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— SPRING —
Han Yujin grew up in a small town near the coastline of Jeju where nothing much ever happens, away from the more touristy parts of the island. It’s a small life, but a peaceful one, and it’s not like he’s particularly drawn towards the overwhelming stress of city living — at the very least, his father has complained enough about it to turn Yujin off from that lifestyle for eternity.
Their family runs a small seaside sushi restaurant, so he does get to see quite a fascinating range of customers, from businessmen trying to impress their clients with the Hans’ once-a-month, always fully booked omakase night to students just trying to grab a bento on the way to school. One of Yujin’s very favorite pastimes, though, is accompanying his uncle to fish for fresh catch every week, because he gets to taste the salty wind tearing against his skin and watch as the waves crash against their tiny boat, a stubborn little thing fighting against the world.
Yujin likes living here, with the fresh air, clear skies and the sea next to them. That’s why it comes as a surprise when a family from China arrives in their tiny town, and the youngest one apparently seems to hate life in the town immediately.
The first thing Yujin — and most other people — notice is that they don’t have a father with them. It’s just the mother, her two daughters, and her son. The mother looks young for her children’s ages, maybe forty at most, and her daughters are twenty-one and eighteen respectively. Shen Quanrui, or Ricky as he tells them to call him, is the ‘baby’ — if you can call him that — at sixteen, barely older than Yujin himself, who’s turning fourteen this year.
No one has any real idea what the Shens do. They keep to themselves, mostly, and the younger daughter leaves after only a month for university in the city.
Term starts again, and despite the infrequency at which Ricky visits the local combined school, apparently his grades are good enough that the teachers don’t rag him all too much about it, according to the senior in Ricky’s grade who’s kind of adopted Yujin under his wing. When Yujin questions how he knows all of this, Gyuvin just laughs, waves it off with a wink, says: “Ah my Jaemminie you have to learn how to make connections~” and nothing else, which doesn’t tell Yujin anything.
Keeping secrets with no conceivable purpose is one of Gyuvin’s more annoying habits, but Yujin will let it be as long as he keeps giving him free pastries from the dessert café he works at down the street.
So anyways, Yujin doesn’t see Ricky often. In fact, he doesn’t see the Shens much at all. It takes a stormy evening near the end of May for him to even realize they’re neighbors.
He’d been planning to play a few games with his friends that afternoon in one of the small pitches near the school, but they’d had to break up early because of the heavy rain. Gyuvin’s dad had called him back early anyways to take care of some shop stuff Yujin wasn’t interested in enough to pay attention to, so they’d been left without a goalkeeper for a while even beforehand, and well — that’s just the natural progression of a bad day, Yujin thinks.
Under the shadows cast by the gray clouds, he nearly misses the blond figure crouched over something at the side of the road. Key word: nearly. And because Yujin is self-admittedly a curious not-kid (he’s a teenager, alright) he leans over to see.
“What’s that?” he asks, and Ricky is so startled he nearly drops whatever he’s holding.
They blink at each other for a second, slowly, and Yujin can hear Gyuvin’s voice cooing in his head, which he immediately dismisses on principle.
“Um- ” Ricky’s voice is surprisingly deep for someone with such delicate features. He hesitates, then looks back down at his arms. It’s then that Yujin sees it — a tiny calico kitten with wide blue eyes staring up at them, sopping wet, shivering, and just generally pathetic. It stirs up something protective in him.
Yujin adjusts his hold on his umbrella so that it covers all three of them. “Where’s her mom? She’s probably missing her daughter.”
“‘Daughter’?” Ricky echoes. “How’d you know?”
Yujin shrugs. “Oh, calico cats are mostly female, so it probably is.” When Ricky only looks more confused, he tacks on, “Gyuvin always has something random to talk about. You probably know him already.”
Against his expectations, Ricky’s face remains blank.
“Guy in your class — you seriously don’t know? I guess it doesn’t matter.” Yujin kneels down for a closer look. “I didn’t know there were cats here.”
Ricky hugs the shivering kitten tighter. “She’s a stray. Someone left her here. I’ve been trying to convince my p- mother to let me take her in, but she won’t let me, so I’ve just been feeding her here. It’s been just over a week, but under these conditions…”
“I’ll take them in.”
Seeing Ricky’s surprised expression, Yujin hurriedly amends his offer. “I mean, not forever, just until the rain gets lighter. I don’t think my dad will let me keep her for long either. We run a sushi restaurant, so. No cats.”
“Thank you,” Ricky breathes, and that’s the end of it. The Hans’ house (and sushi restaurant) is just on the other side of the road, so Yujin opens the door to let him in.
“Were you planning to just stay like that for the entire night?” Yujin asks.
“…No.”
“But you didn’t have anything planned for the kitten,” Yujin guesses. If Ricky’s ears turning scarlet is any indication, he’s hit the nail right on the head. Once Yujin’s explained the whole thing to his dad — who agrees, albeit reluctantly, with a warning that the cat will have to go once the storm ceases — of course his mom has to invite Ricky upstairs for a cup of tea and a quick snack. That is, if a whole plate of tteokbokki counts as ‘a snack’, but hey, they are growing boys.
Ricky is pretty nice, Yujin learns, and polite too. If he were more outgoing, he could be just like Hanbin, who was the neighborhood ajummas’ favorite until he left for bigger dreams in Seoul. Now the title’s been passed on to Gyuvin, whose antics they are almost equally fond of, but there is no way in hell Yujin will ever acknowledge that.
When it’s time for Ricky to go home, Yujin watches with his jaw agape as he knocks on the door next to theirs and bids his goodbyes, disappearing behind the polished wood.
“He’s our neighbor?” Yujin cries to his parents. “You never told me! That was so embarrassing!”
His parents share a look. “You never asked,” his dad says.
“Dad!”
Not even a week later, when it’s finally sunny and warm again, Yujin hauls Ricky along to the one place — or person — he knows will keep the kitty safest.
A bleary-eyed Kim Gyuvin gawks at them from his front door. “You want me to…what?”
“Take in this cat.” Yujin lifts her up towards Gyuvin, like that monkey in the Lion King with baby Simba, and turns on his pleading bunny eyes (not his own words — Gyuvin’s). “Please,” he enunciates. “She’s well behaved.”
It always works on him. Well, almost always.
Gyuvin stares. “I- ” He glances up at Ricky, and he must see something in Ricky’s expression, because he sighs. “Ugh,” he grumbles as he holds out his unnecessarily gigantic hands for the kitten, though Yujin knows he doesn’t mean it. “Fine, you menace. Hand her over.”
Yujin has to fight all seventy-four of his inner demons in his efforts to hide his grin. Ah, hyungs — they’re all the same.
Neither Ricky nor Yujin have the conversational skills of social butterflies like Hanbin or Gyuvin, so they don’t say much to each other on the way back, content with just basking in each other’s presence. The few words they exchange are this:
“Was that Gyuvin?” (From Ricky. Obviously.)
Yujin stares at him. “Wow, you really don’t know anyone.” Not knowing Gyuvin in their town is genuinely incomprehensible.
“Shut up,” Ricky returns halfheartedly. “Is he nice to you?”
Now it’s Yujin’s turn to be confused. “…He literally agreed to take care of an entire cat for us for nothing. He’ll do mostly anything for anyone as long as they ask, and if he likes you enough he plasters himself all over you like an overenthusiastic koala. I’ve been trying to stop him from doing both of those things for ages and he still doesn’t. He’s too nice, in general.”
“Huh.” Ricky sends his gaze back towards Gyuvin’s house with an expression Yujin doesn’t quite know how to read.
They say nothing else for the rest of the journey.
—
After that, Yujin starts to invite Ricky over, occasionally. They live close anyway, and Ricky must feel lonely if he really isn’t close to anyone else in town. Yujin suspects it’s mostly because Ricky’s shy, because Ricky is great. And it’s not like they don’t have the food to spare, being a restaurant and all.
