his head. If it wasn’t a tamagotchi, Junsu envisioned he was another nonliving thing that could be tucked snugly in Yunho’s spacious hand, and just as quickly fired out of it, rendered cracked and useless. A plastic yo-yo. A glass vase. A doll that was once polished and new, but as the years had passed, became juvenile. Junsu wondered why his sense for metaphors became unusually profound as he delved deeper into this well of self-hatred. If anyone could read his mind, he’d be mortified. His thoughts spiralled out of control, sounding like mockery, like Yunho had claimed his mind, hooked his phone up to it and was screaming on a megaphone into the transmitter. The Junsu-doll would look cute but then become ugly the longer you kept it… its face would get puffy and red if you accidentally spilled alcohol on it… it would only have one saying if you pulled the string: “How could you do this to me, Yunho-hyung?!”

.

.

.

The world was deeply affected by this blow; the Yunho-Junsu friendship extinction event wiped out a good ninety-percent of Junsu’s positive relations, including those whom he considered close friends, but it was a highly hospitable environment for a new breed of gossips. Most were girls, and they delighted in whispering about Junsu’s apparent homosexuality; meanwhile the male trainees behaved neurotically, like deer in hunting season, avoiding Junsu however they could. Throughout this period, Junsu didn’t see him even once.

As the schoolyard taunting went on, the staff seemed to go in a bizarrely inverse direction, heaping Junsu with more encouragement than ever. He guessed something had happened behind the scenes to kickstart his debut. Compared to Boa’s preparations, close to a year ago, Junsu’s felt dull and miserable, no different from how he imagined the onboarding into a salary worker’s job would be. Work, work, work. Oh, Junsu, let’s think about your stage name. Work, work some more. Memorize this, that, try this melody. Sing it on the treadmill now. Work. Stylist-noona wants to see you. We’re thinking about a feature on this artist’s new single… gain a little weight, not too much, just enough… work, work, work, work. The ceaseless state of mild panic only eased when he was getting into bed, waiting to fall asleep. And it came back when he went unconscious.

Junsu dreamed about Yunho. The Yunho who wore leather jackets and styled his hair in an intentional un-styled look, the Yunho who had his driver’s license, smoked and drank, and, by the way, could dance. He manifested unexpectedly, like an abstract vision rendered in the decorative language of line, shape, tonal value. Everywhere and nowhere. Now that he was no longer in Junsu’s waking life, he made himself known as a terror in the defenseless nights (how very Yunho-like). Yunho’s hands were the earth beneath him, melting as though wax sculptures, becoming etchings of him, illusions of his eyes, the smooth tube of a cigarette, but instead of smoke emerging it was a Dadaist collage of horrible, unfathomable, contradictory messages, expressed in all five senses, and Yunho was saying to him, go, Junsu, have a smoke. No, no, no, I don’t want a smoke, not from that.

He knew he had to speak with Yunho. They both needed closure, and even in the worst case scenario, where they aimed irreversible blows, insults that had spent years and years in the pressure cooker, fine-tuned through the secrets they shared, well, it was better than his last memory of Yunho being that party, with a shell-shocked, feeble version of himself.

There would be some anger, righteous anger, because Junsu wanted to get even. He was pretty sure he could push Yunho to admit his guilt, take advantage of his communication style, and somehow find a compromise where Yunho paid penance without damaging his infallible reputation. Junsu even tried to write the beginnings of a speech, but it didn’t sound right. When he was there with Yunho, the right words would tumble out by their own volition.

Junsu first observed the daily flow of foot traffic, taking unnecessarily obscure paths down various hallways to peek inside the trainee rooms. He checked all the places where he thought Yunho was most likely to be: the on-site gym, the free use practice rooms, the outside courtyards, where he sometimes went to smoke. His trainee friends, wherever they were, blended into the people around them seamlessly. Junsu looked in closets, cupboards, restrooms, elevators, the unused basement flat that intimidated him ever since Yunho claimed it was haunted, he even found excuses to wander the staff’s floor, among their academic-looking workrooms and unadorned living quarters, not unlike the trainees’. This three-day endeavour yielded absolutely nothing.

He knew it wasn’t a huge deal. It was something to do with the fact that Junsu had no one, and he felt that most acutely when his mind returned to Yunho. He was doing exactly what he’d set out to do, but felt empty without Yunho by his side. So, he asked around, infrequently, covertly. The first trainee he asked, a dark-eyed, crotchety girl, snapped: “What, you’re trying to fuck him?”

This continued, and he was mindful not to ask his friends. He was still mostly cordial with them, but the topic of Yunho’s revelation hadn’t been broached, and although he knew where some, like Siwon, surely had objections, he didn’t want to think of people like Heechul or Jongwoon looking him in the eye to say he was a terrible person.

He had an epiphany. Jongwoon—Yunho’s roommate. He hadn’t thought to check Yunho’s dorm room, how stupid, there was probably useful information on his whereabouts even if nothing else. In the best case scenario, Jongwoon would throw him a bone and give him some valuable info.

That proved to be spectacularly difficult when, minutes after he left the cafeteria, an unrecognizable woman cornered him for an impromptu weigh-in, which became a casual nutritional consultation (she insisted he was too skinny and that he needed more protein, which made him laugh internally, because just a week prior he’d been told that he needed to halve his protein intake). Just then, an assistant of one of the higher-ups noticed them, and felt the need to add her input about Junsu’s dietary needs, and they wanted input from Lee Sooman because Junsu’s face seemed too sunken-in, missing its characteristic baby fat. He resigned himself to another long day of not being out of sight, taken on a treasure hunt as more errands popped up along the way. The adventure even involved a call to Dr. Kim’s assistant, who was adamant that cosmetic surgery was not the way to go to try and create a plumper face before his debut. Sometimes it felt like the superficial side of being a trainee took up more time than the useful stuff.

In the end, he’d agreed to meet with Sooman the next morning, more out of his exhaustion than anything. The lethargy gave way to nervous excitement—he wouldn’t go to recuperate and sleep in his dorm without checking Yunho’s, though it was out of the way.

Junsu was all alone in a hallway crusted with peeling paint on all sides and hard, corrugated floors that made him feel like he was in a cramped warehouse. He knocked. After a few knocks he banged his arms on the door, tried the knob—locked— and shouted Yunho’s name. He realized he didn’t care who heard him, and he was being carried away by his selfish feelings.

No one answered, and no one came out to meet him, questioning why he was yelling in the late evening. Although he loathed confrontations with other trainees nowadays, now that they saw him in an entirely different light, he almost wanted to see another moving, blinking face, to prove that it wasn’t his insanity at work. He was persistent, thinking at any given moment that he might rip the hinges off the door with all the force his body transmitted. He grunted and hissed under his breath when it held, impartially quiet against the assault, and he imagined being Yunho. Yunho; each of his report cards since preschool documented his extreme persistence. He wasn’t just the last one to stop at varsity practices or group study sessions, he had to be dragged away by a more sensible friend, or a teacher who’d stumbled upon him all alone, resolute despite his tiredness. The cerebral lobe that evolved to tell humans when to cut their losses—so the early hominids didn’t drive themselves crazy trying to hunt an elusive Sabertooth they could never catch—hadn’t been calibrated properly in Yunho’s head. No, it was as though it was missing. If their places were reversed and Yunho was the one being mocked by a sealed door, he wouldn’t stop until a security guard came. He’d camp out in front of that door, look for weapons, try and pick the lock with a hair pin one of the girls had on hand.

Junsu knew how fanciful his fantasies of Yunho were; he was already an icon in Junsu’s world, a perennial star not just in music, but life. Jung Yunho had to be the most intense, impressive human on earth, if Junsu’s recollections were taken literally. Maybe he had it wrong. He’d had a better handle of Yunho when they were actual friends, grounded in the same lives: walking to the bus stop for school, talking over lunch about their test results, speaking with great sincerity. He almost wanted to cry.

Worshipping Yunho wasn’t useful. There was no point in it, either, when Yunho wasn’t even the same person anymore. And even if he was, why was Junsu so enamored by that boy? Why couldn’t he feel content with his personality, still in the upper echelon of hard workers, but causing far less grievance to the rest of the world?

He circled back to the cafeteria for a cup of tea that was basically tasteless. Then, he went to bed, and slept better than he had in a long while.

Chapter Text

Seventeen days without Yunho. Junsu felt like an impostor in the cafeteria; he’d been skipping meals, because the thought of coming here made his head spin. He considered the grooves on the walls, the scratches and scars that amounted to nothing more than ugliness, but if he squinted, started to resemble messages and symbols. If he had a pen or other tool, he’d start a tally of the days that passed by without Yunho.

His stomach was normally able to deal with the hunger with tight-lipped stoicism, but today, the hunger pangs felt unbearable. He was disgusted by whatever the cafeteria had on display, so he bought everything he could afford with his spare change at the vending machine. He was ready to take the haul back to his room and chow down like a squirrel sequestering itself for the winter, but he stopped, and stared. The mindless hand of fate was dealt in this same room, so long ago, when the price was a soiled shirt and a healthy dose of humiliation. Now, he watched Heechul with calm deliberation.

Heechul was unconventional in many ways: he hardly ever noticed if a younger trainee forgot to address him with an age suffix; he ignored the social strata whenever it suited him; and he was jokingly compared to a girl or called gay given his looks and long hair, but he brushed the comments off with little care, sometimes flirting back just to see the reaction on the guy’s face. So Junsu wasn’t wary; he had to trust someone eventually. No one had reached out to him to defend him, so it was this or nothing.

“Junsu, hey.”

Fortunately, Heechul glanced at him with his usual devil-may-care grin. When Junsu moved to see what was on his laptop screen, he didn’t flinch away or show any response. It looked like an online game, not really interesting.

“Can I sit?” Junsu asked.

He nodded.

“I tried Yunho’s room twice, and it was locked. I haven’t seen him, or Jongwoon, for that matter.”

Heechul’s fingers—long, slim, distinctly male—had just barely graced the keys when he lifted them and looked at Junsu with an undivided gaze. He could be somber-looking when he wanted to.

“You don’t know? Jongwoon got a new room,” he said.

“Oh.” That in itself wasn’t uncommon enough to warrant Heechul’s newly affected voice, so there was something else left unsaid. He was trying to appease Junsu with the least-upsetting part first, even though they both knew Junsu would pester him until Heechul told everything. “And Yunho?”

Heechul stared at him, immobile and statue-like. His pupils dilated, like he was focusing really hard on a mental calculation. He so rarely lacked the right words, and Junsu’s gut lurched nervously.

“I’m a little surprised no one told you.”

Junsu hesitated. One of Heechul’s fingers just barely rested on the red pointer dot in the middle of the keyboard, making the cursor wander aimlessly across the screen. He was the same, rocking back and forth like a pendulum.

“He flubbed the landing,” Heechul explained. He turned the screen away from Junsu and rapidly typed, clicked, and turned it back, waiting for the loading screen to pop up. It was a movie viewing software. “Look.”

That hazy shadow Heechul pointed to, in one corner of the screen, was Yunho, but Junsu couldn’t believe it. He watched with a certain level of detachment. The group was on their way to the circus, or a gymnastics tournament. Yunho stood on a raised platform, several metres off the ground, while his four fellow trainees watched from the floor.

Yunho’s movements showed no hesitation. He ran along the runway of the platform, and Junsu hated the way his body lurched. Yunho jumped off into a forward somersault and, thankfully, fully rotated it so he could anticipate a landing on his two feet. Clearly the huddle of boys were meant to catch him, but… they didn’t, not quite. The pixelation made it difficult to see, but the video recorded the horrible cracking sound. Two of the boys had managed to catch Yunho’s upper half, but his lower body dangled limply; he must’ve landed at full-force. His calf wobbled, like it had been fixed out of place. And then the video cut out.

“You’re breathing loudly,” Heechul said.

“Damn…” Just a leg injury, Junsu thought. It could’ve been worse. A lot worse. What if Yunho had landed on his head, or his spinal cord, and… gotten amnesia, or something?! That happened a lot on the dramas his mother watched. Any remote possibility seemed worthy of consideration.

“He would be out for a couple months, at least,” Heechul surmised. “Maybe longer…”

“What do you mean? He would?”

“Oh, well, see, kids get injured here all the time.” Junsu didn’t like that look, the regrettable expression that overtook Heechul’s face. “Some people, if it’s bad enough, take an extended leave… Well, it has to be approved by a supervisor first. Sometimes you can go for weeks, using over-the-counter painkillers and nothing else, on a sprained ankle or something, before it becomes enough of a problem to warrant attention.”

“That’s… stupid!”

“Yeah, they’re unlucky. And the ones who grin and bear it for however long, they tend to have the worst prognosis. I knew a guy who danced for half a year on a bad back, until one day, he was in so much pain he couldn’t leave his bed. And he left, left the idol industry, because it hadn’t been treated and he had chronic back problems as a result.”

“Back problems! And as a teenager…” Junsu shook his head. And then, he understood. “Oh, no.”

“Junsu? What’s wrong?”

He was already gone.

.

.

.

He knew it couldn’t wait, and there was no acceptable way to get out of practice besides a bold-faced lie, a family emergency that he wasn’t confident enough to expand on. I’ll be back in a day, I promise, he said, and then he called every relative and friend of Yunho whose number he’d memorized, starting with the distant relations. He didn’t want to have to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Jung. Thankfully, one of Yunho’s aunts, a woman who spoke in a gritty Jeolla dialect, sounded touched by Junsu’s compassion and sent the address of his place of residence. It wasn’t a hospital, or, as he would come to find, a friend’s house. He took the bus to the other side of Seoul, and the shock came over him in waves. Yunho’s family had stuck him in an apartment, a nice one, but an apartment all the same. It could be worse—at least they had the money to make him comfortable.

Junsu wandered into the apartment like a field researcher landing in a war zone. The tumult was so great, it seemed to affect the hardline dimensions of the rooms, as if the heaps of trash and unwashed glasses had collapsed the material reality into an optical trick, where walls leaned in on themselves and light reflected at odd angles.

“Yunho?” Junsu sloshed through puddles of pharmacy bags, medicine printouts and bottle labels that had been unglued, presumably to be shredded. Amidst the crinkling, in the gaps of his yelling, he could hear a tinny droning sound, like a sonar message. His assumption was a TV program, but it wasn’t turned on. The sound broke off into a wheeze, long and arduous like all the accumulated air being expelled from a punctured lung. Then, it stopped, and after a spell of silence, resumed.

He sniffed as though a police dog. Stale air rolled through his body, at first tasting foul, but he quickly became acclimatized to that particular odour, one that could not be described in thoughtful detail, though it reminded him of mildew mixed with stale frozen food.

Yunho had always been so good about upholding his reputation, but he’d telegraphed his downfall in a multi-sensory piece of experiential art. That was it. Junsu kept going because he saw the poetry in the pain. The mess was beautifully symbolic to him, luring him in. Hills of rolling white paper were the snowy alpine ranges, punctured with a wink of a neon pill bottle, like bright skis on a downhill climb. The kitchen counter was a rocky mesa, standing proud with its rows of asymmetrical boulders of cutlery, plates, and drinkware.

“Yunho?”

The kitchen table was mostly clean; did that mean he was eating in bed? Junsu found a used strip of gum, pocked where the cubes had been ripped out, plus some containers of herbal tea. That was all. The blare of that noise became louder, the intervals getting shorter, until it was abruptly cut off by a hacking cough.

That sound was Yunho. Somehow Junsu had missed him. Plopped on the couch, right in the middle of the action, cocooned in a quilt, surrounded by his implements: pill bottles, a temperature wand, two mugs and three spoons, a jar of honey, a heating pad, a cooling pad that looked like a flat oval of jelly, and the TV remote, discarded face-down on the floor. A hurricane of tissues formed at one end of the room, brushing against one side of the sofa and then drawing away. There were gauze bandages, unidentifiable bottles of pink syrupy stuff, random newspaper clippings, and cracked CD cases.

Yunho was notorious for his thin, modelesque face as a trainee—tres en vogue, lucky him, but now, he was lost in the blankets and the mess with his small face, his hollowed cheeks and gaunt jawline. Junsu fought the strange thought that Yunho’s face might prematurely age him, in the same way it made him look more mature as a child.

“Oh, Yunho, you…”

His mere presence was a form of humiliation for Yunho, and Junsu thought of all the ways he could make it worse. The idea of laughing, taunting him, ordering him to do things he couldn’t unless he got up from the bed, each was so tantalizing, but Junsu couldn’t. He gaped, at Yunho’s wide eyes, his trembling bottom lip, and his hands, folded up near his chin, as big and elegant as they were monstrous.

Yunho seemed less than human as he languished, like a vegetative inpatient. He was evidently breathing and blinking, but he hadn’t spoken a word, nor indicated he had acknowledged Junsu’s presence. A slimy trail of drool caught on his right side, coming down his jaw in a slow track.

Junsu knelt down, a fair distance from the couch, and began rifling through the piles of disarray. Each had its own story, a sub-plot that hinted at the overarching denouement. He found old paperback novels and a pair of black rectangle-framed glasses. An empty bottle of mouthwash. A butterknife with crusted white stains—that was worrisome.

“Talk to me, damn it, hyung!” Junsu dropped the knife, so the blade made a plasticy clatter. He leaned over Yunho’s face, inspecting his untrimmed hair between his fingers. Small acne spots had popped up on his chin, and his face had an oily sheen, a pallour like that of the embalmed.

Only when Junsu felt around his face, Yunho swatted his hand away. “Get off me,” he grumbled. Junsu thrilled; finally, signs of life. His best friend, his first advisor, teacher, and leader, was within reach. Now Junsu had to take the initiative.

“Here. Sit up, sit up,” He reorganized Yunho’s limbs, pushing him so he was upright. Yunho made a weak moaning noise, kind of like his distilled breathing from before, and he extended his left leg in front of him, onto the coffee table, which, amongst the chaos, had a pillow on which he rested the back of his calf.

Yunho rolled his shoulders. “I’m supposed to keep it in this position all the time.” He pulled the pant leg of his pajamas back, so Junsu could see the knee brace. It was made of thick bands with velcro straps and a rotating hinge, a cage that punished bad ligaments. Junsu hovered his hand over it. If only he could rest his hand on Yunho’s thick-haired legs, below and above the ends of the brace where the skin broke free, he’d close his eyes and put everything back in place.

“I didn’t want this.”

His voice sounded vaguely hoarse, each syllable rounded out tentatively, as if he was trying to mask his illness. He coughed again, and then wiped his nose. “I didn’t want to be… treated… like a baby.”

“Forget about that. If you don’t get better, you’ll never debut.”

Yunho inhaled a little too quickly. Junsu opened his arms stupidly, as if preparing for Yunho to collapse and flatline right there.

“I’m not debuting.”

“But… injuries happen! If you just focus on healing, damn it, but your pride…”

Yunho looked away submissively. His lip started quivering again. Junsu felt sorry, but also, disgusted.

Then, Yunho exploded, within the confines of the medicated version of himself. “I tried, Junsu! I got two painkillers after the surgery, four pills a day, and that wasn’t enough, so they added an opioid, that’s six pills a day, and then, I was constipated, so I needed something for that, my mouth is dry, I have heartburn, I can’t sleep…! You’d never understand!”

“Why are you being so dramatic?! Oh, six, eight, however many pills a day… big deal! I thought you were strong, stronger than us all!”

“You don’t understand. It’ll take at least a year before it heals, and… I’m already behind. There’s no way. I’m done.”

“Have you taken your pills? Is there a checklist, something, somewhere?”

The moment Junsu got up, Yunho returned to his resting position.

“Yunho-yah! The pain! How is it…?”

“…I’m fine…”

Junsu took every prescription bottle and label he could find, mentally cataloguing the names of each one—he was fortunate enough to never have needed pain medication this strong. The same cast of characters showed up: the three medications Yunho mentioned. He kept searching, digging for diamonds in the rough, and found himself puzzled by the sheer number of diamonds. He looked up at Yunho, feeling a little guilty, but his eyes were closed. He looked absolutely dead.

Junsu shrugged and went back to pilfering. There were so many bottles, and considering the dates on the labels, it simply didn’t add up—he’d never seen so much, and most of them were empty.

“I’m going to come back with a pill organizer. I expect you to have all your documents ready for me by then! And after, we’re going to clean this mess.”

Part of him felt wrong leaving Yunho in that toxic, festering apartment. He’d gotten a good look at the main rooms, but there were parts he hadn’t seen, and he could only guess what Yunho might be keeping in the dark corners of that place—stockpiles of alcohol or drugs, counterfeit money, a gun…?

The truth of the matter was, Yunho occupied an empty space. No one spoke about him, he may as well have been dead—Junsu gleaned that the contract was. What future did he have? He couldn’t live like this forever. He knew how fragile the position of a trainee was, and instead of finding the strength to keep pushing, he’d lost everything.

His mind flashed back to Yunho’s sneer as he delivered the killing blow in a voice so even, he sounded like he’d rehearsed it. But he couldn’t work himself up to feel any kind of anger, not right now. Maybe if Yunho was surrounded by caring family members, helping him get up to pee and thumbing through his physio booklet, reminding him for how long he had to elevate his leg, then, Junsu might feel embittered. Somehow, though, all the trainees knew Junsu liked guys and wanted nothing to do with him, and Yunho had torn his ACL, but only one of them had to deal with professional consequences.

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.

.

He couldn’t stop himself from comparing his debut to Boa’s. Her song was more electronic while his had little flourishes of violin and piano, a faintly operatic tinge to it. Both had dance breaks, but in the context of Junsu’s song, it was a weird inclusion, and he needed the steps to be perfect. Alongside the hip-hop and contemporary styles he was taught, the routine emphasized grace and flexibility, with some ballet-inspired jumps, and the dance break had a bunch of linked jumps. One of them was a front half-split that made him feel like an African gazelle, and could be hard to land properly if he didn’t get enough height on it. It had been one of those moves where, at first, he’d nailed it a couple times, but then it became impossible. He was definitely overthinking it, spiralling in frustration. The anxiety of his chaotic timeline was no help either.

He felt the furor deeply. He was never this hot-headed; when he sensed himself losing composure, he was good at doing exactly what his teachers wanted, taking a short break and then coming back to it with a new perspective. Now, though, the weight of his failure felt stifling. The jump from his self-choreographed dances filmed by his parents to learning routines as a trainee had felt insurmountable at first, but the trainee-to-idol jump was just as hard.

“Junsu, you need to focus. Is there a problem? Anything you need help with?”

He paused. There were so many questions, but the most imminent was: is depression contagious? Ever since he’d stopped to see Yunho and came back to awkwardly set up his pill organizer, he felt the physical and mental toll on his body; all he wanted to do was crawl into bed for an indefinite amount of time. His joints felt sorer, and his throat throbbed a bit—the whole voicebox apparatus, from his trachea to the tip of his tongue, was a little out of order. It could’ve been a cold, but he didn’t feel truly sick.

“Let’s just run the music back again.”

They kept going, and going. His body felt like an inferno. Much like an inflexible voice that broke when the notes became too high, his body would not bend in the ways his brain told it to. Simple as that.

“I’m exhausted,” he said.

His teacher stared at him. She saw his failures, every time he fell on his knees from a badly-timed jump, or winced in pain when he tried to do a half-split, how unlike him it was. So, she let him go early. She was one of the more forgiving teachers, but there was no way he’d get away with this again unless he was actively on his deathbed.

He felt his face, and it was drenched in sweat. His clothes clung to his body as if he’d been in a rain storm, sticky, odourless, filthy. His legs wobbled a little.

“Are you all right, Junsu?”

“Y…yeah.” He gratefully took the water bottle she handed him. It didn’t go down correctly; every time he swallowed, he felt pain, like the water was a string of barbed wire going down his throat. He stumbled to his feet, hands so slick that he almost dropped the water bottle. He put it in his pocket and shuffled to the door, moving with about as much skill as Yunho could’ve without his brace on.

In the hallways the sounds overlapped across dissonant frequencies, making his ears ring out. Junsu waited for the moment when someone would stop him and inquire—in his mind, he swore he looked like a re-animated corpse—but no one looked at him. He wasn’t sure where he was going. Soon, the traffic thinned, and then, Junsu’s eyes absolutely bulged out of his re-animated corpse’s sockets.

Somehow, some way, this boy had been walking across from him, his face at the perfect angle so Junsu could see it in vivid detail as he went by, and the boy, in turn, noticed him. Whatever a hit of heroin felt like as it fizzled into your bloodstream, that was how Junsu felt, like a toxic substance had invaded him, warped his very understanding of the world.

“Oh, Junsu! How are you?”

“Hyukjae?!”

His skin was smooth, he’d upgraded his wardrobe, and, most of all, he had grown. He was tall and reedy, with long arms that effortlessly wrapped Junsu up in a hug. Was he not aware of what Yunho had said, what everyone knew, about the boy playing mahjong?

Junsu felt like a mangy, dirty cat, unworthy of Hyukjae in any shape or form. Hyukjae still patted him on the shoulder and looked down at him with deep admiration; he was clearly oblivious to the suffering telegraphed on Junsu’s face.

“When did you come…?” Junsu managed to squeeze out.

“Oh, not too long ago. I guess we never met since you were in the advanced classes. And now, you’re debuting? Seriously, that’s awesome!”

“Ha… ha… yeah…”

“Junsu, are you all right?”

“I’m… okay.”

He sought that shared flame in Hyukjae’s eyes, but he made Junsu feel alien. He was different in a hard-to-define way. His energy, the atoms that vibrated around him, released a new kind of confidence.

One coming in, one leaving. Was this karma? Junsu had never given it much thought. For all Yunho’s self-aggrandizing behaviour, he’d been made the fool, and now Hyukjae was on his way up.

“Hyukjae…?”

“Yes?”

Agh, even his voice was subtly different. Junsu couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted so badly to be the good friend, so when everyone else was whispering about his wickedness, Hyukjae might hold onto a more favourable image of Junsu humbly congratulating him after all these years.

“Junsu…!”

He thought it but he wasn’t sure if he actually, explicitly said it. He felt the rush of falling forward, of voices becoming loud and then silent, and that was all. Hyukjae, I really don’t feel good. I think I’m gonna faint…

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.

The same cafeteria table was occupied by the holdover trainees, but some new faces populated the group; change was a constant in this fast-paced lifestyle, and friends could be turned over as quickly as fast fashion. Junsu and Boa were no longer remembered as one-time inhabitants, but as enigmatic beings, elevated to legendary heights. Hyukjae grasped a newspaper in one hand like an archaeologist reading an ancient Cuneiform tablet, while his fellow excavators watched and listened.

“His second performance ever may be his last. Xiah Junsu, soloist of SM Ent., opened for BoA’s concert in Shanghai, China, on February 2. On February 6, he was rushed to the hospital with neck discomfort. Fans are encouraged to use the P.O box…”

“Give me that,” Sooyoung plucked the newspaper from his hand, drawing her eyes over it. The article was one paragraph, nudged into the lower corner of the page. Something so horrifying, maybe even earth-shattering for her and the rest of the company, felt almost insubstantial, and she wondered if they were overreacting. Maybe this was destined to be no more than a quick hospital stay. The flu, or pneumonia, or something like that. Strep, maybe. And he’d recover…

At the other corner, beside Hyukjae, Jongwoon was all but silent, seemingly watching the surface of the bench to map all the imperfections. Everyone knew him as the sage with a godly voice, a strange guy, but polite company. He began to pick at a dent in the wood with his fingernail, surreptitiously, silently. Sooyoung smacked the newspaper down with finality.

“Do you think it was a suicide attempt?”

All heads turned to him, placed in the corner, still picking away. “I mean… I remember from last year. It was on Yunho’s birthday, right? The last one he spent with us. So maybe Junsu was reminded of it… and he just… couldn’t handle it anymore.”

No one spoke. They all weighed it—some thought it was bogus, some instantly believed it, and others were just reeling from all the new information. Junsu, Junsu was close to Yunho, Yunho left, and Junsu might want to kill himself…

“I wonder what Boa’s thinking,” Hyukjae murmured.

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.

What was Boa thinking? She was on the road, performing on her first Asia tour, jumping from airport to airport, hotel room to hotel room, never left out of sight for a moment and yet, all alone. She was one of the first to know, and it was a shock to her. During the show, Junsu’s voice was as impressive as ever, but something must’ve happened after they dispersed. One thing she did know. The rumours had reached her, too, as her industry friends also knew about Junsu and the connection to Yunho. But she was sure that it wasn’t a suicide attempt or anything like that. Junsu was Junsu, and he always had something to prove, for better or for worse. He was just like her. They were made to be entertainers, to be famous, and it always came down to protecting yourself from the world. Other people were dispensable, but you, the star, were not. Junsu wouldn’t go down as the would-be idol who wanted to die for his unfortunate friend. He wanted success on his own terms, and he was shrewd, but pure and earnest.

So no, Junsu would never inhibit his career in that way. Mortality was just a passing thought every now and then, never something he held onto seriously.

What did he remember? From the late night doctor’s appointment to his rapid degradation: feeling faint, getting in a car, and being wheeled into the blindingly white hospital. He was shivering, suffocating, becoming agitated by all the sounds around him. It was probably worse for everyone else—at least he didn’t have to see himself in pain. Junsu could barely open his eyes. His lungs shuddered with every breath, his throat felt like shards of broken glass, and he became fully cognizant for a moment. He saw one of those daily desk calendars with the wooden blocks. And he remembered, oh, yeah, today is Yunho-hyung’s birthday. Sorry, hyung, I should’ve mailed you something in advance. Wait up for me. I’ll give you a belated gift.

And then: nothing.

This nothing passed in eleven days and ten nights. It was Junsu’s first prolonged bliss in so long, as unworried and unaware as when he was in the womb, with nothing to focus on, no thoughts, just a body doing what a body does.

In the end, he woke up all on his own. And the reception was absurd. There was a breathing tube and an IV and something on his eyes, which the nurses took off. Apparently he‘d slept for most of those eleven days, and when he was awake, had been so heavily sedated that he had no recollection of that time. Maybe that was for the best. Junsu was haunted by the look in his parents’ eyes. They were prematurely aged, changed, having gone through unimaginable horror. He changed them. And he couldn’t figure out why.

Everyone lauded it as a miracle. The jubilant Christians praised Jesus, among them Junsu’s aunt, wife of the preacher Mr. Woo, who gave Junsu a prayer card for the patron saint of sickness. It was a thoughtful gesture that unfortunately came off as a bad omen, if he was to presume he’d need to brandish it in the future. Other people without a strong religious foothold threw their hands up and praised the strange, but beautiful will of the universe. As it was meant to be. The doctors had the greatest fervour, with their very own religion: science.

No one could talk to him or around him without bringing up the miracle-healing doctor, the master detective who cracked the case. For days Junsu had been getting worse, and his blood pressure got dangerously low, low enough to endanger his life. The doctors and nurses were mystified. A new keen-eyed resident noticed him, and apparently, delivered the prescription lightning-quick. Antibiotics. Penicillin and metronidazole, to be exact. And, he got better. The experienced staff had missed it, a rare condition where a bacterial infection causes a deadly blood clot to form in the throat. He felt sick thinking about it. He could’ve died, should’ve died, but a book-smart resident (he? she? Junsu just knew their name, which was unisex) saved him, and now he’d never hear the end of it.

