like a little planet to his star

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/35303560.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: ENHYPEN (Band)
Relationship: Park Jongseong | Jay/Yang Jungwon
Character: Yang Jungwon, Park Jongseong | Jay, Kim Sunoo (ENHYPEN),
Nishimura Riki | Ni-ki
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - High School, Inspired by Whisper of the Heart,
Inspired by Studio Ghibli, Enemies to Lovers, Coming of Age, Character
Study, Love Confessions, Making Out, Side Love Triangle, Jay is a
complete idiot, Jungwon is trying to romanticize his life iktr
Language: English
Series: Part 1 of i just go. from one day, to the next.
Stats: Published: 2021-11-24 Words: 22457

like a little planet to his star

by tourn_esol

Summary

The boy stood, setting the journal in his outstretched hand and slipping his own hands into
his pockets coolly. He was taller, and Jungwon hated the way his face stayed stagnant
throughout the whole exchange; there wasn’t an ounce of shock or surprise, or regret or
guilt, only mild intrigue, like an adult talking down to a child.

“Cool poems,” he smirked, “a little cheesy, but well-written for the most part.” And then he
walked away.

A small beat to allow for the words to set in. Jungwon was still planted where he stood as
he watched the boy walk around the corner and disappear, leaving behind the faint aroma of
unidentifiable cologne and condescension.

He looked down at his journal, then looked back up, then looked back down. The magic
word etched itself onto his forehead in the form of fine lines and wrinkles.

Cheesy?

Notes

here it is...the long-awaited highly-anticipated highly-debated highly-controversial enemies

to lovers ghibli-inspired jaywon. no words for this really. it kicked my ass. this is
technically the longest one shot ive written bc my jakehoon was split into two parts so
YEAH...oh wow i rlly hope this is good if not u guys r free to beat me up.
 also, i plan to maybe launch a series of ghibli inspired one shots? not too sure about it, but i
already have an idea in my head of one film and the perfect ship for it (hint: i havent written
them before) u will know if u follow me on twt which i have GRACIOUSLY linked at the
end. enjoy !!!

See the end of the work for more notes

“So weird…”

“What?”

The sudden interjection roused him from his studied daze, eyes roaming scrupulously over the
open books splayed out in front of him and then surging upward, eyebrows rising in anticipation, as
if he’d just been caught stealing.

The boy to his right shifted uncomfortably. “Did I just walk in on a crime scene investigation or
what?”

“I’m sorry, I’m just...this is weird right?” He motioned loosely to each of the books opened to the
first page, the one with the library card cataloguing the recent checkouts.

The library was barren, thankfully, as most students weren’t insane enough to get to school so early
in the morning, and most definitely not to make the library their first stop. Jungwon and Sunoo
lived in their own little world though; one where Sunoo was willing to accommodate his best friend
when he flaked and was, without fail, holed up in the school library instead.

Sunoo squinted, leaning over the table and trying his best to make out what he was referring to.

“Jungwon, what is this?”

“Do you not see?” He said pointedly. He only received an unimpressed look, a small pout tinged
with confusion.

“To me, it looks like you’re having a breakdown of some sort.”

“Every single one of these books has been checked out by the same person, look,” he planted his
index finger at the name—it was all the way at the top of the list, indicating that it was the first.
“Park Jongseong, see?”

“I don’t see why that’s so strange,” Sunoo crossed his arms, “and I don’t see why you seem to be in
such a tizzy over it.”

“It’s just…” he sighed, not really knowing what to make of it.

It hit him out of nowhere as he was checking out a book moments ago—it was an anthology of
Greek myths, a recent fixation of his—and he flipped open the front page and there was his name,
Park Jongseong. And something clicked, mind flashing back to every other time he’d checked out a
book during the semester, and before he made it out the door, he dashed down the aisles and took
out every book, one by one, popping them out of the shelves and peeking in:

Park Jongseong
Park Jongseong

Park Jongseong

And his eyebrows scrunched in bewilderment, because there was no way, right? There was
absolutely no way this one guy had read all of these books, and he’d gotten to them first. It had to
have been forgery, or maybe there were multiple people named Park Jongseong at the school, or
maybe there was some elaborate conspiracy and this was all just to rile him up—prolific as the
bookworm and writer of the student body. He was notoriously curious, and for a stunt like this,
who could it have been aimed at but him?