Gyuvin tags along too, usually with an armful of pastries and a declaration of his fatherly devotion to Yujin as he slams the door open — despite his dad being right there — then proceeds to exchange weird looks with Ricky across the table.
There are questions better left unanswered, Yujin decides, after catching them in the act for the fourth time in a single day.
What he doesn’t like about these visits is how Gyuvin and Ricky sometimes go off alone to talk together when he’s called into the kitchen for this and that. Then he has to go find them, but he always catches the tail end of the conversation and Yujin’s somewhat convinced they think he’s just too young to discuss these things with. He doesn’t really understand that. Even if he doesn’t care, he can still listen to what they think they want to do after graduation, thank you very much!
“ — so that’s why you’re here?”
“Mhm.” A noncommittal hum.
“Is it…better for you now? I mean, you know, not including the stuff related to the photo. Sorry about that, by the way. People at our school…they like talking too much. I try to make them stop but they just keep on blabbering!”
A snort. “It’s fine, I don’t care all that much. Just let them. Not like they’re wrong.”
“How can you say it’s fine when they’re- ” It’s then that Gyuvin notices Yujin lingering outside the door. His whole demeanor switches, like a light has been flipped, and he practically beams. “Oh, hi, Jaemminie — what were you doing with ahjussi just now?”
“Just prepping some tuna,” Yujin says, taking it as an invitation to head inside. “I learned a special cut last week so he wanted me to try with a fresh batch.”
“That’s awesome!” he cheers, and Yujin sees his fingers twitch from where they’re laying atop Ricky’s, then settle.
Internally, he thanks Ricky for keeping Gyuvin’s hands busy, because he just got his hair styled by Ricky’s older sister that morning and he does not want to mess up Xiaoting’s hard work — especially not when he’s gotten so many compliments because of it.
Yujin thinks they might like each other. But it’s not like he’ll tell anyone, including Gyuvin and Ricky themselves. He’s just a bit hurt neither of them have told him.
“They’re trying to decide on the chef’s menu this season,” he says, and a judgment about the validity of calling oysters sashimi soon turns the conversation into one about seafood in general and then fine dining, which Ricky gives a staggering amount of input on, describing his experiences in Paris and Madrid and New York — even a place named San Miguel de Allende which neither Gyuvin nor Yujin have ever heard of.
Ricky swears up and down that it exists. Yujin’s just trying to figure out the spelling.
— SUMMER —
On one of those clear, breezy afternoons typical of early July, Yujin finds out that Ricky has apparently never ridden a skateboard before. Gyuvin is off in Seoul doing something or another for Hanbin hyung that Yujin maybe only half-listened to when he was explaining it to them. His own fault? Entirely. But Yujin’s not about to stoop as low as to ask. (Again. For the third time. He really should stop this habit of zoning out.)
So, as one does, Yujin takes on the personal responsibility of being Ricky’s coach, which means they’re now spending half of the morning trying to get Ricky to put his other foot on the board for at least two seconds before chickening out.
“You’ve taken basketballs to your head before,” Yujin says in genuine disbelief. “You’ve scored more three-pointers than the two of us combined. How are you not getting this?”
“Hey,” comes the gritted-out response, “not like I expect to be hit in the head.”
“And you don’t have to expect to crash either, because I’m literally right here,” Yujin says impatiently. “I’m basically the best soccer player in the school. When I say I can catch you, I can, alright? Just step on and kick.”
Ricky looks mutinous under the highlighter-yellow helmet. “I’m six foot.”
Groan counter: thirty-one. “At this rate, I will push you off that thing.” (Let it be said that Yujin has never claimed to be a particularly good coach.)
“Fine, fine,” Ricky yelps, and puts his foot on the board. It finally starts moving.
“Don’t look at the ground! Look ahead! Kick!” Yujin yells, running along. Ricky does as he’s told, a bit too powerfully, and the skateboard begins to speed away.
“How do I stop?”
Yujin blanches. Oh, right. He probably should’ve remembered to explain that particular detail. “Put your foot down! On the side!”
“ How the fuck do I do that?” Ricky’s shouting is starting to become frantic as they near a downhill slope, the board swaying dangerously from side to side as he miraculously keeps his balance but not his direction.
“Oh my god, just — jump off!”
Ricky does as he’s told right before the board begins to roll down the hill, careening into a house’s window as the two watch in frozen horror, shattering the glass into smithereens. One of the skateboard’s wheels cartoonishly catches onto the ledge and bounces back out.
Yujin is the one who recovers first. “Maybe,” he whispers, “if we’re really quiet — ”
“Which fucking asshole just destroyed my window?” a very disgruntled voice roars from inside. “I swear, if I f- ”
There’s a distinct rattling sound of someone attempting to unlock the door.
Ricky and Yujin lock eyes.
“Run,” they mouth to each other, and almost trip over themselves in their haste to get back to their houses, laughing the entire time.
“The skateboard!” Ricky gasps out in between breaths.
“It’ll be fine, probably…” Yujin says back, equally winded and praying to every deity that they don’t get caught. “I mean, it was Hanbin hyung’s! So I just have to bat my eyes a little bit and say sorry…if he finds out, that is.”
That gets an even louder snort out of Ricky. “You’re evil, Tokki-ya,” he accuses. “Taking advantage of someone’s niceness like that.”
Yujin raises a peace sign, purposefully refusing to acknowledge the ‘baby bunny’ nickname Ricky has inexplicably started to call him. (Bunnies are cute. He is cool.) “S’not like he doesn’t know what I’m doing.”
“I think it’s worse that he lets you, actually.”
The town at sundown is quiet, their footsteps and labored breathing being the only sounds filling the otherwise ambient background of cicada-calls and rustling leaves.
“We really do baby you a bit too much, don’t we?” Ricky muses into the air.
Yujin shrugs nonchalantly. “Not my fault.”
“Well.” Ricky straightens up and looks back at where they came from, even though the house with the broken window has long since gone out of sight. “I’m never riding a skateboard again.”
Valid enough, Yujin supposes. “Shame. You learned pretty quickly.”
“Not nearly quickly enough,” is Ricky’s immediate, resolute answer, alongside a dramatic shudder. “That was humiliating.”
Yujin keeps his mouth shut. In hindsight, he really should’ve taught him how to get off first.
—
“So.” The news of Gyuvin’s return to town is announced not by a telephone call, a text, or even word of mouth (though Yujin reckons everyone will know by tomorrow regardless). Because who needs warning, right? No, he barges through the Han family’s door at approximately eleven o’ clock in the evening with no less than six grocery bags hanging off his arms, as far as Yujin can count. “I need your opinion on something.”
Yujin swivels around in the spinny office chair his dad had left downstairs to accommodate their extra guest during dinner service. “Not even a hi?” he shakes his head and juts out his lower lip. “Gyuvin-ssi doesn’t like me anymore after going to Seoul, I see…”
“Ahh, I see — my Jaemminie misses me!” Gyuvin plays along in delight. And maybe Yujin does, a little. Not that he’ll ever say it out loud — Gyuvin’s ego is big enough as is.
He clears his throat. “It’s one hour to midnight, hyung.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Gyuvin sing songs, ignoring Yujin’s very judgmental gaze. He’s built up too strong of an immunity by now. “Whatever! Because! This is important.” He dumps the grocery bags on the table. “Wanna be my taste-tester?”
It’s not like Yujin will ever say no to that. “For what?”
“Strawberry cheesecakes,” he brings out a ribbon-wrapped box, “strawberry daifuku,” another box, “strawberry fudge — ”
Yujin watches in mild terror and abject fascination as Gyuvin brings out a whole Christmas season’s worth of gift boxes one after another onto the table, each one given a name of a random dessert following a ‘strawberry’ descriptor.
