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It’s another bad morning. The mere sound of his alarm has Hongjoong burying his head in his pillows; the sun slowly bathing him in its rays has tears prickling in his eyes, and the cherry on top is the reminder of an exam he has today. He’s crying before he does any more than turning off his alarm and the heat from his blanket makes everything worse. His body aches from tossing and turning all night, his pulse jerks as he goes through every worst-case scenario and works on accepting the reality that if he doesn’t pass today, Roseanne and Julia will kick him out, and Seonghwa will blame him for just wasting his time when they reviewed the material together.
A knock on his door wakes him back up, no longer crying, but his eyes feel crusty and his woodchip wallpaper is a little blurry.
“Joong-ah, I’m going to come in, okay?” Seonghwa asks and Hongjoong has no time to even attempt to nod before his door opens. Slippers shuffle over the wooden floorboards and his bed dips under his additional weight. The smell of coffee and eggs carries into his room and Hongjoong’s stomach growls and cramps at the same time.
“Mom said it’s okay when you only go for the exam, do you want to do that? She’ll pick you up right after, too.”
Hongjoong masters the world’s jerkiest nod and a hum that hurts his throat; he even wants to give a thumbs up, but he’s too heavy and stiff.
💌
The teacher seems surprised to see him and Hongjoong can’t blame him. He’s gotten better at not skipping school since he moved in with Roseanne and Julia, but he sometimes still can’t help it. They try to find compromises and it takes a lot of weight off his shoulders. He sits down next to Minjeong, and she greets him with a smile. This history class is one of the two he doesn’t share with Seonghwa, but Minjeong is nice and patient and doesn’t mind repeating herself when he zones out multiple times in the span of a ten minute working period.
“Good to see you again, it’s gotten boring without you,” she says and Hongjoong finds it hard to believe her. She has friends in every class, the teachers like her, and he’s never heard of an instance with a student that was anything but positive. Even the laziest (Hongjoong hates that word, since laziness as a concept doesn’t quite exist; it’s maybe the lack of energy or motivation, or simply preferring to spend your time differently, but that doesn’t make anyone lazy) students work hard with her with only minor complaints. She doesn’t take offence to him not replying and slides over some candy – the same type she always has with her. It’s grape flavoured jelly and in tiny packets, easy to rip open and chew on two minutes before an exam, which is exactly what they both do.
The exam isn’t nearly as bad as Hongjoong convinced himself it’d be. His head is blank for the first thirty minutes, and he loses focus from time to time during the remaining sixty, but he does remember a decent amount of information, and the funny jokes Seonghwa made up to make memorising all of it easier have him almost smiling.
“Thank you for the candy,” Hongjoong says to Minjeong when they’re packing up their stuff, “I think it helped.”
She beams at him, “Of course it did! Oh, did you do the maths homework?”
Maths, the other subject without Seonghwa but with Minjeong.
“Yeah, Seonghwa helped me. But… I’ll go home now, actually.” He can’t remember how much he opened up to Minjeong about his mental health, but it seems to have been enough for her to nod in understanding without asking any more questions. Her face morphs into something that’s harder to read, but when he does, he pulls the sheet with the stochastic problems they had to solve out of his bag and holds it out for her until she takes it. Her nails are painted with a glittery pale blue and a singular bow is drawn or stamped on her left pinky nail.
“Oh, thank you. Are you sure?” Minjeong has one of the most expressive eyes Hongjoong has ever seen, probably right after Seonghwa, and now they’re big and round and heavy with gratitude.
“I am. Fighting.”
💌
“Good morning,” Minjeong grins and Hongjoong almost stops in his tracks. Her hair is a shiny, dark red and has been trimmed around her chest when it’s been reaching her lower back just a week prior.
“Your hair looks really cool,” he replies and chastises himself for being lame, but her eyes shyly drop down to the scratches in the surface of their table, so maybe he said the right thing.
“Thank you, Charlotte helped me.”
Hongjoong sits down and shrugs off his jacket, thinking about his next words, “I’m sorry, I don’t…”
She catches on and waves him off, “No worries, I don’t think you share any classes. She’s very small, blonde, jingles wherever she goes because she wears a ton of accessories?”
That does ring a bell, so Hongjoong nods, because even though he still can’t remember her face, he does vaguely remember Minjeong hanging onto her arm during recess.
“Is she your best friend?” He still feels awkward about outright asking questions about someone, but it’s gotten easier the more time he spends with Seonghwa, who’s always curious and will ask away until someone puts a stop to his investigations.
Minjeong hums, thinking, as she slides her phone underneath her thighs when their teacher steps into the room, “I think she’s to me what Seonghwa is to you, a sister.”
Hongjoong likes that, despite being bad at expressing affection and love, some people still pick up how much Seonghwa means to him. They’re not related by blood at all, and they’ve only been living together for three years, but he’s grateful to have him.
“Seonghwa is my brother, though,” he replies because that feels better than confirming that they’re as close as brothers, and his voice isn’t as light as he’d have preferred it. Minjeong laughs quietly at his failed attempt to make a joke and then looks away from him, ready for the lesson to start.
