Chapter Text
Autumn ‘24
Han Jisung viewed the world through a veil of casual detachment. The veil was closer to a colour than any physical object- any tangible, meaningful thing that could be inspected and probed for answers. Autumn’s fiery reds and oranges, painting the streets like the leaking ink of a quill, were muted by its very presence. Not in a way that Jisung could ever put down in words, let alone lyrics, but rather too noticeable to ignore. He had only really considered the veil as one might consider a television screen, or the torn pages of a library book. A barrier. A separation, forever dividing him from reality. From its painful intensities and exhilarating highs. From the warmth of his coffee and the quiet elegance of the castle in the rain. Even the October wind, blowing with an undeniable sting of vengeance, did little to disarm him.
It was a little sore and a little lonely and so, so familiar.
The castle was only a castle to the idealists. Those who took its turrets and the sandy stone that framed its grand entrance for fact rather than the desperate manifestation of fiction. It could only have been built in the last century or two, crafted by masters and artists though it was, and held none of the extensive history that a castle requires as a prerequisite. Delusions of grandeur lay at the castle’s core. At its very foundations. Even so, Jisung was rather fond of the place. There was comfort in imitation. Surrounding the castle in a protective circle were the gardens. The gates of heaven, someone had told him once, a carpet of daffodils unravelled across the grass like a miracle. And they were gorgeous, the gardens. Truly. Art within itself, especially in the rich glow of a hazy Autumn sunset.
“Isn’t that my jacket?”
A voice, breaking through the incoherent buzz of conversation and the lightest of rain showers and the songs playing softly in the back of his head. Jisung looked up, unsure of what he had been looking down towards in the first place.
“What happened to best friend privileges? Was it not you who advocated the fuck out of ‘sharing is caring’?”
The sound of his own voice was grating. An unpleasant surprise, like a strange mark staining a window pane. He jogged towards his friend, wrapping the wool closer around himself as he tore away from the relative shelter of the castle’s shadow. Best friend, even. A sentiment they shared aloud often, free spirited and uncaring, but Jisung struggled to admit in the echo chamber of his own mind. The term itself was ill fitting, he thought, in comparison to the hole that it was supposed to fill. Cursed to remain endlessly too ambiguous.
Already mid-step, Kim Seungmin offered an insincere shrug. He’d been like that since forever; moving forwards with a bold shade of certainty before the present could even fade into the muted tones of past. “I was drunk,” he deadpanned, not turning from the snaking path ahead of them.
“It was three in the afternoon.”
“I was drunk,” Seungmin asserted, unaffected. He held a sophisticated composure to him that suited Autumn, Jisung thought. The city, gradually morphing from its lush green to a valley of gold, complemented his natural air of contemplative austerity. Of course, truly knowing Seungmin quickly ruined any such poetical musings. Side by side, the pair walked up the path to the castle, barely winded by the hills that had once left them breathless. “Or losing my mind,” he added, casually.
Within the walls of the castle, wound up in spiralling staircases and dark wood floors, lived the university music department. It was half-heartedly sound proofed. Constantly humming with a muffled orchestra of sound, whether that be the tinkling of piano scales or the ghostly chorus of a choir. Each recognisable, but too lacking in clarity to constitute a real, crisp noise. More like the distant mist of some dwindling memory. Receding as quickly as a temperamental rain shower. Jisung mainly frequented the composition studios, pair of headphones a comfortable warmth at his neck. They resided at the very top of the castle, well into the realms of sloping ceilings and oddly shaped hallways that Jisung took pleasure in memorising. The view from up there was breath taking. Pops of red and yellow amongst tiled roofs and a wispy film of cloud. Yes, the Wi-Fi signal was utterly pathetic, but much could be forgiven at the world’s peak.
Today, he followed Seungmin to the third floor, chatting idly about one thing or another. He’d noticed, recently, that all of their conversations seemed to be about the past. Or the present, and its connection to the past, twisting and turning back to the same root. Not in any particularly morbid fashion, just as a general note on the subject of nostalgia. Autumn always brought that side of him to the forefront.
There was a chamber choir rehearsal, and Jisung was playing accompaniment. Repetitive though it could be, it was pleasant enough to bathe himself in the simplicity of muscle memory for a couple of hours. The vocal practice made for a wonderful background noise.
“Did Hyunjin ever decide on a weekend?” Seungmin asked, boots tracking a mud-leaf-rain concoction towards the designated room. Jisung nodded, hands subconsciously twitching towards his phone.
