Work Text:
JING AN KERRY CENTER
NOVEMBER 2021
Wooyoung thinks he’s going to die—cold, overworked, starving—in Shanghai.
Hongjoong has not stopped walking. The mall no longer structures itself in levels; Wooyoung has passed by this department store entrance, the one with a DKNY stall bordering the perfume aisle, at least five times in the past hour, on three different floors. Hongjoong has supposedly reserved them a table for dinner. Yeosang is fluent in Mandarin. For some reason, Wooyoung remains unfed.
“Wooyoung,” Hongjoong says, eyes bloodshot and wide, “do you have the files for tomorrow’s—”
“No,” Wooyoung interrupts, “no, until I get food, I’m not talking about work, I won’t, no.”
“Fuck, I didn’t copy them before leaving,” Yeosang mutters. Hongjoong sighs and tries to parse through the mall directory once more. Yeosang doesn’t bother to translate for him after the fourth time Hongjoong asked.
Waiting for the other two, Wooyoung leans against the glass balustrade and gauges the moderate distance between himself and the top of Jing An’s Christmas tree, at least three levels tall, the sharp point of its plastic star causing Wooyoung’s guts to recoil at the sight. Until recently, he’s never quite feared heights—not to the point of feeling it so palpably.
God, he’s just fucking hungry. He’s hungry and still can’t speak Mandarin after five months in this godforsaken city and thus can’t flirt successfully with anyone at all unless they’re a foreigner but Wooyoung isn’t into fucking foreigners. Does that make him racist? He’s taken anyway. It shouldn’t matter.
Wooyoung spots the restaurant at the farthest corner of the floor across the balustrade. He points at it, glaring at Hongjoong. “I fucking told you it was in the southern wing.”
“Okay, okay.” Hongjoong raises his hands, throws them back down. They walk quietly until the restaurant’s front desk, where Hongjoong scratches his neck and says, “Look, if this is about Seonghwa breaking your TV, I’m really sorry—”
Wooyoung balks. “Wait, he what?”
Yeosang jerks his head without looking at Wooyoung. “Check your phone,” he says, “Yunho’s been trying to text you.”
A waitstaff hops out of the curtains to usher them in. Wooyoung scrambles for his phone, almost falling flat on his face missing a step up a ledge. Indeed, his TV is gone—screen cleanly cracked into eight identical shards by the looks of the picture Seonghwa sent—though the perpetrator is unclear. San says some variation of sorry in all five of his texts, though in the last one he tries his best to sell Wooyoung the idea of a new TV. Yunho texts that it’s their fault, collectively, and he ‘has a guy’ for a cheap replacement. Seonghwa’s endlessly long message is a deranged play-by-play of how they were playing Warioware, then Seonghwa found it too frustrating, which San took as a cue to peruse the Nintendo Shop, and Seonghwa decided he wanted to play old Wii-esque games, but Switch controllers don’t come with wrist straps and a round of Just Dance ended with Seonghwa’s controller smashing the TV screen. All this is followed by a curt ‘I deeply apologize.’ So it’s Seonghwa.
Wooyoung puts down his phone, slumps in his seat, wails into his palms.
“Did Seonghwa-hyung really break your TV?” Yeosang asks after a while. Wooyoung drags his hands down to his lap. He gives Yeosang a withering look.
“It’s your fault for subletting to Yunho, of all people,” Hongjoong says, peering at the menu. “That’s still fucked up to me.”
“San can’t be left alone for a week, let alone half a fucking year.” Wooyoung inhales deeply, exhales obnoxiously loud. Hongjoong stares at him.
“I never even brought up San? Look, Wooyoung, if you’re so bothered by it, you should’ve taken up my offer to bring him here. I’ve space in my apartment—”
“And I told you, hyung, that’s not gonna work,” Wooyoung snaps. “People have jobs and shit back home? Also, wait—wait, rewind, what does Yunho even have to do with all this? Fucking Seonghwa was the one who broke my TV.”
Between them, Yeosang grins stiffly and holds his hand up. “Let’s just order, yeah?” he says, gently relaying a ridiculous amount of food to the waiter in perfect, enviable Mandarin. At least Hongjoong learned in Taiwan; he sounds like a dying chipmunk most of the time as a result. Wooyoung croaks out a thank you that must be out of tone and counts down the days until he can feel like a normal, well-adjusted human being in Seoul. Forty-five, his app reminds him. He regrets ever saying yes to Seonghwa’s offer of a seat in Yonsei’s MBA program. He regrets saying yes to said program’s exchange term in Shanghai. He regrets ever talking to Seonghwa in general. Where does Yunho fit in all this, again?
“I dunno why, but Yunho is just an unlucky guy, y’know?” Hongjoong says, shrugging. “Gets into weird shit all the time. Now his bad vibes are in your household.”