And that wasn’t the worst part. The worst came much later. For now, Junsu was back to normal, and his parents seemed to treat him like a god, a little monarch. Junho was in China, working to the bone—thank god he hadn’t been there, but he flew in to have a meal and cake with the extended family, a sort of Hooray-Junsu-Didn’t-Die party. He wasn’t sure if they could see that he didn’t enjoy it. All he wanted was to go back to normal. That was singing and dancing. Yunho sent him a letter, which he read at home. The fragile words made his eyes sting with tears, and, unable to cope, he flushed it down the toilet.

There was something else nobody told him.

“Let’s try again. Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Dooo…”

Dadadada dadadada. The vocal teacher played each note on the piano. Dooo…

Junsu winced. He tried to draw the word out, Do. He could do scales in his sleep, having been granted that laudable superpower of pitch-perfectness. But all that emerged from his mouth was a creaking, uneven, strange sound. It sort of reminded him of feet crunching on glass.

Then, he clutched his throat. Again, it happened. The hurt.

“Oh, well, we can wrap up for today,” the woman said. Her sadness made Junsu even more disconcerted. She wasn’t one of the knife-sharp teachers at SM, but his first vocal coach, whom he’d met from his church choir. In all respects, she was a family friend, treasured by him.

Junsu sensed something breaking.

They said their goodbyes, but the thought crept up on Junsu. He knew. He sat in the back as his mother drove home, listless and silent, without the folder that usually contained his vocal exercises for the week. Worse than praising his strength, his parents were now afraid, afraid that he’d fall and break if they weren’t careful.

Jaundice, throat pain, head pain, exhaustion, sepsis, septic shock, sandpaper voice.

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The backdrop of his life for the past week or so was stacks of boxes, piles of packing tape rolls, and bubble wrap insulation. His bedroom became a massive, cardboard fortress where the stage of Yunho’s spiral had resembled a neglected junkyard; both of them had nothing to lose, but Junsu was the high-functioning one, the hypomaniac. All his things were organized neatly, with smaller boxes stacked on bigger ones, like 2-metre tall tiered wedding cakes. He dug a rectangle of space for his cot and the few belongings he kept within arms reach: his cell phone (a new purchase, it had been a long time coming), his wallet, and throat-numbing spray, because although he’d stopped the meds, the worry of a pain flare always lingered.

It was unfair—unlike Yunho, Junsu had wanted to get better, he hadn’t let the allure of painkillers and bed rest do him in, but the blood clot was lodged in his throat, destroying his most prized—and most profitable—possession by pure bad luck. Junho joked that he was the one-in-a-million, because the doctors had said that a diagnosis like his was so infeasibly rare that there was likely no genetic component, it could only be chalked up to misfortune. Like an artist needing both their hands amputated. You’re a one-in-a-million.

Cleaning out his dorm room was laughably quick—he kept his head down the whole while, and the other trainees contentedly played along with the charade. When the assistants escorted him to his dispatch van, he wondered if one of them was going to present him with a going-away present, like how a longtime company employee might get expensive wine when they retired. But he hadn’t been paid, hadn’t earned SM any money, either, so the lack thereof made sense. All the money invested into Junsu’s training, lodging, and meals had gone in a hole from where it would never return—six years of trainee life was no small thing. He had the sneaking suspicion that the sharks at SM had a system in place for these situations where they were, ultimately, compensated, and he wondered if his parents had to pay them out as part of the agreement.

His bedroom, though, was a mess. Junsu had made it clear that he wouldn’t move back home—home was where the days would go on and on, recycled to cruder and cruder forms like cheap plastic. It was suffocating, and through his own savings and some help, he would shake it all off. SM had prepared him for an independent lifestyle.

An addendum: the boxes not only represented Junsu’s things, but Junho’s, as well. His hyung was a serial buyer—he was so easily carried away by his flights of fancy that he had to try everything once, as testified by the various niche instruments and engineering kits, seinen anime box sets and kitsch culinary equipment, board games, cameras, ugly little figurines; things that they couldn’t dream of affording ten years ago, and yet his parents shelled out the money to contribute to Junho’s collection. Junsu thought it was because they felt bad because, for the better part of his youth, Junho had been raised by host families, innkeepers, ferrymen, and other itinerant travelers. Worse still were his treasures from Japan and China. You’d have thought that after the fifth or sixth trip, a foreign country would begin to lose its allure, but Junho’s collections, named Nippon and Manchuria, were sacrosanct, and anything fragile he kept in layers of plastic protection. The sentimentality was grating, laughable; Junsu found a whole stack of drink vouchers from Osaka, each painstakingly preserved in a plastic sleeve, because, as Junho explained, each one was its own happy memory, and he kept in contact with the man who gifted them, the owner of the bar. Junsu never told Junho that he threw out Junho’s many Christmas gifts, themed around characters like Miyary and Kaze-kun—like Yunho, he was weary of the Japanese mascot paraphernalia.

When Junsu had first laid eyes on the state of Junho’s room, he’d put his hands together like a shrine maiden about to purify an infernal land. But, Junho insisted that his junk had value; maybe he hadn’t used it in years, but who was Junsu to say that he’d never end up needing it in the future? Wasn’t it worse to throw it all into the landfill? He’d argued his case with great composure and impenetrable logic, which was highly uncharacteristic of him, so Junsu figured he’d been researching and planning his speech because he knew the conversation was bound to happen.

Junho wasn’t done there, though. “Junsu, I know I have a lot to pack. Do you mind doing it?”

“Huh?”

“You’re better at it than me. You’re way more organized.” He was off to a strong start with the compliment, but Junsu knew better. “It’ll take much less time for you to do it all your way.” Appeal to logic.

His voice dripped, honeyed, and Junsu was sure there was no sound as unbearable. Everyone said their voices were identical, but Junsu was conscious of the differences: his was endearingly soft, while Junho’s sounded smoother, a little more articulate, wielding a manipulative edge like a scimitar when he wanted to.

“You have a lot of stuff, though,” Junsu said.

And now: the finale, the little trump card tucked in his back pocket. Junho rolled his lips, almost as if he was chewing gum. “You do know that I’m covering two thirds of the rent?”

There were a few asterisks in that assertion, but Junsu lacked the drive to argue that point. Junho was right. “Fine, fine. I’ll do the packing. But I’m not giving you any more favours. This is it!”

“Of course,” Junho flashed a winsome smile.​​ He was magnanimously handsome in a way Junsu could never be; in his exceedingly tall stature, and the parts of his jaw and body that were wider-set where Junsu was slim, and although they were as alike in the face as fraternal twins could be, Junsu didn’t feel weird thinking, gee, my brother’s the handsome one. He didn’t know how to feel about it. Junho seemed so oblivious about his looks.

Fast forward a week, and all the material effects of his and Junho’s lives had been systemized, boxed, lying in wait, until tomorrow morning when the movers came. Junsu would only have to live in this bedroom for one more night; he thought about how much time Yunho had spent in his apartment, with no recourse, no promise of beginning anew. He felt sick thinking about Yunho; he was as much a twin as Junho was, his life like a mirror image of Junsu’s, two snakes wound around the caduceus of fate.

He hadn’t seen Yunho since that whirlwind of a day, as though Yunho had hexed him with his ailment, and he was afraid to go back. He had phoned Hyukjae recently for any news, and according to him, Yunho hadn’t resurfaced at SM. He slept loosely, falling in and out of awakeness to no comfortable rhythm; lately his insomnia had been worse than usual, without the promised exhaustion of trainee life.

When he woke up, it was 10 in the morning. The movers were set to arrive before noon. He hastily showered and freshened up in the bathroom, only to return to his room and find Junho and his father, retrieving the boxes and bringing them to the front of the house. Getting rid of them was much easier than putting them back together. The truck arrived at a quarter to twelve, and Junsu’s mom worked her charms on the man who emerged from the driver’s seat. The movers quickly took over, and the family of four shared the moment inside. Time seemed to stand still. Junsu’s mom did most of the talking, as per usual, and she spoke like a wound-up hummingbird, obviously nervous for them but too prideful to say it outright. His father patted her thigh, smiling, and told the boys how much they would miss them. Mrs. Kim nodded along rapidly, piggybacking off his heartfelt words, and Junsu and Junho exchanged a smile. The ice was broken, and Junho thanked them both.

“What’re you guys doing?” Mr. Kim asked. “How will you pay? Junho, I know you have a lot saved up.”

“I pay sixty-six percent, and thirty-three for him,” Junho answered.

“Only until I get my bearings, then it’ll be fifty-fifty. I have two job interviews next week.” Junho knew this, but Junsu wanted to remind his parents—fearing the narrative shifting to the tale of two sons, one freeloading off the other. He thought again of Junho, buttering him up, only to use his insecurity against him, and he made up his mind, then and there. “And, later I’m going to pay him the seventeen percent that I owed. It has to be equal.”

Junho cocked his head. Really? He mouthed. Junsu nodded.

“It sounds like you two have really thought this out,” Mr. Kim hummed.

“I wasted a lot of time and money, but now I’m done. I’ll repay it all.” Junsu vowed.

Junho pulled him into a half-hug that quickly became a noogie. “Eh, well, little brother, don’t blame yourself. I’ve been legally allowed to work for two minutes longer than you,” Junho laughed at his joke. So did their mother, who found everything her sons did entertaining.

“Okay, let go of your brother,” she said, and Junho relented.

Junsu brushed his hair back into place, muttering. “Sometimes I wonder why I call you hyung.”

“How’re you feeling?” Mrs. Kim asked. It was an open ended question that, all of them knew, was really directed to Junsu.

“I’m good, good as I can be,” he said.

His father shook his head a little, his lips softly parted, and then hugged his wife closer. “With the surgeries, it’s a miracle that you healed.”

“Surgeries?”

Mrs. Kim’s eyebrows knitted together tight. She gave a sideways look to her husband, who nervously rubbed the back of his neck. Junho had the look Junsu got whenever he didn’t understand something.

Junsu took a step closer. “What’s going on?”

The slip wouldn’t have been enough on its own. But their guilt-stricken faces, their awkwardness, was telling.

“Junsu…” Mrs. Kim held a hand over her heart, and it gave Junsu a chill. He thought again about that hospital bed, flashes of a dream-sphere coming back to him, with his mother somewhere above the surface, watching him like she was trying to find a way to bid him goodbye.

Finally, his father spoke. “The surgeries that caused you… the pain. Messed with your voice.” He gestured doubtfully to his neck.

“I don’t understand. Didn’t the clot damage my neck?”

Junho left before anyone had to tell him to—as siblings they were well-versed in these subtle arts. Junsu thought of going after him, denying his parents’ right to tell the unequivocal truth, but there was no way of escaping forever.

No one had bothered to sit down like you saw in the dramas, when a family member was about to drop an atomic bomb. Junsu’s father addressed him casually, standing up, like they were making idle chatter at the supermarket. “Before you were healed by Doctor Kim, the staff were at a loss as to what they could do… and you didn’t get better after one day, two days, and they asked if we wanted to try an experimental surgery.” His throat bobbed as he forced the words out, as if they were wrangling him on the way up. “So, we didn’t have any good options. But we wanted to try. So we said yes.”

Stop, he wanted to say. His dad was getting choked up—a sight no son ever wanted to see. Junsu’s mother took over. “Something happened with your larynx… no one knew what they were doing, as your father said. The staff told us that if you survived the operation, you might have trauma to your voice, among other things. And after that, you needed two more reconstructive surgeries, because of the nerve damage. The surgery didn’t do anything, of course, it was the antibiotics…”

There were so many parts of the speech that made him angry. Three words made him want to rip his face off.

Didn’t do anything.

“The surgery did something! It made me worse!”

Everyone was yelling at once. Now his mother was on the verge of tears, and his father shouldered his way in between them like a referee.

“How could you?!”

“You’re making your mother cry! Stop it!”

“I- how?! Why won’t you tell me how it happened?!”

His father sighed, pushing Junsu away. He was a wall of a man, short yet strong, and Junsu’s mother looked over her husband’s shoulder, at him, a wounded look in her eyes. His father pulled him back the other way, the grip of his arm so tight that he was essentially putting Junsu in a modified headlock. “Junsu, maybe it wasn’t the surgery! Maybe it was the blood clot. Maybe your neck was damaged somehow.”

“Just tell me the truth!” He shook himself out for a second time.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Kim said.

“Goodbye.”

He hated his parents because they were the only ones he could direct his hate unto, and he knew a second, more vicious wave of hate would follow. There was no use lamenting it, but still. Still. They had no good reason to agree to the surgery, because it was a bacterial infection, and nothing would’ve changed if they hadn’t done the surgeries, in fact, it might’ve changed the outcome drastically. They lost the toss-up, and ruined their son’s life. He’d never willingly have agreed to that, to a Frankenstein-type doctor poking around in his throat to see if progress could be made. Did they not see how much singing meant to him? It was his life. His everything.

And what about those doctors? He was always naive enough to think that every doctor, nurse and surgeon made the best call they could at any given time, and the thought that he might’ve been treated like a toy—an object of experimentation by curious minds, at his parents’ behest—seemed too outlandish to be plausible. And yet.

“Are you…”

Junsu breezed past his hyung, and busied himself with the few remaining boxes, checking they were labelled correctly, sealed shut with heavy-duty tape. “I’m fine. I’m ready to leave.”

Junho sighed deeply.

Junsu glimpsed his brother. The first human he’d ever known, before his mother who birthed him, his brilliant, annoying, one-of-a-kind brother.

It wasn’t the right thing to say, but it was true: between their parents and their twin, both boys would pick each other, every time.

“I’ll get the keys,” Junho said quietly.

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.

“This is a bad idea.” Junho shook his head.

“I’m not the one who stayed up partying until dawn,” Junsu stuck his tongue out. “Try not to blow the place up while I’m gone, hyung.”

They were still feeling the high of last night’s celebration; their shared birthday, the twenty-second, to be exact. Four years since the annihilation of Yunho and Junsu’s dreams of becoming SM idols. It had been four years since he’d left it all behind, strong-armed out of the idol industry by SM’s cold-hearted business agreement, moored on a strange, uninhabited land by the shipwreck.

Just as things got much worse, they got better, in some ways. Suffering could beget hope. Junsu was shocked by how calm he felt when he signed all those papers, ultimately swearing to the law that he’d never join another trainee company after his unceremonious departure. And Junho was back in his life. Junsu was the family fuck-up, and that made Junho more eager than ever to be with him. It was a blessing, Junho’s love for him, but Junsu couldn’t shake the feeling that a part of it was Junho no longer feeling threatened by Junsu’s former, precocious success.

Junho was like Junsu in his ambition, but he’d taken a radically different path. He wanted the unglamorous reality of life as an artist, so from the tender age of eleven, he took the ferry a couple times a month to Japan and Northern China to busker. Junsu thrived under organizational structure, Junho preferred the artistic freedom of writing his own music. He was quiet, but he could enliven Junsu’s days with the stories he told of his unlikely adventures, in his cheerfully monotonous voice, making them both laugh until their stomachs hurt.

Those years were nice; Junho had found stable employment at a Korean art high school and his busking grew less frequent. They shared a small apartment, but it had multiple rooms, and they could do whatever they wanted with it. Junho’s teacher salary was comfortable, but Junsu contributed too, however he could. He tried being a waiter, working at a gas station, and working at a pet store. Not one of those jobs suited him. He was more like Junho than he liked to admit, and he, too, wanted to become one who made a living off their art. His voice was still too fragile, a mere shadow of what it had been before. There were other options. Junho had his connections. But Junsu was stubborn.

He couldn’t remember the exact moment that he’d decided, but he’d been walking home from his job as a waiter. He made his decision. And that was that.

He assumed a performance as he boarded the bus, the perfect mix of casual and dignified, dressed in a sweater and business pants for the autumn weather. The belt was from Junho, and the matching shoes, too, but he was bigger all over, so Junsu had to wear two pairs of socks to make them fit. They were nice shoes, though; Junho had good taste.

The arrival bus stop was a bit of a hike from his destination, and Junsu hummed a melody the whole way there. At this time of year, the air was as invigorating and crisp as a cold bottle of water. He gripped a satchel on one side of his body that contained his new phone, his glasses, a notebook, and some other things. Preparation was the first step to feeling like he belonged in this world.

When he entered the building, the clerk pointed him to the second floor. He felt thrilled. The group hosting the audition even made laminated directional signs that had been taped to the walls, written in Japanese and Korean. The audition had specified in large, blocky writing: Must be a Japanese speaker. Besides his high school studies, Junsu had gone 2 years on-and-off at his local Japanese conversation club. He could sort of remember the full alphabet. It was called Hiragana, right? Or was it Katakana? One of those was only used for foreign words. He found himself in a clogged corridor where black-haired heads poked out from the queue. Junsu understood exactly half of what was being said at any given moment, which meant they were switching between Korean and Japanese. The foreign Japanese words sounded so unlike his attempts at Japanese in the conversation club. They’d used booklets and DVDs that had obviously been meant for children, and the level of fluency had reflected that. Stupidly, he hadn’t expected to be surrounded by native speakers and flawless, lifelong bilinguals.

A young woman strode up to them from the front and addressed the whole line. “Hello, everyone,” she said in Japanese, and then Korean, smiling wide. “Thank you for coming in today! As you know, we’re auditioning for two roles, a male and a female, both in the eighteen to thirty-five age range.”

She continued to explain that this wouldn’t be a standard closed door audition. Instead, groups would go in together and read in front of each other. Junsu’s nerves went into overdrive. Two people had filed in behind him, a man and a woman. He was effectively boxed in.

The crowd moved more quickly than he expected. No one returned from the door they’d gone into; he tried to imagine the hopefuls filing out of a hidden exit in the back of the room, down a murky stairwell, some dejected, some excited, all a little nervous.

The man waiting at the door motioned for them to come in, in, in, and Junsu waited for him to gesture for them to stop, but he waved Junsu in, too, and a few people after him.

A small stage had been constructed on one side of the room. Behind it, there were three rows of folded chairs, empty save for two men and a woman, each holding a folder—the judges’ panel. This was only the first round of auditions, weeding out the obvious nos from the ones who had potential. He knew his chances were marginal. But every chance was something, and Junsu did not know how to quit.

An old friend had instilled him with that principle.

Everyone was invited to pair up with the person standing beside them. Junsu naturally went to the girl who had been behind him in the line; she was so tiny, he hurt his neck looking down. There was a minor ruckus as a result of there not being enough men admitted in the room for the pairs. Weren’t the Japanese supposed to be organized? In the end, the guy standing by the door yelled for two more men to come in. The first ducked in with practiced austerity—he wasn’t much to look at. But the second?

And what would make this already horrible moment worse?

Him. He stood out, among the tallest in the lineup, with finely tailored clothes and a penetrating gaze that locked on Junsu the second their eyes met. He’d grown his hair out, so it was wavy, with bronze highlights. A perm—so foppishly perfect for a guy like him.

Junsu wasn’t the only one to notice. The room came to a standstill, as though his mastery was already guaranteed, like he was the A-lister in a group of wannabes. It was nothing more than a good-looking face and height, Junsu thought grimly, angrily.

Had he been too obvious in his disgust? The guy looked at him, and it was him, it was so, unequivocally, absolutely, him, back in Junsu’s world. Things Junsu hadn’t realized he remembered from that face were all there, lined up perfectly: the big, glittering eyes with asymmetrical double lids, the prominent nose, the drooping lip-corners that gave him a perpetual sense of aloofness. The perfectly neat hairline. The short, squared fingernails. The narrow physique, like that of a model.

He knew Junsu, too. They were on equal footing… they had to be.

Two pairs were called to the front to present before it was Junsu’s turn, each given a copy of the script and one minute to go over it before the audition began. Neither stood out, which was probably a good thing for them. He tried to mouth the words along with the male reader, but he invariably lost his way. Then, he and his partner were brought forward, randomly selected by one of the judges.

“Hello. Please introduce yourselves.”

The woman beside him spoke so quickly, he only caught her name and (maybe) which Japanese prefecture she was from.

When it was Junsu’s turn, his voice was wooden. “Hi. I’m Junsu. Thank you.”

“Junsu, where are you from?” One of the judges said. Junsu caught maybe half of the words, and he didn’t know the meaning of a single one.

He switched to his native language. “Can we speak in Korean?”

“It’s a Japanese speaker who we want.” The judge eyed him curiously. Another judge picked off where he’d drifted off from, clapping her hands together, “Right… Suzuno-san. And Junsu.”

“Hey, how come you’re using my first name?” He switched to Korean on impulse. Mei was the girl’s name. Suzuno Mei. “I think it’d be fair… to be more equal…”

He considered the possibility that none of the judges spoke fluent Korean, that he was ripe for a disaster, an epic humiliation, but the female judge replied in Korean. “…In Japan, it’s just more polite…”

“I know. But, in Korean… Kim Junsu-ssi. Something like that.”

The judge eyed him—actually, all three were watching him, probably detesting him. What could he say? Listen, it’s a delicate situation, but historically, our people have been undermined and the terms of respect should be equitable no matter the name.

They were each given a copy of the script. It was written in kanji, but also phonetically with hangul, which was a major relief. No more than a few lines. He awaited the cue, wanting at the very least to surprise them with a performance that was passable.

The flow of the language was markedly different, and he sensed that he was accentuating the wrong syllables as he talked, in an unfortunate syncopation to Suzuno-san’s perfect rhythm.

“Excuse me,” Junsu stopped, his finger quivering on the page. “What is this word? Go-ra-ma?”

“It’s the name of the company,” the female judge answered.

Junsu thought of his acting teacher’s golden rule: if you can’t be confident, fake confidence. He resisted the urge to fall into either of the major traps that betrayed anxiety: speeding through his lines, or sounding them out too slowly. He had to repeat a few sentences to correct mispronounced words—even more embarrassing because he was reading the phonetic hangul, managing to trip over the alphabet that he’d been submerged in since he was a baby. Suzuno-san wore an ambivalent smile as she suffered through his performance. Not once did the judges do the thing that only ever happened in movies—the stop, stop, we’ve heard enough, you can leave, Junsu-ssi. They always sat through the audition, no matter what they were subjected to. What was most damning was the fact that not one judge had picked up their pen to jot a single note—that spelled doom not only for Junsu, but for his unlucky reading partner. The judges thanked them and Suzuno-san stepped back. Junsu remembered that it wasn’t over, and he’d have to guard his feelings as he waited for the rest of this group to perform. He was too afraid to look up, be met with that face.

He was next to present. His partner just so happened to be a tall, leggy girl, just as tanned as he was—they’d make a convincing couple, or maybe brother and sister.

He bowed. “Yoshimoto Masuo.” Though he pronounced it more like Yoshimoto Masssu, with the faintly lifted o-vowel.

“Yoshimoto Masuo,” the judge repeated his name with a neater inflection, all seven syllables in rapid-fire succession.

Junsu didn’t stay to hear his partner’s name; he located the exit, and there was no one to stop him from going. He’d never see any of these people again, but also, he didn’t care. He only hoped Masuo’s audition was a failure.

He hadn’t cried in four years, and he wasn’t about to start now. He’d come close. This time, he subdued the tears before they could begin, and forced himself to look straight ahead. He hadn’t stopped walking, and found himself in a small, furnished alcove that connected to the foyer of the building. No one was around, and the windows were clouded—if there was a perfect time to cry, it was right here, right now. He squatted onto one of the chairs, heart shuddering at the recollection. He’d known back then that the mahjong boy would grow into his body—his legs had seemed too long, his facial features hadn’t quite aligned properly, but now he was an adult like Junsu, and he was gorgeous. Junsu couldn’t imagine a scenario where Masuo didn’t remember who he was. Their first encounter was no more than fifteen minutes, but it occupied a great deal of space in his head still. While the trainees had made jokes about Junsu lusting after the mahjong boy, they didn’t realize how true to life it was. He desperately wanted the burden to be equal, for Masuo’s heart to have seized the moment he saw Junsu, as the floodgates opened with the memories of a talkative would-be idol who disturbed him from his game. Was he trying to parse Junsu’s career path, the chronology from idol to aspiring actor? His cheeks coloured. Masuo had been right. And that pivot to acting made it seem as though Junsu had found a new doctrine in his off-handed suggestion, scribing his commandments on the mountain from the word of his young god.

He touched his palms to his face, and felt the faintest prickles of wetness. Fuck. This was never supposed to fucking happen.

“May I sit down…?”

Korean. Someone speaking Korean? Praise God. He turned to the person who had found their way to this unassuming corner of the building, directly across from him, as if awaiting a job interview.

It was a girl, one he didn’t recall seeing but who grabbed his attention immediately. She tucked a long strand of hair behind her face, reminding him faintly of Boa, with her delicate lips and catlike eyes. Her outfit was eye-catching, yet classic, and laundered to smooth perfection—in all his auditions and seminars, Junsu was beginning to understand the way rich people displayed their put-togetherness, and he knew it when he saw it.

“Hm? Yes, you can.”

“Okay. Well, if you need someone to talk to, I’m not busy right now.” He fully expected this sweet-faced girl to add to his misery with an oblivious comment or an implicit barb. As she sat down, she leaned in, so he could smell her light, fruity perfume; like a coil of enticing opium, it wove its way through Junsu, making him feel as though he could be transparent with her.

“I signed up for this audition thinking it would be a bunch of Koreans who could sound out Japanese words, but it’s actual Japanese speakers, and it’s become apparent to me that my handle on the language isn’t as good as I thought.”

“I understand,” she said. “I only know a few Japanese phrases. If someone had tried to talk to me today, well…” she made a self-effacing grin.

Junsu’s heart hammered harder. A sympathetic shoulder? Her voice was so pretty, disarming, as light as a feather, a proverbial wave that enveloped his body, rocking it to the point of motion sickness. “Thank you, but you don’t have to console me. I chose to go to the audition knowing full well that my pronunciation is a wreck. I can barely speak Korean sometimes, and that’s my native language!”

“It’s hard, isn’t it? And I’m not consoling you,” she pushed him away lightly by the shoulder. Flirtatiously? This girl seemed so out of his league. He wouldn’t let himself be too hopeful.

“Second languages are hard.”

“Actually, I speak English. Korean and English. My name’s Jessica.”

Junsu feigned a toothy smile. “Je… Jessica. Nice to meet you.”

“My boyfriend’s auditioning. He’s from Japan.”

That was it. She’d come to support her boyfriend. Junsu played the fool. “That’s nice.”

Jessica bounded off. Nice clothes, nice smell, nice personality, exotic actor boyfriend. Junsu hated how pathetically jealous he felt. He wished he had something to smoke. All these years, he’d never taken a vice, as difficult as his days could be, but it wasn’t in a morally righteous way. He knew addiction wasn’t so far beyond him. Soon that day might come, when the twitch of his fingers became compulsive, but as always, divine intervention came to save him, this time, in the form of a high-pitched, wallowing cry.

He stood up. It seemed to trail on forever. “Je… Jessica?”

If something had happened to her, he was of limited help. He couldn’t even speak Japanese, really. She was no more than a stranger.

“Jessica?” He called again, and the confusing patter of footsteps felt like it was going off all around him, trailing a perfect circle around his skull.

He instead decided to attempt a quieter means of subterfuge. Be the lion, Junsu. His very first performance credit after leaving SM was a small-time production of The Lion King, where he played a young Simba for a crowd of screaming five year olds, and Junho would never let him live it down. Sometimes, when they were looking for something, trying to trap a loud insect in the apartment, they whispered: be the lion, Junsu… Junho… silent… steady now… and… pounce! Except he didn’t pounce. He managed to tap into his feline-hearing with the sound of a girlish laugh. It sounded like something he wasn’t meant to hear. Was it Jessica? He found it too hard to tell. The sound stopped just as quickly, and he was no closer to figuring it out. Maybe he was meant to go home, although he hated the thought of waiting in the dark for a bus that always managed to be late.

No, scratch that. There was that same noise, more prolonged now. Had it been a laugh?

He cut past the main foyer down a hallway that branched into three separate paths. He didn’t use Jessica to track the source, but another, lower voice, a mere murmur. He saw them through a window in the door, and then he backtracked, taking the stairs up two at a time until he managed to find the same stairwell on the top floor—it was well-hidden, but not well enough for Junsu. He stood in the stairwell, above them, just out of sight. It was nothing more than sounds, of bodies chafing together, accidental vocalizations that slipped through, little smacking sounds.

How about another…? Do you want two?

P… please….

Mm… I don’t know… have you been a good girl? How about three?

Oppa…

Come for me, baby…

Oppa…!

That soft, fluttery voice from before.

Of course she was dating Masuo. How hadn’t he known? This was just the kind of everyday thing that happened in Junsu’s life.

He wanted to knock his head on the wall and black out. That fucker had no shame, and his little girlfriend had played the role of a sweet angel, well, how did she rationalize that? And of all the places, they had to do it in the stairwell, too? They couldn’t have found somewhere truly hidden, no, one or both of them was probably an exhibitionist. How revolting. He didn't think he had the energy to take the bus home. He’d have to call Junho and tell him everything that had happened, beg for him to take the car out of the parking garage.

When Junsu peeked over the railings, he watched one of the shadows wane. The heavy door yawned open on its hinges, sealing the sound of rapid footsteps outside. His pulse quickened.

Somewhere in his soul, he knew who those languorous breaths belonged to. He could visualize those legs as they boarded the stairs—he was sure he’d never seen or heard them using stairs, but he still knew it, intuitively. He backed against the wall, mind palpitating as if it was a second heart, all his blood pooling in his head, screwing with his vision. He grabbed the door handle, and his hands were so sweaty, they couldn’t get a grip. He tried again, planting both feet at hip-width and using his hands to jiggle the handle, but he couldn’t get it. Why? Why! Junsu made a noise of anguish.

Oh, fuck.

Masuo was coming over, looking as sharp as ever. Calm and collected as could be, he yanked Junsu by his shirt collar and pulled him away from the door, back down the flight of stairs, to the scene of their debauchery. He thrusted his right hand in Junsu’s face. Three of his fingers were slick and shiny, even past the second knuckles.

“Suck.”

“I can’t…”

“You can. And you will. Now.”

Nothing could explain why he did it besides Masuo. He went against every polite courtesy of Korean society; perhaps it was his Japanese blood.

And so Junsu ended up on his knees, not long after nine pm, in full view of whoever was looking through the windows, and he used his mouth to polish Masuo’s digits off, one by one, the closest he’d ever get to a taste of Jessica. But the woman he had liked was secondary in the ordeal—it was Masuo’s fingers in his mouth and Masuo’s voice in his ears. Junsu’s whole throat felt slippery and well lubricated. He drew so much saliva that a wad drooled from the corner of his mouth, making him feel so stupid, drunk or high.