It was grating in a way he couldn't define—pulling at his brain matter like some otherworldly
amoeba had infiltrated his mind with the vendetta of making him fixate over something that
really shouldn't have been so serious.

“It’s just weird is all,” he huffed, his arms at straight angles as his hands were palm-down on the
table. He looked like a detective reviewing crucial pieces of evidence, and he knew where Sunoo
was coming from when he made that earlier comment.

“You know what’s weird?” He turned to look at him. “That you promised you’d come watch the
baseball team’s morning practice with me and I had to go hunting for ten minutes to find you.”

His lips parted and his teeth clenched.

“Sunoo, I’m so sorry.”

“Yea, yea,” he rolled his eyes, “clearly the books are more important than me, and whoever this
Jongseong character is.”

“No, I’m serious, it totally slipped my mind, I got caught up in this…”

“This investigation,” he completed his sentence, and they fit together like puzzle pieces, like they
always did. “Now I’m going to help you put all of these away and we can still catch like, twenty
minutes of it, and we need to hurry. I’m not letting whatever this is get in the way of my Riki-
watching agenda.”

Jungwon gave a small sigh and a patient nod as Sunoo started piling the books in his arms and
shooting him uneasy looks as he tried to figure out the correct place for each of them. They spent
the next twenty minutes doing just that: jabbing at and berating each other from different aisles of
the library, giggling at the pretentious book titles (mostly belonging to the YA section), and teasing
each other for lacking the strength to carry stacks of books in their arms.

Time had grown wings and whizzed right past both of their faces before they could even check the
clock. Sunoo punched him lightly on his bicep. The morning baseball practice would have to be
watched another day.

“So,” Jungwon huffed, sliding onto the dusty, green bench with his journal under his arm and
consequently frightening Sunoo in the process. He paused his thought, giving him a funny look.
“Jumpy much?”

Sunoo tensed, eyes cast downward and fingers intertwined anxiously. Jungwon’s suspicions
deepened observing him—his best friend acting like a rabid hamster under his scrutiny—and began
to rethink about the gravity of the situation. It was concerning enough to receive a text near the end
of class reading, and quote:

meet me at the spot right after the bell rings

pls

god.

and no stops.

its an enmergency

And he knew his best friend had a tendency to overreact about things—especially when it came to
his ridiculous love pursuits— but jeez, with the way he was fidgeting, like a broken children’s toy,
maybe somebody fucking died.

“What exactly is the pressing issue?”

The bench, as nasty as it is, is their spot. It’s stranded, sequestered alone at the top of a hill,
conveniently overlooking the baseball field. On days where Sunoo was feeling particularly bashful,
they’d opt to sit here instead of the bleachers; and besides, the view was pretty. On a beautiful
Thursday in the middle of March like this with swelling white clouds all fluffed and squeezable
like tufts of cotton candy and a sky so blue it would rival Taylor Swift’s eyes, it was perfect to
simmer down after school.

Or, in Sunoo’s current case, detox whatever secret he’d had strapped across his chest for a couple
hours now.

Finally, finally, he turned to Jungwon with a pout and divulged the all-important piece of
information:

“Jungwon, do you ever think about...you know, boys? ”

Oh, that’s it?

He couldn’t hide the disappointment etching across his face if he tried. He didn’t, and he wouldn’t,
Sunoo was his best friend, he could take it. He clenched his teeth and recoiled, like he’d just been
witness to something wildly inappropriate and disgusting, even.

“Boys? Sunoo, don’t tell me you texted me in a panic just to talk about—”

“I got a love letter. Of sorts. I suppose.” He coughed out, hacking it up like a cat would a hairball.

Now this, this was something he could get into. He surged forward, grabbing him by the wrist and
buzzing with excitement.