“I think Seonghwa’s the unlucky one, actually,” Yeosang says.
“I think I don’t care,” Wooyoung singsongs sharply, “because both were there to break my TV!”
Hongjoong looks about ready to launch into his spiel of how Wooyoung simply has the wrong mindset in this situation, so Wooyoung gets up from his seat. Yeosang gives him a close-lipped smile, which reassures Wooyoung that their food will arrive soon, he just needs to walk the mood off. Walking to forget how all the walking earlier irritated him in the first place.
***
Wooyoung finds himself in the middle of the department store; not its front by the DKNY stall, but among at least five different brands with a burgeoning headache from the lights bouncing off the marble floor. He backtracks. The damp, chiseled, zoomed-in face of Takeshi Kaneshiro enters the scene. Plastered around a pillar, his features are wonky, but Kaneshiro is still Kaneshiro, and Wooyoung sighs. Neither he nor San need skincare at the moment. Wooyoung purchases a set from Biotherm anyway, under what he dubs as the Kaneshiro Influence, and thinks his mindset isn’t wrong. Watch this: Jeong Wooyoung is feeling extremely lucky to have a beautiful man like Choi San as his boyfriend, waiting for him in Seoul, where they share a ridiculously adorable apartment together. What joy! Wooyoung is miserable. He is over five-hundred miles away from home, which isn’t a lot, but is enough. It is enough to bring him near-tears from a poorly placed poster of Takeshi fucking Kaneshiro—who isn’t even young and hot anymore, and now Wooyoung begrudgingly accepts that he’s ageist too—because waiting forty-five days before he can be greeted by his beautiful boyfriend who would let Wooyoung fuck him to death any-which-way Wooyoung wants is a bit much. For all parties, involved and uninvolved.
(In Wooyoung’s defense, it felt incredibly good to be free of San for the first sixty, seventy days or so. But then Biotherm Homme decided it was a good idea to choose a washed-up movie star as its brand ambassador and Wooyoung thought he had to obey memory associations and watch Chungking Express. He has been in the same hell as Kaneshiro and his fucking tinned pineapple ever since.)
Food’s here, Yeosang texts. Wooyoung turns on his heel, begins walking back to the restaurant, shifting his small shopping bag from one hand to another. He decides to call San.
“Hey! Hey, Wooyoung, I’m really, really, really sorry about the TV—”
“Wow, I’m doing real fine, San,” Wooyoung says mockingly, close to scathing, “and how are you!”
San is quiet for a couple seconds. If Wooyoung closes his eyes, he can hear the faint draw of breath—deliberate to the point of exaggerating again. “Wooyoung, c’mon,” San says weakly. “I didn’t mean to smash your TV. I’m already scared shitless as is. Don’t start, not while you’re there.”
Wooyoung hums. “Yeah, sorry. I read your texts. For the record, that was definitely Seonghwa-hyung’s fault.”
San huffs a laugh. Wooyoung’s shoulders loosen and sink down. He thinks he needs to see a physiotherapist by the end of this term. Forty-five days more.
“Have you eaten?” San asks, cordial and awkward. Naturally, he still feels bad.
“Am going to,” Wooyoung replies. “Hey, can you send me nudes?”
“Nudes.” San repeats the word with great humor, emphasizing its vowel. “Like, frontal, artistic, fratboy…”
Mentally, Wooyoung has booked off a couple hours of his evening later to jack off. He’ll make sure to cum all over Hongjoong’s showerhead. Just to prove that he has been miserable this whole evening. “Send me whatever, just make sure they’re hot.”
“Will do, sir.”
“Oh, wow, are we roleplaying now?” Wooyoung says through a pinched grin; he feels out of place. His stomach is growling, though, and San is laughing. Good signs. “Hey, text you later? Hongjoong and Yeosang are waiting for me. Love you.”
“Love you too. Oh, happy anniversary, by the way.”
Fuck. Wooyoung is glad he got the Biotherm set. He makes a mental note to find something else. “Happy anniversary. Okay, bye.”
Wooyoung jogs to the table, where Hongjoong and Yeosang have polished off all the pork ribs. Bastards.
“Sit. Eat,” Hongjoong says, chin lifted. Wooyoung sits. He shovels a thing of sticky prawn into his mouth. Silently, Wooyoung wonders if he has time later to make a detour around the Bund, find someone, fuck and ruin Hongjoong’s prized La-Z-Boy recliner. Maybe cum in Yeosang’s bag of Indonesian coffee beans worth a week of his supposed salary. On Hongjoong’s new Celine headband, even. What is ill will to old friends and Wooyoung’s no longer functional dick. He will forget all of this once he’s full, anyway.