Good, and keep going, and hell yes, Masuo whispered under his breath in Korean, interspersing some Japanese as well. It was nothing shocking, but a little too close to the things he probably said during sex.

“Tsugi wa ore no chinpoda. Baita.”

“What?”

Masuo felt for the door handle and eased it open. Junsu screamed internally.

His girlfriend was Korean. In a way he had found himself a Korean boyfriend, too.

Ugh.

Japanese men.

Chapter Text

Junsu stumbled home at half past two, propelled to the open kitchen by his rumbling stomach, and now, the beginnings of a throbbing headache. No doubt his face was redder than a tomato. He sighed.

What was meant to be a quick shooting for a university PSA devolved into revelry and dirty jokes, and he should’ve said no, but somehow he ended up at a bar in the other end of Seoul, accompanied by men who were uncomfortably similar to him: creative, desperate for a connection, and dead inside. Most of them could stomach the shitty off-brand liquor, though. Junsu couldn’t, and really, by that point, he should’ve shrugged his shoulders and made an excuse to go home, but he didn’t. He got through two and a half beers, and then the migraine came all at once like a thunderclap. He could hardly focus as he staggered onto the bus and walked a block to his flat. 8000 won in the hole, feeling no better, and clearly not going to be ready in time for an audition at eight thirty tomorrow—that sounded just about right for him.

Sometimes, he felt like the universe was conspiring against him. Junsu took the seasoning packet from the dry ramen cup and tried to tug the indented part open, but it was made of plastic, thick and unforgiving. He thought back to something an agent had said, thoughtlessly. Oh, that’s Junsu, he has really small hands! Needless to say, there were never going to be romantic scenes where he enveloped the female lead’s hand in his. He had cousins who weren’t even teens with bigger hands.

Sighing, he dropped the packet, and soon after the kettle on the stovetop whistled, so he went and poured the boiling water in. It was old and scratched, the windows so foggy that they were near opaque, just one of many things that usually came from someone else and needed to be replaced. When I’m rich… when I’m rich, I will have a beautiful antique kettle, and the maid service will polish it every day… Sometimes he created songs as he sang in his apartment, usually while doing the dishes or some other unenjoyable chore. Now that his voice wasn’t as croaky as before, he could even enjoy the sound, though there was the odd time when a belligerent neighbour screamed at him to shut up (it should be known, he was often singing to himself past midnight, when he couldn’t even think about sleeping).

Junsu cut the packet with a pair of scissors and poured the seasoning over the noodles, which had risen and softened. He stirred it with a bamboo spoon (procured from a restaurant that allowed him to take extras with no charge) and plopped himself in front of the TV.

He slurped the noodles and the brothy water, and thankfully the headache subsided, but his face felt even puffier than before. His mother always told him to have lots of vegetables with salty food, but how long since he’d gone to the grocery store to find produce?

When he finally looked up, he couldn’t help but to breathe a laugh. It was a rather sarcastic laugh, but still, Yunho always found ways to dredge up Junsu’s old fond nostalgia. The channel just happened to be airing his debut drama, which had catapulted him to stunning fame. It was called Now I Know the Red Phoenix or something, released in Korean and Japanese. Yunho played a wide-eyed student who went abroad to Japan and ended up messing with the yakuza. The series, and by extension, Yunho, had gone viral for a number of reasons: one, the fact that every actor had to become fluent in Korean and Japanese to film both versions; two, that the show tackled the difficult geopolitics between the two countries in a way that left the Japanese and Koreans fuming for different reasons, unintentionally directing more attention to it; and three, Yunho.

Number three further broke off into two sub-categories. Three-point-one: Yunho’s acting. It had been either plain bad, so bad it was good, or amazingly heart-wrenching, but it definitely wasn’t boring. Junsu thought it took a lot of guts to be so emphatic, so extreme, in the way of a confused high school boy. It was much harder to do that than it was to be overly subtle and understated in one’s acting—the other extreme that often befell rookie actors. So he did laugh at the internet jokes, the clips that were shared as prime comedy, but he also thought Yunho was being disparaged in some cases. Though, perhaps he’d won in the end, because that performance was only the beginning of his career. Being twenty-three when the first season concluded, there was nowhere to go but up.

And, three-point-two. This was Yunho’s press run. Young, inexperienced actors said the wrong thing, that was a given, but just as the show’s writing caused intense infighting in both countries, so did Yunho’s press conferences. The apex of the outcry came after an interview in Osaka, when a Korean lawmaker announced his plan to put forward a bill that banned Jung Yunho (and the series) from South Korea, so great was the disrespect he’d levelled them with. That was obviously an extreme example, but Yunho’s PR failures were inescapable for weeks on Korean sites and, Junsu assumed, Japanese ones, too.

But, Junsu didn’t think of any of it as he watched. This was episode one of the third and final season, when Yunho’s character Hwang Jaerim began his descent into violence. Perhaps it was good that Yunho left the series on a high note, because the last season got the best ratings by a huge margin, all the way at 23%, though that may have been in part due to the celebrity actors that joined the cast overtime. Still, Junsu remembered the scorn and teasing slowly being replaced with compliments about Yunho’s abilities.

He was a force, more than any of them knew. He’d spent years learning Japanese tirelessly, so his accent was basically flawless—Junsu didn’t speak more than bits and pieces of Japanese, but he’d heard it online; he liked the flow of it, the creaky, animated sound that was a little less rounded than his native Korean. As Yunho became proficient, so too did Jaerim, as he came to rule Kansai in this fictional version of Japan.

The episode culminated in a fight between Yunho and one of his subordinates, and the choreography, too, was something to marvel at. Yunho was just as lithe as he’d been when he was a dancer, but Junsu knew he was still burdened by his ACL that had never healed properly. It showed in the smallest of limping steps he took, the slightly uneven way he balanced himself as he leaned back, but, to the untrained eye, he was exceptional, and Junsu wondered how much hurt he’d bore to shoot these scenes. That was Yunho… our Yunho.

“Fuck… pig-nosed bastards!” Yunho punched the guy in the face, and he crumpled against a brick wall. The dusky lighting was dramatic, in shades of red and orange, and Yunho’s spiky hair shone bright crimson. Amidst the silence of the quiet road, he left the other man there, alongside their other clan members, who watched silently.

The next show was fate’s second joke in his face, but it was considerably less funny. Junsu wondered if he was seeing things. Another young actor’s debut series, around the same time as Yunho’s, and as it happened he knew this leading man just as well.

“Damn…”

He went to pour the leftover broth into the sink and threw the ramen cup into the recycling, just as the opening credits played. He needed to go to sleep. When Junsu slept less than seven hours, the evidence was damning on his face, and the best makeup artists struggled to hide it all.

Jung Yunho was one, the Korean who jumped back and forth to Japan. And number two was Yoshimoto Masuo, his inversion; proficient in his native Japanese and in Korean, his first big hit happened to be a Korean drama.

If Yunho’s drama was a smash hit, Masuo’s flew under the radar. Yoo House Trouble was a soap in every sense, airing in the less desirable mid-morning cable slots and nowhere else, the kind of show that aunties talked about during their group lunches. Junsu hated the nonsensical premise: suddenly, South Korea’s top oil magnate dies, leaving a fortune to eighteen children (yes, eighteen) and three wives. As stereotypical as a soap can be. But, Masuo, to his credit, did a good job as the main character, the eldest son of the ailing second wife, always dressed in a well-tailored suit, scheming his way into getting more inheritance for the noble purpose of caring for his mother. Junsu had seen the spoiler that Masuo’s character’s mom dies in the first season, leading to his vengeful anger, and knew that corruption on set and low viewership caused the show to be cut to only two seasons. He’d skimmed the series and remembered the last few episodes being truly chaotic in effort to tie up too many loose plot lines that were meant to stretch into the next seasons. Big effort, big story, little payoff, unless your name was Yoshimoto Masuo.

Junsu found his laptop and searched his name. He was born in Osaka, and worked in between the two countries; for the past two years, he lived in Japan—most of the news items concerned his recent work there, which Junsu hadn’t seen. How funny, both of them being bilingual. Junsu pondered it; maybe he ought to find his old Japanese dictionary. Anyways, the top article announced he was sighted recently in Incheon for a shooting. This was exciting, because he had a loyal Korean fanbase that had been hung to dry for years (unless you liked watching subtitled shows). Masuo looked blurry, but he had that gangly frame Junsu recognized. His hair had been cut short.

He was tortured by fantasies about those two boys, his first loves, running to parallel destinies, and never managing to convene. Because trust, he’d searched the combination of their names enough times on Korean and Japanese search engines to know for certain that they had never so much as spoken a public word of each other.

Well, Masuo, I have around a decade on you when it comes to knowing him. I couldn’t imagine trying to chronicle our shared time, or every word of every conversation we’ve had, but if I did, it’d be longer than the Mahabharata. While your time together has amounted to, what? Two superfluous conversations?

Ah, but Yunho, Junsu may have liked you first, but who did he love first? That’s the difference between friends and lovers. You can have your memories of the two of you as children, but he didn’t become an adult until he met me.

There was no way that any of that would transpire. Besides, it became a post-ironic performance, as Junsu realized how ridiculous it was to place himself in the center of this love triangle, like a heroine in an otome game, the bland, faceless heroine who magically attracted any number of airbrushed-looking male characters. That was his problem, right? He was too vain. Masuo, Yunho, from a distance they looked like carbon copies: tall and long-legged bodies with defined, masculine features, the Mister Right to every girl in Korea or Japan with functional eyes. There was something more interesting, more appealing, about settling for guys who were more in his league—guys who weren’t too tall or had love handles or an imperfect nose. But they were his burden; six years since he last saw Masuo and ten for Yunho, and a few girlfriends had shuffled into the empty void in that time, and he was getting better at widening his life to make the space that they occupied seem smaller, but they were always there, within, as much a part of Junsu as his bones.

Masuo’s character on Yoo House Trouble was named Yoo Noa, and how the coincidences went unimaginably deep. As a sort of unofficial catchphrase, the three syllables of his name were screamed rapid-fire, usually by a scheming ex-wife or bastard cousin, and it sounded just like Yunho-ah, Yunho-ah, the way the older kids had said it, transporting Junsu back to his childhood. Noa walked down a hallway in his father’s Versailles-like mansion with a woman in tow, who was playing the late father’s secretary as well as the executor of the will, and he was the very picture of elegance, dressed in a casual suit with an open trench-coat, his hair a little longer and wavier than most leading men, a distinctive look that popularized him more. Junsu knew what was about to happen. Their businesslike conversation gave way to light-hearted bickering, and then he closed a fist around her arm and they went into an empty office and he lifted her onto the desk and they were kissing. His breathing was louder than hers—had that been intentional? It was for the female viewership, Junsu reminded himself, that the shots of the secretary’s body were second to Masuo’s, his lips, the long, straight lines of his back, the veins on his forearms. They stopped before any articles of clothing were removed or either pair of lips moved down—Yoo Noa’s fatal flaw was his half-hearted womanizing ways. The secretary reached out to embrace him, but his eyes flashed cold and severe, and he pushed her away, murmuring to himself: “What am I getting into…? In a time like this…?” And the girl would chase him like an eager puppy, but he was the tragic anti-hero, the anti for his mindless seductions and hero for, in the end, choosing chastity.

What was he doing this for? Separating the Yunho of his youth from the Yunho on the screen was easy, but with Masuo, there was incorrigible history. The shame of what he’d done—what they’d done—was tactile, pricking his skin like mosquito bites. So he sat through it, eyes bouncing off the corners of the TV, and as if he hadn’t known he’d been held underwater he quickly flipped the channel, coming back up for air.

He set his alarm for six, knowing well he’d hit the snooze and miss his morning audition, and slept on the couch.

.

.

.

The headache shocked him awake, and stars danced in his vision, making the numbers on his digital clock dance like a chaotic timelapse of red lasers. He groaned, rubbing his eyes, and they were achingly dry, probably because he forgot to take out his contacts before he slept. Eventually, he was able to focus, and 12:01, the clock read. The hangover was definitely exacerbated by his patternless sleep schedule.

He’d left the TV on, too, and remembered yesterday afternoon’s dishes, still in the sink. “Ugh…”

Junho had sort of kept him in check when they were living together, but without him, Junsu slept the mornings away, lest he be overtired and cantankerous. He was alone these days, which meant he was receding into a shell of who he was, becoming familiar with himself like he was two people at once, and the one always enabled the other, because no external eyes were watching, waiting to give him a firm talking-to.

Junsu’s life could be considered a mess, but he never wanted to feel that way, so he ensured he maintained a routine that proved he hadn’t lost his sanity. He took a long, hot shower, dried his hair, got dressed, and found a chicken sandwich from the convenience store in the mini fridge, which he ate with two painkillers for the hangover. After each bite, he felt his throat, making sure there wasn’t any pain. Sometimes the food didn’t go down—that might have been a psychological response, not necessarily due to the surgeries—and he always wanted to be ready, mapping out the step-by-step process to giving himself the Heimlich.

He balled the plastic-lined packaging and threw it on the floor, wiping the last dregs of spicy chili sauce from his lip corners. Then he had a guava energy drink, also from the convenience store, but the acidity made bile rise in his esophagus, so he nibbled on some salted peanuts and seukkang to settle his stomach.

His only raison d’etre, besides the lingering hope that he’d rise above his station and become a famous actor, was truly quotidian: starting from the day he’d first gotten his hands on StarCraft at Yunho’s house, Junsu devoured every video game he could afford. More than that, he went to the extreme, grinding out multi-hour sessions of play to ascend the championship bracket, earning absolutely nothing for his hard work besides the dubious honour of his screen name being placed among the top players. For a while his chosen game was StarCraft, but it reminded him too much of Yunho, and besides, he’d grown tired of turning it inside out and trying to find new ways to make it challenging. This game had been a recent bargain find; it caught his attention immediately because of how technically demanding the gameplay was. The user had to control groups of characters as well as nonliving machinery and alien cyborgs, each with their own distinct controls. The playerbase was modest, so Junsu cruised through the tournaments, snatching gold without breaking a sweat (though breaking many a curfew).

What interested Junsu was the online partnership mode. He’d done some research on in-person tournaments for this game, if only because they promised cash prizes for the winners, and he was always scant on cash, but the major tournaments focused on the two-player team mode. Somehow the game became even more mind-breakingly complicated when the number of participants doubled. He couldn’t think of anyone he might like to take on as a training partner. His system was vigorous; Junho would cop out after thirty minutes. Yunho would’ve been proud of his work ethic, though.

Shaking his head, Junsu inputted his display name and rank and the game matched him with a partner player with a similar level of skill. He hardly glanced at their information card as he started the game. The intro began, they were each dropped onto a randomized planet in a randomized solar system and given a paltry inventory. The beginning was difficult, because the player had to mine natural resources on the planet while keeping lookout for whatever alien beings were gunning after them. Junsu had been randomly assigned to the sister planet of his partner. He could see their avatar, a dot marked with a red chevron in the astral distance.

Working together was the objective. In duo-mode, each player received less inventory than in single mode, because the point was to pool your resources together, which, of course, could not be achieved until one or both players fashioned a capsule that could transport them to each other’s planets.

“Aish!” Junsu hissed, smashing his fingers on the keyboard.

This player, through a combination of horrible luck and a horrible lapse in judgment, had managed to blow themselves up within four minutes of landing. He exited the game immediately, and tried again. This time, he couldn’t resist looking at the information card of his joinee—not wanting another underperforming partner of low rank. This one, though, he recognized. They had played once before—well, it was more than once, it was almost nine hours straight of playing, winning, resetting the game, and doing it all over again, until they both logged off and hadn’t convened since. Junsu distinctly remembered their first conversation:

palmtree1215: your display name is ‘nobody’?

nobody1234: yes. I don’t want any assumptions to be made about me based on the name I chose.
nobody1234: how did you come up with yours?

palmtree1215: well, I like palm trees. (shrug)

nobody1234: what about the numbers?

palmtree1215: why would I tell you that?!

nobody1234: I’m assuming it’s your birthday. 12/15= Dec 15.

palmtree1215: you’re wrong.

nobody1234: then what is it?

palmtree1215: it’s a secret!

This guy was just as masterful as Junsu, but only when he wanted to be. His nonchalant genius was different from Junsu’s sharply-honed skill, but they covered for each others’ weaknesses. Like a power couple. We’d be unbeatable in one of those tournaments, Junsu thought. Because it was true: in their nine hours of nonstop gaming, they’d narrowly lost the first game, but from then on, they blitzed through the rest of their opponents, ending up with a ten-wins, one-loss record.

And from there, they talked. Junsu had talked more, finding that he’d missed having a listening ear, and nobody1234 was receptive and sincere, despite his penchant for sarcasm. Junsu even talked about things his family didn’t know. Those hours were a blur, and he was sure that they’d be a flash in the pan, but, here he was again.

nobody1234: never thought I’d see you again

palmtree1215: well, not many other people are in the top .5%

Their world opened into a pixelated galaxy. They travelled light-speed on a one-way journey, each in separate capsules, until Junsu landed, and his partner landed. He checked the ship logs.

nobody1234: it happened again! kkkkkkkkk…….
nobody1234: my little moon ~

One of their running jokes had been that, no matter where they landed, nobody1234 always ended up on the larger planet, in this case, a bluish, proto-Earth with speckles of green land. Junsu, by contrast, arrived on the moon, caught looping around his partner, and his resources were invariably worse. He looked down at the chipped, Martian-beige ground, and a wind whipped around him. There were no signs of life, nothing but the crusty earth, and, of course, his friend in the distance, mining on his new planet.

The game didn’t pick up until nobody1234 managed to craft a capsule. His ship traced a clean, glowing path to Junsu’s planet, and his avatar disembarked to check on the engineering.

palmtree1215: I landed in a shithole

nobody1234: let’s head back to CG-277, my moon

palmtree1215: stop calling me that!

They returned to the more fertile, ocean-surrounded planet, landing on a small isle. Opportunities proliferated, as Junsu pooled his inventory with his partner. They began to craft fishing materials, transport ships, and weaponry. The larger their colony became, the sooner aliens would begin to take notice and start firing down.

That was the magic of video games. You could be anything: rich, poor, happy with life, depressed as hell, and nothing existed beyond the rectangle monitor shining its bluish light on your face. Junsu controlled two specialty probes, whisking them back to the moon where he’d landed as a secondary colony if the aliens managed to conquer them on nobody1234’s planet.

There was a widget in the bottom corner that, if clicked, allowed the player to check on the status of their two opponents. Head-to-head battles could last anywhere from a few minutes to hours, because there were so many win and lose conditions. The opponents began in their own galaxy, and usually, matches ended when the stronger team went to the opponent’s home planet and destroyed their colonies. Sometimes, teams could lose if one or both colonies were killed by aliens or, in the case of Junsu’s unfortunate previous partner, by a player’s mistake. Their opponents were located in a galaxy approximately 2 million light years away, much too far to travel to unless they managed to create an S-class rocketship, and that seemed unlikely. They weren’t much further along than Junsu and his partner.

nobody1234: uh oh, incoming meteor

Slow-moving text appeared, relaying the meteor’s coordinates. It was right on the path to CG-277; if they lost that planet, there was no way they’d be able to win.

palmtree1215: where’s the mapping device?!!
palmtree1215: it’s getting closer!
palmtree1215: HELLO??

nobody1234: found it, found it

He managed to procure the device right before the meteor struck their planet. Junsu was ready with the ray gun, and he marked the angle of impact, so his moon probes struck and instantly vaporized the meteor before catastrophe.

palmtree1215: you almost made us lose!

nobody1234: you should’ve marked the meteor’s path earlier on. I was busy looking for a platinum deposit.

Junsu rolled his eyes. This guy nobody1234 always thought he knew better when they came to a disagreement, and, sure, most of the time he did, but he didn’t know the niches of the game the way Junsu did.

palmtree1215: you might as well quit then.
palmtree1215: you suck
palmtree1215: sorry, I’m having a bad day… night… year…

nobody1234: what’s up?

Junsu sighed. He wanted to pause the game, because he couldn’t think properly right now. His left-brain was still zeroed in on the game, on winning, and gah, he hated losing, but his right-brain was too caught up in his emotions.

palmtree1215: I’m an actor. kind of a failed one… haha. I keep auditioning for shitty roles in shitty productions and somehow I rarely even get those!

nobody1234: are you young? handsome?

palmtree1215: yes…

nobody1234: are you tall?

palmtree1215: I’m not short!

nobody1234: hmmm… well, it seems like you’re either unlucky, or you’re not as good of an actor as you think.

“Hah! You idiot!” Junsu cried.

palmtree1215: I think we’re done here.

nobody1234: give me your contact #
nobody1234: I can figure things out if you want

palmtree1215: not sure who you think I am, but I DEFINITELY don’t need help from you. Have a nice day.

PLAYER_1 palmtree1215 FORFEIT.
GAME OVER. MATCH__LOSS.

This had gone too far. It was impossible to know someone from a few hours of idle chatter. Nobody1234 was convivial, and yet no-nonsense, perfectly suited to Junsu’s style of communication. But he was a know-it-all, and those were the worst. What did he have to show for himself? A guy who played video games in the mid-afternoon, dispensing advice to his gaming partner instead of having a normal day job, yeah, no way was his life as tidy as he wanted it to seem!

Junsu powered down the PC and went back to the couch. The TV was still running, but he didn’t recognize the actors from this show. He took his phone, the same cell he’d had for the entirety of his twenties, and called a number.

“Junsu?”

He crossed his legs, feeling restless. “Heeyeon? Can you meet me at Oda’s?”

“How soon?”

He could imagine her sitting on the studio apartment’s leather couch with wide-set legs, coolly running a hand through her hair, probably after a long night of fun; she was a fellow night owl, after his own heart. Junsu laughed in recollection. “...Tonight. Eight.”

Heeyeon made an incredulous sound. “That’s a little early.”

“Bring makeup.”

She made a ptoh sound into the receiver, almost like a disgruntled ahjussi. “I’m not exactly rich. ‘Sides, who knows what germs you have?”

“I’ll have you know that I smell great.”

She laughed humourlessly. “Okay, fine, fine. You’re lucky.”

“I’m not lucky. I always knew you’d drop whatever you were doing for your prince.”

No one knew how to push her buttons like Junsu did, and though Heeyeon held her breath in, Junsu could practically feel the quavering, tight-lipped rage, though Heeyeon still looked beautiful in her ire.

“Eight. Be on time,” she said.

“I can drive you!”

Beeeep—call ended.

.

.

.

Heeyeon was one in a string of ill-fated dalliances, but she was the only one with whom he’d parted on relatively good terms. Her beauty was a red herring, because her true personality was boisterous and unfeminine. She had a willowy, tall build, and despite her penchant for bright lipstick, she wore androgynous, pared-down clothes at every conceivable occasion, while Junsu was the peacock, painting his nails, perfectly coiffing his hair, and piecing together his outfits with superhuman precision. They were a funny-looking couple, but they were similar enough in the ways that mattered.

Heeyeon had eclectic taste, and as soon as she learned he used to sing, she took him to a singing lounge in Seoul—like something out of 1950s Paris, but without the musty clouds of cigarette smoke. He’d thought three things when he first sat down and watched a show at Oda’s, belly full of exquisite galbi-jjim and virgin cocktail—why have I never been here before? What bright minds conceptualized this otherworldly place? How can I be the one on the stage?

His rain-stained shoes clacked on the tile linoleum floors, tracking puddles of off-white water. No one would see; the owner of Oda’s strategically placed each individual light, from the vintage chandeliers to the smallest sconces and electric candles, and each was a key player in the rapturous light show. Junsu watched the shadows recede as he was given clearance to enter. The wrought-iron flanked him on both sides, calling to mind a dark medieval chamber, casting dim, yet evocative shapes on the papered walls. In spite of the chic aged aesthetic, the owners kept the bar in pristine condition, so his nose didn’t pick up a tangible smell other than wood and a faint whiff of rainy air, probably from a window someone had opened.

He was surrounded by people of all ages, rich and poor, dressed in the finery that their wallets would allow. Each night was so different; as the view from the lattice-patterned windows interacted with the lights, and unintentional decisions changed the look of things as well, a velvet drape pulled in one corner, a set of drinking glasses perched close to a door—each night, a new character took form, and this disembodied creature was the closest proxy to a host.

In one section, the man at the bar was serving wine and coffee—pour over, not his taste. Junsu moved with the crowd, sweeping his gaze over it in hopes of finding her somewhere. In the end, he found her first. Like the parting of the red sea, an avenue opened among the throngs of people and he took it, seemingly a direct path to the insouciant-looking Heeyeon, hands clasped and eyes awkwardly roaming around from the outskirts. She’d always been a little shy, and when her eyes met Junsu’s, he saw them come alight.

Heeyeon knew how to undermine her arresting beauty; it was a wonder what body language and averted eyes could do, because no one noticed her. Her baggy shirt and dress pants blended into the scenery, as if she was filtered in black and white besides her trademark red lipstick. She nodded to him, and he nodded, too, and they were off.

They had to walk through the concert hall first to get backstage—though Concert Hall was the official name, written in gold lettering, it was a small room with an even smaller stage. Oda’s did the most with what it had, and while there was little majesty to the room as you walked in, it was a case of less being more. The less you looked around, the more your ears took over. Junsu led them down a few stairs and into a sunken backstage room, smaller than the stage somehow.

He’d been down here only a couple times to shoot the breeze with other musicians, but now he was in the hot seat, his butt jammed into an uncomfortable fold-out chair, looking in a mirror, one of the ones with rows of lightbulbs arranged on the frame like Christmas lights. In front of him, cans of hairspray, makeup applicators, false lashes, and cleaning wipes littered the counter.

Heeyeon ignored the mess and revealed her own makeup kit—Junsu was a little surprised and delighted that she had still kept that Dolce & Gabbana makeup bag he’d given her on their first anniversary. She had bought lip gloss, eyeliner, eyeshadow, and mascara from a cheap beauty store, each of which she unwrapped with her blunt, blank nails. Junsu closed his eyes, removing the vision he saw before him. The bristled brush touched his top lip, and he pursed it faintly.

There was something reverent about Heeyeon’s process of doing his makeup; she’d done it before, when they were newly dating and she remarked at how pretty he’d look with a dash of it—he had his own small collection for special occasions, but Heeyeon brought her own vision and expertise to his face, her canvas. She knew how to enhance him perfectly, bringing out the masculine and the feminine, articulating the length of his eyelids with a swoop of liner, perfecting his pout with some shimmery gloss. Tonight, she focused on bringing out his eyes, making them so big and bright with intense silver eyeshadow, black eyeliner, and a hint of mascara. “It’s all about balance,” she said, in her science-nerd voice, because, as Junsu was wont to forget, she wasn’t just his ex-girlfriend but a genius engineering student. “Your pretty features don’t need much, I mean, like, your lips. Though your eyes need a bit more help.”

To which, Junsu snorted.

“They’re small, that’s all…”

“Right, right. Should I tell you now that I went to book a double lid surgery, two or three times, but chickened out?”

Heeyeon laughed boorishly, almost dropping the mascara wand. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Hey! No one has a perfect face.” He pointed to his lips. “But who wouldn’t buy this pair of lips?”

She smirked. Then, she finished, spritzed his face with setting spray, and blew on it softly. Junsu opened his eyes, and for the first time in his life, he thought, wow, I look like a fox. He was androgynous and unfathomably beautiful, ready for the front page of Vogue Korea; he felt a disconnect between the person he knew he was, the loser wasting away in a studio apartment, and this masterpiece.

“Now, say thank you, Heeyeon,” she said, in a teacher's voice.

Junsu let Heeyeon help him up, out of the chair, so they faced each other for the first time. “Thanks, you made me even prettier than you,” Junsu teased. He ducked out of the way just in time, so her fist swept through the air harmlessly.

“Yah, you’re so annoying. Are you wearing heels?”

“Uh huh,” he clacked his feet. He was taller than her, not by a lot, but her flat dress shoes and his heeled boots made the difference more pronounced. Heeyeon shot him a look, as though this was an unfair move. She brushed the imaginary lint from his shoulders, and her hands ran across the sublime velvet of his billowing shirt. His outfit, top-to-bottom, was as black as the makeup Heeyeon had provided. He wore black leather pants with a black studded belt, and his shirt was the statement piece, a designer garment he’d found while scouring the discount bins at his favourite clothing store. The velvet draping was arranged with such detail that it almost looked like a black cloud twined around his body, and the tie-up back neckline dipped dangerously low, even with the laces fixed in place. Hani had scoffed when she fixed the bow, remarking, “You should leave it undone, because the tight laces only draw more attention.”

Still, as she surveyed him, Junsu knew he’d earned Heeyeon’s approval. She drew her hands away, finally. “...You look good.”

Junsu smiled.

“Are you nervous?”

“More than I think I’ve ever been.”

“You’ll get through it. Even if you don’t, who cares? It’s just singing.” Heeyeon patted him on the back, and escorted him out.

Junsu was weighed horribly by those words. It’s just singing. In the grand scheme of things, in the life he chose to lead, yes, she was right, singing was hardly relevant to him. But it sounded so wrong. Junsu and singing. Those words were meant to go together, made to be associated.

Come on, Junsu, it’s not as though you can quit your job, quit your passion, just to try and make it as a D-list singer. What’s gotten into you? Think about your throat, think about all the things you can never do.

This was already such an unimaginable step, to be singing in front of a crowd, a real, live crowd with backing singers and piano accompaniment, and the song wasn’t as vocally challenging as his SM songs. He’d dreamed big his whole life, look at where that got him.

“Go on, break a leg.” Heeyeon winked.

In a way, it was acting as much as it was singing. A shitty singer could coast on their alluring charisma, their way with the microphone and connection with the audience. He stood backstage, waiting for his signal to go.

An older man in a tuxedo sat at the grand piano in one corner and began to play. His body looked as worn as sun-baked leather, but he moved his fingers like they were weightless, boneless, each ivory key singing sweetly in his jazz rhythm. Junsu thought of how he was once like that, so trusting of his body and his brain’s ability to manipulate it. The pianist was liquid, and the two of them were once, at the same exact time, liquid. Three backup dancers joined the man on the right-hand side of the stage, three men of very different heights, each one holding a microphone on its stand. This was it. This was his moment.

The crackling audio system announced: Everyone, let’s put our hands together and welcome tonight’s guest, renowned across all of Asia, Xiaaaaaa!!

He cringed a little at that part. Junsu had explained his stage name beforehand to the staff, none of whom recognized him as an SM soloist, which was more common than he’d anticipated—those who were not entrenched in idol gossip seemingly passed over his failed debut. Instead of hiding himself, he used the idol name, Xia, thinking it might earn a few nods from those who were in the know. He’d also felt the need to provide the SM-approved explanation, that Xia (or Sia) represented Asia, and his hopes of conquering the continent. Somehow that morphed into a declaration of his renowned pan-Asian fame.

The lights felt so bright in his face. Junsu walked on stage to restrained applause, and he knew the crowd had potential. He tasted liquor, expensive osmanthus, and metal. This was a new dimension. He didn’t have to be Kim Junsu, the ex-singer or Kim Junsu, the failing young actor; he was just Xia. And what a revelation that was.