Their teacher’s voice is perfect for anyone in the historic field, or for the audiobooks Julia loves to listen to because her migraine makes reading too hard for her to enjoy it properly. Hongjoong likes listening to him, even if he isn’t really following, he at least doesn’t have to pretend to be attentive and can hold eye contact. With most other teachers, they either are unaware or ignorant of Hongjoong’s health issues, or they pay too much attention, checking on him too much and making him feel weak and unable to make decisions for himself. Sometimes he’d love to look at his English teacher and scream at her If I couldn’t handle it, I wouldn’t be here today or I have fully written out suicide notes to the people I live with at home, please give me space to think at his maths teacher.
The class is dismissed and the heaviness has settled into Hongjoong’s bones without his permission or him noticing. He’s rooted to his chair, his book still open on a text about the structure of a village in the middle ages, his hands that were resting on his thighs are now cramped around fistfuls of his baggy pants. People around him are moving, packing up and chatting; it all mushes together into the sound of a storm knocking on window panes or waves rolling and his head is filled with static noise.
He feels a weight on his shoulder, it freezes his skin but he can’t force his muscles to shrug it off, to move his eyes to assess the situation. Someone shields him from the rest of the room, a grey shadow in the corner of his vision, and they’re close but don’t touch him. Their warmth radiates and the notes of their perfume melts the tension he’s holding; his fists loosen, his eyes blink and the feeling of sandpaper being rubbed on them disappears. His shoulder is light again, his scalp tingles in circular motions and his head leans into it before he can stop it.
“Hongjoong? Are you back with us?”
Seonghwa. Hongjoong breathes out in a sigh and rids himself of the lingering lead hardening his joints. With a yawn, he slowly looks at the shadow and into Seonghwa’s kind eyes, his gentle and encouraging smile. He has Hongjoong’s packed backpack in one of his hands and his phone in the other, and without asking, Hongjoong knows he’s contacted Roseanne to pick him up. It feels like he’s a burden, since Julia already is barely able to work due to the migraines that partially blind her, and now he also needs close to constant attention. Roseanne’s job is understanding and accommodating, but there has to be consequences at one point, right? And it has to be more than a slap on her fingers, right?
It’s like Seonghwa can read his mind (or maybe it’s the far away look in his eyes because Hongjoong can feel himself zoning out, slipping back into heaviness), because he holds the backpack out to– is there someone else? Who else is seeing him like that? His knee jerks and bangs into the table; the pain spreads like a wildfire and throws Hongjoong back into reality. He suddenly takes notice of Seonghwa’s voice and– Minjeong?
“Don’t worry, I’ll just follow you,” she promises and a moment later, Seonghwa hefts him out of his chair with a tight grip on his arm he wraps around his own shoulders and a stabilising arm around Hongjoong’s waist. His vision blurs, but he stays lucid enough to slowly walk down the stairs, with Seonghwa’s heavy breathing in his ear and Minjeong’s lighter steps behind them. They’re fortunately barely passing any students, just a teacher who quickly checks in on them (it’s their physics teacher, who knows them both and takes Hongjoong’s depression seriously without being overbearing) and then leaves them alone.
The crisp air outside feels like a punch to the stomach, but it clears Hongjoong’s head further until he’s able to walk on his own, albeit very slowly, and feel the cold.
“Here,” Minjeong pops up next to him with his fleeced faux leather jacket, and he quickly shrugs it on with a grateful nod.
“I’m sorry you had to see– this mess,” Hongjoong can’t keep the venom out of his voice, especially not when they walk past groups of students in their grade, those who whisper and spread rumours about him faking it all. Their eyes are ice picks and pierce right through his body until he’s full of holes and bleeding out, with the snow soaking it all up and putting him on display. Minjeong shakes her head and walks in front of him, shields him, and Seonghwa catches his dripping organs, with his heart cradled to his chest.
They wait at the parking lot, right next to a handful of teachers enjoying their break for a cigarette or two, and Hongjoong catches himself wishing he’d have a pack on his own. He never smoked, but he’s on the verge of a nasty spiral and needs something to focus on his breathing – he doesn’t know whether it’s irregular at all or not, but…
“Mom is here,” Seonghwa whispers and Hongjoong looks up, sees her park right on the street and flipping off an angry driver behind her. The passenger door opens and Minjeong wordlessly walks up to the car and stows his backpack in front of the seat. She shortly talks to Roseanne, but it’s too quiet for Hongjoong to pick up when he follows her. She steps aside and Hongjoong sits down, puts on his seatbelt, and Seonghwa leans over him to steal a sip of Roseanne’s coffee.
“Seonghwa-ya! You’re too young for caffeine!” She scolds him, but her voice sounds light and she blows him a kiss when he does, “See you later!”
💌
I don’t mind messes, it says on a note that’s been slipped into the stack of worksheets that Seonghwa collected for him during his absence at school. The view of it brings the fatigue back, but he woke up feeling fairly good, so he decided to take the step and ask Seonghwa for the material he’s missed out on. Hongjoong immediately recognises the handwriting as Minjeong’s, but he tells himself that he’s making things up, that maybe Seonghwa also heard him and gave it to him as encouragement and comfort while working. He props the lined, ripped off piece of paper against the lamp on his desk, willing his eyes to stay on his own papers and the faint ridges his ballpoint pen leaves behind.
“You should text her.”
Hongjoong jumps when Seonghwa’s voice strays from the music he has running, a sound he wasn’t expecting.