“Second one of November. He’s busy with work until then.”
Seungmin grimaced. “I still can’t imagine Hyunjin as an adult with a job and actual responsibilities.”
Opening the double doors to the vocal room, Jisung surveyed the early arrivals with a laugh.
“Isn’t university just a pointless attempt to delay the same fate?”
Somehow, Seungmin grimaced harder. “One morning without coffee and you’re a nihilist.” He turned towards the stage where the students were milling about, heading off without so much as a backwards glance. He was blunt like that. Refreshingly so. Left to his own devices, Jisung shuffled towards the piano in the corner. A pretty, antique thing that could only loosely be considered tuned, but resonated richly enough to make up for it, seeping out through the cracks in the door frame.
Seungmin was right about that coffee, he begrudgingly noted as he ran through warmup scales. His fingers were decidedly not at their most dextrous, and his slips earned him several pointed smirks (that he valiantly ignored). Oh well. When the notoriously exacting choirmaster arrived, the smile would be wiped off Seungmin’s smug face.
Two hours could pass like a click of the fingers at these rehearsals. Playing and pausing and repeating on a constant cycle. The winding road to perfection- a sunlight strewn ideal that was never really attained. Not by anyone but the very best. Or perhaps just a mirage to chase into the truthful oblivion.
People often asked Jisung what he thought about when he played or composed. Maybe ‘people’ largely translated to ‘acquaintances’, and it was a relatively safe, open ended topic of conversation. He often gave some mindless spiel and subtly avoided the question. He always meant Hwang Hyunjin.
Hyunjin was constant. Like a meandering river that ran through all of his memories- good and bad. Anything worth keeping, anything that made Jisung himself, was imprinted with Hyunjin’s image. If there was any single thing that Jisung understood about the world, drenched in Autumn bronzes or bright with Summer vibrancy, it lay within Hyunjin. Their very existences, in fact, were intertwined past the point of separation. That’s how it had always been, unhealthy or not. If their canopies left one another without the sun and their roots hoarded what was precious little water, it was unimportant. Hyunjin was more Jisung than the voice in his own head, sometimes.
They had grown up together, of course. From squabbling over colouring pencils at their town’s only primary school to movie nights and starlit convenience store runs. Practically neighbours and forced to endure each other’s company, at the beginning. It hadn’t taken long for a sort of hesitant, unmentioned companionship to bloom from the ruins of childhood antagonization. By secondary school, they were a pair. By sixth form, a couple. If only because everyone else had assumed so, and the assumption had contorted into reality between drunken confessions and unfamiliar tension. Kim Seungmin had appeared at some point in the timeless corridors of their teenage years, complementing them in a way Jisung hadn’t thought anyone could. Completing their makeshift trio like the final note of a chord. And they’d grown up. Changing and dreaming and laughing about the fantasy of escaping, as if they were characters in some ridiculous coming of age movie, and not real human beings, trapped by circumstances.
Then, things had changed. Circumstances had changed. Finally, Jisung and Seungmin did it. Escaped. Spread their wings and followed their dreams like it was anything less than miraculous. Hyunjin didn’t do it, and that was fine. He visited during term time, they visited during holidays. Their phones were constantly illuminated by notifications. Hyunjin wasn’t there, but it was fine.
“Again,” the choirmaster ordered, tonelessly. Jisung prepared his aching wrists for another run through, barely repressing the urge to check the clock. Seungmin’s jacket- maybe it was closer to a coat in length and weight- was pleasantly warm around him, although the castle itself had quickly been infiltrated by the October chill.
He wondered, briefly, where Hyunjin was right now. Working at the hair salon, snipping at strands like the strings of a guitar, emulating the same rhythmic precision that Jisung himself was? Or taking a class at the local college, tongue between his lips as a bare branch tapped at the windows? Living a life that Jisung was gradually fading from like the dissipation of summer warmth. Unnoticeable until it’s too late.
A wrong note sliced through the melody. Jisung couldn’t quite bring himself to acknowledge the choirmaster’s admonishing stare.
~
Felix: “Is everyone heading out tonight?”
The window in the café was North-facing. This, Jisung was sure of.
Chan: “My heart says yes, but this two-thousand-word essay says no.”
It was something Hyunjin always obsessed over, as if it made a lasting, dramatic impact on the quality of his day. Maybe it did. As it was, the outside world was settling into darkness. He couldn’t see the sunset from this angle, but rather, was transfixed by the unannounced descendance of night.