The stand mic was already waiting for him, charmingly old-fashioned with some rusted spots. It was ice-cold on his fingers. He swallowed, seeking Heeyeon’s eyes in the front row of the audience. He would not forget a line, and each note would be flawless. Nothing left to do, all has been set up and dealt, the cards will fall where they may…

Aju olaejeone neukkyeowassdeon…

Nareul boneun nundongja…

Junsu searched for Yunho’s face; this was supposed to be the point where he found Yunho, or a man who bore a resemblance that left him in stupor, so he’d forget the words to the song, dashing his dreams. Each man making eyes at him was a potential king, and a thorn in Junsu’s side. Without meaning to, he sang his heart out, giving shape to his rage, burning it on the spit. Drops of spittle flew on the mic, his throat ached in a familiar, comforting way, not in a post-surgical panicky way, and they oohed and aahed.

Geu eoneu gose isseobwado…

Before, each word was bespoke in pristine consonants and wide, open vowels. Now, they became lazy, garbled strings of sounds. Maybe he was making a mistake, going all-in with this edgy, unabashed singing persona that was like a transport to the Parisian lounge bar so longed for by the audience. If a music critic were hidden amongst the innocents, writing a performance review about a far more famous singer, they’d find a plethora of adjectives at their disposal: smoky, sultry, breathy, resolute, daggerlike. Like the hiss of a viper. He’d never forgotten the sound, and somehow fell back in love with it almost immediately after opening his mouth. Not just the singing style, but the breath work was more challenging, the high register had to be used sparingly, some vocal techniques—like a proper falsetto—were unreachable at this point. But he still sang, and no one would’ve guessed the trauma those surgeons had enacted on his throat. His mind levitated, soared, flying beyond him like one in the three parts of the trinity, the mind, the body, the voice.

This was the high he missed. He’d never transfixed a group like this, not since SM. His small-time stage productions had a similar landscape, but he never felt the calm appraisal of this temporary cult of personality.

Pihal su eobseo… oh-oh…

Fuck; he cringed. His costume was meaningless. They all saw far beneath skintight leather and cloudy eyeshadow, to the battered core, the forever-bruised voicebox. But the piano melody carried his mistake away with a flourish, and he didn’t notice any reactions in the audience.

When he was a trainee, Junsu had never received the singing advice that he heard in whispered corners, torn apart by fed-up trainees, even the ones that were vocally on his level or better. You need to sing with emotion. If you can’t organically do that, then just think of something sad or happy or bittersweet or whatever you’d like to convey, considering the lyrics. Although he’d never been on the wrong end of that critique, he was excessively bothered by the concept of needing to imagine something in your head to get the voice to understand. If your singing and your feelings couldn’t be bridged together, what was the point? Focusing on anything that wasn’t singing when trying to sing would always hurt your performance, because true singers’ voices flowed naturally, like a river rushing down a hill.

He sensed himself falling into that trap, perhaps for the first time ever. Music didn’t care if you deliberated, rationalized, or deconstructed. It actively went against overly complicated things. Still, when that stream felt like a weak trickle, Junsu thought, what does this song mean? Pupil? Is there more to it than that? He gripped the microphone stand harder, trying to anchor himself in the present moment. If his thoughts took him further, he’d crash and burn. So, it was a fight. And he didn’t entirely exorcize his mind of that probing inner monologue, that voice dreaming of bigger stages and brighter lights.

What was a pupil…? He sought the audience for answers, then his mind, his body, and only his voice seemed to have the answer.

Once the applause petered out, the three backing vocalists bowed to Junsu and departed with their mics. The pianist segued into the night’s pleasing backtrack, ever-cyclical like elevator music. He expected that some would rise from their seats, others would sink deeper into theirs as the servers fetched helpings of wine, and one or two people might shout a rushed compliment to Junsu as he departed.

That did not happen.

“Wow, Junsu!” Heeyeon hurdled to his side, nearly knocking his microphone over in her haste. “You… you were… I mean…”

“Good?”

Heeyeon bundled him in her skinny arms, squishing their faces together. “You were amazing! I don’t think any of the previous singers here are even close to your level.”

Heeyeon wasn’t the only one. A fraction of the crowd had lingered by the foot of the stage, their eyes mirroring Heeyeon’s. Junsu’s perspective was still touched with the hands of the SM ghosts, always demanding better; of a particular demographic profile of a forty-something year old instructor with a coffee addiction. Evidently, though, what was subpar to them and Junsu himself was still pretty damn good in the minds of these listeners.

Heeyeon finally let him go, her hand lingering on his shoulder, as if to say, look, look at the boy I used to date and still like and introduced to this place, look at this prized act. He couldn’t help but wish she was someone else.

They were followed out by the starry-eyed crowd; a young woman even asked for him to autograph the white shirt she was wearing. Those people had taken the announcer’s introduction as gospel, clearly seeing the star quality that belied celebritydom, which was mostly imagined. He felt like he was living out a scene from an alternate life, where he was a famous singer meeting with his VIP fans, and Heeyeon, his defacto manager, leading him from place to place.

A small part of him was tickled by the praise; one person even said that Um Junghwa herself should’ve been there to see justice brought to her song. Some people were going to have a bite to eat, others were heading to the balcony for a smoke, and Heeyeon was left alone with Junsu yet again.

“Are you all right, Junsu?” she said.

“I think… I’m going to get some air.”

He turned on his heels without looking back.

The plaza was formed by two curving lines of buildings, eastward and westward, meeting like parentheses in which the pedestrians were enclosed. The southeastern edge was flanked with a few high-rise buildings, while Oda’s was in the middle of the eastern bank. Junsu, for the nth time in his life, wanted a cigarette. Just like every other time before, today would not be the day.

He walked the dimly-lit streets, watching the half-dressed clubbers stumbling to their benches. A girl in a leather dress patted her friend’s shoulder and took an empty plastic bag from the ground, and the other girl, wearing a cat ear headband, took the bag in her lap, looking down at it for a moment as though considering emptying her guts into it. She tentatively got up, still holding the empty bag, and her friend, Leather Dress, helped her up and down the opposite direction.

He wasn’t in the mood to shop much; maybe if Junho were here, he’d drag Junsu into the luxury boutiques to try one of everything on, because that experience, more than actually purchasing, satisfied his wanderlust. They’d both become miserly in their years living together, as Junho’s savings dried out with alarming quickness, though Junsu was a lot worse.

The need to piss snuck up on him randomly—he didn’t know where the bathrooms were at Oda’s, and he didn’t want to go back, not yet. Junsu found his eyes drawn to the tallest buildings at the south end; he’d never outgrown his fervent curiosity for that lifestyle and all that symbolized it. He had never before worked or lived in buildings like these, the ones with grand elevators and waxed marble floors, affable, neutral smells, expensive modern sculptures, populated by smart-dressed people who gave firm handshakes and spoke decisively about the world. His eyes followed the ceaseless movement of the revolving doors; this untitled building called to mind a ritzy hotel, which it very well could’ve been.

“Ah, what the hell,” he pushed his way in. More or less, he’d been right about the particular modernist style—this was a brand of affluent minimalism, whereby less seemed to convey more, the triumph of my less somehow being worth more than your more. The front desk felt cramped up close, though the room was spacious, as though whoever had done the interior design wanted it to feel imminent and uncomfortable to new arrivals. He saw no prominent elevators; he sensed there were hidden hallways and staircases in this labyrinth.

“Hello, sir.” The woman at the front desk addressed him politely and vaguely. He didn’t even care to read the name tag on her blazer.

This was the closest he’d get to the lifestyle of the very rich. He tossed his hair, peering at her from under the fringe as it settled on his forehead. “Ahem. I’m a famous singer. Xia, if you’ve heard.”

Flirting with celebrity status at Oda’s had done a number for his confidence; his acting was superb. She was drawn in like a moth to a flame.

He leaned an arm on the front desk, cool and unpretentious. “Now, my agent called for a booking…”

Her eyes widened to cartoonish size, and she quickly deferred to a binder filled with laminated pages, drawing her finger over the ink grids. “I’m sorry… who is it under?”

“Kim, first name Junsu.”

“Kim… Junsu…?”

“Apologies, I’m in a hurry. Is there an empty room?”

“Uh…” she drew the landline phone to her body and tapped the number with the tip of her talon-like nails, click-click-click, and then picked up. “Hello? Ahem… yes… customer says he has a booking today… right now, yes… not in the records, no.”

Her turn to look him over. Junsu straightened a little, but didn’t posture otherwise. He was playing a role.

“Okay… okay…” she took a second hand to the neck of the phone, squeezing it hard enough to strangle. Her palms left patches of sweat on the sides. “I… yes, a celebrity.”

A celebrity. He couldn’t help but smile.

She lowered the phone and pretended to smooth the papers of her binder.

“Room 950 is empty. It’s a big conference room… and, if there’s a problem…” she hastily clipped something to his neckline. “Tell them we sent you.”

It was a pin, a fancy—and clearly disposable—pin, embossed with the phrase ALL-ACCESS PASS, something that was only sensical to rich people.

He smiled. “Thank you. And are the bathrooms nearby?”

She pointed him in one direction.

As soon as he was out of sight, Junsu laughed, giddy like a child. He’d never tried faking his way to greatness, but now his mind raced with possibilities—where would he be if he’d such obscene audacity from the start? He felt drunk, overdosed from the stint at Oda’s and now a shot of identity fraud to his system. He didn’t care one bit about the conference room; he might check it out, eventually, or not.

He followed a winding path to the men's room. Now that he had full access to the premises, he could appreciate the lavish design without envy-clouded judgment. Because he saw how painstakingly every surface was rendered: the perfect alignment of the quartz sinks, the nicest stone-textured bathroom stalls he’d ever seen, and pristine urinals that glowed in the low light. A piss befitting a king. No, a celebrity.

The piss didn’t go uninterrupted, but he didn’t let that bother him. Someone else had opened the door and was tracing his steps, heading to the wall of urinals. His eyes were firmly trained on the target. The urinals were generously spaced out, so he could forget about the shadowy figure forming on one side of his vision.

Except, the figure was getting closer, and closer, and really? The stranger unzipped his pants and the sound was so loud. Junsu looked down, at the man’s feet, and, yep, this douche had broken the cardinal rule. Was he trying to have a dick-measuring contest or something?

“Junsu?!”

He looked up, dick somehow still in his hand. Of all the people… of all the places…

“Fucking hell!”

Yunho had grown up and become a man who was slightly bigger and more polished-looking. His body formed a V-shape in a blazer with a white shirt underneath, the top button undone, nothing out of the ordinary for a young man in the corporate realm. Otherwise, he was the same old: handsome, tall, small face, just as before.

Junsu was glad their first meeting wouldn’t transpire in the lowlights of his everyday life, while he was dressed in a holed baseball jersey and sweatpants on his grocery runs, or something like that. At the same time, he would’ve liked them to not be holding their dicks as it happened.

“Why’d you choose the urinal beside me?” Junsu came to his senses and zipped his fly up. He made a beeline to the sinks and started angrily lathering his hands in soap and water.

“I miss you,” Yunho said. He flushed the urinal and, infuriatingly, chose Junsu’s neighbouring sink, as well. At least he was looking at himself in the mirror and not at Junsu.

“I missed you too,” Junsu said after a beat.

“You look… really different.”

He laughed. “Well, this isn’t what I usually wear. It was a special occasion.”

“Oh?”

“It was my first real performance… Singing again, I mean.”

“I remember,” Yunho said, mildly offended. “And that’s great. I’m so proud of you, I mean.”

Junsu smiled bashfully, then corrected his mouth to an impartial straight line. The mere sight of Yunho dredged up old memories, and with them a less-assured version of Junsu that he had to actively fight against. “It went well. They said I was the best performer to sing at the venue.”

“You were always the best.”

Junsu didn’t speak or move.

“Did you do it yourself?” Yunho pointed to the inner corners of his eyes, tracing a line along his eyelid, and Junsu made a sound of recognition.

“My- my girlfriend, not me,” he said hurriedly. “I don’t have her makeup skills.”

“Well, it’s pretty. Beautiful. Handsome. I don’t know what you’d rather me say… I mean, for a guy, you’ve always been pretty.” Yunho awkwardly scratched the back of his head; his hair must’ve been dyed brown for a role, and it was tousled in that charming style, a far cry from Junsu’s bedhead situations. He sort of reminded Junsu of a chocolate lab. “Is it a serious relationship?”

“No, actually. I lied, we broke up recently,” Junsu said, and Yunho made a funny face. Junsu could’ve scolded him for acting familiar, interrogating his love life as if no time had passed since they were tight-knit like schoolgirls. “But we’re still friendly.”

“That was a… bold-faced lie,” Yunho observed.

“At least I gave you the truth. Which I’m not sure you deserve.”

“That’s fair. Anyways,” Yunho’s eyes sparkled infuriatingly. “Where are you off to?”

“Nowhere, really. You?”

“Oh, boring things. With my agent.”

Junsu raised an eyebrow. “You should go. Don’t want the paparazzi to start rumours that Jung Yunho is a huge diva…”

Yunho laughed. “Can you wait fifteen minutes? I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”

“But, hyung…”

Yunho held up a finger and smiled; then he left. And so many years apart could dissolve, becoming irrelevant and meaningless, as they were destined to fulfill the same roles from before. Junsu forgave, obeyed, followed where Yunho led. He knew he’d prove to Yunho that he was no longer a pushover at the first instance of his domineering behaviour; the only reason he agreed to stay and wait was because he was curious, wanting to know as much about Yunho’s life as he could.

They reconvened outside the bathrooms. Yunho had been quick about it, bursting with his leftover energy as he led Junsu into a raised hallway, the opening flanked with brightly-coloured bamboo plants.

Right. No matter how regular he looked to Junsu, Yunho was one of South Korea’s premier actors. He was important. He walked with easy swagger, while Junsu’s head turned as if on a swivel to marvel at the decor, the gilded chandeliers and ornate window covers. What was awe-inducing for Junsu was Yunho’s personal playground, the boring backdrop to his daily life, and that difference couldn’t be easily overcome.

“I forgot to ask, but what’re you doing here?” Yunho asked, head turning to face him.

“Nothing. I mean, I’m not supposed to be on the premises. I said I was a celebrity with a booked room, for, I dunno what, and she believed me.”

Yunho laughed. “Funny.”

“I’m being serious, hyung. And where are you taking me to?”

“You’ve been lying a lot tonight. I hope you weren’t lying about finally singing again…”

“I wasn’t- ack, no!” A hand gently found purchase on the bare nape of Junsu’s neck. He shivered, hairs standing up on end, no doubt pricking Yunho’s warm palm.

He considered various ways to swat Yunho’s possessive touch away. But Yunho, as if sensing something Junsu himself wasn’t even aware of, drew his hand away, and opened a massively tall door to a parking lot somewhere at the back of the building. A valet was already waiting for them under the carport. Junsu didn’t resist, knowing Yunho’s one-track minded self hadn’t the smallest doubts about Junsu following him in.

Junsu was a bit of an aficionado for cars, and the liquid-black Rolls Royce was pristine with a new-car smell. Yunho was perfectly suited to the expansive dark leather interior, his long legs outstretched, head tilted back carelessly. Unfortunately, the awkwardness seeped in as the gulf of lost time seemed to erupt between them, in the partition in the back row of seats.

They buckled up, Junsu’s leather pants squealed against the leather cushion, the valet’s lips smacked with chewing gum, and the moment was held like a bated breath, an unmanageable interlude. The Rolls Royce was off, and Junsu spit in his hands and rubbed his eye makeup off.

The outside world was as black as the car, punctured with neon lights like a galaxy of its own. Junsu sensed Yunho’s legs adjusting, moving in further, and he grunted, turning on his side so his body was facing the window.

“What a stroke of luck,” Yunho said.

“What?”

“I heard you, when you were singing in there. I heard a voice and I immediately knew who it belonged to. That voice was my everything. My spirit guide.”

“Stop it.”

“Trying to get into acting when it’s so oversaturated and thankless, Junsu…? Trust me, I know better than anyone. You’re a singer, through and through.”

How did he know about that? Junsu had never gone to high-profile auditions. He’d met quasi-famous people at social events, but no one of Yunho’s calibre. Unless the various factions of the acting world were nebulous and overlapping, and D-listers made small talk with Baeksang award winners, then the gossip had somehow made its way to Yunho.

Perhaps the culpability was written on his face, or Yunho was just being Yunho, because he understood immediately. “Junsu… of course I pay attention to you. I’ve never forgotten you. Every day I think about…”

“Quiet. Not in front of him,” Junsu hissed.

Yunho reached out, but Junsu froze his wandering hand, pinning it with his gaze like a mythical gorgon. That was enough, for now.

He should’ve figured that Yunho was up-to-date on his whereabouts. Not to mention, Junsu was famous, albeit for a very short window of time, so it figured that one or two people at a random audition had recognized him and began to spread the word. Now he felt like a fool, but he was still angry at Yunho. He didn’t have the right to tell Junsu how to live his life, which career path to take when he’d been absent for a decade.

Finally, the valet parked and retrieved a carry-on for Yunho. This next stop was a massive, European-inspired hotel, and Junsu knew for a fact that he’d never in his life be able to afford the offerings.

“Yunho…”

Tracking him down. Sweet-talking him. Ushering him to the car, wasting no time. Masking perfectly.

“Are you trying to kidnap me?!”

“Ah, no, Junsu! Please, I insist. It’s too late to be out.”

“In that case, you should’ve driven me home! I don’t want to…”

“What…?”

“No, no, I have places to be… I’m sure you do, right, hyung…? Don’t you?”

Yunho smiled thinly. “I have a suite, y’know, my own private suite. Don’t make a scene, or I’ll be mad.”

Junsu threw his hands up, because what were they doing, seriously? Having a personal spat in a parking lot as midnight loomed closer? He was the idiot for falling for it, Yunho was the idiot for trying to kidnap him so shamelessly, only absolutes could exist right now.

That room he’d immediately vouched for at the hotel, that was supposed to be comforting, but what did it really mean? Junsu thought of him taking a new man to the suite each night, sleeping the morning away and then leaving for work so the staff could deal with the cum stains and whatever else they’d done.

“I promise you I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. I’m not interested in that. But you should try living the high life.” Yunho beckoned him.

Junsu wasn’t sure how Yunho, the vacant space in his turbulent twenties, had come back and within a few hours, had a good sense of who Junsu was. He was more observant than Junsu’s parents, to whom he spoke on the phone almost every day.

That’s just who he is. He’s a playboy, shifty. Sniffing you out like a bloodhound… Why, you’re just like every other fool, Junsu…

He fell into the devil’s clutches. Because the devil was a handsome young man with a picture-perfect smile. There were worse ways to fall, right?

In the eyes of the patrons wandering the halls late at night, he was nothing more than the arm candy of a celebrity. There goes Jung Yunho, with his latest toy…

Because Yunho cared about image. He wore an uncanny smile as he brought Junsu into an elevator where they were the only two people the whole way up to the fourteenth floor, as composed and chaste as a Buddhist monk. Junsu hated how real the tension felt for him, and how he saw no hint of reciprocity in Yunho’s eyes. He couldn’t admit it to himself, that he did want it.

Silence carried them down the hall and to the hotel room. When they were both in, Yunho slammed the door shut behind him.

Inside, the suite was beautiful, draped in suggestive shades of red and black, like the bedchamber of a vampire from a Gothic novel. Junsu groaned, catching Yunho’s lips in his first, and they grappled as though fighting in every sense.

Junsu moved to undress him first, clawing at Yunho’s blazer until, with some acquiesce, he found the right angle to rip it off. He ran his hands over Yunho’s cotton white shirt, lightly massaging his pectorals, searching for his nipples, and Yunho’s tongue curled into his mouth.

“Ah… hyung…!”

Yunho shoved him on the wall, hard. Junsu was sure he’d found his nipples, because Yunho started rutting against him in tandem with Junsu’s fingers circling over the now-erect nubs through his shirt.

“I-ah… I…’ve been waiting for you, Junsu…”

“Leave me alone…” Junsu sputtered his words, and they died out with the feeling of Yunho’s tongue brushing along his neck, directly under his earlobe. Junsu had forgotten his hands most of all, how unruly and overgrown they were, but now that Yunho had come into his body they seemed well-proportioned. Nonetheless, up close they looked huge. Yunho tongued Junsu all over, gliding a palm across his neck, massaging with light, yet competent fingers. He felt heavy, a weight pushing on Junsu all at once, emptying the oxygen out of him.

Yunho drew his hand back up to Junsu’s chin, and tilted it up with a quick tweak. He was smiling generously, so full of pure adoration that Junsu felt ashamed, and quickly looked away.

Yunho’s hand then took the form of a gun, cocked and lodged partway into Junsu’s mouth. He recoiled, and there was nowhere to go, with the wall around him. Yunho pushed two fingers against Junsu’s tightly stitched lips, the barrel of the gun. Junsu looked away, and Yunho made a breathy noise. Junsu would’ve been able to handle the predictable onset of his angry temper; but his immature joy at getting under Junsu’s skin was infuriating.

“Will you say I love you?”

“I won’t…”

“Say it.”

“I’m not saying… Ooh… Hyung, stop!”

“Hyung is going to do what he wants, exactly to his taste.” Yunho hummed like a happy tiger, and befittingly, made swipes with his wet tongue on Junsu’s face, painting him in the saliva of an overgrown cat.

“Hyung…”

“Suck,” Yunho said, gruff and yet light in Junsu’s ear. Junsu gulped, throat constricting with a globus sensation. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t feel particularly charitable, but in the end he did open his lips, and Yunho growled his approval.

He was pinned by some indeterminable force onto the bed, suffocating and heavy like a rock in the sun, lips gaped and welcoming. The most apt word was taken. He wasn’t technically being taken, but he understood the raw ravishment, the metamorphosis, of becoming one with another—anatomically speaking, one engulfing another. He didn’t hate it. The anonymous hotel was comforting, almost mockingly so. He thought, Yunho-hyung probably doesn’t think I’m sexy, I must look like a fish under him, gasping for air. Then he thought, fuck, fingers in my mouth… Yunho’s were longer, but Masuo’s were thicker. One set was domination, the other was love, love transposed into the language of finger-fucking.

“Big, right?”

“Bigger than your dick, I bet.”

Yunho chuckled with unmistakable assurance. “We’ll see about that.”

Yunho drew his fingers in and out, like he was slicing through a wet fruit. He extricated them, leaving Junsu dumb with drool-tracks on his face. He returned, smiling, a whip-cracking jockey about to subdue a riding horse.

Was it over?

One more thrust, two fingers, shot deep into the cavern of his throat. Junsu coughed, wheezed, and teared up. His fingers were somehow even longer, so unimaginably long. He wasn’t sure if Yunho was getting pleasure from this, or if he was watching with the methodical care of a scientist conducting a dubious experiment.

“Aren’t you cute…” Yunho tapped the tip of his index on Junsu’s tongue, and he snapped his jaw shut, not before Yunho had the mind to pull away. He figured he knew what Yunho was thinking: bad dog, little brat, just making me want to tame you even more.

Yunho helped him out of his shirt, forgoing the laces entirely, simply throwing it over Junsu’s head and casting it aside. He went at Junsu’s pants next, but he couldn’t be down two to one, so Junsu ran a hand under Yunho’s shirt. His chest was pleasantly hard, although his nipples were soft. Tit for tat, Junsu helped Yunho out of his shirt before he stepped out of his leather pants, and then he unzipped the fly to Yunho’s dress pants, and soon it was just them, underwear-clad, swimming in a huge king-size bed.

Junsu didn’t protest, but didn’t help Yunho move his body into place. He tucked a pillow under Junsu’s hips and wrapped a leg around his waist. Time to be devoured. Two wet fingers left saliva marks on Junsu’s skin, in the small curve of his lower back.

A part of him felt like a woman, or how he imagined a woman would feel on the day of her first time. Had he bypassed the fear and the revulsion entirely?

The band of his underwear being lowered. Hot breaths.

“What’re you waiting for?”

Yunho grinned, hugging Junsu’s waist closer, and took two handfuls of Junsu’s ass in his hands. “Mmm…”

“Damn it…”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Yunho reached for the condom he’d set down nearby and ripped it open with his canine tooth. Junsu shut his eyes, waiting, the resin-petrified emotions cracking apart and hitting him like a wave.

He waited… and waited…

“Yunho-hyung?”

He felt something against the opening of his hole, pinned in place by four finger pads.

“C’mon.”

He’d never seen another man’s dick from this angle. It looked… huge.

“I’m not doing that.”

“Well, then I’ll just have to wait.”

“I’ll get up, and leave.”

“Really?”

Junsu tsked. “You want me to do all the work? Are you even attracted to me? Yunho-hyung?”

“Of course. You’ve got it all wrong, Junsu.” Yunho felt closer, even though he hadn’t moved. “I want to fuck you raw so badly. But, ah, we need to use condoms, don’t we? I can’t handle the thought of putting it on myself, knowing I want to bend you over and…”

Fucking hell, what’s wrong with him?

“Come on, I want to know you want it, too,” Yunho drawled.

“Fine.” Junsu bit his lip as he slowly worked his hips up and back, and the condom conformed to each distinct contour of Yunho’s dick as it enclosed him inside the thin rubber layer, and, just as well, inside Junsu.

It could’ve been the adrenaline overflowing inside him, but Junsu didn’t fully register the feeling until it was too late. He felt like Yunho was smothering him, with his body and his scent, and it was his eyes, those upturned almond-shaped eyes, that transported him back ten or fifteen years, because Yunho really hadn’t changed. He was everything Junsu had presumed, just a boy in the body of a man. Begging to be released.

In fact, it felt like that Yunho was the one on top of him right now: the one who smoked, rode a motorcycle, and claimed the world as his birthright. Because that should’ve been the natural outcome, right? Once upon a time, when they were young and burning with excess testosterone, fighting and working and dreaming about fucking…

Yunho chose to remind him that he wasn’t a teenager any more right at that moment, using his long, thick arms to pin Junsu back as he slowly worked his way in and out, never more than an inch with each breath of air.

“Junsu…”

“H-hyung…”

“I’m not even halfway,” Yunho said, sounding mesmerized.

Junsu moaned, head bracing against the pillow. He tried wrestling Yunho’s arms off him, but it was no use; Yunho’s were twice the size of his, with the hands to match.

Soon the present reality of his situation became undeniable, that Yunho was around him and in him and it was impossible to ignore. So, when Yunho said, open your legs a bit more, he did, and Yunho nudged his body in the space between. He fucked just like he danced, with power and razor-sharp precision, sure to leave burning muscles in his wake when he was done. Yunho buried himself to the hilt, dragging Junsu’s legs around his waist. He was just like an animal, wrought with passion and a survival-induced imperative to fuck, to mate, to sow.

Junsu pushed back against him, digging his foot into Yunho’s chest before the damage was too much, before his shrieks became pain and no pleasure. Hyung… hyung… move like this…

Yunho understood. He rested his palms on Junsu’s knees, watching from above as Junsu fucked in the way he danced, hypnotic and watery. Yunho’s pupils were overblown and desirous, the whites of his eyes dimmed to dull grey by rows of fanned-out eyelashes. Going under with Yunho was a maddening, elemental dance—they were fire and water, Yunho’s hard-hitting arms, Junsu’s smooth hips, Yunho’s plasmic bones, Junsu’s liquid flesh, locked and mutually devouring.

Point one for me, Junsu thought victoriously. Yunho’s thighs trembled from the way Junsu was milking his cock and he groaned, a sweet, enlivened sound. Junsu only ground in as far as he needed to feel the sparks of pleasure hitting his body all over; he looked down, and there was still plenty left. He tried not to look at Yunho, how his cock was harder than it had ever been, darkened with lusty blood.

“Turn over,” Yunho whispered, hands already moving to Junsu’s lower abdomen. They were both leaking precum, and, not wanting an excuse for Yunho to manhandle his body, Junsu turned on his wobbly legs. Now, at least, he wouldn’t have to look at Yunho. He could succumb to the pleasure, head buried in the pillow.

“You’re wet,” Yunho murmured, putting a hand under Junsu’s body so he could tease his cock with featherlight strokes.

Water was supposed to beat fire.

Yunho settled in, this time giving Junsu no buffer to adjust. They became enmeshed, fighting for control, fighting in the only way they knew how. Gyrating, fucking. The buildup of energy was so great, it felt as though they’d explode fantastically in a climactic neutron star collision. And Yunho said his name, repeated it like a prayer, beseechingly, but Junsu only said hyung. No Yunho, no Yunho-hyung. Even if it didn’t seem like it, he would retain control.

“Oh, fuck, let me take this off, let me come in you, please…”

“Come in me and you’re dead.”

Yunho smiled, laughing into Junsu’s shoulder. He nipped at the skin, making Junsu gasp and tense, and Yunho couldn’t hold on. He bucked wildly, holding Junsu by his lower back, making a mess of his torn-up insides.

Junsu rubbed himself covertly, and combined with Yunho pounding into him, dumb with post-orgasm yet still hard, he came. This was the orgasm that made all the other ones from before seem inadequate, frustratingly so. This was rebirth, reconnaissance. This was how normal, everyday people could find themselves addicted to sex.

If it was a competition, he’d won.

“I think you were in ecstasy for a little,” Yunho said. Junsu turned over, and pain shot through his abdomen, down to his gut. He wondered how long he’d been blissed out for. The state of orgasm was hard to describe; he wasn’t exactly conscious but he wasn’t unconscious, either, he was just elsewhere. Now, the need was sated.

Yunho bear-hugged him, turning Junsu over so he was on top. They were both replete with sweat and god only knew what other bodily fluids. But Yunho was smiling.

“We should clean up,” Junsu murmured. Their faces slotted into each other’s necks, like a perfect puzzle.

“Mm… later.” Yunho tightened his hold. The chemistry of skin-on-skin felt like it might yield another spontaneous fuck, but Junsu was still soft, and so was Yunho.

Somewhere, on a hotel room floor, a man cast a well-used, well-stretched condom.

“Did I do well?”

Junsu almost laughed. Yunho sounded just like his trainee self, endlessly deliberating over his performances. “Yeah. You’re good.”

“You are, too. Your body is… amazing,” Yunho said earnestly. “I mean, even after you couldn’t sing anymore, you could’ve been a dancer. Why acting?”

“I… don’t know, actually.”

That was that. Junsu held his lips together, and Yunho had learned that he no longer had license to delve deeper into these personal matters.

They both yawned, knowing they’d succumb to the exhaustion sooner rather than later. Junsu touched his body, the body Yunho claimed to love… he was skinnier than he would’ve liked, but his thighs were as muscular as always.

“I always knew you’d be famous, Yunho, but it’s still strange to me that you’re an actor. Not an idol.”

“Even if I’d had the urge to… I was too fucked up,” Yunho gestured to his bent knee.

“And the funny thing is, you’re not the only famous actor I knew before they were famous,” Junsu mused.