“Who?” His eyes jump back to the piece of paper and he thinks about hiding it, but Seonghwa has already seen it and it’d look more suspicious if he did. The scratchy gel pen she uses sharpens the corners of her letters and when he was running the tip of his finger over them earlier, they tickled his skin.
Seonghwa walks up to him, his feet quiet on the floor, and Hongjoong remains with his back to him. He hums as if in thought, “The pretty girl who blushed like crazy when she gave the note to me even though she could’ve texted you.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have my number,” Hongjoong argues uselessly.
“Don’t you have a group chat for your history class?” They do. “And I bet you have her saved.”
“We sit next to each other, of course I do.” Hongjoong bites his tongue at the admission that he knows who Seonghwa was talking about from the very beginning. “Why would I text her?”
Seonghwa takes the worksheets Hongjoong has already worked his way through and scans them, nodding in approval before raising his eyebrow at him, “To be polite and say thank you, duh. And ask her on a date while you’re at it.”
Hongjoong huffs and avoids his eyes, “You know exactly why I won’t do that. And I’m polite enough when we talk, no need to go the extra mile.”
He’s too cold; his muscles are frozen solid and his bones filled with black ice and his joints glued together with lead. He’s too hot; skin liquid lava, hands vibrating with it, legs melting under the weight of everything . Asking her out would feel like allowing blood out on a patch of snow, tainting something untouched. She deserves someone who can move oceans for her and heat them up right to her preferred temperature– not someone who struggles to stay in school for more than two hours a day. I don’t mind messes, his brain reminds him, but she deserves the beautiful type of a mess of rain on a summer day to cool down or kitchen counters full of flour from baking together. The only mess Hongjoong can offer comes in the form of blades, suicide notes, and rotting away in bed for days on end, having to be spoon-fed and carried to the bathroom to take a damn piss.
“She meant it,” Seonghwa adamantly sticks to his interpretation of the poem that’s Hongjoong’s deteriorating mental health and Minjeong right in the middle of it, smiling sweetly, rooted to the ground, while he lost his footing long ago. Seonghwa squeezes Hongjoong’s shoulder and he grows spikes, piercing him.
💌
Don’t say things to make me feel better.
Hongjoong feels bad for the folded up note in Minjeong’s textbook, but he’s spent the weekend spiralling and relapsing and it all ended in writing this note and slipping it into the very back of their history book when he gave it back to her. He does so with a small smile, and hers makes his bigger, easier to execute. During his weekend, he also started accepting that the feeling that overcomes him whenever she just looks at him, that isn’t quite happiness but also not the muted and dulled emotions he usually deals with, is because he is quite fond of her.
PE classes are spent on the benches, catching up on readings and writing essays – and watching Minjeong. Her laughs carry through the whole gym, completely disregarding that they’re on opposite ends at all times; her friends calling for her echoes. The girls are playing volleyball while the boys focus on athletics, running laps and sprinting. A shriek comes from the girls’ half and their teacher, an older woman close to retirement, hurries over and scolds one of them. Minjeong immediately jogs over and wraps an arm around her friend; her face is too far away for Hongjoong to see, but she makes herself taller than she is, and her friend melts into her, their teacher deflates. Together, they leave the gym and Hongjoong looks back down to his book.
He hasn’t been participating in PE lessons since he turned eleven or twelve, which is when he succumbed to self harm and skipped too many lessons to count. It resulted in him being humiliated in front of his former classmates by their headteacher, him having a panic attack, and ending up in emergency care. There, he accidentally spilled all the beans while the nurses tended to his wounds and signed him up for therapy, fully taking him out of school like that. The whole ordeal led to him being prioritised on the adoption lists, with additional notes of self harming behaviour and skipping school, lacking education to proceed with year 7.
Now, he’s watching Seonghwa racing one of his friends in circles, not letting up with the biggest smile on his face. He’s always the happiest when he’s physically active, and his stamina is otherworldly. Hongjoong often makes the mistake of teasing or stealing something from him right in front of his eyes, which will always, without a fail, end in a chase – and every time, Seonghwa has him eating dirt. But it’s too much fun to see his eyes narrow and then hear his cackles as he’s running after Hongjoong and they roughhouse until he asks for mercy in between giggles.
The door to the gym next to Hongjoong opens, and he jumps a bit in surprise, especially when Minjeong steps out of it and drops an index card right in front of him as she hurries back to her friends. Hongjoong freezes, unsure if he should call after her or simply give it back later, but then she looks over her shoulder, right at him, and presses her lips together to hide a smile. Her cheeks are red from tiring herself out and turn into apples. Before anyone else can notice or make a remark, he quickly picks up the card and the light blue creates a contrast to the stark white of his book pages.
I really don’t mind your messy handwriting in my notes (insert a winking face here)
💌
Your handwriting is worse than mine… I’m offended.