Jeongin: “My heart says yes, but my wallet says no.”
They must have appeared strange, draped over chairs and carpet alike with a distinct air of comfort. They had a right to feel at home here, Jisung thought, considering that Yellow Wood had been their regular coffee spot for almost a year now. He could probably draw a map of the place from memory; plot a path through the seemingly arbitrary arrangements of mismatched furniture and plant lined corridors. Fresh pastries perched in a tempting display, aroma mingling with bitter notes of coffee beans and becoming something otherworldly. Most of all, Jisung loved the music they played at Yellow Wood. An ever-rotating collection of jazz piano that soothed him to his very soul.
Seungmin: “My heart says no.”
Maybe it was a little sad, but Jisung was constantly shocked by the friendships he’d fostered since moving to the city. Socialising had never been his forte- not like it was Hyunjin’s. He’d had his two people, and they had been enough. More than enough. The group he and Seungmin had integrated into now was nothing short of a mystery to Jisung. He had grown to love them, though. Adore each and every one like his own family.
“What about you, Sung?” Felix asked in a somewhat more desperate tone, eyes imploring.
Jisung laughed. “Tuesday,” he said simply. Felix instantly deflated, taking it for the rejection it was. Attention drifting back to the sheet music stretched across his laptop screen, Jisung left the chords of conversation to fade back into the piano.
“What a wild group of party-lovers we are,” Jeongin observed, fingers tapping at his keyboard with a vengeance. Seungmin snorted, clasping his mug of tea in both hands. “Every time we go out together, it feels like the start of a bad joke.”
Chan sent him a questioning glance, skin dyed orange in the glow of lamplight.
Huffing, Jeongin seemed deeply frustrated by the prospect of explaining his own ambiguity. “An alcoholic, a nerd, a broke bitch, a recluse and an obsessive boyfriend walk into a bar.”
Appearing to genuinely consider this, Felix paused in his incredibly important exploit of doodling in the margin of his notes. “What would the punchline be?”
Jisung heard his phone chime in his pocket. Without thinking, he pulled it out and glanced at the screen. It inked his skin an eerie blue in the relative darkness of the café. Evening had dawned without warning- as it tended to- and the bedraggled staff were staring hopefully at the stragglers. He felt disappointed when it was just some department-wide email about coursework, eyebrows furrowing involuntarily. Then, he wondered when and how he had become as acutely conditioned to the ring of the bell as Pavlov’s dogs. He sensed more than saw his friends share an unimpressed glance over his head. “Obsessive boyfriend is about right,” someone mumbled. Jisung actively ignored it.
“It wouldn’t be a joke, it’d be a maths question,” Seungmin piped up, gaze focused longingly into his empty mug. The remnants of hazelnut syrup dripped down one side, lethargically, leaving Seungmin with an ever-complex decision: to preserve his mysterious image or to lick. He chose the former, but didn’t seem overly convinced by it. “An alcoholic, a nerd, a broke bitch, a recluse and an obsessive boyfriend walk into a bar. How many come out with their dignity intact?”
Chan said “That’s not a very hard maths question. It’s literally just subtraction,” at the same time as Felix said “How many come out?”, laughing as if he’d offered up something incredibly intelligent. Seungmin grumbled and Jeongin laughed. Jisung thought he was probably smiling, but it was hard to tell, and something about his own archetype made the base of his spine twist in quiet discomfort. They stayed until closing, and maybe a little after. Then, ventured out into the cold.
The walk home was uninspiring until you looked closer. Until you properly digested the pleasant facades of townhouses and the shrubs spilling out through cracks in the pavement. Until you raised your head to see the cathedral’s steeple probing the horizon, a distant lighthouse to the lost sailor. He shared a flat with Seungmin and Jeongin. Originally the plan had been for all five of them to live together, but Felix had found out that his status as international student gave him access to a discounted private studio, and Chan had dropped out to help a friend struggling with rent. What remained was the three of them, and a stressfully late apartment hunt. Perhaps due to this, they had ended up with a, to put it kindly, dysfunctional dwelling. Even so, Jisung thought of it fondly, and treasured these quiet walks home.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Jisung set off towards his room.
“Tuesday,” Jeongin commented from behind him.
“Tuesday,” he confirmed.