“Oh my God, you should’ve started with that, what the fuck? Sunoo. Oh my God, is it time? Was
it Nishimura? Did he finally confess—”

“It’s not,” he huffed out, dejected. “That’s the thing.”

His excitement was still present, albeit a little tempered now, simmering down at the concession;
he sat and assessed Sunoo’s frown with a little more solemnity this time, narrowing his eyes.
“Well...the guy can’t be that bad, right? Maybe you should take a chance on him? Is he
handsome?”

“I...I suppose he is…”

“And is he smart? And nice?”

Sunoo nodded twice over.

“It’s just that...I really, really like Riki.”

And yeah, Jungwon was well aware.

If he was being truthful and the suitor in question was good-looking and intelligent and had all the
positive qualities you could come up with off the top of your head, then sure, who wouldn’t take a
chance on someone like that, especially when they’re brave enough to approach you first. It’s a
given, right? Easy. Easy and simple.

However.

Sunoo, as a person, was not easy and simple, not at all. His Nishimura craze has lasted over a
month which, at this point, basically means he’s already planned out their wedding and has already
put into place certain steps to fit him into his life: they’ve attended all of the baseball team’s
games, he’s been keeping track of all the times he’s casually mentioned a favorite restaurant or
favorite place to go in class.

And it was evident that this new person was completely throwing him off.

“I don’t know, Jungwon, I want to but just…”

Jungwon stood without a further word, casting a shadow across Sunoo as he blocked him from
direct sunlight; and it all looked a little dramatic, especially with the way Sunoo’s gaze floated
upward with a blend of concern and fright and caution. Jungwon extended a hand and Sunoo took
it.

“Uh...where are we going?”

“Home,” was Jungwon’s inarticulate response, “I have chores and you have cram school.”

Something so excruciatingly mundane to interrupt the pressing matter they were discussing, but
obligations were obligations. Sunoo grabbed hold of his bicycle that was propped against the bench
and they commenced their walk down the hill and onto one of the winding streets that snaked
upward and zig-zagged into the residential area.

The after-school walk was one of Jungwon’s favorite parts of the day, because the view was
always stunning, and it did wonders to fuel his creativity. There were so many incredible subjects
to ogle, and it was on their first day of school that a life-altering realization sank into his bones:
that everything could be poetry.

There was the pond they passed after dismounting and reaching the foot of the hill: overgrown and
mossy and unkempt, but still beautiful. Untouched by human hands, it was intrinsically itself, it
was the way nature deemed it was to be. He’d created a story about the frogs inhabiting it in his
head—that one of them, the largest, had violently usurped the throne as King of the Frogs, and the
others were conspiring against him—and they went about their froggy business with their
glistening, scaly skin under the increasingly warmer and warmer sun.
He was also in love with the small bakery that was the first sight that greeted them after reaching
the inhabited area. It was run by an old couple, and he’d identified regulars by now, to the point
where he’d wave to them and they’d wave back. And he didn’t know their stories, he didn’t know
what was going on at home that prompted that middle-aged man to visit the shop in his work attire
and bring home six loaves of different types of bread every single week-day—but he damn sure
went home and wrote about it.

The idea that everyone and everything had their own lives—the frogs in the pond toiling over a
political power struggle, the man from the bakery who bought loaves of bread to sate the
omnipotent demonic being living in his backyard and to earn us all another day before it decides to
cast our world into oblivion because it didn’t have its afternoon rye—little microcosms. Sonder.
We couldn’t possibly know what was going on in anybody’s world.

“Are you even listening to me?” Sunoo snapped.

He jolted back into reality, a little too engrossed in the game of marbles a gang of small kids were
playing close to a nearby fire hydrant.

“Yeah, something about a love interest and Nishimura and—”

“Ugh,” he groaned, “at least try to sound a little invested.”

A sheepish grin as he decided to abandon the conversation altogether and reach into his journal,
because as he was observing the marbles game, there were several words popping into his head
that he just needed to record for future use. He went to open his journal and—

Oh, wait.

He was floundering. Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and patting his shirt, the back of his
pants, his pockets.

“What?”

“My journal,” he hissed, like a dragon returning to its den to find his hoard had been stolen. “I
must’ve left it back at the bench.”