His days are a bit brighter, bright enough to join Seonghwa for his birthday to a bowling alley, along with a few of his friends (and Minjeong, she glows). Hongjoong has taken on putting their names into the system: Seonghwa, Charlotte, Jake, Leo, Minjeong, and Hongjoong himself. The music is boring and the people around them are loud, but they’re louder. Seonghwa cheers with his first strike, Jake launches into a dramatic reenactment of To be or not to be with a bowling ball that’s way too light for him and almost flies into the pins, and Charlotte sings along to the currently playing song. Hongjoong doesn’t recognise it, but the sample is familiar enough for his fingers to itch for his headphones and phone, eager to put it into one of his mobile producing apps. He waits his turn and squeezes into the very end of the red bench, recalling the sample as he scrolls through his list of works in progress – all numbered but unnamed – until he finally lands on one that could work with it. Seonghwa is used to his antics, so he puts the ten second audio on repeat during his next turn.
When he sits down again, he combines both best as he can, unsatisfied with the programme (he has a better one at home, on his laptop, one he found for quite cheap), but the buzzing in his fingertips quiets down. Minjeong is suddenly next to him and she has a glass of water in her hand, offering it to him.
“Didn’t see you drink anything yet,” she comments and turns her head back to the boys and Charlotte, who are yelling all over each other. The mid-final scores show Seonghwa as the clear winner, and Charlotte and Jake sharing the lowest rank, with the other three fairly evenly in the middle.
“That’s because I haven’t,” Hongjoong replies belatedly, “thank you.”
Minjeong winks and bounces off to the others, taking a sky-blue ball and playfully elbowing them aside, shouting, “Let the boss play!”
“Girl, you’re losing,” Charlotte snarks with an eye roll and a smirk, to which Minjeong gasps and splays a hand over her chest, leaning back with shock all over her face.
“How dare you!” She continues her act (they’re all theatre kids, with Hongjoong being the exception), turns around with a cocky air of confidence– and promptly sinks her ball into the sidelines.
Jake and Leo burst out laughing and their crouched over figures reminds Hongjoong of Crash and Eddie from Ice Age, their laughter going silent as Minjeong hides her blushing face behind her hand, her eyes jumping to Hongjoong for a split second. He also can’t help but laugh, trying to school his expression into an empathetic one, but he fails when he sees the crinkled corners of Minjeong’s eyes.
Seonghwa comes back with a new bottle of water and asks, “What did I miss?”
💌
Hey, you’re supposed to be nice to me!
Hongjoong listens intently for any movements on the upper floor where his bedroom is situated, but Seonghwa is out with… someone from school, working on something (Hongjoong was half asleep when Seonghwa walked him through his plans, he can’t be blamed for not remembering), and Roseanne is at work. Julia, last time he checked, was napping on the living room couch, with the blinds down and a sleeping mask over her eyes. They seem to always switch: Julia’s okay days are Hongjoong’s bad days and vice versa.
He writes, Let me make it up to you, then?
💌
Minjeong smiles sweetly at Julia, her voice soft after Hongjoong had warned her about the migraines (and then launched into an almost spiral about other things about their home that strayed from most families he knew, like the fact that he’s adopted, that he has two women taking care of him, that Seonghwa is Roseanne’s biological son and she married Julia when he was ten after his father had abandoned them right after birth).
Hongjoong takes her coat, shakes his head at her worries about it being wet from the snow, hangs his right next to hers and says, “They’ll dry, don’t even worry about it.”
“My dad can be a bit difficult with that, so we have an extra entrance area for umbrellas and winter boots, but also for coats that got wet,” she explains and follows him into the kitchen, bending over the vast array of teas Hongjoong shows her and picks out a lemon-ginger one, “I know that most parents aren’t like that, but it’s just a habit for me.”
“Your habit is worrying about wet clothes?” Hongjoong hopes his voice is light enough for it to sound like a tease and not rude judgement, and starts the kettle. When he takes out two mugs from the red cabinets, he hears her shuffling around, coming to a stop in front of the fridge and studying all of the different magnets and drawings.
“Did you draw these?”
Hongjoong laughs, “No, it’s all Seonghwa’s work. I don’t draw.”
Minjeong turns to him and cocks her head, “But you do. Whenever you’re not listening in class, you’re making doodles in between your notes.”
The kettle turns off after bringing the water to a boiling temperature and Hongjoong uses that moment to turn away from her, even though he can still feel her eyes on the back of his head. He pours the water into both mugs and watches the tea bags go for a swim; Minjeong’s water turns into a light yellow and Hongjoong’s a dark green. He never noticed that she noticed his habit of doodling when it was too hard to focus but time won’t pass. Usually he checks out immediately and waits for Minjeong to bump her elbow into his to signal the end of the lesson– the same way she does now, before gingerly taking the kettle out of his hands and putting it back. She takes both mugs and Hongjoong hears that familiar smile in her voice when she says, “Lead the way.”
In his bedroom, that he tidied to the best of his abilities, Minjeong puts down their tea and immediately takes great interest in the posters he’s hung up, a random assortment of whatever fit into the colour spectrum of black and grey, even ones he didn’t particularly like. Some of them are singers, others are magazine covers or ripped out pages, and then there are Seonghwa’s works, the only peaks of colour when he used blue ink instead of black. Hongjoong treasures every one of his gifts greatly, knowing how hard it was to share something so personal.