“Stop, stop, stop.” Yujin slams his hands down onto the table as Gyuvin’s taking out a box of what are presumably ‘strawberry truffles’. “What’s with your sudden strawberry mania?”
Gyuvin looks caught. “Ah- ”
“And how am I meant to eat all this?” Yujin continues. “There’s at least twelve boxes of strawberry stuff on the table.”
“It’s fifteen…” Gyuvin mutters, abashed.
“That’s worse!”
“You can just taste test,” says Gyuvin hopefully. “Just a bite? Please?”
Yujin squints at him. “Did you make all of this?”
“Yes. There may or may not be, uh…twenty-seven in total, if you count what’s left in the other bags,” Gyuvin says. He’s notably evading Yujin’s gaze.
Twenty-seven boxes. Yujin sighs.
(An hour later, a conclusion is reached: the cookies may be well-crafted, and the cakes may taste good, but the strawberry truffles are definitely on top.)
—
Late summer sees an influx of customers from a variety of places, as usual, and Yujin even finds himself using some phrases he’s picked up from Ricky when Hanbin returns home for a few days hand in hand with his Chinese friend. (Boyfriend, is Yujin’s assessment, but he’s not rude enough to ask why Hanbin doesn’t want to own up to that. Not when he has his own suspicions — ones he’s somewhat reluctant to acknowledge.) Zhang Hao seems pleasantly surprised and teaches him a few more words that Yujin’s not quite sure he’s described to him correctly, judging by the mischievous glint in Hao’s eyes and Hanbin’s fond but disapproving gaze.
Hanbin doesn’t say anything though, which Yujin would normally take as a vouch of honor, but given his wide-eyed adoration, Yujin’s not as convinced this time.
In the middle of all this, Ricky seems to suddenly get whatever the plant version of baby fever is, because Yujin sees him shoveling dirt in the Shens’ backyard more than once. Shoveling dirt? Shen Ricky? That is an insane combination of words.
“What are you doing,” Yujin says one day, peering over the fence. Ricky startles at that, almost dropping his tiny handheld shovel.
“Gardening,” he says, looking up. “What does it look like, Tokki-ya?”
Yujin stares. “Those are strawberry seeds.” He knows this, because the strawberries are sitting cleanly, seeds all plucked, right next to Ricky in a plastic container.
“Who doesn’t like strawberries?”
“Strawberries don’t like it near the coast,” Yujin says. “That’s why Gyuvin hyung got his from his trip to Seoul.”
“Oh.” Recognition flashes in Ricky’s eyes. “The truffles?”
The dots start connecting in his head, but Yujin is not going to think too hard about what Ricky just said. “Have you done gardening before?” he asks. “If you’re not careful, they’ll die really easily.”
Ricky looks down at his seeds. “Oh.”
Yujin clambers over the fence and lands in front of the small area Ricky’s dug out for the seeds. “If you want to plant something easier that you can use in food…lemons would probably fare better here.”
“They’re sour, though.” Ricky pulls a face.
Just a glance at Ricky tells Yujin all he needs to know. “You haven’t tried Gyuvin hyung’s caramel cream toasted meringue lemon mousse pie summer special extravaganza yet,” he accuses.
“Gyuvin’s what?”
“‘Caramel cream toasted meringue lemon mousse pie summer special extravaganza’,” Yujin recites dutifully. “It’s what got him hired at Café Ludia. I think.”
Ricky stares at Yujin. Yujin stares him back in the eye, unwilling to back down.
“Fine.” Ricky relents, somewhat sullenly. “I don’t have lemon seeds, though.”
Yujin can’t help it. He laughs. “My family runs a sushi restaurant,” he reminds Ricky. “We have plenty of lemons. Want some lemonade?”
They bury the seeds in a small tray filled with the pre-watered, fertilized soil Ricky’s prepared, and cover it with the clingfilm Yujin steals from his dad (who most certainly noticed but just turned a blind eye towards it) when they’re done with the lemonade, freshly made from the Hans’ weekly shipment.
“Gyuvin hyung made his caramel cream toasted meringue lemon mousse pie summer special extravaganza recipe because of me, actually,” Yujin tells Ricky proudly later as they sit on the swings at the nearby playground, having nothing else to do after planting the lemon seeds. “Because we weren’t using all our lemons. So he asked for them.”
Ricky smiles. It’s not a common occurrence, so it’s always satisfying when he does, the way he looks down — or away, generally — as you watch the corners of his mouth creep up.
“Did he develop that recipe himself, then?”
“Um.” Yujin thinks about it. “Partly, maybe. He said the original was a peach mousse pie made by his mom, and the caramel cream was a new addition. It’s good, though,” he adds. “Don’t tell him I said this, like ever, but it’s really, really good.”
“Better than Hanbin-ssi’s cold injeolmie toast?” Ricky teases.
Yujin laughs. “A lot better!”
Neither of them are good conversationalists, but Yujin feels like it’s better this way. As they fall into a comfortable silence, he traces out an image of something-nothing-everything with his sneakers on the grass below.
“Wanna know something, Tokki-ya?” Ricky says out of the blue. “I think I like Gyuvin.”
Yujin only blinks up at Ricky when he turns his head to gauge Yujin’s reaction. “Oh. Okay. Did you just figure that out, or- ”
Now it’s Ricky’s turn to laugh. For someone who’s usually so composed, it really is an inelegant laugh. “No, no,” he says in between guffaws. “I think I’ve known for a while. Was it really that obvious?”
Yujin refuses to let himself even think about thinking about everything he’s seen.
“Yes.” Though, in retrospect, it is a bit weird no one else he knows has said much about it. Not even his friends, who usually pounce on stupid gossip about who-likes-who and whatnot. “Anyways, it’s cool. Didn’t know you were into the loser type,” he jokes dully.
“He’s not a loser!” Ricky defends feebly, the most sickeningly sweet expression on his face that Yujin’s ever seen — okay, maybe not ever, but that’s only because he had to bear witness to Hanbin and his ‘friend’ a week ago.
Yujin can’t help the grin that comes over his face. “He is, kinda.”
“You little shit,” Ricky says, but there’s no heat behind it.
They fall back into silence.
“Hey…have I ever told you why I came here?”
Yujin shakes his head, quiet, letting Ricky continue. This is lore, and he’ll be damned if he misses it.
“My father cheated on my mother,” Ricky says simply. “Then, when he got caught, he filed a divorce so he could live with his mistress. She’s, like, twenty, you know? Fresh out of university — actually, I’m not even sure she’s done. Anyhow, after legal proceedings and all that, my mom got his seaside property all the way in another country. And it’s not like she had anywhere else to go, so…”
“That’s horrible,” Yujin decides.
Ricky smiles, sardonically this time. “Yeah. Had to leave everything behind. I mean, I’m fine now, but I really didn’t like it here at first. And it’s hard to make friends here.”
“Your Korean is good though.”
“That’s…not the real reason,” Ricky says softly. “Huh. I thought you would’ve known. I guess it’s my turn to be surprised now. Haven’t you heard what they say about me, Tokkaengi?”
There’s something sad in his eyes, and just like that stormy May night with the tiny kitten, it stirs up something protective in Yujin.
“No.” He thinks for a second. “Are they beating you up? I’ll fight them.”
Ricky shakes his head. “No, it’s something different.”
“But it’s making you sad.”
Ricky’s pause is answer enough.
“I’ll fight them anyways,” Yujin declares. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“Sometimes it’s not physical hurt, Yujin-ah,” Ricky says softly. “Sometimes, the hurt is a little different — a little deeper, even. Sometimes it’s not something you can beat into submission yourself. Sometimes it’s not something you can beat into submission at all.”
But one thing people tend to underestimate about Yujin is that he’s very good at observing people when he puts his mind to it.