“Who else?”

“Yoshimoto Masuo.”

“What? Really?”

“Uh huh.”

“I’ve never met him.”

Junsu yawned. “Actually, you guys sort of look alike.”

Yunho didn’t say anything. He turned over, drawing the covers over his body. “C’mon.”

Junsu resigned himself at once. If anyone deserved to be cradled, it was him, but Yunho always liked being the little spoon. Funny that.

.

.

.

“Ughhhh…”

Junsu woke up at roughly the same time as Yunho, and somehow, they’d ended up on opposite sides of the bed, with Junsu’s feet touching Yunho’s chest and Yunho’s arm propped on Junsu’s cheek. The long, uninterrupted sleep was a necessary refresh, but Junsu awoke with a new ache. He did his best to hide it, but Yunho probably figured it out on his own. Either way, he was as warm-hearted as he’d been before, endlessly pestering Junsu into ordering from the room service menu until he obliged, and even then, Yunho insisted his chosen meal was too small.

This is something we will never speak about again, he incanted. Junsu was waiting for the moment that Yunho would send him off, maybe with a personal valet or something. They lounged like fat cats after eating, appreciating the silence, giving no meaning to it.

“Junsu,” Yunho said, motioning him over. They were both wearing nothing but underwear, after each having a nice, hot shower.

“You should watch this.” Yunho unplugged the earphone jack, and blasted the volume.

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Yoshimoto Masuo’s birth name is Shim Changmin. He’s Korean! He never met his true parents… he was no more than a baby when they snatched him up. His mother was a housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Yoshimoto, and they couldn’t have children… so they did the unthinkable!” This whistleblower hadn’t identified himself with an attached name or affiliate; all he had was a podcast microphone, and the background of his recording was blurred to a mild-mannered grey. Whether he looked like a reputable source of news, Junsu wasn’t sure; he was as generic as a guy could be, likely in his late twenties or early thirties.

He shoved something into the camera, a white sheet of paper that was so over-exposed Junsu couldn't see a word of it. The man who, by now, didn’t seem reputable, devolved into catatonic screams. “This is it! This is the truth!” He repeated as he wobbled the paper over and over again.

“What’s he saying?” Junsu asked.

Yunho paused the video and rewinded. “His lips, Junsu, pay attention.” He unpaused, played the clip, and then paused again, glancing expectantly at Junsu.

“I don’t know. It’s grainy.”

“Birth certificate, he said,” Yunho went back and replayed those few seconds, and a little more convincing had him nod his assent. Yunho was more perceptive about these things, so he was probably right, as per usual.

“Is that all? You can’t even see the birth certificate. It could be a ploy for attention.”

Yunho exited the video, and his fingers rapidly tapped the screen, until he pulled up a tab of someone’s naver blog. He scrolled maniacally, so Junsu didn’t register a single word until he stopped on a picture. The picture was grainy, with the rectangular shadow of the phone that took it in the right corner. He squinted, and Yunho zoomed in on the picture, and sure enough, someone had managed to find a paper copy of the birth certificate. Father, mother, son’s name, son’s registration number, date of birth, and place of birth, there were so many details that Junsu couldn’t imagine someone had put so much effort into a reconstruction of a birth certificate as a ploy for attention.

“Shim… Changmin…?”

“Definitely real,” Yunho said. “There’s no way… no one cares enough about this guy to make a joke like that.”

“I mean, he’s really popular.”

Yunho snorted.

“Hyung, he has a lot of fans. And I’m not saying that to antagonize,” Junsu moved in closer to his side, his eyes drilling holes into Yunho’s phone, in that birth certificate. “I agree with you, though, it must be legit.”

“I never thought he was a big deal.”

Back to his egotistical self; Junsu hadn’t missed it. Yunho was like a geocentric model of the earth, incapable of seeing beyond himself. He liked Junsu just fine, because neither of them ever forgot that Yunho had in spades what Junsu struggled for, but a man who was dangerously close to being his equal, perhaps a rival?

“Care for another round?” Yunho piped up, in his casual, teasing way. The sincerity of his proposition would depend on how Junsu reacted.

“I need to go,” Junsu replied in a small voice.

“Ah, but… I never get time off like this. I’ll be on a plane in six hours,” Yunho said matter-of-factly. The flame of desire burned in his eyes, eyes Junsu knew so well. They were like his own.

A heavy, veiny hand wandered to his bare, plump thigh.

“Stay a little longer,” Yunho whispered.

This had been a mistake. Unequivocally. He’d hate himself for it later.

Junsu’s phone chimed, and he reached for it on the floor, still plugged into the charging port.

UNKNOWN CONTACT: hey, palmtree1215?

UNKNOWN CONTACT: I have a role I think you should check out…

UNKNOWN CONTACT: [link]

Junsu settled his phone on the night table.

“Who was that?”

“Just a colleague.”

Junsu found his way on Yunho’s lap, and the warmth of his groin caused his own to heat up rapidly. Lips found lips. Aw, come on, what was another round…? This was the way of things for virile, closeted, frustrated men in their twenties.

Stay a little longer, he did.

Chapter Text

The pain was no more than a dull ache to Junsu’s body. Yunho had made sure of that, proffering a sleeve of ibuprofen in his so-called goodybag, which was as systemized as a United Nations care package; also included inside were tea sachets, hard candy, some bus money, and a handful of restaurant vouchers, likely obtained through his advertising sponsorships, and as Junsu left, Yunho had invited him to come to meet his agent to rub elbows and see where his acting career might potentially end up. “Call me,” He’d said by way of parting, a cryptic goodbye. And he wrote his phone number on a piece of scrap paper and deposited it in the bag, pushing it to the bottom, a memorable display, at least. He probably felt bad—rightly—and wanted to see Junsu off with some niceties for his pained efforts.

Junsu couldn’t believe that what had happened had happened, but there was no use in trying to reconcile. He became steel-faced as he wobbled onto the bus, not quite sure of where he was going. He knew he couldn’t go home.

He was expecting a notification or two from Heeyeon, but at the same time, he felt relieved that she hadn’t contacted him after he went missing. Their relationship had never been kindred in the way some couples’ were. His only received texts were the ones from the morning, from his gaming partner. How had he gotten Junsu’s contact? Moreover, why had he gone through the trouble of getting Junsu’s contact? Of all the people in the world to track down, all the phone numbers leading to private messages, he picked Junsu?

He headed to the nearest café and ordered three espresso shots in a cup, no dairy. As he settled with his coffee by a window seat, aligning his phone so no other customers would see, Junsu searched for that elusive, strange name. The story had just broken this morning, and Yunho must’ve been one of the first to hear the scoop. Junsu refreshed his phone, and new articles were popping up by the minute, each essentially paraphrasing the same content, of which there was very little. The newspapers were bound to the code of reputability, so there was basically zero substance and a lot of allegedly and possibly being thrown around. Just about every article Junsu read ended with the same sentence: Yoshimoto Masuo has not yet released a statement.

He then switched to social media, and there was already a trove of commentary piling up on both sides of the strait. He used a translator to search for key Japanese terms in one tab while he blitzed through Korean socials in another, and eventually he found a massive English-language forum for Japanese celebrities with a thread on Masuo’s situation—how inconceivable that even people on the other side of the globe were watching this unfold with eager eyes! Junsu couldn’t help himself; he deliberately sorted by controversial rating. On Naver, things were looking dire for the young actor:

> So he’s Korean, but he cheers for Japan, stands for the Japanese anthem, and he went to school in Japan… he has no business calling himself Korean.

> Shim Changmin, eh? I always knew he was too tall to be Japanese.

> Is the story real? I’m quite disturbed.

> This guy must’ve known. And all this time, he felt too ashamed about his true identity? If he calls himself Japanese, good. We don’t want him!

Then, he downloaded LINE, and it was no better:

> Masuo-kun is, and always will be, Japanese. Anyone who falls for this smear campaign is an idiot.

> I’m sure the true story is different. Mr. Yoshimoto is a very nice man (I’ve heard on multiple occasions) and the birth mother was probably a scoundrel. Do we even know the identity of the father?

> They were saving that boy from a humiliating life. Imagine if he was raised by a single mother, and a foreigner at that… Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t be where he is now.

Junsu thought about his childhood, and the boy who popped up more than once in unlikely ways. Yunho’s destiny was crisscrossed with Junsu’s from the start, but Masuo—or rather, Changmin—didn’t make sense being anything more than a stranger. He was on an entirely other level, rich and self-assured, jumping on private planes between the richest parts of Japan and of South Korea; how was he taking this? Even if the allegation wasn’t true, he and his family were being placed under the microscope in two countries, and he’d be forced to reckon with the life he’d known and the individual players—his mother and father, lambasted for their cruelty, his invisible biological parents, two Koreans who let their son slip away under the flag of a different country.

Part of him felt a sense of sadistic pleasure, similar to the way Yunho delivered the news initially, but his was different, in a way. Yunho lived and died by his pride, and consequently, his feelings were self-serving, but Junsu saw the news leak for the boon that it was: he’d only known Changmin a little, but he was a prick in all their encounters, and Junsu didn’t doubt that he was even worse to those he dealt with on a daily basis. So, maybe it would be good for the guy to come down to earth. Junsu pondered it—fostering a strategic agreement with Yunho’s agent, finding his way into key auditions and social gatherings, meeting Changmin and being able to hold his head up, and take the high ground for a change. He read the name on his lips, practicing it, as though he’d be poised to greet the man soon. Shim Changmin, it’s so nice to meet you. But, have we met? It’s just, you look like this guy… but, no, he was Japanese, wasn’t he…?

Before he allowed himself to be carried away, Junsu returned to the unanswered texts from this morning. He hadn’t worked up the nerve to click the link—what if it was a prank, or worse, malware? His finger wavered, and after releasing a long, bated breath, he clicked. Alright, nobody1234. Let’s see where you take me…

He was sent to a page titled ‘AUDITIONS’ on an official-looking site—not one of the many audition websites that were permanently bookmarked on his computer, but a private casting agency. He tried copying the url into another tab, but right when the landing page loaded, the site timed out and he couldn’t click anything. Mystified, he went back to the page nobody1234 had linked to. There was a nonspecific blurb about the production, which he barely glanced at as he scrolled down, and then two roles listed:

JUN BAEKHO
Protagonist. Seeking male aged 20-35. A prodigy race car driver in his late twenties. Tall, good-looking. Charismatic, brooding and world-weary.

KANG MINHAN
Deuteragonist. Seeking male aged 20-35. Reporter for the Korea Herald. Charming, yet mildly insecure.

He scrolled to the top and read the blurb: 1.5 hr to 2 hr film, first draft script complete, genre: action/romance. ‘Jun Baekho, the record-setting race car driver, decides to return to his sport after an untimely fall.’

Well, the website was impressively well-made, but the casting call itself gave him a pause. Why was there so little information? Normally they listed everything of relevance, including the names of the producer and company, the salary, whether there was other meaningful information (would the person casted as Baekho need to learn how to drive on a race car track? and et cetera).

Junsu considered both roles. There was no way he’d be able to stand up to the Adonis-like men vying for the main character’s role. Deuteragonist would be more than enough. He clicked the apply button, and a new tab appeared on his phone.

The only required information for the application form was his first name, phone, email, and selected role. That was a red flag. No resume, not even a headshot wanted? This was probably nonsense. He reluctantly filled the text boxes in—because it couldn’t hurt to try—and clicked the confirm button. The screen buffered—the café internet connection was unstable, and he wondered if this was somehow the spiritual hand of God telling him not to go through with it. But, his phone connected once more, and the application went through. He was redirected to a screen that thanked him for applying and advised him to look for his scheduled audition date in his e-mail inbox.

That was a minor weight off his shoulders. Junsu exited, blocked nobody1234, and turned his phone off. His coffee had gone cold. He took a sip, hating how strong the taste was, but it seemed everyone in the film industry lived off caffeine. One would be ill-advised to presume decaf, tea, energy drinks, or, god forbid, water, were properly stocked on site, but there was always a fully-operational coffee machine. He checked his e-mail, but as expected, nothing, and then threw his coffee out and circled back to the bus stop from whence he’d come. No one else was around, when, suddenly, the ringtone blared from his phone.

Answering unknown numbers was Junsu’s policy—he hated dealing with scammers and telemarketers, but one never knew when a long-forgotten lead might decide to call back with an offer. So, he picked up, mentally preparing himself.

“Kim Junsu?”

The voice on the other end belonged to a man. Initially, Junsu thought it was Yunho, but this person had a slightly different cadence.

“Yes?”

“I’m calling on behalf of Jung Yunho. He wants to meet—you, me, him—at Josun Palace. Does Sunday, exactly two weeks from now, work? At 8PM?” The man spoke each sentence like he was sniping bullets.

“Josun Palace?! I don’t… I’ve never… That’s really upscale, yeah?” In his haste to make sense of it all, Junsu’s diction ended up sounding rough and old-fashioned, and he mentally cringed. If only Yunho had heard, he would’ve laughed out loud.

“...I’ll send you the address. You must understand that these meetings are private affairs, given how famous he is. A… public establishment wouldn’t do.”

“W… What does he want from me? Specifically?”

The man on the other end sighed. “Discussing your future as an actor, I assume? Jung Yunho loves to take young upstarts under his wing, y’know, share his experience, his connections, it only ever works out a fraction of the time—I mean, hah, I’m saying this as if he’s not twenty-seven himself. You don’t have to.”

“No… I’d like to. Two Sundays from now, you said?”

“Yep. You’ll receive an e-mail with the address. It’s a luxury venue. You’d do well to suit up.”

“Um, thank you. Who is this?”

“I’m his agent. Kibum.”

Kibum hung up promptly. What a whirlwind of a phone call… part of him wanted to believe this was a cunningly-choreographed prank, but even if there was the tiniest possibility of it being real, he had no choice but to follow through. Even if Yunho and Kibum embarrassed him by being no-shows, he was already at rock bottom, so the ego blow wouldn’t be able to hurt him.

Junsu logged the date into his phone calendar. Kibum had said those words, Josun Palace, with the banality of one talking about the corner store, or the pharmacy. Yunho was operating on an entirely different airwave, not just him but the people who surrounded him, too. What a life it must’ve been—did he forget poor people existed in his world of immense luxury?

Junsu went home, fired some applications off for routine acting roles, and then walked to his part-time employment. Having an uncle who owned a dog kennel nearby meant he could drop by whenever he had a few hours to spare, and earn some easy cash.

The boisterous uncle was Junsu’s father’s brother, heavyset and wide and much taller than this younger brother, much in the same way Junho was to Junsu. He operated the kennel alone, living in the trivial way of a lifetime bachelor. If anyone was to end up in Seoul in the family, it made sense that it was him.

When Junsu arrived, he was moving bags of dry dog food, swaying a little under the weight, while two doll-sized pomeranians and a sheepdog mix trailed after him, nipping at his heels. “Hello, Junsu! Mind giving me a hand?”

He held his arms out, clumsily taking a few bags. “Where do these go?”

“Out in the shed. I’ll show you.”

He liked those simple, yet fruitful hours, though a small part of him felt like he’d never properly shown gratitude to his uncle for the ongoing employment. He doubled as a dog-groomer, so while Junsu hung around the dogs in the back yard, the only time they were ever un-leashed, he was in the basement spraying one down with a pressure hose.

A woman eventually came to pick up her dog, a rather slender-figured husky, and after that his uncle decided they’d take a break. He retrieved two chilled sodas and they sat on the couch, watching the dogs prance outside through the screen door.

Junsu watched a mid-size dog bite an identical-looking dog by the neck ruff, jerking it off-balance. The victim snapped its jaws and chased the biter, until they were lost in the whirlwind of fur and wagging tails, each running after each other, having forgotten their conflict. They were definitely siblings, littermates… that was how it worked, the truth of sibling love.

“How has it been? How’s Junho?”

“He’s okay.” Junsu straightened; his uncle always asked about Junho first. He was such a generous man that at times, Junsu forgot that from the very start, he’d shamelessly picked Junho as his favourite twin. “He still thinks he’s going to become a professor, but I don’t see it.” Junho had had his fill of teaching community music classes, and now he wanted more: he’d taken a fast-track program and was working towards his master’s, with the hope of getting a musicology doctorate. “He’s never been a scholar, but he’s studying hard. When I call him, he usually can’t speak for more than one or two minutes.”

“Ah, he’s grown a lot, hasn’t he?” Junsu’s uncle spoke appreciatively. “He set a goal, he has his sights on it, and he’s working at it. Not like me, I was dumb.”

This was clearly a joke, but Junsu had to do the filial thing and object. “You’re not dumb. You have a successful business.”

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” the man winked and took a long sip of his beverage. “Well… how’re your parents?”

“Good. Things are uneventful for them right now.”

“Well, that’s always good… And you? Are you a big-name actor yet?”

Junsu closed his eyes, wincing. “Soon. I have something coming up.”

“What kind of something?”

“It’s a secret. But I’m excited.”

His uncle scoffed, though he was smiling. “How many times have I heard that before…”

“This time is for real. Okay, uncle?” Junsu knew he was getting hot under the collar. He hadn’t been on guard at first, but it came on instantly, like a defensive mechanism.

“Yeah, yeah. I could keep you on full-time, ya know.”

Junsu got up and let the dogs back inside, one by one. For a dog boarding kennel that doubled as his uncle’s place of residence, the house smelled decent. He watched the dogs as they scurried off to the preestablished destination, down the hall and into the big room with the shaggy carpet for naptime.

“Did you hear me, Junsu?”

“I can’t.” He tried to keep his composure. His uncle had never brought this up—was he lonely? Junsu looked at him in fear, as if seeing what was to come, one half-formed apparition that could delineate his future. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, fine.”

They went to check on the dogs. Inevitably, a few had the zoomies, and so Junsu let them out to wander around in the halls. He came back to find his uncle giving a belly rub to a magnificently fluffy pomeranian—his uncle’d always had a soft spot for the tiniest dogs.

“That’s a cute one,” Junsu observed. He lacked the parental instinct his uncle seemed to possess when it came to the dogs, but he liked them regardless. He got on his knees and petted under the dog’s chin. The pomeranian had dappled black and bronze colouring, with a small, dainty snout.

“You should get one. You’re good with them,” his uncle said.

He shook his head. “Not right now.”

“Think about it, at least…”

“If you say so.”

Junsu got back home with an envelope of cash, long after the night had chased the sun away. He stuffed two bills in his wallet, put the rest under his mattress, and played a few solo game missions on his PC. His stomach felt strangely nauseous, so he ate some salted almonds and nothing else and, thoroughly bored, went to bed earlier than usual.

Sleep was hard to come by. Junsu reached for his phone, and all of the search tabs from his morning research were still open. He searched the name Shim Changmin again and found a slew of new articles and video thumbnails, most related to the same update: a short press conference wherein he’d addressed the controversy. Junsu tapped on the two-minute video, and it swallowed the rest of his screen, instantly cutting to an empty conference table with a microphone attachment, presumably at the front of a hall. Camera shutter sounds fired off, people made idle chatter off-screen, and then, the young actor walked up to the table and sat down in the middle seat.

The crescendo of sound was unbearable. An unseen hand placed a glass of still water in front of him. His inexpressive face was whitened by ongoing camera flashes, attacking from all angles, but he didn’t blink or look away, and he looked as naturally beautiful as ever.

“Excuse me! Yoshimoto-san,” a man cried. The press con was in Japan, subtitled in Korean. “Can you comment on the allegation that you were not raised by your birth parents?”

He leaned into the mic. “I released a press statement that clarifies the basic information.” He shifted uneasily, and his eyes flashed to the side, as if he was looking for a cue. “...But, yes, all of that is true.”

A minor commotion ensued, but calmed just as quickly. Another reporter, this one a woman, asked the next question: “Yoshimoto-san, Yoshimoto-san, is it true that you are ethnically Korean?”

“That is true. My birth name is Shim Changmin. I hope you’ll continue to support me. Things may be different now, but I’m the same me.” He bowed awkwardly in his seat.

“Yoshimoto-san! Does that mean you’re renouncing your Japanese name?”

“What’s in store for you next?”

“Yoshimoto Masuo! How do you plan on…”

“Please, no more questions,” a man in a tan suit appeared behind Changmin—probably a PR person. He was just as striking and as youthful, but he didn’t look anywhere near as intimidating. His eyes were more open, his lips friendlier.

“What about your parents? Can you tell us about your mother? Your father?”

“I’m done,” Changmin said rather gruffly. A flood of camera flashes followed him as he got up, and the video cut out.

Junsu wanted to admonish him for such a belligerent attitude. Here he was, a star adored by so many, given the chance to articulate his thoughts, and he called to mind a petulant child, digging his heels in and shooting the evil eye at his parents. He replayed the chaos of the last few seconds, wherein the frantic reporters all tried to get a word in, and Changmin categorically ignored them all. What was the point of this if he wasn’t going to answer their questions? Junsu must’ve been working at the kennel at the time Changmin’s official press statement went out online, and he read it, and was struck by the redundancy of the press conference. Poor planning on someone’s part.

As much as Junsu wanted to say his frustration at Changmin’s inadequate answers was wholly noble, there was a selfish component too: He wanted the information for himself. Changmin’s parents’ full names had been leaked from the birth certificate, and both were Korean. What would this mean? Junsu assumed South Korea would cozy up to him if he truly accepted his heritage, but how would Japan react? It was his primary source of income, his home country, but Changmin was a foreigner, wasn’t he? Junsu wanted badly to be a fly on the wall in the board rooms where, no doubt, people were discussing it all.

A notification rescued him from his useless torpor; it was from his e-mail.

“Huh. That was fast.”

He opened the e-mail, and his audition was to be held in two weeks, on Monday, at 8 PM, exactly one full day after the Sunday he was to meet with Yunho. He exhaled in relief, having narrowly avoided a major crisis. Even if Yunho succeeded in taking him somewhere or going to bed with him again, he’d have plenty of time cushioned between the two equally important affairs.

He marked the e-mail and finally, managed to fall asleep.

.

.

.

The week went by, and the two most fortuitous opportunities of his life came closer; Junsu couldn’t cope with it, so he threw himself into his work, his hobbies, his familial obligations, whatever he could do to kill the hours sweetly. He played video games, not running into the elusive nobody1234 even once. He called his parents, nagged them more than the reverse. Because he lacked steady 9-to-5 employment, he was often summoned by his relatives for miscellaneous errands, and he took the train four times in a single day to help his newly widowed great-aunt move some furniture. He received an e-mail pdf of the scene he would be reading for his audition, a conversation between the two leads. He immediately understood why it was chosen. All sixteen double-spaced pages amounted to an exercise in emotional vulnerability and relational dynamism. The emotions, the shame and hate and love, were not spelled out for the layman, they rolled like a cyclone until the culmination was delivered as a punch to the gut. The demanding roles required two actors with exceptional range, who infused themselves with charisma but were not handicapped by it.

He felt confident about his role; he was Minhan, the initiator, interrogator, and then, defensive, the first to demonstrate his anger. He thought of all the times he’d been picked on, laughed at, or underestimated by people who were like Jun Baekho, and he wondered if this role might be his catharsis. Even if he didn’t get it, just staging it, getting to properly vent his anger onto a blank face, called him like a long-awaited treasure. Junsu gave up on reading his lines after two hours—he formulated an initial sketch of the character, and wanted to leave the rest of the performance up to the incidences of the day, in the audition room, so it would be more natural. Paradoxically, he found that in the past, the more he practiced, the less sure he became and the more he over-thought, and the point of acting was to believe in your words above all else.

He also got an e-mail from Kibum, which was a slightly more in-depth recitation of their phone call, asking him to please reply and confirm the address and time. Junsu responded as soon as he saw it.

He was pleasantly tired from forcing himself to be accountable, and in that week, he slept better than he had in months. There was that percolating thought, one his cynical mind had readily extinguished before, but burned brighter than ever now: that he might escape the grueling world of taking acting jobs he found uninspiring and unenjoyable, while fruitlessly chasing the greatness of men like Yunho, imposing on himself a world of unending torture.

Exactly one week from Josun Palace and one week, one day from his audition, Junsu felt so good, he’d started to pay attention to his body and show restraint, limiting himself to two game missions per evening. He won his first and second, but he was so content that he felt relatively unaffected. He took a hot nighttime shower, changed into newly-washed pajamas, and bundled himself under the covers with his phone. It was an old model, bought secondhand. If all went according to plan, he’d get a spanking new one, after the audition, after a meaningful talk with Yunho…

Junsu held the phone close to his heart as he slept, and when he woke up, not from an angry alarm but the natural sunlight filtering through the curtains. That morning was spent dawdling, Junsu caring for himself like he was both the kept man and his owner, making self-indulgent coffees, taking a perfumey bath, picking his most vibrant outfit to wear, painting his nails, fixing his hair. He wished he hadn’t, in the end, he looked back on it with the shame of a wishful proletariat. Junsu checked his e-mail.

From the company holding the audition.

The Subject line read ‘Revised Audition [URGENT]’.

He assumed, baselessly, that it was a minor issue. The script that they’d sent him had a mistake, the room number would change, or something like that. In the end it wasn’t a big deal, this sort of thing had happened before, but the way in which it happened, the exact cards of fortune that determined where, how, and when it would happen, the celestial mockery of it all was unendurable. Junsu did the only thing he could think of.

And after the third ring, Junho picked up.

Junsu presumed it was mutually unintentional, but nonetheless, noteworthy given the flow of their daily lives. Either way: he couldn’t remember a time where a call to Junho had gone to voice mail, and on the flip side, he never got missed calls from his elder brother. Twin telepathy, Junho would’ve joked. Even Junsu’s parents, to whom he talked each day, missed many of his call attempts.

Given his undependable memory, this might’ve been a recent development, of the last few years. Certainly, nowadays Junho sounded less absent-minded on the phone, he had a schedule, he was committed to studying, now finally growing up. Unlike Junsu, he lived with two friends in a luxurious apartment.

“What’s up?”

“Hyung, I have a problem.”

“I’m listening.”

He hung his head, a wave of sentimentality hitting him at his brother’s voice. “I managed to organize a meeting with a high profile actor, somehow, and, we’re meeting on Sunday, 8PM, Josun Palace. Then, I somehow got this fancy audition with a fancy company and they gave me the audition date on the Monday, fine, that’s no problem. But because I have the worst luck imaginable, my audition gets rescheduled to that same Sunday at 4, and now I have no fucking idea what to do!”

Junsu swore he could hear the rustling of loose-leaf papers and textbooks, and tried to envision his brother, the boy who had done everything out of order: a worldly traveller in his childhood who graduated back to the books. Technically he needed eyeglasses, but Junsu had never seen him wear them.

“Hmm… this is difficult. You should try and go to both.”

“There’s no way, hyung. The audition starts at 4PM, and it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’d have to finish super early, and then take a forty-minute bus ride, and I’d probably need a change of clothes, some makeup…”

“So what’re you gonna do?”

He ran a hand through his hair, flummoxed. “That’s why I called you, hyung.”

“You said Josun Palace?”

“Ah, why don’t you focus on the matter at hand?!”

Junho laughed, as soft and light as a bell. “Well, it’s relevant. Josun Palace means this guy you’re meeting with is super high-profile.”

“He’s A-list.”

Junho whistled. “Good job.”

“But there’s no guarantee he’ll help me.”

“You’re meeting him, one-on-one…” Junho clarified. “Okay. The audition is probably going to have, what, ten other people wanting your role? Fifteen?”

“Give or take.” He knew where this was going and wasn’t sure he liked it.

“So, your odds are much better meeting with the one guy. It’s all in your hands, you won’t be against anyone. You’ve done a hundred auditions, and you’ll find another one.”

“Yeah, but… this audition was a weird circumstance. It’s the kind of audition I’ve never gotten before, and I may never get again.”

Junho made an unconcerned sound. “You have a tough decision to make.”

“Why are you the voice of reason? Your logic is sound.”

He laughed again. “I surprise myself, even.”

“I don’t know what to do. It’s a crapshoot.”

“Can’t you move the meeting with this guy? Since it sounds like an informal thing.”

“Yeah, but…”

But I don’t want to.

But that’s troublesome.

But Kibum the agent might scream for my blood.

But… it’s Yunho.

“He’s so busy, though. And… who would I be to ask a guy like him to reschedule?”

“Mmm… Well, this is difficult. You can only do one thing… Junsu?”

“Yeah?”

“Choose what your heart desires,” Junho said in a singsong voice. Junsu groaned audibly. “That, or flip a coin.”

He hung up, feeling at a complete loss. Junsu had almost never required his brother’s counsel when he felt burdened by something, and Junho’s lack of aptitude in that role showed. He oscillated from one side to the other, becoming quietly remorseful and changing his mind when Junsu challenged him. In the end, nothing was settled.

Maybe the most frivolous means of deciding was the smartest: flipping a coin. He’d have to decide which side was which. Which coin he was using… he emptied his wallet, smoothing them down on the coffee table. A specialty coin from the 2002 World Cup caught his eye, but then he noticed a shining, 500 yen coin he didn’t remember having, given he’d never been to Japan, so that seemed like the auspicious energy he needed to channel for this endeavour, but then the coin reminded him of the newly-christened Shim Changmin, and he nearly threw it out of the window. Sighing, he took the World Cup coin in his hand, feeling how insubstantial it was, how it quickly warmed to the temperature of his palm. He closed his fist around it, deciding the trophy-side would be the audition, and the soccer player-side would be Josun Palace.

Would it be decided? Did he have any control over the way his thumb would flick the coin, the way it would accelerate and decelerate, the way in which it was suspended in air, bound to the pull of gravity? He could see the coin in his mind, one flat face becoming the other ad nauseam, moving as rapidly as a spinning top, becoming a 3-dimensional object in the illusion of the blur.

.

.

.

Changmin wanted to start bitching so badly, and his agent, Choi Minho, was fortunately paid to listen to people bitching. Unleash a torrent of curses and thinly-veiled threats in his face, release a fan of spittle for good measure, and he’d stand there, composed, with his unwavering, good-natured smile.

Changmin felt this time, as was not usually the case, he had good reason to bitch at Minho in particular. Changmin liked him precisely because Minho pushed him in important matters, but when it came to the obnoxious fluff of being a celebrity—all the things Changmin detested, like sponsorship events, magazine shoots, press conferences—he relented, knowing how little Changmin could take before he lashed out. Minho was his most trusted employee, an ally to the most demanding of introverts, until he betrayed Changmin’s trust.

“Have you cooled down?”

“Fuck you,” Changmin growled. He heard Minho but didn’t see him; he was currently sequestered in his too-small hotel room, brooding on a leather chair situated in the corner, while Minho moved around like he owned the place, unseen and yet very much heard.

“I didn’t want it to be like that, but it was a mess and if we didn’t say anything, you’d be absolutely torn to shreds-”

Changmin turned to him. “You let me be humiliated, like a damn puppet, a parrot: yes! No! Okay, that’s enough questioning for today! You’re not my handler, you’re my agent, you do not need to come and put your big, dumb face in front of the camera and usher me away like a kid! Are you fucking listening to me?!”