The setting sun casts a golden stream of light right onto Minjeong and Hongjoong feels his breath and heart stutter at the sight; the red in her hair that’s losing pigment and still catches the light, her jewellery and the gemstones on her painted nails reflecting it. She has stepped closer to him, reading the lyrics written by Hongjoong on ripped out notebook pages that are scattered over his desk and bedside table. His first instinct is to tell her off for it, to take the emotional support lighter he keeps in his pants pockets at all times and burn it all in front of her face. But she’s been nothing but patient, never pushed him to do or say anything, just always was present, so she doesn’t deserve him putting his walls back up when she’s been carefully piling each individual stone he trusted her with.
„You’re staring,“ she says but there’s no hint of dislike in her voice, she only sends him a small smile and takes one of the notes into her hands and starts reading.
Hongjoong wants to say, Can’t help it or no artist could ever picture your beauty and I still think they should try and hang it in every museum and art gallery on this planet, so everyone will be able to see what I see, but he sits down on his bed and fiddles with the end of the tea bag, digs the pad of his thumb in the edges of the paper. Usually, when he gives someone some of his texts to read, he immediately bolts and looks for distraction, but now he studies Minjeongʼs face, not minding her comment about him staring at all (again, how is he supposed not to?).
Her face is so expressive; her eyebrows draw together, her lips purse, and her eyes widen minutely. They go from line to line, then up to reread something, back down to continue – then she reads it again, a smile on her lips (they’re shiny with lip balm or lipstick and Hongjoong wants to find out what it is without outright asking). She repeats one of the lines, “Because every time I speak, I feel like an emotional whore house.”
“I do,” Hongjoong replies, finding how easy it is, despite her triggering exactly that feeling of whoring himself out emotionally by reading his texts. But despite everything, he doesn’t feel like shriveling up and dying on the spot– it is uncomfortable, but her eyes on him don’t feel intruding. He feels seen without being analysed.
“Even with your family?” She puts the notes back down and sits down next to him, leaning against the wall and taking a penguin plush from the corner, petting its head gently.
Hongjoong starts drinking his tea and nods, “Yeah, even with them. It doesn’t feel as bad, but it still makes me feel… Naked.”
“Yeah, I guess you don’t want to be naked around your family…,” Minjeong winks at him and rests the penguin between her stomach and bent thighs, gesturing towards Hongjoong’s tea, “Can you give me mine?”
Hongjoong snorts and leans over to give her the steaming mug, mumbling careful and smiling at her nod, the way she very carefully takes it into her hands. “But that’s also why… this is so hard for me and why it took me so long to, I don’t know, make a move, I guess,” Hongjoong admits while staring at the lone, dried bouquet of roses that’s hanging upside down from his bed frame.
“There’s no rush for anything, don’t worry about it.”
“Is it really as easy as that?”
Minjeong shifts so she’s angled towards him, “What do you mean?”
Hongjoong organises the words in his head, thinks them over and becomes frustrated because no matter how he arranges them, they don’t fully express what he wants to ask, “Aren’t you mad? Frustrated? Upset? I’ve been shutting you out since forever. Didn’t you get tired?”
Minjeong hums in understanding and reaches for another plushie, a bunny that he got from Seonghwa, to set it down on his thighs before she replies, “It’s not hard to be nice to you. Or tiring, or exhausting. I was wondering whether I was too much, maybe, because it was clear that you’re struggling with something that’s bigger than a crush. But you kept responding, in one way or another, so I decided it’s worth the risk.”
Crush? Is this her saying out loud what he’s been trying to suffocate? Like that simple word isn’t putting her heart on display?
“I’m happy you did. I wish it wouldn’t have taken me this long,” he says instead, as if this doesn’t only barely scratch the surface of everything his tongue wants her to know.
“Don’t cry over spoiled milk, or however that saying goes, mh? We’re here now… And there’s only one thing left to do.”
Her grin causes him to raise his eyebrows, a bit suspicious of her plan, but relieved enough from their conversation to trust her. She gives him her mug and he barely has time to properly grab it before her face suddenly is very serious, “What are their names?”
“Whose?” Hongjoong asks with two mugs in his hands, halfway to put them down on the bedside table, if there wasn’t the snow white bunny on his lap, threatening to topple over. Minjeong giggles and takes it into her lap, where the penguin still is resting.
“Theirs,” she pets both stuffed animals and looks back at him expectantly.
“Oh,” he replies and finally puts down their mugs, “They don’t have one?”
💌
“And now you need names for your stuffies?” Yunho concludes and Hongjoong watches his eyes flick over his own screen, the light in his room dim but that doesn’t matter, not when they’ve lived together since they were babies. Yunho is playing some kind of shooter game, shoulders tense, and Hongjoong was cleaning up his music files and all the programs he had downloaded. He also went on another reddit rabbit hole to check if anything new popped up, but closed his browser with slight disappointment after not finding what he was looking for.
They’ve been video calling for the better part of two hours now, and for the past twenty or so minutes, Hongjoong has been retelling how his– date? with Minjeong went. And that she assigned him to come up with names for his penguin and bunny until Monday. It was rather cute, how serious she had been, and he couldn’t help but smile as he remembered the whine in her voice.
“Yeah, but I’m terrible at naming things,” Hongjoong sighs and leans back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling and drumming his fingers on the surface of his desk.
He can hear Yunhoʼs smirk without looking at him, “I can clearly remember kitty, and I won’t ever let you forget.”