Jisung was aware of a soft, tingling sensation. It had started in his fingers, itching to act, and spread through him at an alarming rate. Some unidentifiable mix of emotions. Anticipation, excitement, of course. And perhaps, he noted as he reached to open his laptop, a touch of something else. Something that he’d never really associated with Tuesday before. With these calls. With Hyunjin.
A touch of anxiety.
He feared it was something he’d have to get used to. Frustration struck him like a physical punch, harsh against his stomach. But now wasn’t the time. Jisung took a breath before clicking onto their usual meeting link.
The screen buffered momentarily, before a familiar image appeared. It was always a little jarring to witness the bedroom that held years of memories through such a pixelated lens. From the sage green walls to the arrangement of lovingly painted canvases, everything was a touch and a mile from tangible. Even beyond Hyunjin’s West-facing window, the sky was pitch black. Probably speckled with stars in their unpolluted hometown, but dark nonetheless. A litany of pumpkin spice candles and twinkling fairy lights were the tried and tested solution. They flickered with life, and perhaps some subtle sense of irony that Jisung had to face them before the absent Hyunjin himself.
Lounging back in his desk chair, Jisung waited. Took in all the details of the bedroom that housed a lifetime; it was so achingly nostalgic that he could practically smell the fragrant vanilla of Hyunjin’s favourite incense. After too long and not long enough, the door creaked open. Jisung could feel himself straighten up, unbidden, like an unanimated doll that was wound up.
And there he was. A slice of tiramisu was balanced on a plate in one hand, while the other tugged on the blanket around his shoulders. The ridiculously furry wolf pattern one, that had turned from a joke Christmas gift to an integral winter accessory in the blink of an eye. And Hyunjin’s eyes. Creased and delightfully upturned in the way they are whenever he smiles. Immediately, all of Jisung’s nerves dissipated, mingling with the air like smoke from a candle. What on earth had he ever worried about?
“You won’t believe who I saw at the library today.” Slumping down onto his chair, Hyunjin settled his plate on the desk somewhere. Jisung heard a rattling sound behind the camera. Presumably his fork hitting the pottery with a remarkable chime in B flat.
“The ghost of Christmas Past?”
Hyunjin sent him a bemused look. His face had always been wonderfully expressive, features twisting and remoulding themselves to fit the carefully painted images in his mind.
“Isn’t it a bit early for him to be doing the rounds? Halloween hasn’t even happened.”
“True,” Jisung agreed, easily tracing the lengths of Hyunjin’s hair with his eyes. A chocolate brown that reminded Jisung of a hundred walks through fallen leaves. It was longer than it had been in the summer, for sure, but not noticeably different compared to last Tuesday. “Christmas Present, then?”
Hyunjin let out a high-pitched laugh. They always made Jisung smile- a reminder that his very presence was a source of joy and comfort for somebody else in what could be a truly cruel reality. And Hyunjin handed them out freely.
“No such luck.” He paused, forkful of tiramisu suspended in midair. “Now what I was going to say sounds boring.”
Laughing, Jisung leant towards the camera. “Tell me anyway.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Yes, you do.”
Hyunjin sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “I do.” Then proceeded to clean the fork in one mouthful. “None other than the wonderful Mr. Park.”
Jisung gasped. Over dramatic, perhaps, but a shared moment between partners separated by dozens of orange-tinted miles. Everything always felt a little realer in Hyunjin’s presence. As if his actions had an authentic, physical outcome beyond the limitations of the mind. “History teacher from Hell Mr. Park? Made us read the entire Magna Carta in Year 8 Mr. Park?”
Solemn as could be, Hyunjin nodded. “The very same. He lured me in with pleasantries and then pummelled me with a two-hour lecture on the Victorians plus additional reading.”
Jisung choked out a laugh. “For a college art student, that’s an awful lot of secondary school history homework.”
“You’re telling me.” He shovelled in another load of tiramisu, somewhat more angrily, and cream coated his lips. “I’ve got that technical printmaking essay due tomorrow and I want to die. I came here to create, not to write a million papers that have been written a million times.”
Sympathetic, Jisung winced. As was the plight of all creatives, it seemed. “Don’t die just yet. You’re visiting in a few weeks, and I really need you to bring my headphone adapter with you.”
Hyunjin scowled, tightening his grip on his blanket in a protective manner. “Is that all I am to you, Han Jisung? A glorified delivery driver?”
“I wouldn’t call you ‘glorified’. A three week wait period for one parcel is pretty slow.”