See, when he doesn’t care about something, Yujin’s just quiet. He doesn’t particularly like to gossip or anything, but he’ll join in if everyone else is, even if half his mind is wandering around in the clouds and he’ll remember nothing about the entire session of five minutes to three hours (depending on who he’s speaking with). Mmms and aahs are perfectly sufficient to hold a conversation when the other party isn’t interested in you, he’s found.
Over the years, he’s basically mastered the art of being a wallflower, which is exactly what he likes. And it does come in handy from time to time.
Near the end of summer break, Gyuvin and Ricky have an argument Yujin’s not privy to, by virtue of having been invited to hang out with Baek Junghan and his friends (read: play striker for their match, because none of them are remotely as good as he is). It’s a major argument, he can tell, because there’s no other explanation as to why they’re suddenly avoiding each other like the plague for no good reason. And annoyingly, Gyuvin refuses to tell Yujin anything, so Yujin resorts to what he does best.
—
He listens.
—
“I don’t need him to do all that!” Ricky vents to his sister, voice audible even through the walls as Yujin sips serenely on the cup of coffee Ricky’s mother has just brewed him. He watches her slowly and awkwardly turn the volume up on the radio to aggressively blast TVXQ across the house, not knowing that over a decade of living in a restaurant has trained Yujin’s ears to be very good at picking out different sounds, even over music. Like voices.
“Now, he just cares about you- ”
“Fuck that! His friends are starting to find out because he’s so goddamn obvious about it, like a fucking idiot, and he’s not minding my warnings, so then it’s going to be my fault he ends up making his life unnecessarily worse!”
Unfortunately, Yujin can’t quite make out what his sister says next over Changmin’s high notes.
“I know he won’t blame me, he’s a self-sacrificial asshole! He doesn’t blame anyone! I know that! I just want him to be- ” it’s here that Ricky’s words also finally cut off as he lowers his voice to a more normal level.
The coffee is bitter. Yujin doesn’t even like coffee. He keeps drinking it, however. Adds a sense of normalcy to this insanity, kind of.
In any case, it seems to soothe Auntie Shen, so he continues.
Ricky comes out a few minutes later, looking as terrible as someone with features sculpted by angels can look, and Yujin isn’t in the habit of mincing his words. “Wow,” he says, staring. Auntie Shen switches the radio off in the middle of its third loop of Mirotic. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks, Tokki,” Ricky says sarcastically. “You got the compost?”
In response, Yujin points at the trash bag on the floor next to his feet, and Ricky holds open the door to the backyard for him.
— FALL —
Another thing Yujin hasn’t mentioned — or well, he has, it’s a fact everyone knows that Gyuvin and Ricky ignore because they’re too busy babying him (blegh, even thinking that made Yujin feel gross). It’s that he’s fourteen now. One-four. 14. And that means he can work things out pretty easily — has always been able to, actually.
You kind of have to, to be good at observing people.
“Don’t you think it’s weird Kim Gyuvin keeps jumping to his defense?” someone whispers behind Yujin during recess as he’s collecting a can of soda from the vending machine. He stops to listen. An inkling tells him that this is about Ricky, in one way or another, although he can’t possibly imagine why.
“You’ve noticed too? It’s a bit weird, right? Do you think…maybe…”
“He’s like him?” A pause. “Like, like Shen Ricky? No way. That’d be crazy, like if Sung Hanbin came back with a degree in wine tasting instead of becoming a lawyer or something, but worse. It would be all over the town within hours.”
A third voice pipes in. “Plus, wasn’t he dating Lee Minkyung last year?”
“He was, yeah. Let’s be real here for a second — he’s probably just being nice. He’s nice to everyone.”
“Good on him, I guess. I don’t know if I could find it in me to be nice to a- ” whoever it is spits out a very rude word, rather spitefully, and the others laugh along in a cacophony of soulless nastiness that gives Yujin’s head a pounding headache.
The pieces of the puzzle start to click together, and Yujin doesn’t like what he’s seeing in the slightest.
He turns around to see Baek Junghan and his posse. They’re decent at soccer, and he might even have called them friends before. But something about them chatting about Ricky — or anyone — like that makes him violently sick to his stomach.
Still, Han Yujin is not a conversationalist. Any argument he starts, he’s aware he’ll probably lose, especially against so many people.
So he does what he knows he’s much better at.
He socks Baek Junghan in the face.
It’s like the world has frozen around them. Everyone is still chatting and playing, and in the distance there’s still the faint sound of excited yelling as a basketball slams against the backboard nearest to them. A wall seems to surround their small circle of boys at this very moment, blocking out every sound except the static in Yujin’s ears.
“Find another striker,” Yujin says calmly. His knuckles are buzzing. “I’m not playing with a bunch of bigots who talk shit about other people to make themselves feel better about their miserable lives.”
There isn’t a single striker in their grade — or any grade, speaking truthfully — as good as he is. Yujin knows that for a fact. He’s prepared for one of them to retaliate, but Junghan’s posse just glare at him, unmoving. All of a sudden, Yujin couldn’t be more grateful for his instructor forcing him to be part of the local taekwondo black belts’ act during the town-wide variety show last year.
“I’m leaving,” Yujin announces, then walks briskly away. As soon as he’s out of sight, he breaks into a run towards the soccer pitch, where he knows Gyuvin is. “Kimgyu!”
“Ah, Jaemminie! Who taught you that?” Gyuvin calls back joyfully, though he only sends Yujin that one quick acknowledgement before turning his attention back on the ball. He’s the goalkeeper again this time, like he usually is.
Yujin ignores his question. “I need to talk to you.”
There must be something wrong with his expression, because Gyuvin takes another glance at him and immediately sobers, straightening up as someone sends the ball flying towards the net and catches it. “Gotta take a rain check, guys, sorry.”
His friends boo him off the pitch good-naturedly as he walks to Yujin, hurling friendly insults back at them — along with the ball — the entire way.
“What’s up?” Gyuvin asks seriously when he catches up.
“I need you to tell me what exactly you argued about with Ricky — ” Yujin barrels on determinedly, turning a blind eye to Gyuvin’s obvious exasperation — “because these guys in my class just called him a- a bad word.”
And Gyuvin must know exactly what he’s talking about, because his face darkens instantly. “Who?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Yujin dismisses. “I punched him already.”
“You what.”
Yujin blinks, confused. “I punched him. Was I not supposed to?”
Gyuvin opens his mouth, then seemingly rethinks what he’s about to say and shuts it again. “Nah. I would’ve done the same, I think.”
“You would’ve,” Yujin says in agreement.
“Uh…is that all you wanted to talk about, ‘cause - ”
“Ricky,” Yujin reminds him. Gyuvin makes a small ‘ah’ sound and points at him with finger guns, because at the end of the day the most popular boy in their school is honestly just a dork, though Yujin will probably have to keep those thoughts to himself to not incur the wrath of his fanclub. It may be too late for Ricky, but that seems to be for another reason entirely, so he doesn’t count.
“Hey, you might’ve wanted help with your literature homework again, who knows,” Gyuvin jokes (and before you ask, yes, Yujin’s pretend big brother is one of the best humanities students in the school, which is a source of both irritation and pride in equal measure for Yujin).
Yujin gives Gyuvin a flat stare. “…Not the time? Sorry.” Gyuvin glances at his friends playing on the pitch, then back at Yujin. “Let’s head somewhere else.”
“What, you’re skipping school?”
Instead of answering Yujin’s question, Gyuvin just slings his backpack over his shoulder. “What classes do you have left?”
Yujin tries to recall his timetable. “PE? I think? And…moral education.”
“That’s what I thought. You’re not skipping out on anything.” Gyuvin starts walking, and Yujin hurries to catch up. “Either way, I only have history and economics left.”