A slight frown in response.

“You wanna borrow my bike?”

He rolled his head back and groaned.

“No, you’re gonna be late.” And then, he was like wind. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”

Sunoo grunted at this, but Jungwon was already heaving himself down the block with a farewell.

“Get home safe!” He called out.

Jungwon gave an exasperated sigh, wishing he’d been more active in gym class, or that he was a
wise man like Sunoo and had a bicycle.

School is a short walk, he reasoned with himself, clutching his allowance money in his hand as he
opted to go to the bookstore instead of the local bicycle shop. I won’t need it, he reassured himself,
setting down the stack of books he was intending on reading on the shop counter.

Stupid, silly, naive little Jungwon of the past.

He finally made it back on school grounds and to the bench, but he froze.

Because there was a boy sitting in the same exact spot he was in leafing through his journal. It
wasn’t just a casual peek either—judging by the way that he paused for a bit on every page, the
slight head tilt from left to right as he scanned the words on the paper—he had to have been
examining his work.

His nose scrunched in irritation. Who was this guy? Who in their right mind would go through
someone’s personal stuff like that? He looked like the punchable type. Even from the back of his
head, hair jet black and shiny, he looked easily despisable.

He stormed over, hands in fists, and stopped in front of him. He was ready to give him a piece of
his mind.

“Hey!”

The boy looked up slowly, a sophisticated eyebrow arching, wordlessly asking why he was
disrupting his peace.

“That’s mine.” Jungwon declared, arms crossed and with the most angry-looking face he could
muster staring down at him.

“Oh really?” He responded, quickly flipping to the front of the journal. “ Property of the one and
only, Yang Jungwon,” he recited, and gave his snooty, entitled expression again, “you’re Yang
Jungwon?”

“Yes, I’m Yang Jungwon.” He put forward his hand and waited for him to give it over. “And it’s
not nice to go snooping through other people’s things, you know.”

The boy stood, setting the journal in his outstretched hand and slipping his own hands into his
pockets coolly. He was taller, and Jungwon hated the way his face stayed stagnant throughout the
whole exchange; there wasn’t an ounce of shock or surprise, or regret or guilt, only mild intrigue,
like an adult talking down to a child.

“Cool poems,” he smirked, “a little cheesy, but well-written for the most part.” And then he
walked away.

A small beat to allow for the words to set in. Jungwon was still planted where he stood as he
watched the boy walk around the corner and disappear, leaving behind the faint aroma of
unidentifiable cologne and condescension.

He looked down at his journal, then looked back up, then looked back down. The magic word
etched itself onto his forehead in the form of fine lines and wrinkles.

Cheesy?

And then, as a truer anger started to compile within him—less unfounded, more ardent now—he
bared his teeth and breathed in and angled his head upward and squinted and cried out:

“STUPID JERK!”

And there wasn’t a bone in his body that cared whether he was still within earshot or not, or if any
innocent bystanders heard him and thought he was a freak. He was shaking with anger, clutching
his journal in his right hand until his knuckles were red, and starting storming back the way he
came with even more indignation.
“Stupid jerk,” he muttered, leaving through the school gate and passing the bicycle rack.

“Stupid jerk, stupid jerk,” he muttered, walking down the sidewalk where he turned and left Sunoo
behind to find his own way home.

“Stupid jerk, stupid jerk,” he muttered, still shaking and glowering at the ground.

“Stupid jerk, stupid jerk,” he muttered, climbing the stairs of his building to his family’s apartment.

“STUPID JERK!” he yelled as he slammed the door to his room and slid pathetically down the
back of it, his butt hitting the floor and clutching the journal to his chest as the anger started to
evaporate into steam and made way for something else, something more unwelcome.

“Stupid jerk…he has no idea what he's talking about..." he whimpered, opening the journal to the
page with his first poem, an experimental one, entitled: flight patterns and irregular orbits.

“Jungwon, where are you going?”

The hallways were flooded with students—as they always were as soon as the lunch bell rang—and
Jungwon stopped, much to the slight confusion of a few passersby, and turned to face his friend, a
few steps behind him.