Minho’s face was stony in the face of his ineffectual words. He must’ve been conscious of the fact that he’d made a huge faux-pas; as they were getting up and leaving, Minho had been accosted by a security guard and scolded for his moment of impudence, and at one angle, Changmin could be seen shooting him daggers, but the extended video recording had been scrubbed from the internet.

“Are you going to ask me what this folder in my hand is for?”

“I really don’t care.”

“I’m sorry, Changmin. I was being stupid, and I hope this’ll make it up to you.” Minho threw him a sheaf of papers, sixteen in all.

“What the hell is this?”

“Your new role. Baekho. Start reading.”

The front page was titled ‘MAXIMUM’, and below that, the screenwriters’ names; among them was the current darling of film critics everywhere, the director-producer-writer trifecta known simply as Kangta. This was a scene taken from the screenplay, where the main character, Jun Baekho, was being interviewed about the Grand Prix race in Rome.

“But, wait.” Minho grinned knowingly. “Not only is he a racecar driver…”

“Hmm…?”

“He’s gay. Homosexual.”

Changmin tossed him a flippant shrug.

“It’s going to be controversial, no doubt,” Minho continued. Changmin sighed, and gave up on trying to focus on reading. “There’s kissing scenes. The traditionalists will have a lot to say.”

“They’ll all be dead soon,” Changmin replied.

“Ha-ha, you’re not wrong! But don’t say that in public. No, but… he’s a manly guy, doesn’t talk too much, you’d never know it… and then the relationship is the surprise in the second act. Apparently they’re keeping it under wraps, like, the advertising won’t show any of the gay parts…”

Changmin sighed. “They’re asking for trouble.”

“That’s how it’s going to be. You’ll have to ask Kim Jaejoong. He’s basically the boss.”’

What Minho didn’t say, the fine print of it, was that this would be Changmin’s new normal. He was just getting used to being a new person, having his Korean name in katakana displayed alongside his Japanese name in kanji. He felt as Japanese as he’d always been, but only Korean blood coursed through his veins, all Mongol, no Jomon.

So, controversy surrounded him like a noxious cloud of smoke. He had two new bodyguards and the PR assistant was doubling her shifts to deal with the onslaught from the press and the public. He absolutely despised it; were he a little more carefree and a little less loyal to people who relied on him, people like Minho, he’d probably feel like quitting the industry was the only option.

Minho, though, wasn’t just kind. He wanted to pull Changmin to the very top, and he’d never made a mistake in their time working together. He was young, but sure of himself. Before, he’d been cautious about the number of projects Changmin took on, assuring quality over quantity, but now, they were flung to the other extreme, of riding the waves of shock and outrage to even greater fame. Building on Changmin’s now-disputed birth would be a role that was just as memorable. He only had to audition. Minho tried to offer Changmin the role without auditioning, but Changmin drew the line there: he never wanted to obtain a role without first going through the process. In some cases, when he was clearly selected for his celebrity status and not his fitness for a role, he turned it down, and he’d never felt bad about that.

Changmin didn’t let his job become his identity. When an acting teacher first taught him about the concept of method acting, he’d worked himself into a fit of laughter. He was certain that actors were the most self-absorbed people on the planet, easily putting a damper on everyone around them with the mere flick of a finger or turn of the head. He sought to distance himself from that crowd as much as he could, and he began to feel nervous as he read through his lines for MAXIMUM, knowing the project could very well catapult him to greater fame and greater excesses. A new release always meant unwanted attention, Minho and his other staff dragging Changmin to events and promotions where the smallest, accidental frown was disparaged by journalists hours later. All he wanted to do was go into the studio for however many hours, play his part, and then go home, rinse and repeat until the movie was done. After, he’d take a month or two of sabbatical, and dip his toes into a new film or series, with the eventual promise of retiring to a sleepy town somewhere where nobody knew his name.

That was as faraway as he could dream. Looking up his net worth didn’t tell the full story—Changmin needed to work, that much was clear, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to live glamorously until he was a weathered, greyed version of himself. He asked himself often, too often: What do I want? The details varied, but more or less, he always had the same answer: To leave.

He didn’t even have a place to call his own, to where he could return to if he needed recuperation. It wasn’t a matter of his reputation, his career or the people around him, he quite literally did not have a real house. His staff had made a decision to sell his apartment in Osaka because he was almost never there, and so he lived in hotels and other means of temporary lodging. There was his parents’ house, also in Osaka, but even it wasn’t the solitary respite he needed. His life had become surveilled constantly in the past few years, and he hadn’t noticed.

He couldn’t really describe the feeling to anyone, even Minho. He could sense it by the vertiginous drop, starting in his throat and landing in the pit of his stomach, making him choke on his words and question his vision; sweaty, glowing skin, a heavy, forceful heartbeat, and sudden-onset mutism were the accompaniments. The actual anger, of shouting and shoving and pushing people away forcefully, came beforehand, an all-systems-go final warning to the world before his body inevitably shut down.

“Don’t come back here until tomorrow morning. I’m getting room service.”

“All right.” Minho was already heading for the door.

“I mean it. I might smash your face in.”

Minho chuckled, and slammed the door shut. Changmin grunted, getting up to move the sliding door latch so Minho wouldn’t be able to come in, even if he had the key card for Changmin’s room, which he always did.

He returned to the script for MAXIMUM. He could see the beginning of the threads that, once woven together, would make a smash-hit. Moviegoers loved nothing more than an entertaining premise with unexpected beats of emotional depth. The role of Baekho was closer to Changmin’s brand of cynical wit than any of his previous ones, and he wondered for a moment if he was the screenwriter’s inspiration in creating the role.

Changmin ordered a feast for dinner, one dish from every country on the international-themed menu. The food was so good, he called the front desk to tip an extra 30 percent—well, all of it would be charged to his PR agency.

Afterwards, he checked his laptop, and Minho had inputted the audition in his online schedule already. He knew he was heading back to South Korea on the weekend, but now, it would be even more hectic. He grabbed the complimentary notebook with the hotel’s insignia on each page and began writing notes for the week ahead. Suit fittings, charity galas, commercials for make-up brands and cookware, sponsorship lunches, airport embarkments, auditions of every variety, staff meetings, daily styling appointments, a meeting with his nutritionist, and there was nothing to say about the ever-expanding family obligations and other personal matters, lost in the sea of celebritydom. He sighed.

Changmin arrived at the Creative Centre alone, with the print-out from Minho folded in his coat pocket. The complex was alive with activity, no matter that this was a sleepy Sunday afternoon. He went to the basement floor, and the entire east wing was cordoned off. A man in casual clothes stood sentry as employees passed by, freeing the stanchion rope and then locking it again until the next person came, in intervals as short as a few seconds, and the display was so frustrating Changmin had to look away.

Finally, someone noticed him. “Masu- I mean, Shim Changmin?”

He nodded tersely. The guy allowed him to pass through the cordoning, and the hallway was as claustrophobic and energetic as a bazaar; men dragged video recording equipment over their shoulders like sacks of food, assistants held four or more cups of coffee in their hands, racing after their masters, two people were watching a phone video in the middle of the aisle, and one balanced a clipboard, jotting notes down every few seconds.

Finally, he ended up at the end of the hall, thoroughly disoriented and overheated in his coat. Two men were standing in a corner, staring at a chipped cinder block on the wall. The closer one turned his head, and before Changmin’s rage could manifest, he was stunned into silence.

The other man, wearing a deep V-neck shirt, turned around, too, and he was vaguely familiar, likely a face Changmin had seen at an event or two before. Neither were dressed up, and therefore that seemed like social currency, that they had no need to impress anyone.

Changmin bowed. “Kangta-nim…”

The guy in the V-neck sweater laughed. “His name’s Chilhyun.”

Changmin’s cheeks warmed, but Chilhyun had a serene look on his face. This was a young master of his art, a legend in the industry—director, producer, writer, a name gilded and sparkling in award cases, circled in old school yearbooks, known by everyone from the avant-garde film buffs to the casual family filmgoer, and he was just thirty-five. His films all had a sort of artistic, yet docu-style feel, unflinching and masterful, retaining the coarse touch of his university arthouse era.

“Shim Changmin. This is Kim Jaejoong,” Chilhyun said, gesturing to the V-neck guy. “He’s my co-producer and the screenwriter for MAXIMUM.”

Changmin silently appraised Jaejoong, holding the corners of his mouth taut. He knew this kind of guy from his art school days. This type of guy showed up to classes in baggy jeans that were intentionally worn backwards, and he thought that made him funny as shit. His work was written on chewed-up paper, not typed and printed and stapled. He held back his giggles when he handed it in to the professor, because he thought it was hilarious. Now that guy had grown up, made a killing, and might be in charge of him for the foreseeable future.

“I’m here to audition.”

“I figured,” Jaejoong retorted with ease. Chilhyun handed him a piece of paper, and then waved, presumably on his way to something more important.

Jaejoong handed him a stapled copy of the script, pristine with that newly-printed paper smell.

“Am I auditioning out here? In the hall?”

“No, but the room’s not free yet. Give the script a look, practice, if you want. I’ll be waiting.”

He definitely wouldn’t be doing that, not in the presence of this Jaejoong. Changmin held the script at his side, feigning nonchalance. “...So you were one of the screenwriters.”

“Yes. And this is my first time producing as well. I’ve been working with Chilhyun-hyung for a while, but this is really my baby,” Jaejoong said. “From top to bottom, I’ve been working on this concept for, I dunno, close to ten years… refining this and that… He trusts me, with having a foot in every door. So here I am.”

Changmin glanced at the script. “I was told there’d be a romance with my character.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s pretty obvious.” Jaejoong yawned. He leaned on the wall like a lazy cat, managing a natural, indefinable form of swagger.

Jaejoong leaned in, too close for comfort, but instead of shrinking away, Changmin’s eyes searched, boring holes into the script as if it was a prehistoric Rosetta Stone. He was already starting to see the lead not as a distant character denoted Jun Baekho, but an extension of himself, and so he thought with I and me, not he or him. I… I am Baekho… Baekho and Minhan… Me and… How hadn’t it hit him? It was as obvious as a slap to the face, and yet had surreptitiously flown over his head, leaving him with a sense of embarrassment. “So Minhan is his husband?”

Jaejoong laughed. “Not a husband, a partner. Boyfriend. Kang Minhan. He’s the sports reporter who covers Baekho’s…”

Changmin recalled the subtle flow of it in the scene, how both men slowly went from being polite to belligerent. “So, the romance, it’s like… I hate you, but then, I want to fuck you?”

His cussing seemed to delight Jaejoong. “Yes, that’s it. Kissing, though, not fucking.”

“Good. I don’t do sexual scenes.”

“There’ll be making out. Touching. You’re okay with that?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

Chilhyun returned with a small retinue, including two more men who had copies of the script in their hands. Jaejoong clapped decisively. “Great, our room’s ready. Let’s go, boys!”

.

.

.

Junsu was late.

A one-off episode of tardiness could be considered charming for an A-lister, but he didn’t have the luxury of being anything but punctual, and he’d seen people immediately be dismissed for coming to an audition even one minute late. He should’ve left earlier—he was still in the throes of doubt and self-indulgent anxiety, but he wasn’t helped by the bus being late, an elderly pedestrian almost being hit by the bus so they had to pull over to talk to her, and then, the abundance of rain that came down without warning, drenching his copy of the script, making the ink run like dramatic mascara tracks.

He ran the whole way, went inside to the first bathroom he saw and tried to use the air dryer for his hair and clothes as best as he could, while the damp, crumpled, useless script was lodged in his coat pocket. This was most likely the worst lead-up to an audition he’d ever had in his life, but he was still holding onto the thought of leaving early, or skipping the audition entirely, so he’d have plenty of time to go home and fix himself up for Josun Palace at eight. In a way he’d left things up to fate, and the window of time stood before him…

With the help of a few passersby, Junsu found himself in the dingy bowels of the complex, choked on body heat and the tinge of nicotine. The room he went to was something between a lecture hall and a regular classroom, already filled to the brim.

At first, no one noticed him. They were exchanging greetings, murmuring to themselves. A short man with a trembling lip was speaking to Yoshimoto Masuo, and Junsu took a step back.

“What should I call you?” The shorter man said.

“Changmin. That’s my name.”

Junsu took in a shaky breath.

“Shim Changmin,” he amended. He was almost a full head taller than the other man. His hair had grown some since that photo from Incheon, and it was messy and wavy, so maybe he didn’t wear a perm. He looked like a model, clean-faced and handsome, strong jaw, long legs, Junsu wanted to run away but it was too late.

“Welcome!” A beautiful man of about Junsu’s height came to greet him, not-so-subtly dragging him into the room through an ironlike handshake. “I’m Kim Jaejoong, co-producer and lead screenwriter. This is Chilhyun, you may know him as Kangta.”

The empty words went in one ear, out the other. Junsu trembled. He ignored Jaejoong, ignored Chilhyun, and found himself staring at Changmin once again.

“Woah! Excuse me. I’m sorry!”

Junsu turned. One latecomer had pushed in past him, no, two of them had, which meant there were now twelve people excluding Jaejoong and Chilhyun and their assistants. Twelve hopefuls, eleven strangers, five opponents who would do their best to stymie Junsu from getting what he wanted.

And one Shim Changmin.

Chilhyun gave a rote self-introduction. He was truly handsome in person, almost alien in his beauty where Jaejoong was more conventional. He stepped back, and Jaejoong took control of the group with the magnanimity of a natural orator. “I’m not an old-timer. I do things my own way. This film’s been next to impossible to fund, so that’s why we’re in an old high school classroom.” Sparse laughter. “Anyways, technically this is a private audition. Each of you was referred through a highly selective process, but that doesn’t mean you get to rest on your laurels. No, I want grit, I want quality actors who think they’re starving artists, I want my actors tough, with titanium-steel balls, ‘cause that’s what you need!”

Jaejoong broke the surface tension with that quip, and the laughter flowed. He smiled disarmingly, and Junsu couldn’t help but feel fond for him—amazing how that worked, how quickly strong feelings replaced neutrality.

Jaejoong somehow knew all the Baekhos and the Minhans and divided them randomly, and, phewww, thank fuck Junsu wasn’t with Changmin. It seemed they’d mutually acknowledged each other and agreed to pretend they were strangers. Jaejoong encouraged informality; some actors were reading through the script at a desk in the corner while others were shooting the breeze. Junsu glanced at his script, barely processing the words. He could hear Jaejoong and Chilhyun arguing good-naturedly about whether cats or dogs were better companions.

Someone strode by him, arousing the same stares and thinly-veiled adoration as Changmin. He stopped, and this, Junsu realized, was his partner, the Baekho to his Minhan.

Junsu felt obliged to compare them, and this guy wasn’t quite as striking as Changmin. His face was a checkbox of desirable features, the sum not quite adding up to the parts, but that didn’t matter much when those parts—his big eyes, his jaw, his smile—were so frustratingly perfect, one might feel obliged to hack them off and transplant them onto one’s face in lieu of getting plastic surgery.

Junsu smiled awkwardly, clenching his script. “Hey.”

“Hi,” the guy said.

“I’m Junsu.” He half-raised his hand to shake, noticed the man’s arms were stuck firmly to his sides, and drew back, all in the span of less than a second. He tried to cast the embarrassment away, and said, “Who are you?”

The guy smiled, not a true smile. He was used to being recognized. “I was in Super Junior.”

“You… what?! Kim Kibum?”

“Uh huh.”

The idol group was, in Junsu’s mind, inevitably tied to his old friend, Hyukjae. They’d been so close before, but now… they’d lost touch, though Junsu sometimes checked them out online to see how they were doing, and ensuingly a bittersweet sort of pride raced through him. Hyukjae had gotten the flashy success that was denied to Junsu and, initially, Yunho.

Kibum lowered his head. He seemed humble; satisfied by the little moment of recognition and then, returning to his script for some last-minute studying.

Junsu and Kibum were called first, but the mood was so laid-back that Junsu hardly dreaded it. Everyone else was sitting at the desks, while they stood in the middle, sizing each other up.

Kibum’s major advantage was a naturally expressive face that fascinated Junsu, but their performance was fairly ordinary. The silence was clearly not held as sacrosanct; a few people coughed or their sneakers squealed on the waxed floor. But neither of them was rejected outright. Chilhyun was writing for a solid three minutes after it ended, while Jaejoong wore an unexpected poker face.

Next was Changmin and his partner. Junsu ignored most of it, not wanting to psych himself out. He referred to the script, following with clinical precision, giving his belated analysis of Changmin’s lines and his partner’s. He wished he’d focused more beforehand, not on his lines but his partner’s, because each was rife with hidden meaning and inspiration.

You’re on your way… I’ve arrived… Wanting it so much… Is that all…

“…That’s unfortunate. Because, well, you’re not good.”

His finger stopped.

Wrong!

They’d both stopped.

Everyone was looking at him.

Fuck.

Did I just say that out loud…?!

“What is wrong?” Changmin barked at him.

“You. You got it wrong,” Junsu snapped. “The line is, I quote, which is unfortunate, because you’re not very good, unquote.” He stood up. Somewhere, in another world maybe, his mother was fainting, while his father was kneeling and asking the room for forgiveness. “Can’t be bothered to learn the lines properly… You must think you can coast on being the rich and famous one, here. Tch.”

The room was absolutely dead. Changmin turned towards him.

“Kim Junsu.” He bowed, his voice unaffected.

“Masuo. Changmin. Whatever you are.”

The uproar surged instantaneously, and Junsu knew nobody was on his side. Aside from those who held Changmin in high regard, some of the actors seemed angry that Junsu had insinuated that they were penniless nobodies, and then they began listing off their acting credits, and somehow, Jaejoong got in the middle of the fray.

“Enough, enough!” Jaejoong managed to separate Junsu from Changmin, so one was left in the scrum, and the other, on the empty battlefield of a stage. Speaking directly to Junsu, he said, “Do you know each other?”

“No,” Junsu said, while Changmin shook his head.

“Really? I want to see that. You two,” Jaejoong pointed an index finger to Changmin, and then, to Junsu. “Go through the whole thing again. Now.”

Junsu touched his throat. “Can I have some water first?”

To his and, presumably Changmin’s, utter shock, Jaejoong nodded, and relayed the order to one of the interns. Moments later, a water bottle was fixed in his hand. Junsu took a long gulp, and managed to steady his hands. He didn’t know how. Nerves could pin him in the best of auditions, and the main predictor was reading with a much more famous person, and Changmin was the most famous actor he’d ever read with. Strangely, though, the nerves were absent, down to his usual physical tells of sweat, an erratic heartbeat, and shaky, uncoordinated hands.

Jaejoong gave the signal, and Junsu released a final breath of air. He started off, hardly glancing at the paper or at Changmin, finding tranquility in the peripheral space in between. “Jun Baekho, may I have a word?”

“What is it?” Changmin flawlessly cycled from confusion, to impatience, to underlying interest, in the span of just a second or two.

“I’m reporting with the Korea Herald. Kang Minhan,” he bowed tersely, gripping the paper a little tighter. He tried to immerse himself into the role, looking at Changmin as if he was not only taller but bigger, richer, the sun eclipsing his moon in every way. “You’re on your way to the Italian Grand Prix tomorrow. This is your first major race since your knee injury three years ago. What does this experience mean to you?”

That was the magic of acting. Junsu didn’t have to mime holding a microphone to Changmin, or imagine the blazer he’d be wearing, or envision the din of exhilarated fans screaming behind them in sunny Rome. He was already there, and Changmin was, too.

“I’m not on my way. I’ve arrived,” Changmin smiled wolfishly, showing his teeth. “What do you think it means for me? You seem to be up-to-date on my career.”

Go on, his unwavering gaze seemed to say. There was very little direction in Chilhyun and Jaejoong’s manuscript; Junsu’s character’s emotional collapse could be interpreted however he wanted. Junsu inhaled a rough breath.

“Go on,” Changmin said, so quiet, his voice could’ve been the wind.

Junsu bit into his lower lip, his stomach roiling a little. He couldn’t go through this audition without looking Changmin in the eyes at least once. Their chemistry had to be palpable, expressed in a way where every person in the audience would be able to see it, without it seeming overboard. A herculean task, but it could be broken into bite-sized steps, and the first step was meeting Changmin’s gaze.

Junsu swore he faltered, but the lines came back to him. “...Well, I would say that you must be excited. Determined to prove yourself. Wanting it so much… feeling it to the point where you can taste it…”

Changmin’s lip swiped the corner of his mouth like a mirage. “Is that all?”

“What do you mean? I’d like to hear your piece, too…!”

Changmin’s eyes roamed left-to-right, as though he was looking on the sidelines for his trainer. The dam was threatening to break. Not a soul in the peanut gallery broke composure, each managing their breathing, their unmoving bodies, their unfaltering gazes.

“I know about you. I know your daddy bought you this job, which is unfortunate, because you’re not very good,” Changmin said, his voice bored and wooden and perfectly articulate, but, and this was his brilliance, hinting at a twinge of boyish uneasiness. He was the house of cards, threatening to come down.

“What is wrong with you?” Junsu’s voice rose in a crescendo, timed perfectly. He swore his heart dropped in his chest when Changmin glared back at him, an expression so familiar, it was unmistakable. He was smirking.

“Cut the cameras,” Junsu hissed under his breath. “Cut. Cut…”

“None of that aired,” said one of the staff, who was reading the cameraman’s line.

“Good. Good,” Junsu hadn’t noticed, but in his barely-restrained fury he’d managed to drop his paper. Fear coursed through him as his mind went blank and white—was his line the next one? He glimpsed Changmin, as smug as ever.

Everything in his body was telling him to smack the look off his stupid face. No one was that dauntless, Junsu felt sure, no one had ever given this man the kind of beatdown he was practically begging for.

“C’mon,” Changmin said, cocking his chin to the paper, cast backside-up on the floor. Anyone watching in the huddle of chairs was close enough to jump in and pick it up for him, but they watched, absorbed in a way Junsu knew personally; it was the way Junsu and Yunho had listened to Yunho’s parents scream and slam doors in each other’s faces downstairs.

Junsu sighed, and went down to one knee to pick up his script. This was something on the boundary between performance and real life, an interim dream-scape where nothing was entirely real or made up. He gave the hard laminated paper a crack, shooting daggers at Changmin, and he was unable to find his spot. Where had they… where was…

“Stop looking at me like that!”

Junsu roared, a voice as foreign to Junsu as it was to everybody else, including Changmin. Finally, his stupid face was marred with a look of shock, tangible evidence of losing control, losing the fight. His large eyes were a point of beauty on his face, but now, they were saucerlike, so big that they looked overdrawn, as comical as a cartoon. Changmin’s lips trembled, as if spit might start to fly. By contrast, everything below his neck was as still as a golem.

“...Can I tell you something? Hyung?”

Changmin advanced on him, throwing his own paper to the floor. Junsu had wanted to establish dominance or, if not that, equality between them, but Changmin was like an animal on the rampage, the hyena stalking the lion, disrupting the order of things as they’d been seconds ago. His voice was soft, almost mocking. “You have no business being here, working with someone like me. There’s nothing calling it into question… You know, who has the power here. I don’t know how much you’re worth or who you know or whatever else. But I could tell you right now, jump, and wave a five-thousand won bill over your head like a dog bone, and you’d do it, right?”

“You’re such a prick.”

“You embarrass yourself a lot. Are you a masochist?” Changmin pulled him in by one shoulder and pushed him away.

“CUUUUT!” Jaejoong hollered.

“What was that? You went completely off script,” Junsu hissed, initially trying to keep his voice to a whisper for Changmin, but he couldn’t control his anger. “Are you trying to ruin my audition?”

“Why would I when you’re perfectly capable of ruining it yourself?”

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll break your nose.”

The threat of violence seemed to entice Changmin more than anything else. He folded his arms over his chest and squared his shoulders, stretching to his full height. “Despite what you may think, I don’t actually hate you.”

“Yeah, well, me neither. You’re not worth my hate!”

Changmin’s smile deepened. “You’re really funny, hyung.”

“You’re not!”

He was now so close, Junsu realized, that his pervasive cologne was rubbing onto Junsu, which was no better than if Changmin had been a mutt humping his leg, scenting him with piss. He’d take a long, hot bath to wipe the Changmin-residue from every corner of his body, hydro bills be damned.

“Go on, then. Hit me,” Changmin whispered. This time, he was so quiet that Junsu was absolutely sure no one else had heard.

His skin prickled. A ghostlike hand roved down his back, finally settling on the smallest part, and Changmin pulled him by the waist. What was eminently clear now was that Yunho had been microdosing on the putrid confidence that filled Changmin’s body. They were both needlessly touchy, downright perverted even, but Yunho only did it because they were close, they’d grown up together and bathed together as children, whereas Changmin…? Changmin, whom he’d met once or twice, decided he had free, public reign over Junsu’s body. The Jessica-situation had been even more degrading, that was at least a shameful, closed-door encounter. Meant to be forgotten. This… What was wrong with him?

“Fuck off,” Junsu pushed him away, and Changmin obliged.

Seriously… What if I actually hit him…? Would anyone care? Seeing as they didn’t give a damn when that bastard was manhandling me…

An incriminating blush rose on Junsu’s cheeks. He broke eye contact with Changmin, and said to Jaejoong, “Are you not going to stop this?” The producer was clearly immersed in their read-aloud, his eyes just as wide and unblinking as Chilhyun’s in the seat beside him. Junsu looked around, and they weren’t the only ones. Everyone was a reflection of the same astonishment, from the bigwigs down to the coffee interns.

Junsu realized he was shivering with poorly-concealed rage. Like a tiny dog in the face of a colossal St. Bernard.

“Right, right. We’ve seen more than enough.” Jaejoong clapped his hands together with a grin. Changmin mirrored his easy expression, showing no sign of shame over their little spat, as if dumping it all onto Junsu’s weary shoulders. Eventually, I’ll throttle him, Junsu thought, shaking his head.

“We have our Jun Baekho and our Kang Minhan,” Jaejoong announced. “Everyone else, you may leave.”

“What?!”

“Kim Junsu and Shim Changmin. Welcome aboard,” Jaejoong stood up, smiling like a generous host. “Stay a little, mm? We have some things to talk about.”

He sounded unlike the older, sober-minded people Junsu worked with in the past, rather like a friend, a guy-next-door type from work. Changmin nodded and Junsu vocalized his agreement. Jaejoong intercepted some coffee from an intern, and waved them off with the promise that one of the managers would direct them to the meeting room before long.

The rejected actors cleared out. The ancillary staff were moving onto the periphery.

Changmin shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You know, I…-”

“Don’t talk to me,” Junsu said under his breath, and weaved his way backstage to find an unclaimed cup of coffee.

.

.

.

The next phase was simple. Jaejoong gave them a first draft of the script to pore over, and contacts were exchanged.

I don’t have an agent, or anything, Junsu thought in a huff. He should’ve signed one, even though he knew he didn’t have the money.

He watched Changmin filling in the forms, with small, terse handwriting. Junsu nearly jumped out of his skin when Changmin set the pile aside and his eyes roved to Junsu’s forms, to the hopelessly barren line on which he was supposed to write his professional contact’s name.

Changmin moved in, and Junsu gripped the fountain pen tighter, wishing it was a pencil so he’d be able to snap it in two if he tried, and delay this inevitability. Another part of him was manic with the delusion of arriving at Josun Palace if only he hurried enough.

“That’s enough,” Junsu pulled his papers away from Changmin, from his right hand, his insistent wrist.

“But, the form…” Changmin tapped the problematic empty line with the back side of his pen. “Let me.”

His behaviour, aside from being woefully inappropriate, struck Junsu as odd. How could Changmin invent a manager for him? Knowing him, he’d input his friend’s number and make a fool of Junsu. “I can do it,” was all he said. He checked his phone to verify Kibum the agent’s number. This was the very best he could do.

Changmin withdrew, finally, and Jaejoong returned, this time by himself.

He sat on the opposite side of the table, facing them both. His hands were free of implements, unless they were the implements.

“A star matures. And another star is born.”

Changmin wasn’t very good at hiding his annoyance. Did he have a problem with everyone? Jaejoong had been nothing but kind; he seemed so harmless.

“We’ll begin shooting in three months. Initially I was expecting a full ten months before we’re wrapped up, but knowing the way this works, it’ll probably be twice as long. We’re mostly shooting locally, in and around the studio, but we’ll be going to Rome for around two or three months. It hasn’t been finalized yet.”

“...Are our castings finalized?” Junsu asked hesitantly.

Jaejoong laughed, clearly expecting a lighthearted response from either or both of them, even when none came. He was good at being unembarrassed, acting as though the awkward outcome was not his own function. “I’ll be in contact with your people, and everything’ll be tied up nicely.”

At this, Changmin’s head jerked up.

Jaejoong adjourned the meeting, teasing them both with the possibility of going downtown for drinks afterwards. Changmin immediately shot him down, looking like the beleaguered movie star he was, enchained by his own schedule.

“Wait- before you go…” Jaejoong allowed Changmin to leave the room, but he stopped Junsu. His eyes were like bursts of energy. “Are you shitting me? Or are you a real actor?”

If Junsu had been holding anything, he would’ve dropped it, right there, on the floor.

“Of course I’m an actor,” he said, in a tiny voice.

“Ah, well, that’s what I thought. But you know how conspiracists are. Just ‘cause someone has zero online presence and all that, it doesn’t mean he’s a spy trying to break into your production and ruin it before it even gets off the ground!” Jaejoong laughed again, too loud. Junsu was finally beginning to understand what Changmin had seen instinctively.

He glanced at Jaejoong, who’d slung an arm around his shoulder in a fraternal gesture that reminded Junsu of his older brother.

“Junsu, I’ve never seen your work, but that was impressive. What have you been featured in? Really?”

Ah, this was shaping up to be just as bad as he’d feared. Junsu checked his watch—he’d squeak into the meeting with Yunho provided a few miracles took place—and gave an agitated smile. “Indie projects. Mostly friends of friends, university films, that sort of thing…”

“Well, you can name names. I’m well-versed in the world of indie films,” Jaejoong said, and then, he let Junsu go. “We’ll be in touch!”

Junsu gave him a thumbs-up.

“Goodbye, my Kang Minhan!”

Dear God. Junsu swung the door open, hand wrenched against the handle like it was a life preserver. He walked mindlessly, hoping each step would erase the proximity of his many problems, sending them elsewhere.

Part of him jolted backward, and his back rocked against the wall. He gasped, thinking for a second this had somehow reinstated his throat problem, but he was okay. Changmin was standing a few feet from him, and Jaejoong had followed out.

“Sorry,” Changmin said. Junsu hadn’t even realized up to that point that they’d collided. He rubbed the back of his head; it had been no more than a bump, but he could feel the blood rushing to that spot.

“Why are you still here?” Junsu asked.

Changmin turned to Jaejoong. “I wanted to discuss something with you. Privately.”