“You’re not good enough at economics to skip that.”
“Ah.” Gyuvin whirls around, a grin on his face, like he’s in on a joke Yujin isn’t. “Gunwookie is, though.”
Yujin furrows his brow. “Who’s that?”
“Pen pal from Osan. Phone pal, maybe?” Gyuvin tilts his head in consideration, then shrugs. “Well, we met when I went to visit my cousin in Jeju last year — same inn — but we still call and text, and he helps me with school stuff. He’s an academic weapon, kinda.”
Yujin snorts. “Says the grade’s highest scorer in ethics.”
“Touché.”
He follows as Gyuvin climbs over the wire fence separating the school from the central, busiest part of town. “Please don’t tell me you’re bringing me to Café Ludia while committing truancy.”
“I’m bringing you to Café Ludia while committing truancy,” says Gyuvin cheerfully. “Except we’re not truants, because we haven’t missed enough classes for that classification yet, according to the school rulebook. You’re a bit closer though.” He wags his finger at Yujin in mock disapproval. “Tut tut.”
Yujin groans. Somehow, he’s not the least bit surprised Gyuvin knows when he skips lessons. Probably just asks his classmates, too, like the overly charming guy he is.
“Auntie Sung is going to kill both of us.”
“If you want my caramel cream toasted meringue lemon mousse pie summer special extravaganza, I suggest you say nothing to her. We’ll be fine.” At Yujin’s dubious face, he adds, “She’s out for the rest of the month. Off to visit Hanbin hyung in Seoul. Which means I’ll be the only employee for the time being.”
That explains it. Gyuvin might be resilient, but no one has ever survived Auntie Sung’s patented Look of Disappointment.
Once they arrive at the café, Gyuvin starts to rummage around in the shelves and storage boxes for ingredients while Yujin makes himself comfortable at one of the bar seats.
“So what’s the deal?” Yujin asks.
Evading his gaze, Gyuvin dumps a bunch of stuff into the blender and puts it on high. “I guess I kinda do owe you an explanation, don’t I?” He pulls a tray of his ‘signature’ shortbread crust out of the fridge.
“Yes.” Yujin doesn’t budge an inch.
“Right.” Gyuvin types something into his phone, then flips it shut and pockets it as he starts beating the egg whites. He takes a deep breath. “About Ricky and I…we’re dating. Or at least, I think we have been.”
Oh. They must’ve gotten together after that time he talked to Ricky in the playground, then.
Makes sense. “Okay,” Yujin says.
Gyuvin’s head whips up so fast Yujin’s afraid he’ll break his neck. “You’re not surprised.”
Yujin shakes his head. “No, not really.”
“Huh.” Gyuvin goes back to beating the egg whites. “Well. We started dating during summer break, but a lot of people in my grade already thought Ricky was gay before that. He… rubbed them the wrong way, maybe, I’m not sure. Constantly skipping classes and all that — that part’s his own fault by the way, but he’s not aiming for a normal university degree anyway, so it’s fine, probably? Also, as you might have noticed, he’s a bit socially awkward.”
“And Chinese,” Yujin says without really thinking.
“And Chinese,” Gyuvin echoes in agreement. “Gist of it is, people don’t like him, so they invented a reason to excuse it. Don’t know how, but someone got ahold of his camera somehow — pretty sure they stole it — and found a pic of him kissing his ex-boyfriend.” His tone turns sarcastic. “And that made him an easy target. You know how pleasant this place can be about these things.”
Yujin looks down in shame. “I haven’t really paid attention before.” Or maybe he’d just disregarded it as not that important — something he regrets now, seeing Gyuvin’s face morph into one of a faraway wistfulness that makes his heart feel heavy.
“Consider yourself lucky.”
“You had a girlfriend before though, right? So are you- ”
“Gay? No.” Gyuvin flips the bowl upside down. Nothing falls out, and he puts it back down on the counter. “Bisexual. As in, I like both guys and girls.”
“I know what bisexual means. Well, you two make a cute couple, I think. Blergh. Ew. Don’t make me say that again. Is that why Hanbin hyung introduced Hao hyung as his friend instead of his boyfriend?” Yujin muses out loud.
Gyuvin raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t think you’d notice.”
“As if!” He’s properly indignant now. “I have eyes! I’m not a kid!”
“Yes, you are,” Gyuvin says happily, then reaches over to grab the electric mixer while pouring a carton of double cream into a smaller glass bowl. “But thanks for winning me twenty thousand won. I’ll treat you to bingsu later.”
Yujin’s jaw drops. “You bet on me? With Hanbin hyung?” He’s never felt so betrayed in his life.
“I won, didn’t I? Not the point, anyways! As I was saying, they can get nasty about him, though I didn’t think it was a thing outside of our grade.” Gyuvin glances up at Yujin’s disturbed expression and sighs. “At least not until recently. Before you ask, yes, I’ve argued. No, I haven’t fought anyone. Unlike you.”
“I planted a fist in his nose,” Yujin says derisively. “It was not a fight.”
“You did what?” A familiar deep voice exclaims from the entrance. Gyuvin looks up, and Yujin twirls around in his spinny barstool.
The door swings shut with a click. Ricky’s standing there in all his blond glory, glaring at Gyuvin, who shrinks slightly under his accusatory demeanor. “What did you do and why did I get a text saying ‘SOS come to Ludia now’ literally the minute my art studio internship interview ended.”
“Hey! I remembered your schedule right!”
His eyes narrow into slits. “Gyuvin, I swear to god- ”
“He had nothing to do with it, actually,” Yujin interrupts. “I punched a guy because he was being a dirtbag to you. That’s about it.”
If anything, this only serves to make Ricky look more dismayed, for no discernible reason. “Oh, little Tokki, why…” he says, tone softening in something that reads to Yujin — inconceivably — as guilt. “Now they’ll be horrible to you too.”
Yujin stands up to look Ricky dead in the eye. “I don’t care.”
Go Jaemminie, mouths Gyuvin’s reflection in the window as he’s whisking the cream.
Ricky frowns. “You’re only making your own life harder. Everyone knows each other here, Yujin-ah. You’ve all grown up together, and I’m just an outsider. I don’t even know anyone. What good is there in doing all this for- what, me? It just- it doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should- ”
“No, I shouldn’t! And I don’t! And neither does Gyuvin, by the way,” he adds. “I’ve lived with this guy for fourteen years. He’s happier with you than he’s ever been. Do you know that?”
Ricky looks trapped. He turns his gaze onto Gyuvin, who simply stares back without a word. “I- ”
“Happier. Than. He’s. Ever. Been,” Yujin enunciates. “Get it into your thick skull: he chose you over everyone else. Because he loves you. And guess what! I do too! You’re one of my best friends, and no one speaks about my best friend like that!”
The blender beeps once, to indicate it’s done, and then the store is quiet.
“It’s true, you know,” Gyuvin says placidly. “I’d choose you in every universe.”
“Yujin-ah,” Ricky says, still staring at Gyuvin with something unreadable in his eyes, “can you give us a moment to ourselves?”
Yujin hesitates. “But the caramel…”
“We’ll call you back when it’s done,” Gyuvin promises. “You’ll get your fair share of caramel cream toasted meringue lemon mousse pie summer special extravaganza — ”
“How do you two even remember all that,” Ricky mutters under his breath.
“ — Scout’s honor. What was that?”
“Nothing.”
Yujin stifles a smile. “I’ll wait in the playground, then.”
—
The sun’s already starting to go down when Ricky finally arrives and takes a seat on the swing next to the one Yujin’s on. “The pastry still needs to finish baking. But we talked for a while.”
“I’d hope so,” Yujin says dryly. “It’s been hours.”
“Barely two.”
“Yeah. Two hours.”
Ricky chuckles. “I guess so. Do you want to know what we talked about?”