“Well, it was indeed a cat,” Hongjoong argues and thinks back to the time when the both of them had shared a room in the orphanage, and the exact moment when he had found a lost, pink stuffed cat in the pouring rain and had carried it to Yunho immediately. They had lived there for almost twelve years, with different foster families taking them in for periods ranging from three weeks to half a year– always together, because Hongjoong had gotten so attached that he became mute whenever they were apart. What did force them away from each other, in the end, was Yunhoʼs aunt stepping up and taking him in at the same time as someone expressed interest in Hongjoong. They’re now three hours apart by train, but Yunho makes sure to call Hongjoong at least once every two weeks, if not weekly.
Hongjoong did go mute for the first month or two, maybe a silent protest to give him back to Yunho, maybe just the repercussions of everything, the trauma from having his only friend taken away from him. That time, he spent listening to Seonghwa yap on and on about Star Wars and drawing and fashion, Roseanne about her work in bookkeeping in a large store that mostly sells books but also other media forms, and Julia about when she was about to become a singer, if it hadn’t been for her migraines (very rarely, she still sings, claims that it distracts her from the pain). Now, he still prefers to listen, but he’s also gained Seonghwa as emotional support to focus on whenever he has to speak in front of more than two people at a time.
Yunho laughs at his argument and jumps with a whispered fuck you before leaning back into his chair, reaching for another can of Red Bull. He hums, “Mh, let’s see… You have a penguin and bunny, right? And the bunny was a gift from Seonghwa?”
“All correct,” Hongjoong makes finger guns at him and Yunho winks (he recently came out as gay to Hongjoong and he feels like with every time they call, Yunho embraces more and more of himself), “and the penguin I got at the home I was at before I ended up here.”
“Are there maybe any recent babies in zoos around you? Maybe you can steal their names,” Yunho proposes and starts searching on his phone, “Man this one classmate of mine– I told you, right? His name is Hunter, and he’s gay but no one is allowed to know.”
Hongjoong hums and nods along, remembering the whole story of Hunter’s dad being the head teacher and wildly and shamelessly homophobic. And he feels for him, it’s hard hiding yourself, but then again, Yunho completely falls under his radar despite coming so close to the stereotype of a gay teenage boy, that he doesn’t think Hunter has to worry. At this point, Yunho just tries to see how far he can push it before he gets told off for anything (and he likes Hunter quite a lot, but he doesn’t like the feeling of having to hide it).
“He actually is thinking of coming out, so every morning and every night he says he’s gonna do it, only for him to chicken out every time. And, sorry dude, that’s tough, but I honestly have better stuff to do than be your emotional support gay,” Yunho groans and presumably replies to one of Hunter’s messages before switching back to the browser to look for names of recently born baby animals.
“Share your screen, dude,” Hongjoong jokingly demands when watching Yunho’s face becomes boring.
Together, Yunho scrolls through websites and Hongjoong declines every name he brings up. Yunho threatens to punch him through the screen and Hongjoong cackles, having pulled up his own research on the side.
“What about Snowball and Kowalski ?”
“Bitch? You were looking too?”
Hongjoong laughs at the look of pure betrayal on Yunho’s face, nods, “Yeah, I made my decision, like, ten minutes ago.”
“You bastard!”
💌
Minjeong doesn’t look convinced. “Snowball?” She asks and crosses her arms in front of her chest, looking up at the grey sky. They’re in a corner of the school patio, not because Minjeong feels the need to hide that they’re talking, but because it’s quieter and there are still free benches to sit. Hongjoong is hitting next to her, happy to watch her face again. Her cheeks are rosy from the cold and her lips are red from lip tint (they aren’t glossy, so it’s either super matte lipstick or lip tint; Hongjoong itches to find out if it’d transfer to his lips or not), and her hair is loosely braided with some strands framing her face.
“Yeah, from the movie Pets, you know? The aggressive tiny bunny,” Hongjoong explains and she looks back at him now, nodding seriously. He smiles because she’s cute and then she smiles after barely looking down at his; she’s so pretty–
“So you’re naming a cute little plushie you got from your brother after an aggressive animal?”
“Now you’re ruining it.”
Minjeong laughs and Hongjoong doesn’t think he’s ever heard her laugh this loudly– his palms become sweaty and she falls into him, giggling into his shoulder and resting her head there even after they die down.
“This okay?” She mumbles after a minute of Hongjoong panicking on what to do. He nods, then, and feels her move, panics again and stammers, “N-No– I mean, yes, it’s okay but no, don’t get up?”
She sings a little okay~ and relaxes back into him. The wind is harsh and she keeps shifting to remove hair from her face, until Hongjoong shrugs his shoulder to get her to sit up straight again. When she does, he removes his own beanie and puts it on her head, tugging all loose strands under it.
“I promise I don’t have fleas,” he jokes and Minjeong only blushes, but doesn’t look away from him even after he’s happy with his work of protecting her ears from infections and her beautiful face from her just as stunning hair. She now carefully touches his hair when it’s falling into his eyes, but he doesn’t mind if it means she’s warm.
💌
Minjeong does ballet, and Hongjoong feels so out of place as he waits among parents and older siblings that look bored to death. It’s been steadily snowing lately, and he knows his hair will be wet by the time they’re back at the train station, but he forgets all about it when the door opens and a small group of girls tumbles out, excitedly talking while their faces are red and they’re sharing their close to empty water bottles. In their middle is Minjeong, getting on the tips of her toes (don’t her feet must hurt?) until she spots Hongjoong and hugs the flurry of girls, accepting the half-cheek-kisses she gets before skipping over to him.