“To the teacher’s lounge.”

“Why?” He had to raise his voice a little bit to be heard over the idle chatter around him. “We
always eat with Mrs. Jung on Wednesdays.”

“I’m going to try and see if I can find out who Park Jongseong is.”

A cryptic look now.

“You’re taking this…very seriously,” Sunoo said cautiously.

Jungwon only nodded, then grabbed him gently by the elbow and beckoned him to follow. He did,
with reluctance laden in his steps, but followed nonetheless.

“Can’t you just give it a break?”

“It will take like, five minutes tops, I swear,” he countered, determined.

And then he whisked himself down a flight of stairs and out of the doors into an outdoor walkway
area, a significantly less amount of students as they were going in the opposite direction from the
cafeteria.

Pushing past a few as they neared the building of their destination, the double-doors that they were
headed toward opened, and out walked an older-looking man—he would’ve guessed he was a
teacher, but he’d never seen him before—and with him was…

“You…”

He didn’t stop walking, but he faltered a bit, evident in the way he paused and grabbed onto the
railing as if a hurricane was about to hit him.
“Who?“ Sunoo pestered, their paths converging imminently.

He had his nose buried in a book—how serendipitous—as he was exchanging words with the older
man he was following, evidently not an active participant in the conversation. Talking just to talk,
no respect given whatsoever.

They passed, and Jungwon made a show of throwing him a nasty look—eyebrows forming a v,
mouth wound tight with consternation—the whole shebang, and thankfully, he saw it. He looked
up from his book and, much to Jungwon’s bewilderment, an amused smile as they locked eyes.

Jungwon was disappointed. He wanted him to be put off by it, or bothered, but he was neither. It’s
like he was enjoying it, or he thought it was cute—both possibilities aggravated him immensely,
and he was soon falling deeper and deeper into this juvenile hatred, the anonymous boy not only
getting under his skin but practically making a home in there, unwelcome.

“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes and shrugged it off, pushing forward and opening the doors to the
teachers’ lounge.

If everybody walked around with a sign on their forehead proclaiming their worst trait, Jungwon’s
would read: severe lack of time management skills, and also, spendthrift.

He woke to a slamming on his door, his mother’s voice booming get up, you’re gonna be late, and
a sequence following: glancing at his alarm clock, realizing he was already late, skipping a
morning shower to throw on a hoodie and some perfume stolen from his sister, grabbing his
backpack and hurrying to the door where he got stopped by his mother’s hand on his shoulder.

He turned, exasperated, and she shoved a brown bag into his clutches.

“Take this to your father, he forgot his lunch.”

He huffed, itching to complain that he was already late, but he already knew she’d retort with a
that’s your fault , and she was right.

He hit the sidewalk with a fire in his step, positively booking it down the roads and avenues toward
the newspaper office where his father worked.

Taking the normal way wouldn’t be enough though, so he had to innovate; conjuring a mental map
of the town that he’d lived in since he was born and trusting his instincts.

Mrs. Oakland’s house came into view—a foreigner with an egregiously loud husky always posted
out front in the garden—and he knew to take a right, stumbling down a few sullied steps
precariously that mellowed out into straight dirt and gravel.

A brief scan and he spotted an alleyway. A cramped one, doing his best impression of Paper Mario
to squeeze through without his broad shoulders becoming a detriment, and a grand sigh of relief as
he made it out onto the other side and the office greeted him—a large blue sign reading The Daily
News, poignantly titled, on the roof—sandwiched between a local coffee shop and some kind of
medical office.

Relieved, he pushed his way in, a few faces he passed lighting up in recognition as he entered—
Mrs. Kim the receptionist, Mr. Takata who was one of his father’s colleagues, Kim Chaewon who
was a recent graduate from his high school and started interning here about a month ago—smiles
exchanged, hurried hello’s muttered as he had to keep up his pace.

“Dad,” he exclaimed, swinging open the door to his office without preamble, not even checking to
see if he was busy or not. Whatever important business he was discussing with whoever important
person could wait; his father was a decorated editor at the office, so his son could never do any
wrong.