It’s a tempting offer. Yujin considers it briefly. “Not really,” he decides. “Isn’t it private? That’s why you asked me to leave in the first place.”
“It is, a little,” Ricky admits. “But if you wanted…”
Yujin shakes his head. “As long as you made up, then nah, I don’t have to know.” He squints at Ricky, suddenly wary. “You did make up, right?”
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Ricky reassures him. “By the way — not sure how the conversation came to this, but whatever — I told him about the lemons we planted. Did you know Gyuvin said lemon trees grown from pips take a minimum of three years to bear fruit?”
“Three years?” Yujin says, baffled. “I had no idea.”
Ricky laughs. “Don’t worry, Tokkaengi. I don’t think I’ll be leaving this place for a while, anyways.”
Yujin glances up, surprised. “You’re not?”
“No.” Ricky lets out a yawn and stretches out all at once, long limbs unfolding. Like a cat, whispers a voice in Yujin’s head that sounds suspiciously like Gyuvin. “This place is pretty good for art. It’s peaceful, and the scenery is great, and…”
“You do art?” Yujin says, wide-eyed.
Ricky looks at him strangely. “…Yes? I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before.”
“I thought all that talk about Picasso and Monet and whatever was just you being a rich city boy!”
Unfortunately, Ricky seems even more flabbergasted by his statement. “I talk about paint and canvases! I’m planning on going to art school. I just did an interview for an internship at an art studio in the next town.”
Yujin crosses his arms. “How am I supposed to know what fancy art enthusiasts talk about?”
Ricky opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it. “How about this?” He gets up and motions for Yujin to follow him. “I’ll show you.”
They walk all the way back to the Shens’ house, and Yujin watches as Ricky’s deft fingers fly over the keypad. There’s a small blue stain on the bottom of his wrist, Yujin can see it now — how hasn’t he spotted that kind of thing before? Or maybe he just hasn’t tried.
Because Ricky’s bedroom is on the first floor, Yujin has never really had any need to go upstairs, so he’d never thought to ask about it. Now, listening to Ricky talk, he wishes he had been just a bit more curious about the layout of the Shens’ house itself, instead of the surround-sound speakers and fresh-off-the-market game consoles and the ultra high-definition TV.
“Originally, it was supposed to be my bedroom,” Ricky explains on the way up, “but apparently there were some issues with the lighting, so the lights wouldn’t stay on consistently. Imagine not being able to turn your light on at night.”
“Yikes,” Yujin says with feeling.
Ricky nods. “Right? But no one was using it, so I thought — maybe I could just use this for a studio. I used to have one, back h- in our house at Shanghai.”
The door is slightly ajar, so Ricky nudges it open with his foot and leans against it so Yujin can enter. It’s not what Yujin expected — sunlight is pouring in from the window, casting a natural glow on the interior. On the shelf backed against the right wall is a collection of carefully spaced-apart, unframed paintings, interspersed by small clay models and wire structures.
“You do sculptures, too?” Yujin says in wonderment.
“It’s good to be all-rounded,” says Ricky’s voice from behind him. He’s trying to adopt a casual air, Yujin can tell, but he can hear the hint of smug satisfaction in Ricky’s tone anyway.
In the middle of the room, directly in the beam of sunlight, is a half-blank canvas still untouched by paint — if Yujin squints, he can vaguely tell that there are sketch marks on the white backdrop, but otherwise nothing else is really visible. A work in progress, in every sense of the word, and yet there’s something about Ricky showing him his vulnerability in the form of raw unpolished ideas that leaves Yujin’s heart warm.
“What’s that?” Yujin asks, walking towards the canvas to get a closer look. Even at this distance, he still can’t tell what Ricky is attempting.
“That’s a secret, I’m afraid.”
“No fun.”
Ricky laughs, and Yujin turns back. “I don’t like telling people what to think when they see my art. Everyone’s supposed to interpret it differently, my brushstrokes just guide them to where their thoughts settle. Look — what do you think when you see this?” He gestures towards one of the few paintings laid against the wall and the floor, presumably still in the process of drying. “I call it ‘a dream of two stags in a forest’.”
Yujin stares. “That’s…uh, on the nose.”
The scene in the painting is of a forest filled with pastel greens and pinks and yellows, leaves and flowers blurring into each other so seamlessly it’s difficult to tell them apart. Intertwined among the trees are two soft brown stags, just a light enough cocoa color to differentiate from the trees surrounding them. Their antlers, touching as they incline their heads towards each other, are the same color, indistinguishable in their mock embrace. The whole piece has a hazy feeling, like a distant memory.
It makes Yujin feel…weird, looking at it. Not in a bad way, necessarily, just…weird. Like he’s witnessing something too intimate for him — like he’s intruding. He says as much out loud, and Ricky nods. “If that’s what you think. How about this?”
The piece Ricky points towards is one of a small black-and-white lop-eared bunny and a tiny ginger cat. The bunny is hoisting an umbrella over the peacefully slumbering cat, covering the two of them as rain falls onto the scorched earth underneath their feet.
Now, Yujin may not be the best at literature, but that doesn’t mean he can’t read between the lines.
He blinks. “Is that us?”
Ricky tries — and fails — to hide his grin. “Hey, you said it, not me.”
Yujin whirls around. “That’s not fair! What’s with you and bunnies, anyways?”
“You’re our cutest baby bunny, Yujin-ah,” Ricky says very seriously, placing a hand over his heart. It’s a miracle he doesn’t snicker. “The one and only Tokki in our eyes.”
Then, after a second, he adds: “If it helps, I made myself a cat here, so…”
These people, really. Incorrigible. Accepting his fate with a sigh, Yujin turns back to the painting. “It’s very pretty,” he says begrudgingly. “The details are nice. It is cute, I guess.”
“Yeah?” Yujin can hear the smile in Ricky’s soft voice. “Thank you.”
“I’m cool, though. Not cute.”
“Sure, Tokki-ya, sure.”
—
When they finally arrive back at the café, urged on by Gyuvin’s many, many messages (that guy doesn’t double text, he quintuple texts), some sort of loud music is blasting through the speakers that Yujin recognizes as a Sechskies song, though not quite which.
“The caramel cream toasted meringue lemon mousse pie summer special extravaganza is languishing in the fridge, you know,” Gyuvin bemoans.
“Sorry,” Ricky says without an ounce of contrition. “We lost track of time.”
Gyuvin rolls his eyes. “You two are lucky I love you both so much,” he says as he brings the pie out. “The disrespect, really, aish…” He takes out a blowtorch from one of the drawers behind the counter and goes over the meringue until it’s dusted with a deep brown. “What did you even talk about?”
“He gave me a mini-tour of his studio,” Yujin says, gratefully accepting the slice of pie Gyuvin hands him. “It was cool.”
“Yeah?” Ricky sounds all too giddy. “Oh- shit, this is so good. You weren’t kidding.”
“I never kid,” Yujin says solemnly. A lie, of course, but everyone ignores it in favor of digging in. Yujin scoops a big forkful of pie into his mouth, the burst of creamy sweetness and muted acidity leaving his tongue tingling.
“I showed him the one with the stags, and the umbrella one,” Ricky explains to Gyuvin halfway through a bite.
Gyuvin perks up. “Those two? They’re my favorites. Cute little bunny Yujinie!”
Though he’s somewhat aware the effect is mitigated slightly by having his cheeks stuffed full of pie, Yujin glares at him. “I’m not cute,” he protests, voice slightly muffled as he leans down to scrape the last of the pie crust off his plate.
Above him, Gyuvin and Ricky exchange a glance, then burst out laughing.
For once, Yujin finds he doesn’t mind.