“Hello there,” she grins and Hongjoong wants to kiss her, can’t keep pushing it into the back of his head. He’s not a fan of being perceived, but for once he doesn’t care about the people around them.
“Hi,” he breathes and he knows his eyes are so incredibly fond when he strokes her head to make all the fly-away hairs get back in their place, “Did you have fun?”
Maybe it’s his imagination, but maybe she’s leaning her head into his hand, and it’s the cutest thing ever; he bites his tongue to not scream. But when he lets go of it, it grows a mind of its own and asks, “Can I kiss you?”
Minjeong’s eyes widen in surprise, but then she smiles brightly, “Yes to both.”
Snowflakes are settling in her hair that’s now closer to orange than red, and his breath hitches, scared that he just dreamed up the past few minutes, but then she steps a tiny bit closer and rests her hand on top of Hongjoong’s. He pets his thumb over her cheekbone and slowly leans down, his heart threatens to beat out of his chest when she closes her eyes and he pretends not to hear the whispers and squeals from Minjeong’s friends when he finally kisses her. Today, she’s wearing lip balm and it is pressed into his lips, smooth and sweet. The planet seems to come to a halt, stops spinning, the snow pauses, and the only thing he can focus on is her warmth under his fingertips, her thick jacket against his, the tips of their shoes touching.
She presses closer for a moment before stepping away and hiding her face in her hands. Hongjoong is blushing too hard to attempt to lift his head since he can still feel eyes on them, and is relieved when Minjeong takes his hand and drags him into the direction of the train station.
“Sorry for my friends,” she says to the crunching snow under their boots and Hongjoong links their fingers, lets her continue, “I’m very bad at hiding when I like someone, and they’ve been very invested. So…”
“It’s all good, really,” he assures her and then, because it’s easier, scolds her, “You know, I didn’t give you my beanie just for you to not wear it.”
Minjeong rolls her eyes but smiles and pulls it out from her bag, putting it on her head like a toddler. Her eyes are covered by the rim and there’s a bulge at the back of her head from her bun. Hongjoong can’t help but laugh and indulges her by fixing it until she can see again.
“Do you also want to take out your bun?”
“Nah, my hair is greasy,” she scrunches her nose and grins at him.
💌
The high of officially dating Minjeong is followed by a tire-screeching crash; Hongjoong counts the day passing, but he just lays there and stares at the sky lightening and darkening over and over and over–
A knock on his door, Seonghwa’s voice, “Joong, Minjeong is here. Is it okay if she comes in?”
A shiver of shame runs down his spine at the mention of Minjeong, and the embarrassment straps him down and glues his lips together. He doesn’t want her to see him like this, doesn’t want the image of him right now to remind her that his mess is all-consuming and that he can’t remember the last time he brushed his teeth, let alone showered. He can smell his own sweat and hides under his blanket when his door is opened.
Seonghwa (Hongjoong recognises the sound of his slippers) comes in and lays a careful hand on the blanket lump, petting Hongjoong’s legs. Hongjoong’s eyes grow hot with the tears collecting in them, his skin is tight from the dried blood of today’s relapse, and he wonders for how long he’s going to feel like this. When will people give up on him because he keeps shutting everyone out? For how long will they lie and say it’s okay? Seonghwa’s touch leaves him and Hongjoong chokes on an ugly sob, suddenly noticing the restriction in his chest, the squeezing in his heart, the—
Singing, someone— Julia is singing.
“Mom?”
The singing stops.
“I’m here, my boy,” Julia says and carefully slips one of her hands underneath the blanket, leaving it there for him to take, and continues humming the same song from earlier when he does. She pets over the back of his hand, his knuckles and nail beds, squeezes gently when his breathing picks up again. He sometimes forgets or underestimates how similarly their health issues play out— isolation, having given up on or little trust in medical professionals because they’ve been disregarded too many times, only staying in bed staring at walls or attempting to sleep it all away.
“It hurts…”
Julia hesitates. Hongjoong can feel it in the way her petting stops and her humming becomes quieter, so he scoots to the wall, ever so slowly because he feels disgusting due to the lack of personal hygiene and fears that she’ll reject him. She doesn’t. Her weight settles down next to him and her free hand rubs along his lower back.
“What hurts?” She asks and kisses his head through the blanket.
“Everything,” he sighs and only then notices how true his statement is. His body aches from being curled up and not moving for— how many days has it been? He still went to school on Wednesday, but he already knew then that another bad episode would hit him sooner rather than later. With Minjeong’s visit, it can’t be a school day, since the sun is currently at its highest, so it has to be a weekend. And then his thighs hurt from the cutting, his eyes are sore from crying, and his fingertips and shoulders from picking at his skin and acne. His chest feels okay-ish now, with only the echo of distress.
“Okay, let’s take it easy, mh? Do you feel ready to get up?” She never stops touching him, always gentle and careful.
Does he? He feels embarrassed and not ready to face the damage in any mirror, but he’s itching to clean himself, especially because he can’t shake off the feeling that this episode is over just yet. He replies, “I want to shower and brush my teeth, but I don’t want to look at myself.”