Brightening like the sun gliding out from behind a cover of clouds, Hyunjin laughed again. It was getting cold in his own room, Jisung suddenly noticed, formerly immersed in Hyunjin’s bubble of space. He briefly considered getting up to turn on the heating, but ultimately found the urge to remain was stronger. His room was arranged in such a way that one corner, near the desk, was constantly bathed in a warm, golden glow. Whether that be from the morning sun or his reading lamp in the evening. But the other three corners were almost permanently shrouded in darkness. The idea of venturing into one such corner when he was in the presence of true brilliance filled him with dread.
Hyunjin shuffled a little, staring directly into the camera.
“I can’t wait until we’re together again.”
“Me neither,” Jisung agreed in a heartbeat. The distance between them suddenly seemed all too massive. The call a cheap imitation of intimacy. “Just three more weeks and-”
“I don’t mean until I visit. I mean until we’re properly together again. For good.” He looked so beautiful. So earnestly hopeful. “I want to spend autumn with you again. You never told me the recipe for your cinnamon swirls, and we kept saying we’d watch Over the Garden Wall together and then getting distracted,” he said, through a chuckle. Bitter sweet and longing. Hyunjin’s pain was all too reminiscent of his own. Only then did he deal the final blow. “I miss you. I can’t wait ‘til you’re back.”
Jisung felt something drop in the depths of his stomach. Like a pebble kicked so innocently off a clifftop, only to plummet into the black abyss below. Hyunjin was a dream come true, glowing like something ethereal in the dance of the candlelight. Maybe his presence exaggerated the feeling. Ugly and guttural and raw. Exaggerated the spike of anxiety that struck him with all the violent force of a lightning bolt. Because there, before him, was something important. Something more natural than the rivers and mountains themselves. Something worth going back to. And yet, no part of Jisung, no matter how deeply within himself he searched, had it. Any desire at all to go back.
Jisung loved Hyunjin like he loved nothing else in the world, but he just couldn’t do it. Muster up the will to return to his past after he’d seen what else there could be. He was selfish and cruel and so, so guilty. He hated himself with a strength that translated to visceral nausea whenever he thought about it. Jisung wanted Hyunjin and he wanted freedom. Now, he knew which of the two he prioritised, and the answer repulsed him.
They chatted for far longer, and hung up late into the night. Jisung’s energy was thoroughly sapped by the time he crawled into bed. Mood low in a way it never should be on a Tuesday.
~
Past 01- Autumn ‘22
It was a strange town- Levanter Valley- and a study in contrasts.
Firstly, the name itself was disarming. The ‘Valley’ part was true enough; their home was surrounded by towering hills on all sides, and seemed swamped in shadows no matter the time of day (though the sun setting between peaks could be a magical sight). It was ‘Levanter’ that was out of place. ‘An easterly wind that majestically sweeps across the western Mediterranean Sea’, their geography teacher had proudly explained. Such a description conjures an image of sand, sea and rocky cliffs of exotic stone. Levanter Valley was as painfully anticlimactic as could be. Encircled by mountains but flat itself. The only body of water it boasted, a somewhat murky lake, lay a little too far from the town, just out of walking distance. The Valley was situated rather near a plentiful stretch of crop fields, but was dominated by convenience stores. Its only local fresh produce shop always seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy. A town swimming in natural beauty that was, itself, undeniably drab and uninspired.
Really, that was all one had to understand about Levanter Valley to envisage the place with relative accuracy.
Han Jisung hated it. He resented his parents’ quiet resignation to not live, but simply exist there until the inevitable end. And he was always surprised by the popularity of such a mindset. The general consensus that pervaded the residents there, young and old, that the easiest course of action was simply to remain in Levanter Valley forever. When he was younger, he had imagined it to be some sort of curse, cast on the town by an evil witch centuries ago. Of course, there were a few others who felt the same as him. Seungmin, who had moved from the nearby city a few years ago, and seemed more than ready to move right back. The girl who worked at the nursery during breaks in her internship. Even the rich families who visited the holiday homes a little way up one of the hills.
But it was fair to say that no one wanted to escape Levanter Valley more than Hwang Hyunjin.
“I did some research,” Hyunjin had been saying, fingers dancing rapidly over the keyboard of his laptop. They were sitting together in the library on Mainstreet after school. The first day of their final year. It was only early September, but it was already starting to get cold, and Hyunjin had pulled a long, brown coat over his sweater. “And this one…” He looked, to Jisung, beaming like he’d discovered the door to the beginning of the world. “This is the one.”