— WINTER —
Yellowtail season means Yujin gets invited out on his uncle’s fishing trips more often than not, since — as his uncle quite aptly puts it — more hands catch more fish. Not even the brutality of the cold weather can deter Yujin from going out — the sheer gratification of casting empty nets and dragging them back up full of writhing fish the size of his arm (or more) is another form of that quiet type of adventure Yujin likes best.
Wrapped in three separate layers of warm jackets and fleeces, with an armful of fishy-smelling nets, he watches as they depart from the tiny town docks. The splashing of waves crashing against the boat fills his ears as the land grows smaller and smaller.
“Isn’t this awesome?” Yujin turns to Ricky, who — as another fit teenage boy in their neighborhood — has been recruited onto their small crew of fishermen for today.
He grimaces. “It’s cold.”
“Oh, shut up.” Yujin rolls his eyes with a smile and shoves lightly at Ricky, who barely even moves. “Don’t be a killjoy. You wore a silk shirt outside when we were skating yesterday, and it was way colder then.”
“I will neither confirm nor deny that statement.” There’s a grin on Ricky’s face.
All too used to Ricky’s antics at this point, Yujin shakes his head. “At least you’re wearing appropriate clothes this time.”
“What do you mean Gucci isn’t appropriate for a fishing trip?” Ricky teases.
Yujin doesn’t even bother to dignify that with a response. “You’re secretly worse than I am, you know. I don’t know how Gyuvin doesn’t see that yet.”
That draws an even bigger grin out of Ricky, somehow. “Oh, little rabbit, he does- ”
“Never mind,” Yujin says hastily. “I don’t want to know.”
“Boys!” Yujin’s uncle yells from the front of the boat. “Stop yapping about and come help us with casting the nets! I’m not giving you a full course meal of yellowtail sashimi for free!”
Out of sight from his uncle, Yujin sends Ricky the blandest look he can muster, and whispers: “Yeah, he’s not. Dad is.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, uncle!” Yujin spins around to shout cheerfully, a smidge of satisfaction welling up in his chest when he hears Ricky chuckle behind him.
—
By the time they’re back onshore, the sun has almost set, so Yujin takes advantage of what little sunlight they have left to drag Ricky to the seaside. Their little town isn’t one of the (many, many) tourist spots in Jeju for a reason — it’s not very flashy, sure, and they don’t have any attractions, true, but that’s mainly because there are no beaches or convenient seaview areas, and zero safety measures in place on top of all that.
But of course, someone like Yujin, who’s grown up here all his life, knows every nook and cranny of the path to the sea like the back of his hand.
“That big rock is slippery,” he warns as he leads Ricky down as close to the waves as he’s willing to get without risking a slip. “Watch your step. Some of these can be really sharp, which they should be, with the barnacles and all. Great place to harvest oysters — that’s how we get ours fresh — but you can get nasty cuts if you’re not careful.”
Ricky only gives a short nod, too busy concentrating on stepping exactly where Yujin’s stepping. It’s a little paranoid, in a funny way, but you can never be too careful with the rocks here, so Yujin lets him be.
“Have you gotten any injuries here before?” he asks, once he’s safely seated on the highest, flattest rock next to Yujin.
Yujin shivers. “Ugh. Don’t even remind me. I almost died when I was six.”
“You almost- what?”
“Died,” Yujin repeats nonchalantly, not seeing the absolute horror on Ricky’s face. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I got trapped, basically, not knowing how to get back. Then I fell into the ocean. Tore most of the skin off my leg. I recovered pretty quick,” he adds once he catches sight of Ricky’s expression, “but Mom banned me from going anywhere near here until I was ten.”
He’s never seen Ricky’s eyes so wide before. “I’m…yeah,” he says slowly. “I would’ve done the same.”
“Gyuvin monitored me every time I came down here until I turned twelve.”
“Well yeah, you were a kid,” Ricky says, looking like he’s still trying to process the information he’s just been given. “Still are.”
Yujin harrumphs. “I’m a teenager!”
“Still a kid,” Ricky says with an air of decisiveness. “In any case, I’m glad you’re alive, Tokki-ya.”
“I come out of a near-death experience to third wheel my best friends,” Yujin deadpans. “My best friends who delude themselves into thinking they’re my parents even though they’re like, two years older, what the fuck.”
“Life is cruel,” Ricky says wisely.
Yujin suppresses a laugh. “Shut up. It’s your fault!”
Falling into a peaceful quietude, they watch as the sun dips below the pink-streaked horizon. As the occasional bout of chatter — about sports and art and games and everything in between — intersperses the tranquil air, Yujin watches the shine in Ricky’s eyes and finally lets himself come to the conclusion that he thinks he might’ve already arrived at, months ago:
He thinks Ricky has found his home, now. (And this time, he’s almost sure.)
A ring startles them back into reality, and they both glance down at Ricky’s phone to see the tiny notification screen light up with a text.
Ricky flips open his phone.
From: Auntie Han
Dinner’s ready, please come back.
6:53 PM
“It’s almost seven?” Yujin says in surprise.
“I didn’t realize we’ve been here for that long,” Ricky says, eyebrows raised. “Let’s head back, then. Don’t want to skip out on today’s reward.”
Instead of voicing his agreement, Yujin just hops down and offers a hand to Ricky, who gladly accepts it and follows. Now that they’re aware of how late it is, even the wind seems to bite harder, and Yujin inadvertently grips the jacket tighter around himself as they make their way back to shore in the darkness, shining the mini flashlight he always keeps in his pocket in front of them. It’s around half past seven when they arrive, earning a rightful stink eye from Yujin’s dad, but Yujin finds he doesn’t quite have it in him to care. And from the looks of it, neither does Ricky.
The yellowtail sashimi, by the way, is delicious.
— SPRING, FOUR YEARS LATER —
Ever since Gyuvin and Ricky have gone off to Seoul for university and an art apprenticeship respectively, Yujin’s been lonelier than usual. Which he’d expected, but that doesn’t mean it feels any better.
In the meantime, he’s found something to work on.
A year ago, to celebrate the graduation of the cohort after Gyuvin and Ricky’s, their grade had decided to put on a talent show. Embarrassingly enough, Yujin didn’t have any show-worthy talents except for maybe a few soccer ball tricks. That meant he — and around six other remaining boys — had been left at the mercy of the girls in their classes, and girls can be ruthless and also mildly delusional about the abilities of the average teenage boy. So they voted for five of them to perform Replay by SHINee.
Including Yujin.
It must be said that middle and high schoolers have the memory of fish, basically. Most of them forgot about the incident where Yujin punched Baek Junghan within three months and turned their attention to better things, especially once Gyuvin announced he was off the market for unknown reasons that most people could no doubt guess but just didn’t want to admit. The ‘better things’ in question namely being Yujin’s face, which was very weird, and Yujin will never ever forgive Gyuvin for leaving him to fend for himself with his newfound popularity.
(Worst part is, when he whined to Gyuvin about it, he’d just laughed at him. Traitor.)
It wasn’t like the other boys weren’t cognizant of that, either, and although Yujin really did- does try his best to be nice, he’s just not sunny-bright the way Gyuvin is. Has never been. And jealousy is a thing, right? So he got saddled with all the work of learning the dance and teaching it to a group of extremely unwilling teenage boys.
(He would like to issue a formal apology to every teacher he’s ever complained about. Except for Mrs Kang from second grade math. Mrs Kang can keep suffering for all he cares — that’s just karma.)
All in all, an experience Yujin rates one star out of ten.
Now, why one star and not zero, you ask? That has nothing to do with the performance itself. Yujin might not have liked those boys, but the secondhand embarrassment he went through as they attempted to execute the moves onstage was truly a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. His own dance looked great in comparison, which was terrible for his relationship with his groupmates in the long run but only intensified the insanity of his fanclub, which seemed to appear overnight. Both bad things Yujin never wanted to happen.
The singular star is because of one and only one thing: Yujin…started to like dancing.