“I’m all ears.” Jaejoong said, grinning. He waved, Junsu waved, and the second they both turned away, Junsu broke into a jog. If I could only catch the earlier bus, if I could somehow get home twenty minutes early and leave in five and text Yunho that I might be five or so late, give or take, if I could sprint the last two blocks and then, and… I….

.

.

.

The rainy weather had made an unwelcome return. It started up again while Junsu was on the bus, watching the view go by, pausing every so often to check his watch. Time marched on, blithely unaware of his needs. He resisted the urge to shoot a quick e-mail to Kibum or reach out to Yunho, because he didn’t want any last-minute squabbling to cast a low-light over the meeting if he was lucky enough to make it on time. Either he got there or he didn’t, that was all.

Very soon, the deluge worsened, and the individual raindrops popped on impact without leaving trails down the side of the glass. The bus shook on the slippery terrain, but the other passengers were immersed in their phones, probably grateful more than anything to be on a mostly-empty bus.

The bus slowed, tires sloshing in the wet piles of mud and cement. The doors groaned open, two people entered—including a very slow old man wielding a cane. This wouldn’t do… Of the mind that he had to be the architect of his destiny, Junsu slipped out through the doors, knowing he could run faster than the bus. Taking advantage of the pedestrian footpaths, he erred right, ignoring the muck staining his shoes and the freezing-cold water in his shoes. He grit his teeth when a hurricane-like gust of wind smacked him in the face, but through his own resolve, he ran until he saw his apartment building in the distance.

“Yunho… Yunho!” Junsu coughed. He’d been warned about overexertion by the doctors; the scarring of his surgical wounds on his throat could become inflamed, making it difficult to breathe. That was the last thing he needed. He stopped, taking control of his air supply. A taste of bitter pain came as he swallowed, and a cold bout made his extremities feel numb all at once. Had it been worth it? A botched audition turned an opportunity of a lifetime, a promise to spend at least a full year around Shim Changmin, his old enemy?

“Aish!”

He managed to start walking again, but that was all it was: a walk. The rain clearly had no intention of letting up, not any time soon. Junsu’s water-stained watch read 7:43. He’d be deluding himself thinking he’d be able to get there on time.

“Fuck…!”

Hot tears threatened to spill from his eyes. He’d done exactly what he set out to do—obtained at least one of the two, knowing the chance of both doing the audition and talking to Yunho was miniscule, but why did he feel like he’d lost something vital, even from the moment Jaejoong announced that he’d gotten the role?

Junsu went under the awning of a currently dead restaurant for cover and took out his phone. The wind was making the rain fall diagonally, dappling the screen so it was barely visible. He couldn’t even unlock his phone; the water made his thumbs slippery, ineffective.

“Damn it, damn it, call! Why won’t you call, hyung?!”

He cursed at Yunho, said so many horrible things, but they were to be heard by the wind and the rain, answered with the faraway boom of thunder. That would be the only way to make things worse. He was drenched, he was late, he didn’t need to be stuck in a lightning storm.

Soon, the rain abated somewhat and when he was no longer shivering, he managed to call Yunho’s number. He’d inputted it beforehand, but believed with near-certainty that Yunho would be the first to dial.

He’s probably really busy. There’s no way he’ll pick up, not at a time like this… because that’s how my life works, Junsu thought angrily. He pursed his lips, wetting them on his tongue.

“Junsu?”

“Oh, Yunho, hi! I need to talk to you about our meeting at eight… I can’t…”

“Yeah, about that.” Yunho sounded disinterested, and the force of his voice, as if it was a physical entity, a silencing hand, made Junsu recoil. “I can’t attend. Kibum should’ve called you about that.”

“He didn’t call…!” Now that the last burst of rain subsided, Junsu began walking back to the apartment. He needed to flex his legs, not feel so encumbered with the ridiculous atomic bomb Yunho had just dropped on him. “What the hell?! You were planning on not showing up?”

“What were you going to ask me?” Yunho replied.

Flashback. Junsu thought of one particular memory, when they were both little kids on the playground after school. It had happened when Junsu had ignored him, he didn’t remember what about, and Yunho said something similar to this—like, Junsu, do you remember what you wanted to ask me? Yunho had always known that Junsu was a year younger, and Junsu remembered liking that Yunho didn’t treat him in the way the other sunbaes did. He was just… Junsu. Until Yunho got angry; that was when he, in his immature, elitist way, articulated each of his words like a fed-up parent patronizing their stupid child, making every month of their age difference crystal-clear. Yunho was so good at it then, and he’d gotten even better now. A lifetime’s supply of ass-kissers, probably.

“I… I… Something came up.” Junsu sputtered. “I was going to tell you that I wouldn’t be there on time, unless you wanted to wait…”

Yunho didn’t have to speak. Having been late, knowing he’d get a stern talking-to because Yunho hated tardiness, would’ve been worse than not going at all. They’d both made up their minds, somehow.

“Something came up,” Yunho echoed, at last. He sighed. “You know that’s not a good excuse.”

Junsu went inside the apartment complex, electing to take the stairs. Each one felt hollow beneath his feet.

“Junsu, you can’t silent-treatment your way out of this.”

“Okay, I get it! I’m sorry! But it was genuinely a really unlucky last-minute scheduling thing…”

“Last minute?”

Okay, well, no. I had a week to deliberate on it, but instead of being assertive and making a call, I just floundered around… that sounded terrible in hindsight.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re still friends, right?”

Yunho didn’t speak for a long while. There was no white noise, no sound of him doing something else, like fiddling with a pencil or chewing gum. “...More than friends. And less.”

Junsu let himself into his apartment. He slammed the door, ensuring Yunho would hear. “Don’t bring that up. That was a mistake. Never happening again.”

Yunho scoffed. “Excuse me. I never said it would.”

“So, what now? Do we reschedule?”

“I dunno, Junsu… it feels like a lack of respect for me. You don’t hate me, do you?”

He was not expecting anything like that, and so had a hard time muffling his laugh. “Are you being serious?”

“I don’t understand it! I set aside time in my busy schedule for you and me, just us, and Kibum, he’s a whiz… he knows everyone in the industry! That one night, I guarantee you, would’ve been life-changing!”

“Hold on! You were the one who said you weren’t coming, first! Before I said anything! That means you owe me an apology!”

“Well…”

“At least I had the decency to call you!”

He expected Yunho to be shocked to silence—it was an undeniable piece of logic from Junsu, but this was Yunho he was dealing with. He quickly found his footing again. “It’s different for me, Junsu, you know that. My life is so busy, and I don’t have the luxury of rescheduling!”

“But you ended up not coming, anyways,” Junsu muttered.

“I had a real reason. And it was difficult, truly. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I wouldn’t have backed out on you. I didn’t want to… but for me, these decisions can be life-and-death. You must think I sound ridiculous, but I can sleep well tonight. How about you? Did you have a good reason for ditching me? Honestly?”

“I… you’re not making any sense.”

“In the life of Kim Junsu, what could hold more value than tonight?”

Only then did Junsu realize. Yunho probably lived downtown, close to Josun Palace. He must’ve gotten intel that Junsu wasn’t coming, or deduced it from the agitated tone of Junsu’s call, and made a split-decision there to say he wasn’t coming, either. It made sense. If he had had no intention of coming, he would’ve gotten someone to pass the info on to Junsu, right? Better yet, he would’ve told him in person, and sandwiched the terrible news between compliments and promises for the future.

I’m calling your bluff.

“You were planning on going.” Junsu began to strip his sopping-wet clothes off. He felt so much lighter afterwards. “I know you like I know myself. Have you ever stopped thinking about me since that night, Yunho? I don’t think you did. God, I’m so sick of you and your mind games! Your ego is the size of the moon!”

Yunho didn’t speak. Good. Junsu went on. “Should I tell you what it was, the very-pressing engagement that was somehow more important than time with you? I got an audition. I’ll be starring next to Shim Changmin. Yes, that’s what he goes by now. You were right, he is Korean!”

He turned the shower on. No longer did a bath feel needed—Changmin’s horrible actions felt so far removed from Junsu, the rain must’ve washed them away. He felt the water with one hand while holding his phone in the other, ensuring it was hot enough.

“Junsu…”

“Hyung, you can’t always get what you want. Goodbye.”

Junsu didn’t feel good. It had been a long time coming, too much unsaid, left to fester and rot inside him. He wished the proverbial mic-drop gave him the relief he sorely needed, but it didn’t. He hopped into the shower, hoping the extreme heat would dull his pain.

.

.

.

Jaejoong was just as annoying as he’d thought. This would be a long road to weather, but it might be what he needed to finally receive some acknowledgement from the people at the top of the film industry. On the way back to his hotel room, he was still thinking about that last exchange.

After enough teasing, Changmin had snapped at him. “You remind me of this guy I studied with at university. He thought it would be funny as fuck to mess with our audio recordings by putting porn moans on top right before we presented them.”

And Jaejoong, grinning widely, replied: “I think that says more about you than me. Have you put porn moans over audio recordings?”

“Not at school!”

What a fucking idiot I am, he thought.

Back to Korea, to the ever-familiar Josun Palace hotel. Paparazzi were always a nuisance to him, but they seemed more daring now, as if Changmin revealing his heritage warranted extra pestering.

He got back, feeling like it was a dream. Like he might wake up the next day on this hotel bed, and he’d ask Minho, did I have an audition last night, and Minho would say, no, you didn’t. Or you did, but you didn’t get it.

Changmin flopped on the king-size bed, and searched through his contacts on his work phone, searching and searching, and he grunted in frustration.

“What?” He laughed. That little brat must’ve blocked his number or something.

“Ah, but that’s fine, Kim Junsu,” Changmin said to himself. He had four cell phones in total. Two on his person, this one and his personal phone. He should’ve been using it all along. This was obviously more than work-related.

He began typing on his personal phone. A flurry of thoughts settled over him like a snowstorm.

To : Kim Junsu

If you’re wondering, I’m the one who saved your ass there. Next time, listen to me when I offer to write my agent’s number…

Chapter Text

There was a strange relationship between his two leads. Jaejoong saw it on their first day of shooting, he’d even admit that he had a sense of it from their first encounter. He was not a psychiatrist or a neuroscientist, but he was certain could put together a relatively conclusive framework of the Changmin-Junsu schism, the cognitive discrepancies that produced emotionally explosive, seemingly unpredictable outcomes. He wasn’t 100-percent sure on any of it, except for the fact that, with hindsight, he felt even more satisfied with his decision to cast them together immediately.

This was how it worked: Changmin got his start as a child actor. He had a rich family, good connections, went to a fancy arts school, and had a good body of work to show for it. He was remarkably laid-back, but he enjoyed bending the rules in small ways, seeing how far he could go, what he could get away with. Ultimately, though, he wasn’t one to seriously challenge the status quo. If Jaejoong were to hand him a final script, insisting no edits could be made, he’d find a way to work with it, though he might be churlish.

Junsu was his total opposite. Jaejoong’s team found a university short film, two commercials from a few years ago, and a choir solo from when he was an elementary school kid, but otherwise, nothing. He wasn’t even the most famous actor named Kim Junsu—that was confusing at first, mistaking the projects of other Kim Junsus for this one. The only other info about him online came from a rather sketchy fan forum, close to a decade ago. The anonymous source claimed Kim Junsu, known then as Xiah, had promoted a single with the idol Boa, before getting so sick he had to quit the industry. The ages lined up, and considering the choir performance, he could’ve been a singer at some point. But he was a relative unknown, and he had the mentality of a mad dog, the grit that came with a lifetime of grinding, going uphill when the rest of the world was against him. He was efficient, hard-working, honest to a fault, good under pressure, the ideal actor. Changmin liked to joke around, Junsu was serious. That said, he seemed to have a bone to pick—whether with the world, acting, Jaejoong, or something else entirely, there was a sense of deep-seated rage that reared its head every so often. It was most obvious when he’d lashed out against Changmin.

So, all in all, the problems seemed self-evident. Junsu appeared polite but had an unyielding core; Changmin appeared antagonistic but was, in actuality, unconcerned with power scrimmages. It was almost mesmerizing how incompatible they were; how the extreme versions of their personality traits were brought out by the other. There was so little they had in common, and it was Jaejoong’s job to get them through each day of work.

Jaejoong had to laugh. Changmin may not have remembered him, but he knew Changmin well. He’d gotten a little too comfortable for his own good, but taunting Junsu during the audition ended up working well for both of them.

“We have a problem,” Jaejoong said, as they were looking through the footage.

Chilhyun made a noise of acknowledgement.

“The scenes with Changmin alone or Junsu alone are nowhere near as good as the scenes with them together. I mean, the momentum dies. It’s night and day.”

“In your opinion.”

As they were two masters of creation, fed through the ruthless machine of the film industry, there were often minor disagreements between them. Generally, Jaejoong tended to prefer shock, while Chilhyun advocated for a more subtle approach.

They rewound the footage, and watched silently.

“There’s audio issues,” Chilhyun said, pointing to a bulge in the spectrum.

“That’s fixable. Anyways, am I wrong, or am I not?” Jaejoong pulled up the footage of Changmin’s first scene alone, the second scene in the film. Baekho was celebrating his birthday by himself, in a hotel, giving the impression that he’d been kicked out of his apartment and had no one to turn to. It was an emotional moment that asked a lot of the actor, and none of the takes hit the sweet spot. He was too far between being overly numb and then on-the-nose with emotional sensibility.

“This needs to be reshot,” Jaejoong said.

“I like the way he interpreted it,” Chilhyun retorted. “Take 5. That one was perfect to me.”

“Take 5… Take 5,” Jaejoong opened it and paused on the first shot of Changmin’s face. That shot lasted for twenty seconds, twenty seconds of each facial muscle tuned to perfection—for reference, an average blockbuster shot would be around two seconds, but Chilhyun’s modus had always been longer, more indulgent shots. The moment was captured perfectly, as if the viewer was an invisible second party in the unimpressive celebration. The firelight of a birthday candle cast a glow on his face, and his throat bobbed as he breathed, but otherwise, it looked like a still shot.

“The glow,” Jaejoong pointed the cursor over his dark eyes. “The reflection of the sweet bread with the candle in his eye. It doesn’t look right.”

Chilhyun sighed. “You know that’s not a real complaint.”

“Just look. Look at the difference. This scene, it’s meant to be a moment of pathos. But… Wait…” Jaejoong found the scene where Minhan was forcibly outed to the world and his highly religious family, and Baekho was with him, comforting him, sharing his sorrow. This was another simple set-up, just the two men on a bench in Minhan’s backyard. “Watch this. This… this is real pathos. Poignant. Effortless.”

Junsu hadn’t shed a tear, but the pain in his face was just as Jaejoong had said. Changmin’s leg just barely touched his, and he was deliberating, holding him with the grace and resoluteness of a statue. He was perfectly Baekho-esque; nothing felt forced. Neither of them forced it. What a glorious outcome this was.

“It’s the same with the other scenes. Junsu’s scene with the other reporters—dreary! Why hire an actor at all when anyone could’ve given the exact same performance? I mean, hyung, it’s strange! I’ve never had this happen before with two leads…”

“The chemistry is… too good…” Chilhyun echoed. Finally, he noticed that Jaejoong was being reasonable. “When are we going to Rome?”

“You, Changmin and Junsu are going on the last Tuesday of April. Everyone else is coming on the weekend, not sure when.”

Chilhyun nodded. “You have work to do, then.”

He grabbed his coffee, and Jaejoong grumbled to himself, not seriously, just attempting to organize the disparate questions.

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.

.

He stood in the hallway, eyes following the lines of text. In the beginning of the third act, Jun Baekho won his Grand Prix in Rome, tying together his professional conflicts, and the rest of the film focused on the personal—it all came together nicely, the symmetry of the first and last scenes emphasizing the character’s intrapersonal journey. Jaejoong and Chilhyun had come to an audible agreement: often the simplest ending, the realistic happy ending, provided the greatest payoff for a story—in this case, also making the message doubly risky. “I don’t know if the mainstream is ready to see a successful man, who’s gay, end up in a happy relationship with another man.”

Jaejoong had scoffed, but he knew Chilhyun’s fears weren’t unfounded. “Let them be shocked. We have to go all the way, that’s the point of it. Maybe those who see themselves in Baekho will actually begin to understand that gay people are no different from them.”

Jaejoong and Chilhyun treated the world around them as their sounding board—nothing was too confidential, no matter who was around. Junsu had learned quite a bit from listening, mainly to Jaejoong.

He’d crossed paths with the other actors for Maximum, inevitably. There were feisty, but sympathetic race car drivers—Baekho’s rivals—and Minhan’s parents, Baekho’s single mother, who each had a few scenes. The third role with top billing was Kang Hina, Minhan’s sister and Baekho’s one-time enemy who would eventually become his close friend. Her character was played by the equally-cheeky Lim Soohyang, a tall, fox-faced actress who had worked with Jaejoong in the past, and her banter with him and Chilhyun was as natural as chewing gum.

As it happened, Jaejoong and Soohyang were walking by while in conversation. Junsu caught something from Soohyang about a meeting with the makeup artist to give her lips the illusion of having the same shape as Junsu’s, those of her movie-brother.

“Oh, Junsu, hi.” Jaejoong checked his watch. “We’re late.”

“Only a few minutes. It’s not a huge deal.” Junsu yawned. This would be his and Changmin’s last scenes together before they went to Rome. The middle-portion of the movie, where Baekho achieved his dreams and became romantically involved with Minhan, would be shot there.

“Eh, well, let’s head in. Is Changmin here?”

Jaejoong opened the door to the set while Soohyang’s head turned on a swivel, but Changmin didn’t materialize.

The familiar wood-and-fabric smell settled over him. Besides the camera equipment in the offstage area, no one would think a film production was taking place here. The indoor sets were constructed piece-by-piece and then disassembled when no longer needed, as though they’d been swept up all at once by the wind. Chairs and sitting areas in general were in short supply, but that was a fact of life for the behind-the-scenes workers who were on their feet for ten, even twelve hours with minimal breaks. At least being an actor had its perks; if Junsu or the others needed to take a breather, some poor intern always managed to find a chair or a hot cup of coffee before it became a problem.

“He’s seriously not here? Is that the second time now?” Soohyang said, her voice feeling that much more present and consuming with the acoustics of the room.

Only then did Junsu notice the shadowed faces of the film crew, checking control boards and adjusting the height of a boom mic. There were so many of them, stretching to what he guessed was the very back. A murmur of sound rose up from the group; a few were shaking their heads or shrugging.

Jaejoong chuckled. “Well, I don’t keep track.”

“It is the fourth time now,” Junsu said, loudly and clearly; visible shock was written on Soohyang and Jaejoong’s faces. They still considered him more worker than friend, so unless he was mentioned specifically, he didn’t intrude on these conversations.

“Hmmm,” Jaejoong went to his side, as close as he could be while holding onto some doubt. “There’s an addendum. Spill it.”

Junsu hesitated, wanting to push him away. Jaejoong was like a sweet, syrupy liquid, draped over him, seeping languidly into every concealed part of him.

“Come on, Junsu,” Soohyang teased.

“There’s other people around…” He whispered.

“Oh, they don’t care,” Jaejoong retorted. “Do you have a problem with Shim Changmin? Because it would be good to know, for the dynamics on set, and all.”

“...I don’t know why he’s always late, but it’s kind of annoying. And there’s other stuff, too, you might know.”

“Well, one time I was freshening up before a take, and I went out, and I saw him, pacing the halls,” Soohyang said. “And he was, he just stood there… he was murmuring his lines or something, and he didn’t know I was there! Eventually he saw me, and he sprinted the other way.”

Jaejoong laughed, even Junsu couldn’t resist. The problem with actors was that they were very good at mean-spirited imitations. Junsu eventually broke, and it felt good to laugh about meaningless shit with these hot, accomplished people, especially when Changmin was the butt of the joke.

“...And he doesn’t greet anyone. Even when we show up at the same time, I say hello, he just stands there. It’s weird!” Junsu said, by now putting no effort into keeping his voice down.

They continued to joke, seamlessly transitioning to duller conversation topics. Changmin arrived, dressed as impeccably as always, but the tension was clear on his face, as if he could sense what had happened before.

“Junsu-hyung,” He said, and then nodded to Jaejoong and Soohyang as if they were one person. An intern took his coat, his bookbag, and iced tea.

“Changmin,” Junsu acknowledged.

They ran through the scene, and it was no stretch to say that Changmin underdelivered. He almost always had the spark from the first or second take, and when he didn’t, he quickly became enraged with himself. Junsu could see the furiousness in his smallest subconscious movements, of being wholly, indisputably excluded by the rest. Junsu nailed his delivery each time. He had Soohyang and Jaejoong in his corner, all of them playing this immature little game and winning.

A point of contention between them had been Junsu’s mispronunciation—it was his biggest weakness as an actor, other than the anxiety surrounding his throat, but he’d been lucky not to mispronounce very much, until a scene with his boss at his office, where he stumbled over the Korean word for ‘news’. It appeared twice in the script, and he couldn’t get the sound of it right—to the point where Changmin, watching while he ate takeout, suggested that “maybe a synonym should be used instead,” in his most cloyingly manipulative voice.

Junsu had held onto his anger, and now the universe was giving back to him.

“You’re not… much better y-you… your…”

“Cut!” Chilhyun, swathed in shadows beside Jaejoong, was intimidating, even more so than his producing partner. “Take 6!”

One of the stage crew members came to fix Junsu’s hair in place. There was take 6, and then 7, and 8, and 9, and it wasn’t until eighteen that Changmin managed to articulate his words properly. Another three takes and Chilhyun announced that they’d gotten it.

“Good work,” Jaejoong said, glancing at the clock. They were supposed to shoot two more small scenes today, but the amount of time spent on this one called that into question. Chilhyun was exacting, a perfectionist; the small-time directors Junsu had worked with never exceeded five or so takes before they were satisfied. Even though he appreciated Changmin’s humbling moment, in the end that would mean more time in forced proximity with him.

The second-last scene was even more of a disaster. Baekho was arguing with his mother, and he was supposed to say “I’ve increased my salary!” But Changmin stumbled on the verb so it sounded like I’m stretching my salary, and Jaejoong thought this repeated blunder was hilarious. “He’s stretching his money, eh? You’ve made my Jun Baekho more pitiful!”

The last scene mainly involved Junsu and Soohyang, with Changmin making a short appearance at the end. He managed to get through with minimal damage.

“We should go out,” Jaejoong decided.

“Phew! I’m tired.” Soohyang said.

“What? Come on, it’ll be fun! Junsu?”

Junsu watched Changmin, back turned to everyone else. The scene was truly fascinating, of him merely coexisting with the tens of others in the studio, if even that—he moved transiently like a ghoul, passing people by as he departed. Jaejoong and Soohyang were still talking, and other smaller conversations had broken out.

“Do you wanna go drinking, Junsu?” That was Soohyang, slipping into his personal space like it was the most natural thing in the world. Jaejoong was nearby, grinning, clearly the architect of the scheme.

“Oh, I… uh… I should go home,” Junsu muttered. “I spend so much time out, but I’m paying for utilities… I should put the space to use, right?”

“I can find you a nice rental that’s much closer to the studio,” Jaejoong said. This wasn’t his first time making the proposition, but before he’d spoken with an air of lightheartedness, and now it didn’t quite seem like a joke.

Junsu smiled nervously. “No, that’s fine.”

“We should celebrate, though! All we have left are the scenes in Rome,” Jaejoong’s voice swelled loudly. “And we won’t be able to celebrate as a group, because the schedule’s going to be hectic. What do you think?”

Junsu wasn’t thinking about Jaejoong or anyone else. His eyes lingered on the door, through which Changmin had bidded an unremarkable exit. His heart felt like it had taken on extra weight; his conscience was bogged down. An intractable feeling caught on the bottom of his tongue, coating the inner corners of his mouth. He followed Changmin’s path, feeling as graceful and as confident as ever, knowing the stage, and what lay beyond it, all belonged to him.

He found Changmin sitting on the floor, eating what looked to be a cream bun with the wrapper half-on.

Junsu leaned on the wall, looking straight ahead. The rambunctious laughter of the masses could be heard from the studio, which came through the opposite wall. He sniffed the air, expecting the sweetness of cream, but there was a strong savoury flavour.

“What’re you eating?”

“Pork bun,” Changmin showed him the inside.

“I’ve never had one.”

“It’s from Japan.”

“Ah.” He paused, and then considered. Somehow, Junsu hadn’t even seen the Japanese writing on the foil wrap. “You brought snacks all the way from Japan?”

He shrugged, licking his lips. “It reminds me of home.”

Changmin ate the rest, tearing morsels of fluffy bread between his teeth and silently grazing, until he had finished. Junsu half expected him to unbox a takeaway container of steaming yakisoba, or something, but he just sat there, looking morose and somehow insignificant, like a bear with its leg caught in a trap.

“I hate Kim Jaejoong,” Changmin hissed. “He makes me want to smoke, and I don’t, not normally.”

Junsu nodded in acknowledgement.

“I don’t get it. Why’s it so easy for you to get along with him, huh?”

There was no doubt infused in his voice, just pure, savage hatred, as if Junsu’s worthlessness should’ve been a given. It almost made him not want to speak, but he knew he needed to get it off his chest—why delay until Rome, when they’d be stuck together at all hours? “I’ll be nicer to you than Jaejoong was. Don’t act like you’re too good for us.”

“What?”

“You should be working harder. Show up on time. You haven’t earned the favour of anyone on set.”

Changmin didn’t move or show any signs of anger.

Junsu sunk on the ground beside him, back straight against the wall. Not because he wanted to create a feeling of partnership, of longitudinal equity between them—no, he wasn’t really sure why. Maybe this would make it easier. He was utterly present now, and that might make his lack of eye contact more forgivable.

“Junsu-hyung…-”

“Have you ever played a leading role before?” Of course Junsu knew his filmography, but he wanted to make a point.

Changmin laughed patronizingly. “Of course. Many times.”

“Okay, the most recent one. What was it like on set?”

“Fine. I had a professional director and producer. They respected me, left me alone. Not like him.”

“You said fine… why not good or great?”

“Good question. I hate people, that’s why.” Changmin’s laconic delivery set up the punchline nicely, and Junsu smiled, giggled, even though he knew better.

Changmin’s eyes took on an intense quality. “Hyung, everyone knows about me. But no one knows about you.”

“And it’ll stay that way. As long as I can help it.”

Now, it was Changmin’s turn to chuckle. “You’re really good, I have to admit…”

Junsu bit his tongue. Only now did he notice that he’d been maintaining eye contact with Changmin for the past minute or so, subtly shifting his body toward him, because their conversation had felt so natural.

“Hearing that from you… thank you.”

“Not just your acting.” Changmin’s arm hung at his side, and maybe he was paying attention or maybe he wasn’t. His fingers curled inward, so close to Junsu’s knee that he wasn’t sure if they actually touched, but what did it matter, really? What was a moment of inconsequential touch between inconsequential pieces of flesh?

Junsu pulled away. He expected it. Changmin’s wide-set eyes glimmered. His lips made a smile, the corners curled down, white teeth peeking through, and it was the teeth that felt despicable, so sexual, as if Changmin was flashing him.

“I like your type,” Changmin said, under his breath.

Jaejoong and Soohyang eventually arrived, explaining to them both that everyone was going to Jaejoong’s. “My place is a little spartan for what you might expect, but there’s a lot to do,” he insisted.

“It’s like a museum,” Soohyang added, chuckling.

“There’s also plenty of alcohol!”

Changmin raised his eyebrows.

“Sure,” Junsu said. He had a full week off before his flight to Rome at 3PM, so a bit of partying wouldn’t hurt.

Unexpectedly, Changmin stood up and added, “I’ll come.”

“Great! Let me drive you guys.”

“I have a car,” Changmin said, sounding offended.

Junsu’s lack of answer was enough confirmation for Jaejoong. Soohyang mouthed Good luck to Junsu, and then winked at Jaejoong, which was a little disconcerting.

Junsu expected a chaotic, vaguely-uncomfortable conversation when he learned it would just be him and Jaejoong, but it didn’t pan out that way. He complimented Jaejoong’s lamborghini, which became a surprisingly enjoyable discussion about the best luxury car brands, although, riding shotgun in a beautiful car would’ve moved him to happiness no matter how Jaejoong acted. Either way, Jaejoong was undeniably down-to-earth, clearly the new-rich type who wasn’t even rich yet, a far cry from the few celebrities Junsu had met, types like Yunho who knew how to manufacture different selves for different people.

Jaejoong was an incautious driver, but Junsu didn’t really care. That was, until, as he was trying to call in an order for pizza and fried chicken for the whole team, he almost hit a pedestrian and swerved, nicking the side of a parked car.

Amidst Junsu’s vague fear, Jaejoong calmly got back on the road as if nothing had happened, and threw his phone at Junsu, instructing him to call the order in.

-

Jaejoong’s apartment wasn’t lavish in the conventional sense, but there were clues hinting at his wealth. It was spacious, for one, with upwards of forty employees able to maintain arms length distance from one another across two floors. His design sense was questionable, often impractical, as a result of not having parents or a girlfriend to cosign his decisions. From doors that couldn’t open all the way without banging a cabinet, to crooked pictures, windows with too-small drapes, and tight corners, it was as though the apartment was furnished by an alien that lacked the spatial sense of humans and their bodies. Ergo, stubbed toes, elbows to the face, and miscellaneous bruises were inevitable with so many people entering for the first time.

The state-of-the-art kitchen was the single exception to that rule. It was among the widest rooms in the apartment; it could’ve been plucked from a home living magazine, or a moodboard for celebrity chef homes. It wasn’t just for show: Jaejoong was a home cook, though he’d never once brought it up. In fact, the praise came from other people, and chiefly when he wasn’t around—was it possibly embarrassing? Junsu watched the film crew putter through, checking out an island or the french-door refrigerator. He shook his head.

The rest of Jaejoong’s home was a derivative of his thinking process; the physical testaments of his quest for pleasure and novelty, the lack of shame to bury his many failed ventures into the ground. He had a minibar, a glowing dance-floor, a home theatre, a ping pong table, a walk-in closet, and a room dedicated to his pet cats, with one of the multi-level towers with scratching posts. He found all of this—there could very well have been more—in a half hour of wandering, because Jaejoong was busy with his friends, Changmin was nowhere to be seen, and everyone else either wrangled Junsu into a few minutes of badly-disguised brown-nosing (which went nowhere as soon as they learned that he had no interest in providing connections) or flat-out ignored him, the latter because they were probably intimidated.

The smell of fried chicken lulled him to the kitchen. It was a nostalgic smell from his early twenties, because on days when neither of them felt arsed to prepare dinner, which was often, Junsu and Junho got takeaway fried chicken—the spiciest, greasiest, saltiest, most delicious fried chicken, two big bowls of it, enough to fill them both up for a full day. Now, it made his stomach lurch in abject disgust.

He expected someone to drag him into the kitchen, but they were all clearly too immersed in themselves, in each other, and in the food.

“Hm?” A noise, real or possibly imagined, piqued his interest. Nearly-silent footsteps trailed down the hall, quiet yet heavy.