A leaf fluttered down outside the window, brown and orange speckled at the edges. Jisung barely noticed, entranced by the image on the screen. He scrolled down the webpage Hyunjin had pulled up, hands tremoring with anticipation. Reading every word like it was part of some ancient prayer, and not saying a word until he’d finished.
“It looks amazing,” Jisung breathed, entirely honest. “But this is… It’s a good one. Like, really good. The entrance requirements are insane, not to mention the fees.” Every bone in his body was aching with desire. A desire that he knew was all too unrealistic. It really did feel like the only other option was to cry, walled in by shelves of timeless books and condensation from the heater misting up the glass.
“Yes, but,” Hyunjin started, clicking away at the pad. “Look at this.”
Jisung looked.
The stay-in-Levanter-at-all-costs mentality was practised by their secondary school, as well. Second period that day, Jisung’s music composition lesson, his favourite of the week, had been replaced by a careers talk. Of course, the only advice they’d received were snippets of wisdom from an accountant at the Mainstreet bank. He’d gotten his comfy office job through a post-secondary apprenticeship without ever leaving the town, and you could too! University, even the prospect of travel, had never been mentioned. They had found out through Seungmin that the school actually hosted a separate, invitation-only talk for that. To his surprise, not even Hyunjin, whose family was wealthy enough for two cars and was well-regarded amongst their neighbours, received it.
So naturally, they had taken it upon themselves to hunt down their own futures. Jisung had been considering the higher education college for arts in the nearby city- where Seungmin had grown up. Maybe it wasn’t special or prestigious, but it was better and bigger and on the right track. Plus, the tuition fee and cost of living were low, and Jisung could shoulder it all with the right part time job. The music department seemed nice enough, and they were best known for their fine art course. All in all, a respectable choice. Ambitious but achievable. A new life they could share.
What Hyunjin was showing him was crazy. Downright insane. A nationally renowned university in a big city several hours away by train. Special, prestigious, and not a place Jisung had even dared to dream about. The tuition fee was tremendous (doable for Hyunjin at a stretch, not doable for Jisung in a million years). The music department had an associated professional orchestra and the fine art course hosted monthly public exhibitions. Ambitious and completely unachievable. The kind of place even Seungmin, ever the top of the class, would hesitate over.
But this specific webpage. It was-
“A scholarship,” Hyunjin said, impatiently. “Almost a full ride for arts students who are the first in their family to go to university. It’s basically made for you, Jisung.”
“Well obviously it would be cool if they just kind of handed me nine thousand pounds, but I would need to actually win,” he replied, sceptical. There was a sticky patch on the table, and Jisung shifted away from it.
“Why couldn’t you? You’re the best composer this shithole has seen for decades. Mrs. Kim literally shouts with glee whenever you enter the studio.” That was the unfortunate and embarrassing truth.
“Okay, but I need seriously good grades in other subjects, too.”
“You could get them. Seungmin would totally tutor you in English if you asked. And you’re already making progress in history.”
“The city is too far away to casually visit. How do we know if-”
“Jisung.” Hyunjin stopped him, eyes fixed on him, a storm swirling within them. “Do you not want this?”
Jisung froze. Distantly, he felt a headache blooming with stabs of discomfort. They were muted, though, as if covered by a layer of dust. He knew, in that moment, that whatever he said, Hyunjin wouldn’t hold it against him. It made him feel guilty and unworthy. Irrationally so. Because yes, Hyunjin would do anything for him, but surely, he’d do the same.
“Of course I want this.” It was true. “I’m just so fucking scared.” And that was true, too.
Hyunjin’s sombre expression crumpled in on itself, softening into something light and framed by sunrays.
Evading the sticky patch on the table with characteristic grace, Hyunjin took Jisung’s hand. Clasped it between both of his own. The librarian stared at them with strangely contorted lips, and they ignored her.
“Me too. And that’s okay, change is always scary. But we can do this. When the two of us get together, I find we tend to come out on top.”
Jisung could see a sort of hazy sunshine through the condensation on the window. A bleak Winter was sure to set in soon, but not so soon that he couldn’t appreciate any single, sunny day. Another leaf drifted down towards earth from its pedestal.
“I tend to come out on top. You’ve been known to bottom.”
Hyunjin startled into laughter. The librarian was full on glaring, now. He kissed Jisung on the cheek.