Maybe it was the confidence boost from not failing as badly as the others. Maybe it was in his blood all along. Who knows? What Yujin does know is that the stupid show was the entire reason he even knew he could dance in the first place, and now he teaches himself steps and choreographies in his room every day, the mirror that came installed in his closet as his only assistant.
Not even Gyuvin or Ricky have any idea what he’s doing. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure for Yujin — the blood pumping in his ears, the thump of his feet against the floor, and the music flowing through his body.
After one year of watching far too many K-pop music videos, he thinks he’s starting to grasp it, at last. As is customary, the graduates each have a three to five-minute time slot entirely to themselves at the ceremony, where they can read a speech or say their thank-yous or recite a poem, whatever they want to do (as long as it’s polite, apparently, because Yoon Jihyeon being dragged off the stage last year had been painful to watch).
And Yujin’s expertise has never been words.
Hey, his teachers do say to ‘show, not tell’. He’s just putting it into practice.
—
Backstage at the tiny town-hall theater the school uses for all its major events, jitters run through Yujin’s body as he waits for Ha Younha to finish her stand-up comedy routine. Don’t get him wrong, she’s funny, but Yujin’s so anxious he can’t even react to her jokes properly.
“Hey, dude,” someone whispers behind him. “Chill. You’ll be fine.”
He turns around to see Heo Minjoon — one of the boys in his class he’s never really talked to before — give him an encouraging fist bump, just as Younha’s slot ends. He still feels dazed, but somehow, insignificant as they are, Minjoon’s words soothe his nerves a little bit.
“Go!” Minjoon mouths, and Yujin nods, inhaling, before he walks out onstage.
As soon as he does, there’s a smattering of claps, and he’s suddenly conscious of the way murmurs break out among the audience when they notice what he’s holding.
Don’t drop the radio, don’t drop the radio, don’t drop the radio, he chants to himself, both as a calming mantra and a reminder to himself, because he does not have the type of money to pay back Auntie Shen if it breaks.
He steadies the mic in front of him. “Hi, my name is Han Yujin. I don’t have any jokes or essays, but I do have something else for you.”
From near the back row in the pitch-black theater, a whoop that sounds eerily similar to Gyuvin’s echoes through the otherwise silent theater, only to be audibly shushed by someone else Yujin knows can only be Ricky.
Yujin quickly looks down to hide his smile.
Careful not to jostle the mic stand too much, Yujin moves the mic downwards, then puts the radio in front of it and clicks play as he eases into his starting position.
The lilting piano melody of Endless Rain fills the hall, and Yujin lets it go on for a few bars before he shifts his arms, then breaks into his self-made choreography, all sweeping movements and precise waves. A twirl, a jump, a stretch — all connecting into each other as he reaches out, dives into himself for emotions he never knew even he had.
Fall on my heart, in this wounded soul.
Let me forget all of the hate, all of the sadness.
Let me stay as a memory in your heart.
Let me take in your tears, take in your memories.
And three minutes later as the music fades and Yujin comes back to Earth again, waking up to the sound of thunderous applause, there’s only two people aside from his family whose cheers he truly cares about.
—
“You grew up so fast, Jaemminie,” mourns Gyuvin after the ceremony, wiping a fake tear off his face. “I can’t believe our Tokkaengi is going to the big city…”
“Since when did you start calling me that?” Yujin says, incredulous.
Ricky slings an arm around Yujin. From the corner of his eye, Yujin can see a ring on his left middle finger that matches one on Gyuvin’s hand. “How’s it feel to be free from high school, Tokki-ya?” he says dramatically.
“Great.” Yujin grits his teeth as he tries to loosen Ricky’s vice grip on his shoulder — despite what his slimmer build might suggest, Ricky is strong. “You’re heavy.”
At least Gyuvin’s not also trying to crush him. Then he would be in real trouble.
Oblivious to Yujin’s plight, his parents keep taking photos of them on their newly-acquired digital camera. Ricky leans closer to whisper conspiratorially in his ear. “My sister told me something interesting, you know.”
“What?”
Ricky doesn’t answer immediately. “Remember that time you tried to teach me skateboarding and I crashed it into a window?”
“Yeah?” Yujin says, beginning to run out of patience. “What about it?”
“I’ll show you if you run after me,” Ricky says with a grin. “On the count of three.” He’s not looking at Yujin anymore — instead, he’s scanning their surroundings, and Yujin suddenly has an inkling about what he’s planning to do.
Well, this afterparty could use some spicing up.
“Okay,” Yujin agrees with no hesitation.
Ricky unwraps his arm from around Yujin’s shoulders, and Yujin can sense him settling into a too-still stance.
“Three,” he counts under his breath. “Two…”
Gyuvin raises an eyebrow at them, then exchanges a pointed glance with Ricky specifically. After a moment, he seems to understand and surreptitiously steps aside, giving Ricky a discreet thumbs up as he proceeds to engage Yujin’s parents in a scintillating conversation about Italian greyhounds.
“One.”
And they burst into action.
Ricky absolutely books it out of the theater and through the winding corridors of the town hall, the biggest building around for miles, and Yujin follows, bumping recklessly into corners and people alike.
“What the hell are we doing,” Yujin puffs as they sprint past old man Lee’s toy shop down the street and turn the corner.
Everyone on the street is turning to stare — he might even be able to glimpse some people watching them from their windows — but Ricky pays no attention to any of that. “You’ll see,” he says mysteriously.
“Are we even in a hurry?”
A snort. “No.”
Yujin shakes his head at the absurdity of all this, half-laughing. “You’re ridiculous. If no one is going to tell you this, I will.”
Childishly, Ricky looks back for a quarter of a second and sticks his tongue out at Yujin.
They stop in front of Ricky’s house. Following a bit of fumbling with the door lock, Ricky leads Yujin to the back of their house and to their garden, which the Shens had recently turned into a greenhouse using some sort of strong fiberglass. Busy with graduation and job searches, Yujin hasn’t been there lately, having entrusted the duty of taking care of the plants to Auntie Shen in the meantime. But the lemon trees are still right there on the left side, where they’ve always been, and the green buds from a month ago have finally turned a glossy yellow.
“Xiaoting told me first thing when I came back from Seoul,” Ricky says softly. “But I only wanted to show you now.” He walks forward and picks a lemon from one of the branches, then hands it to Yujin.
“Thanks for being here, Tokki-ya. I couldn’t have done anything without you.”
Because Yujin is a strong eighteen-year-old boy, a mere two years away from becoming an adult, he does not cry. If Ricky ever says the waterworks went on for more than fifteen whole minutes — actually, scratch that. If he ever says the waterworks happened at all, he is lying.
“Hey,” Ricky says as he strokes Yujin’s hair from where he lays in Ricky’s arms. “Gyuvin and I — we thought, if you ever want to go to Seoul…our apartment will always welcome you.”
Yujin sniffs and buries his face further into Ricky’s shoulder. The shirt is starting to get all wet, but he can’t bring himself to feel apologetic about it. “I’ve been…I’ve been thinking of going to a dance studio, maybe. I want to dance. Maybe I’ll be a dance instructor or something.”
“Makes sense. Your dancing was great, Yujin-ah,” Ricky says easily.
“You can’t just say things like that,” Yujin grumbles. “Ew.”
Ricky grins. “Looks like our Yujinnie is as bad at taking compliments as ever. I really hope you’re better at teaching dance than skateboarding, though, Tokki,” he adds musingly.
Yujin hits his arm, but there’s no real heat behind it. “Shut up.”
And they stay just like that, just Ricky and Yujin, two ordinary boys who bonded over stray cats and citrus fruit, until a frenzied knocking at the door — definitely, unquestionably Gyuvin — interrupts them with full-body hugs and a plateful of nice lemon (mousse) pie.