There he was. Changmin. He truly set distance between himself and the average person, even just in the small things, in the way he unbuttoned his coat and set it on a hanger, the epitome of chic and unbothered. Even though Junsu had indisputably seen him first, he jumped a little when Changmin looked back at him.

“Junsu-hyung.”

“Changmin-ah,” Junsu now wanted nothing more than to go to the kitchen. “There’s food.”

Changmin sniffed the air, his eyes quickly becoming pert. “What food?”

“Fried chicken and pizza.”

This guy reeeeeally likes food, Junsu thought. Changmin had made a quick beeline to the door, tracking the smell like a dog.

“Are you coming?”

“Uh…” Junsu blinked. Changmin was looking at him, frowning, but clearly not upset. That felt… new.

“I guess. But I don’t like greasy food,” he mumbled, following along.

Then came the sudden absence of talking and moving; only then did Junsu and, he presumed, Changmin, realize that they’d shown up together, as an item. People had seen him milling about earlier, so he couldn’t even lie and say he got a ride.

Jaejoong was at the epicenter of it all, holding a slice of combination pizza. Junsu knew the group dynamics enough to know that everyone was waiting for his quip. He has all the subtlety of a wrecking ball, doesn’t he…?

“Get over here, you lovebirds! There’s way too much food here!”

Rip the bandaid off, he did. In a way his over-the-top delivery was a mercy; now, they could all laugh it off, and Junsu managed to, although he wasn’t as convincing of an actor as usual. He could sense Changmin’s blunted feelings. What was buried underneath…?

Changmin gorged himself in a corner, but there was no way for him to avoid the single young women who, while at work, were no more than assistant photographers, costume designers, and sound technicians, but here, could interact with him simply as people.

He dispatched them quickly, but politely. Polite in Junsu’s mind—Changmin was still curt, but his tone was softened, and there were no adverse reactions from the women. “Right now, his only lover is food,” Jaejoong joked. Changmin hadn’t stopped eating. It was sort of mesmerizing, if not a little disgusting. A small part of Junsu was disquieted by his utter disinterest in the women—some of them were knockout-level beauties, if not for marriage, than at least a night of fun.

Junsu stared at his piece of pepperoni pizza, nursed in an oily napkin. He’d taken a few small bites, hoping that would be enough to dodge a ribbing.

“Are you dieting?”

A woman had teleported into the chair beside him. Initially, he thought it was Soohyang, but this was a different woman, perhaps slightly older.

“...I’m sorry, I hope that isn’t an offensive question,” she continued. “I just don’t know…”

“I’m not dieting, I just don’t like fast food,” he replied. “It makes my face look puffy.”

The woman cupped a hand over her mouth, laughing silently. What was so funny? Maybe it was the flow of the party, things just seemed more entertaining than they were.

“It’s just… good to know that a guy like you has the same problems as us common people,” she murmured, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

Common people? He’d always been on that side of the divide. In looks, in age, comportment, and career experience, what did he have that gave him a meaningful edge over her?

Junsu smiled. “I don’t drink, either.”

“You must be strong-willed.”

She’d stopped eating, pushed her food away, as if his verdict had decided it for her.

“I’m Sejin,” she said.

“Junsu. But you know me. I’d assume.”

Sejin grinned.

“...Hyung, are you eating the rest of that?”

Changmin was pointing at his half-eaten pizza. Junsu handed it to him, expecting something more would produce from the question, but Changmin just ate. Eventually, he got up and left.

Now that they had some peace, Sejin felt more comfortable talking to him. As per usual, he deflected the questions about his life as an actor—because, “I’d be willing to bet that your job’s more interesting than mine.”

That line always worked like a charm. Sejin was momentarily silent, considering where to venture next. “I’m a boom mic operator. My boyfriend- well, ex-boyfriend got me the gig.”

She grinned, pulling the sleeves of her cardigan down, and flexed her arms. “I’m the only girl in my department. You can see I’ve been gaining muscle from lifting so much heavy equipment!”

He wasn’t sure whether touching her bicep would be considered inappropriate—a bored gossip could easily spin it into a nefarious story, something about an uneven power dynamic. He lightly touched, making an exaggerated nod, and pulled away just as quickly.

Sejin was several years older, which had been unexpected—she didn’t really treat him like a noona would, in all the subtle things. She was just right, on his level, as if they were agemates. It felt so easy, and yet, appropriately difficult. She pursued, and when it worked, she pulled back, and it was his turn to lead, while she pretended to be coy and mysterious. They were having fun, the kind of fun that he’d never feel ashamed to tell others about, because it was so benign. It wasn’t crazy in any way—there was no belly-laughing, or yelling, or teary eyes, but that was perfectly fine.

“Ah, there you are.”

Junsu looked up, dreading this, even though he knew he’d be found eventually. Jaejoong pulled a chair out, sitting on the other side of Junsu, meaningfully turning his body away from Sejin. “Wanna play table tennis? We might do a bracket.”

Even after all these years, Junsu could never resist competition. “I’m in.”

He thought of Sejin, and the ambiguity of their conversation. Her laughter, his nervousness. But, quickly reverting to the dutiful employee, she merely nodded and waved them off.

“Now,” Jaejoong held Junsu by the back of his neck as they speed-walked to the downstairs gaming room. “What the hell were you two doing?”

“Talking. Why do you care?”

Jaejoong scoffed. “I saw you ignore your co-star. And for some replaceable assistant?”

This struck him as unusually mean-spirited for Jaejoong.

“...I’m kidding. But seriously, he was making eyes at you. I think he wished you were that piece of pizza in his mouth, hah.”

“Huh?!”

A montage flashed through Junsu’s mind. Of being a teenager, Yunho’s best friend. Thinking about girls. Thinking about guys. Meeting the boy with the mahjong set; feeling the blood rush to his crotch, tucking the boy’s voice into the back of his mind as it followed him home, to the dark corners of his bedroom. Feeling the release. Feeling like a sinner. Yunho telling the world about the most shameful moment of his life. Junsu telling Yunho. Meeting Masuo, being made into his pet. Meeting him again—as handsy as he was before.

Jaejoong could’ve conceivably saved the moment, if he turned it into a witty joke. Not that it mattered what Jaejoong did. This was bigger than the moment.

“Oh no… Junsu…”

In Jaejoong, Junsu saw the pity that had been in Yunho’s eyes, and that unwelcome image invaded his mind, the final puzzle piece. Yunho taking him to bed. Yunho’s anger, his denial, his need.

He’d done it before, forgotten what it had all meant. So he could do it all again. Surely someone like Jaejoong had had his share of paramours, the people who reached into his most hidden parts, and he rinsed them out like dirty laundry.

Except, now a third party—Jaejoong—knew about what was going on. This could become dangerous.

“Table tennis. Let’s go!”

Junsu squared his shoulders, letting the discontent in his mind fall away. Nothing but the paddle in his hand, the blue table, and the plastic white ball.

“You and me?” Jaejoong confirmed.

“Sure. Let’s play a warm-up round.”

Jaejoong’s focus was a mirror of his, although his grip wasn’t quite as relaxed as Junsu’s.

Junsu wound up, and delivered the ball.

“Ace!” Chilhyun called out.

Jaejoong went to retrieve the ball, and when he returned gave Junsu a dumb-struck look.

Junsu couldn’t help but smile triumphantly. “I won’t go easy on you.”

Jaejoong smiled disarmingly—he didn’t have the natural athleticism nor the competitive drive that Junsu did, but he cared about his reputation, so he masked his disappointment with jovial humour. He served, not soft but not as hard as Junsu, and Junsu fired back. Jaejoong managed to touch the ball with his paddle, but it landed on the ground.

“I give up,” Jaejoong said, huffing.

“Woo!” Junsu scooped up the ball and primed himself for the next serve. Fire coursed through his veins. If every person here was as challenging as Jaejoong, Junsu was pretty sure he’d be able to dispatch each of them with the same efficiency, but that wasn’t the point. He wanted the thrill of strategizing, adapting, winning.

No one volunteered, until two drunk-happy interns suggested playing two-against-one on Junsu. He liked that idea a lot. Two were no match for his one, and seeing as they were hopeless against him, the interns gave up after a few minutes.

He noticed the smell of alcohol begin to invade the air, drinks in hands. He noticed Sejin, in a revealing undershirt and very little else, making eyes at an older man. Two people standing like hunchbacks over a table, inhaling, breathing out, rubbing the itchy spot on their noses. Changmin had found his way into the mix, and this time, he was accompanied by another man. Junsu threw his paddle on the table, glancing back-and-forth at Changmin, at the other man, and the crowd, the ocean-blue table.

They were whispering now. From their easy closeness, they clearly had an established relationship—Junsu couldn’t believe that Changmin would allow himself to cozy up with a stranger, no matter how much alcohol was in his body.

The other man left Changmin’s side, verging close to the other end of the ping pong table. He was a forgettable face, one fraction short of Changmin’s beauty in all respects. “Are you up for another round?”

Junsu took the paddle again, tossing it in his hand. “Yeah. But I should warn you, no one else wants to play against me. I’m really good.”

“Changmin is really good, too,” The man said, turning back.

“No I’m not.”

Who had orchestrated this? Changmin looked miserable as he joined the other man, taking the red paddle.

“First to ten,” Junsu decided.

Changmin served, pinpoint like a laser, and Junsu had to squat to one side to make the return. He was completely out of position, so he resigned himself to losing his first point of the night. But Changmin’s returning shot was too soft, too predictable, aimed smack-dab in the middle of the court, and Junsu managed to surprise him with a subdued drop-shot, and he wasn’t fast enough to return it.

Junsu cheered, but only a few people were backing him up. Changmin gritted his teeth, darkness already seeming to cast over his eyes.

“Care for another round?” Junsu teased, watching Changmin bounce the ping pong ball on the table, like a tennis player trying to reorient himself.

Changmin glowered. “Shut up.”

Talk about a sore loser, tch!

Changmin landed a clean, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ace that flew over Junsu’s shoulder. Energy reignited the room, as they rallied behind their underdog. Changmin’s face was the picture of stoicism, not letting the excitement get to him. A worthy opponent, indeed.

How fortunate of him to tie the game from the start—fortunate for Junsu. Now that the possibility of losing had lodged itself into Junsu’s mind, he went into overdrive. Points two, three, four, and five were all his. It was less that Changmin began to unravel, moreso that Junsu had tapped into a reserve of unparalleled force somewhere within himself. This was more than a game of table tennis—he knew that, Changmin knew that. So every point won was Junsu’s vindication. Changmin struck back with a few of his own, but Junsu came out on top with a commanding 10 to 3 victory.

“Yesss! I win!”

Changmin threw his paddle on the ground and left fuming. His little cheerleader followed him, making sure to cast a disapproving glance at Junsu before going.

“Junsu, Junsu, Junsu… I think you’re the king of ping-pong.”

Jaejoong smiled, putting his drink on the table. Now that Changmin’s epic breakdown had stolen all the attention, he’d forgotten to be upset about his embarrassment.

“So, what do I win?”

“Some really expensive wine.”

“I don’t drink.”

Jaejoong laughed. “I think you could use it.” He thrust his cup into Junsu’s chest. It was nearly full, and he didn’t want to think about how much Jaejoong had already had.

“Driiiink… Junsu… Drink!”

“I’m fine! Really!”

Jaejoong jerked the cup back, making the drink splash on Junsu’s shirt. When he saw the outcome, he made a dry laugh, as wheezy as an old man’s. The cup fell to the ground, and he tried to brace himself on the ping pong table as he swayed side-to-side. This wasn’t ordinary drunkenness. He was sloppy drunk.

“Jaejoong-hyung, get up,” Junsu hissed.

Jaejoong had slowly gone to sit down on the floor. He was like an unruly child at a party for adults, gripping one leg of the ping pong table. His legs flopped at his sides, and one of his pant legs rolled in the alcohol-puddle from his spilled cup.

“Get up. You’re making a fool of yourself.” The same interns who played against him before now looked upon Jaejoong with concerned eyes, but Junsu waved them away.

“It’s… That’s… Your problem…”

Junsu managed to pull him up, arms hooked under Jaejoong’s armpits, relocating to either side of his body when he became upright.

“Let’s go,” Junsu said.

“You’re too… Damn… Strict!”

“Bedroom, or bathroom? Are you gonna vomit?”

Jaejoong laughed, a haw-haw. “It’s like… That pole lodged up your asshole… No wonder you don’t know how to have fun…”

“Ugh…” Junsu stumbled, nearly dropping Jaejoong. “Seriously, hyung. Are you okay?”

“Yeah… Just had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all.” A Cheshire grin formed on his lips. How drunk was he, if at all? Was he conniving, as good of an actor as the people he employed?

“Come on, let’s go somewhere more private.”

“Private…?! Hyung, wait!”

Jaejoong took him to one of the few unfamiliar rooms on the second floor, a stuffy bedroom with a huge walk-in closet. That was all for his eyes—Jaejoong yanked him into the closet, so all the visuals faded away, and he became hypersensitive to the smells, the feelings, and the sounds around him.

In other words, Jaejoong’s smells, the feelings of Jaejoong, the sounds he made. In this enclosure, even without his face being visible, his presence was inescapable. He moved like an over-excited teenager, his limbs wrapping around Junsu’s body like a Medusa-like creature. His breaths were small, feeble. Junsu felt something warm and heavy, all the weight of it pushed on his lap.

“Mmm…” Jaejoong rolled his hips, making an audible chafe between the textures of their trousers. He got on his haunches, relieving the pressure of his full body weight on Junsu’s lap, but he nearly tipped over before Junsu realized what was happening. He wound his arms around Junsu’s shoulders to stabilize himself, and the effort was only half-successful. Junsu’s back slammed into the wall, and Jaejoong tumbled on top of him, giggling, breathing in close.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The clouds of his breath tasted of alcohol, but not in a rank way; more of a sweet smell, like ammonia. “Come on…!”

“Jaejoong-hyung, what the hell…?!”

“Just kiss me… c’mon…”

“Ack…!” Their nose tips touched, making Jaejoong crack up again.

“You’re just so cute.” Jaejoong kissed him on the mouth, in an oddly maternal way. “You don’t wanna make out with the producer? I think it would be a story to tell.”

“I…”

“Or are you afraid Changmin will hear? Oh, Changmiiiiiiiin-aaaaaaah!!”

Junsu clapped a hand over his mouth. He tried speaking, but he simply could not.

He could feel Jaejoong’s chest pressed against his; he was as hot as a furnace, making the already stifling air feel unbreathable. Junsu felt like he was within the inner layer of Jaejoong’s house, as one of his lovers, privy to things that the other partygoers weren’t.

Jaejoong kissed him, warming the inside of his mouth with soju-tinged air. He gripped Junsu by his hair, rocking his body up and down, and the friction of Jaejoong rubbing on his crotch, however unintentional, was doing things to Junsu’s body. He’d passed the threshold with Yunho, but this wasn’t like that; he’d felt like the prey, fallen to Yunho’s hunter, but he gripped Jaejoong roughly by the waist, and thought, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, after all. He kissed back, not caring to test before he bullishly impressed himself on Jaejoong.

The mere suggestion of his tongue tapping on Junsu’s teeth encouraged Junsu to respond with his own, sliding it imprecisely, and with the amount of fluid being traded between their mouths, he wondered if Jaejoong might make him indirectly drunk.

Yes, Jaejoong was definitely making him drunk. Junsu made a low whine, pulling Jaejoong’s legs around his waist, beginning to grind his hips.

“What the hell?!”

Jaejoong removed his lips from Junsu’s. A slice of light caught through the open door, so he could see that they were now side-by-side on the floor, looking as though they were about to have sex.

“Oh shit,” Junsu pushed Jaejoong away, wiping his mouth clean.

“Looks like we have a voyeur,” Jaejoong teased. “Or are you jealous?”

Changmin snorted. “This is what you called me for?”

“Uh…”

“Ah, don’t be such a prude, Changmin-ah,” Jaejoong got up unhurriedly. If he was trying to incite Changmin’s wrath even more with his nonchalance, it was working.

“I’m leaving. Idiots…!”

Changmin stormed out for the second time that night. Jaejoong chuckled, while Junsu grimaced.

“This was a mistake,” he said, under his breath.

“Oh? I don’t know if I’d say that.”

Junsu shook his head. The sparks of attraction had fizzled out the moment Changmin arrived—funny how the pressure could build and build, only to be ripped away in a half-second.

.

.

.

From Jaejoong unlocking his alcohol cabinet, to his reserves being nearly diminished, many things transpired, and it was understood that they would never be mentioned again. If only his family were to bear witness to this den of licentiousness; the bodies, sprawled on beds and floors like stains unto the otherwise pure house, the sour smell of drying fluids, overwrought hormones, a chemical reaction of mind-altering substances. The second circle of hell, of lustful bodies. Because that’s all they are… their humanness has been swallowed up by sexual hunger, so they’re like zombies…

Changmin didn’t believe in any of that, and neither did his parents, but most of his friends and neighbours had been evangelical types, so he was familiar with their hard-line brand of hellfire.

Jaejoong was one of the few who was still lucid, even though he claimed to be drunk. The only other people he was keeping tabs on were Junsu, who’d vanished, and his bodyguard, who was in the bathroom.

Jaejoong stood over the island like a barmaid, watching Changmin on the loveseat. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

Changmin said nothing. He’d checked his e-mails, which were empty, and then mindlessly cycled through his apps. If only he’d brought a book.

“Are you still mad about me and Junsu?”

Changmin pocketed his phone and shot out of his seat. He knew he was playing into Jaejoong’s hands, but what the hell. “You can fuck him in the ass for all I care. I want no part in it.”

“So you are jealous.” Jaejoong smirked, running a finger over the marble countertop. “Listen, I’d like to be his first. But you can be the one to take his anal virginity.”

“I don’t like Junsu!”

“He says.”

“This is all bigger than Junsu. You’re just using him.”

Jaejoong came out from behind the counter, standing directly beside him. “Well, you two are going to have plenty of alone time together. Good luck.”

“You are the worst.”

“Rome is very romantic, isn’t it?” Jaejoong winked. “Maybe you’ll finally manage to find yourselves.”

.

.

.

Even though they were flying together, and even though all of this was technically Changmin’s orchestration, he couldn’t seem to find the words to begin. Not to mention, Junsu distanced himself as much as he could from Changmin, and Chilhyun and Minho for that matter.

As they’d convened in the lounge, Junsu cut quite the figure in an otherwise all-black outfit with a zebra print jacket. He was hauling three bags of luggage, each identical but different in size—clearly a cheap box set that would be advertised on a home shopping channel, and in addition, he balanced a bookbag over his shoulder and a coffee in his left hand. He managed this with perfect composure, his sunglasses sitting low and haughty on his face, and what Changmin wanted to say was God, hyung, you’re so cool. I can help you… but I’d rather watch.

But instead he’d laughed. “That’s a lot of stuff. Are you not getting an allowance for Rome?”

Junsu’d scrunched up his nose. Minho, although he’d snickered at Changmin’s quip, offered a hand out to lighten his burden—both he and Changmin each wheeled a small suitcase for themselves, which was mainly clothing—but Junsu rebuffed him politely. “No thank you.” He cocked his head at Changmin

“That’s a nice coat, hyung. From the women’s section, I assume?”

Just after, intercom announced their flight was boarding, throwing the whole lounge into movement. Junsu had been so flustered that he dropped his cases and threw his unfinished drink into the nearest trash can as he followed the assembly out.

“Junsu, your suitcases!” Minho yelled.

Changmin smiled, taking the two smaller ones. It was a lot, but if Junsu could make three suitcases look effortless, so could he.

The weather was holding perfectly, Minho said, as they enjoyed the view in the business-class cabin. Each seat had an unspoiled view of the sky, and it was beautiful. The food was outstanding. Yet, he was bogged down with all the things he couldn’t say, things he, and this was painful to admit, cared about very much.

On the flight, everyone kept to themselves. Changmin read, watched a movie, and gazed out of the window. Minho was talking to one of his clients, but he could be filtered out. Junsu was sitting in the far seat, so Changmin had to look back and crane his neck to see him, and even then, only if he was leaning towards the aisle.

He’d brought eye cream and was dabbing it on his face, because, as Junsu told the flight attendant, “I can’t handle waking up before nine in the morning!” Then he bought a bottle of seltzer, which nearly slipped out of his oiled-up hands, and when he did manage to take a swig, scrunched his face up tight and made an audible swallow. The whole moment was so damn cute, Changmin couldn’t help staring, but his happiness came to a halt when Junsu stared right back at him with a narrowed gaze, and Changmin looked away, figuring it was easier than trying to explain himself.

That discouraging feeling followed after they departed. The airport shuttle took them all the way to the sprawling luxury hotel on weathered, stone-studded roads, and the daytime view of Italy in early spring was a glorious sight to behold, so much action and colour and a lot of well-dressed elderly people. He’d travelled internationally a few times for work, though never to Europe.

Junsu sat in the back with him, leaning against the car window. His genuine interest was so at odds with Changmin’s careful composure, as he looked straight ahead, ensuring the drive was going smoothly, because the rest was peripheral.

I can see the mountains in the distance—the Apennines, right? They look so blue.

That looks delicious. Really heavy, but delicious.

Is there anything you want to buy?

Each was a perfectly viable conversation topic. He couldn’t put up an overly magnanimous facade, though, or Junsu would be suspicious—he needed to somehow incorporate his brand of prickliness without sounding mean.

Except he couldn’t.

They pulled up to an empty lot surrounded by tree groves, and the hotel stood like a shining star, invulnerable and consecrated. It was evocative of the Rome of days past, painted in whites and golds with lavish friezes and trims. When the sky dipped to dusk, and the window lights came on, it would undoubtedly look even more beautiful.

They entered through the archways on the ground floor. Junsu led, chattering away like a songbird, by now unable to contain his excitement, and Chilhyun readily accepted his bid for conversation. Minho walked with Changmin, at a slower pace, laughing and shaking his head.

“You picked an interesting one.”

“Quiet,” Changmin whispered. “You don’t need to know him or any of that. Just handle things as you normally would.”

Minho rolled his shoulders back. He was used to jumping on planes to visit the cosmopolitan side of Europe and the world, so he hardly paused to marvel at the architecture. “It blows my mind that you’re paying double. I’d normally value a client like that at, what, 15% gross? That’s… not a lot.”

Changmin recalled the forms, the boring, stilted conversations. “He doesn’t need you stealing from his paycheck, though.”

Minho murmured something about the value of hard work, but Changmin wasn’t listening. He was on high-alert from Minho having brought up Junsu in public. He didn’t need any more of it—he wasn’t anyone’s benefactor, he didn’t have a saviour complex, he just believed it was fair. The less they spoke, the less chance of him overhearing something.

Inside, Junsu was utterly out of place. He proclaimed each passing thought with such zeal that Chilhyun had to whisper something to him, and only then, he cast his eyes down.

Two porters went outside to fetch the luggage while they checked in with a concierge. Private suites for everyone, as was standard—the rest of the film crew would stay in smaller, but no less luxurious rooms.

The concierge placed their keycards on the counter. Junsu collected his, paused, and smacked it face-down. “I think there’s a mistake,” he said, in garbled English.

“I can speak Korean,” the concierge replied, flashing her teeth in a hollow smile. “What seems to be the problem?”

“This room address,” Junsu pointed to the inscription, “It’s for Room 801.”

“That’s correct.”

Junsu gave Changmin a quick glance. “That’s not the room I wanted.”

“Why not?” The concierge asked.

“801, that’s what we booked,” Changmin added, and finally read her nametag. “...Miss Seo, you must have Kim Junsu in that room.”

The concierge nodded, looking relieved.

“I don’t want to be there! Can I switch?”

“We booked the seventh and eighth floors for the team,” Changmin reminded him.

“Well, is there something else on another floor?” Junsu held his arms to his chest, tapping his leg impatiently. Miss Seo now looked more than a little nervous.

“He’s fine. We’re fine.” Changmin lowered his voice. Before, his childishness was slightly endearing, but there was a limit. He made space for himself beside Junsu, still facing the concierge. “Thank you, madam.”

He pulled Junsu into a headlock, which no one protested about besides the victim himself. Junsu was skinnier than he was expecting, so Changmin dragged him to the elevators with very little trouble, although Junsu landed a nasty kick to his shin.

“If that bruises, I’m giving you one in return,” Changmin snapped. He wasn’t even sure if Junsu had heard—since his anger had escalated, he was barely obedient and loudly unpleasant, like a dog with a brain worm, running around in circles, chasing something that wasn’t there.

Chilhyun was technically Junsu’s boss and the highest-ranking among them, but he rarely gave scoldings. So, the moment they were safe in the elevator, Changmin released Junsu from his grasp, but let him have it.

“I know you’re behind in your career for your age, but that’s not an excuse to make a fool of yourself and the rest of us in a place like this,” he said, evenly and very quietly. “You didn’t even have a legitimate concern, really-”

“Oh, I didn’t? I would never, in a million years, choose the hotel room that’s right beside yours! No, scratch that, we’re basically sharing! The bathroom connects the rooms, doesn’t it?!”

Minho cleared his throat. A delightful marimba song played as they rode the elevator, adding a comical dose of awkwardness.

“And there’s another connecting door, right? You can enter my room whenever you want! What the hell?! Where’s the privacy?”

Changmin wanted nothing more than to grab Junsu by his sides and keep him firmly in place, so he wouldn’t be able to move his body, turn away—then he’d have to wrench him by the chin, too, so he couldn’t look away.

“Eh, you’re my co-star. We’re going to be kissing.”

Junsu bit his lower lip.

“I can keep going. Are you a kid, or what?”

“That doesn’t mean you can invade my privacy!”

If they were being graded on composure, Changmin was winning the fight, doubtlessly. Junsu was the fuse, triggering an explosive fireball of anger with the slightest infraction against him, while Changmin’s anger peaked and settled like a lake freezing over. Rage was, to him, dull. But he enjoyed the performance of other peoples’.

“Why don’t we get the kissing out of the way right now? So it’s not weird.” A theatrical slam! and both of Changmin’s arms pinned Junsu against the wall. He leaned in, just a little, reveling in the performance. Because it was just that, a bluff, a taste of the real thing.

“No… no- hey! Hyung, help me! CHILHYUN-HYUNG!!”

Junsu looked around, but Minho and Chilhyun were nowhere to be found. They’d furtively exited the elevator, leaving the predator with his prey. Unbelievable, and yet, amazing.

“Haha…” Changmin let Junsu push him out of the way, nearly knocking him back on the ground. He frantically mashed the floor-8 button, but the stupid elevator light flashed up, and the stupid song looped and looped as they moved skyward. “...Junsu-hyung, are you all right?”

“I need to call the police, or something…” Junsu shook his head, crouched into the corner. “You’re a psycho! That’s attempted sexual assault!”

Changmin shrugged, and nodded. “Yeah… Well, it was a half-hearted attempt. But I’ll be good from now on.”

Junsu stared at the elevator button, his finger shaking, hovering over it. He drew his other hand over his lips, attempting to protect from further advances. “I don’t trust you.”

“You need to trust me. Or else, how will we make this romance feel real?”

“Don’t call it that.”

“But it’s true.”

“So you’re a method actor, then?”

He shook his head. “Definitely not. But, say, this…” Changmin repeated the motion, pushing Junsu against the opposite wall, and he leaned his face into Junsu’s, leading with his forehead, keeping his lips at a respectful distance. “This… What you were being so dramatic about…”

Then, he puckered his lips and Junsu turned his face away, so Changmin ended up lightly kissing his smooth cheek. He pulled away, and Junsu had recoiled, eyes squeezed shut.

“That was better. You didn’t try to run away that time.”

“I can’t run! I’m trapped in an elevator!”

“Tch… You make me sound like a monster. I’m not!”

Finally, the elevator stopped, and a well-dressed man and woman entered. Changmin bit the inside of his cheek, trying not to burst into laughter. All four of them exited on the eighth floor. Junsu’s room was the very first on the left, quite literally cornered, with Changmin’s beside it. Though, maybe Junsu had been correct. They weren’t technically individual rooms; more like guest houses, where multiple rooms shared amenities. That was a little strange, for a hotel of this scale.

That said, he definitely wasn’t complaining.

Changmin unlocked his room, purposefully leaving it open a crack, and sat on the bed. How funny that his bed happened to be against the wall that separated his and Junsu’s rooms. He thought about getting some room service, but a droning noise distracted him.

Low, dissonant, for a second he wondered if it was the room ventilation turning on. He went back to the doorway, and the sound was no less present; back into the bedroom, and it was more distant.

The sound picked up a bright hum. How convenient was this…? I could fall asleep to the sound of that, Changmin thought. Hopefully Junsu’s actual singing would follow.

Soon, the humming cut off—likely a noise complaint. Changmin propped himself up to read the numbers on the landline phone, searching for room service, but he picked up on the same sound vibrations from the same wall, and quickly pressed his ear against it.

This time, the noise was abrupt, cut into short sentences, but louder than the humming. Changmin couldn’t help but smile and silently laugh to himself. Junsu’s questionable pronunciation was also his greatest measure of self-defense against cunning spies, because as clear as the acoustics were, Changmin couldn’t make out enough words to piece anything together. It was immensely frustrating, but so charming—only because it was Junsu.

“I just… don’t know…”

Oh? That was the first clear sentence. Had he been slurring his words before…?

“I… I…”

Or was it crying? Silent, dry sobs?

“Yeah…? I know this sounds weird…”

What was weird? Changmin tried to make a mental note, but he was anxious—he knew he might not get another conversation like this in a while—and he scanned the room for a hotel notepad.

He wondered if his booming footsteps had disquieted Junsu, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t missed anything. Junsu was struggling to get his words out, and it was starting to get to Changmin. Stop, stop, just shut up…! He knew it wasn’t fair. He’d had his fair share of cries, and they were embarrassing, but necessary.

“Okay. I… miss you. That’s all.”

“What?”

This was the first word Changmin had spoken aloud. Again, he feared he’d blown it, but he kept his ear on the wall, and was well-rewarded.

“I know. He’s… pretty intense. But he’s human… Like we are. He has his shortcomings and his good qualities, I think. I don’t know.”

Ugh.

“I know- please, don’t get… It’s acting! You know that. No… I wouldn’t be calling you if we were… Listen. I don’t like him like… like…”

Like what, Junsu…?

Do go on.

“No, no. I’m not avoiding it.”

He swallowed.

Shut the door. Turn up the volume on the TV. Order room service.

“I… wish you were here.”

You love food, you love not having to leave bed to get food, you’ve always wanted to try authentic Italian food.

“Oh, I would… I can’t really show you over the phone, but… I’d… Like this…” Wet, disgusting sounds. The inside of a mouth. Unfocused, unhurried. Fingers, inside, taking… taking it all…

Eat, Changmin. Go, eat!

“I’d do it for you. Of course I would, Yunho…”

“Agh, fuck!”

He threw the end table on the ground, severing the phone dock from its hidden outlet, and the noise silenced Junsu for good. But, this was a luxury hotel, and the table didn’t break against hardwood floor.