Julia hums in understanding, “How about I cover the mirrors in the bathroom?”
“Can you also close your eyes? Don’t want you to see me either.”
Hongjoong can tell that Julia is swallowing a sigh, tightening her grip on his hand and giving him another kiss, “How about I cover them and then go downstairs? Then you can take all the time in the world.”
“Okay,” Hongjoong agrees, “is Minjeong still here? And Seonghwa?”
“No, they’re in Hwa’s room, I think.”
The answer stings, even though it’s what he wanted to hear. He misses Minjeong (and Seonghwa, he has to admit), but he absolutely dreads her seeing him like this. Surely she’d mind the mess he is now.
Their plan works out perfectly: when Julia leaves his room (not after pressing another kiss to his forehead with precision that causes suspicion), Hongjoong starts to slowly straighten his body and listens to every single bone popping when he stretches out like a starfish. It takes up almost enough energy for him to consider staying in bed, but he hears Julia walking around on the upper floor and then going downstairs, which is his sign. After peeling the blanket away, the flood of sunlight causes him to groan and squeeze his eyes shut. He picks up random clothes from his floor that he remembers being clean enough and makes his way to the bathroom, where he quickly locks the door behind him.
Relief floods him when all mirrors are covered, even the tiny ones on Roseanne’s makeup vanity, and he can drop his clothes next to the sink. He keeps his eyes closed from stripping to toweling his body dry, tasks that usually seem so easy he could do them blindly, but now that he is, he isn’t so confident about that anymore. He bumps into the pointy corner of their sink with his hip while pulling on socks because he loses his balance and then his shin into the toilet bowl when he pulls his pants over his legs a bit too enthusiastically.
He considers going back to his room for half a second as he stares at Seonghwa’s deep green towel that’s draped over the mirror above the sink and then decides against it almost immediately. His room is such a mess and going back would definitely send him spiraling again, filling all the gaps in his body with cement until he’s too stiff to move and falls to the floor, joining the chaos. Instead, maybe he can join Seonghwa and Minjeong? He doesn’t know what they’re up to, but maybe they wouldn’t mind…
He knocks at Seonghwa’s door and holds his breath until Minjeong swings the door open. She gasps and then breaks out into a huge smile, stepping forward and looking unsure of what she’s supposed– or allowed to do. Hongjoong isn’t big on public displays of affection aside from holding hands or maybe giving her a little kiss when she’s glowing and he can’t hold back– his skin feels like it’s crawling whenever his actions scream love and the shame of it has his lungs working overdrive and he ends up bordering on anxiety attacks more often than not. But now…
“Can I hug you?” She asks quietly and Hongjoong’s eyes flick over her shoulder, seeing that Seonghwa is pretending to read one of the manga he recently got into, and then gives her a nod. She immediately wraps her arms around his shoulders and Hongjoong is hit by the overwhelming feeling of this is what I’ve craved and couldn’t put into words. He despises being touched during bad episodes, so much that he forgets they also can help. He squeezes her waist and breathes in the body spray she uses, as faint as it is.
“I’m sorry, princess,” he whispers and holds her tighter when it seems like she wants to let go. Minjeong settles back into him and shakes her head, her nose rubbing into the skin of his neck.
“Don’t apologise, it’s not your fault. I was just worried.”
“Then I’m sorry for worrying you,” Hongjoong continues and smiles at the quiet whine Minjeong breathes into his neck.
“Don’t. Comes with the service.”
Seonghwa catches his eye and winks at Hongjoong.
💌
I think I’ll leave after, Hongjoong writes on a piece of paper and slips it over to Minjeong when their teacher isn’t looking. She finishes up reading the text they were assigned and then scribbles, Want me to come over later?
Hongjoong simply nods instead of writing his answer down and puts the string of the book in between the pages, so he can pick up the text later, hopefully, when he feels better. He’s attempting to push through this episode, simply to finish the school year and keep his sick days below fifty– way more than he’s allowed, but his therapist is cool and did some magic on his head master.
Later is still three hours away, so Hongjoong tries to clean his room. Usually he becomes overwhelmed ten minutes into the affair, and he knows Minjeong doesn’t mind staying in the living room, but he does– he wants to have her in his safe space, in a room with a door that can be closed. So, he pulls every trick in the book to keep going, takes it slow and switches his playlists regularly to not get bored or too caught up in them. The end result was… underwhelming, but Hongjoong truly felt like falling asleep while standing and staring at it all, so he unceremoniously dropped his pants (directly into the laundry basket, look at him go) and crawled under the sheets.
He wakes up to someone wiggling into the space next to him, slowly blinking his eyes open to see Minjeong shyly smiling at him.
“Hi, princess,” he greets her and pulls her closer by her waist, stopping in his tracks when instead of her jeans, his hands suddenly find the hot skin of her naked legs, “Are you sure?”
She hums and hides her face in his chest, pushing her knee further into his hand, “Just don’t… touch me?”
“Never,” he promises and kisses her head, then lets her ramble about everything that happened in the classes they don’t share. His nap energised him enough to not fall asleep again, but Minjeong keeps having to interrupt herself to yawn, and he smiles when she’s only slurring until she falls asleep herself.