“You forgot your lunch,” he chimed with a forced cheeriness, assuaging exasperation from seeping
into his voice.

The cheeriness, however, was short-lived. A brief scan of the room informed him of two things:

1. His father was in what seemed to be a troublesome conversation with his boss—the chief
executive of the newspaper, Mr. Park.
2. The boy is here. You know, that one. He’s sitting in the corner, head held up by his hand
pushing against his temple and legs wide open, manspreading.

All three looked up at once, and all of a sudden, he felt small.

“Oh, sorry,” he bowed quickly in apology.

Both of the adults gave a dismissive wave and his father’s kind eyes greeted him.

“No Jungwon, it’s actually quite fortuitous that you’re here, come sit.” He tapped a nearby chair,
one that was right next to the other boy.

Like oil to water, every bit of Jungwon’s chemistry was urging him to stay away from him. And so,
he muttered a small okay and grabbed the chair and skittered it across the floor closer to where he
was already standing, taking a seat.

If his father was perturbed by this, he didn’t show it. The boy, however, found this curious; he shut
off his phone and cocked his head to the side. Jungwon returned a neutral look. He wouldn’t pull
anything foolish or unruly in front of his father, especially not in front of his boss, and so he would
entertain him like strangers did to each other.

For all intents and purposes, Jungwon has never seen the boy in his life.

“Yang Jungwon?”

A shiver ran through him. So much for setting that precedent.

He just had to speak up, and now a clumsy silence lumbered in. Mr. Park and Mr. Yang were at a
table between the two, almost making it look like a family dinner with the way the four were
positioned; and so, with ample view of both of them, the adults turned to him, then to Jungwon.

“Do you two know each other?” Mr. Park spoke up, his voice holding more gravity that Jungwon
anticipated—his words were enunciated clearly and hung in the air with an ostentatious ring.

The other wasn’t keen to answer, opting to continue to scrutinize Jungwon; his brow scrunched and
one eye squinting slightly, as if Jungwon would come into focus if he tried hard enough.

“No.”

It slipped out of his mouth before he really had a chance to think it through, and an immediate
regret had him in handcuffs; eyes shooting open momentarily before he could return his
countenance to an agreeable in-between, the look of an obedient, quiet Yang Jungwon who’d
stumbled into his father’s office and happened upon someone he’d never met before.

“I don’t know him,” he added. If he was going to lie, he was going to commit to his lie.

The other’s Adam’s apple bobbed, vocal cords flexing; and in this moment, Jungwon couldn’t help
but notice, with his neck pronounced and jawline highlighted, he looked…

Nevermind. He cast the thought out of his head.

“We do. We’ve seen each other around, right?”

What the fuck?

Could he have not gone alone with it? Did he have to complicate things? What was his angle here?
Just what in the world is he playing at?

He tensed, hands in his lap scrunching the fabric of his slacks, and his own father returned a
puzzled look at him behind his glasses.

“We just,” he started, then faltered, catching a glimpse of the boy across from him; jaw clenched,
one brow arched upward in the same way a strict teacher would scrutinize a student, waiting to see
what he’d do next. It boggled his mind, this kid, and why he was so impudent.

“You just what?”

“We just haven’t talked to each other, is all.” Jungwon shrugged, returning the ball to his side of
the court.

“Oh, but we have,” and his head careened at an even more extreme angle. Jungwon blinked back a
grimace and hoped that if he concentrated hard enough, he could telekinetically make his neck
snap in two. “Remember? After school that one day?”

“Nope,” he countered. “Don’t remember it at all. Don’t remember anything of the sort.”

Quickly discovering that they were in the middle of what was practically a children’s dispute, the
adults shook it off and proceeded without further hindrance, despite the fact that the other looked
like he wanted to speak up again.

“We’ve been discussing some things, Mr. Park and I,” Jungwon’s father started, shooting his brow
up toward the other to wordlessly pass him the baton.

“And we’ve come up with a terrific solution to our short-term understaffing problem.”

Jungwon was once again caught off-guard by the magnitude and character with which the man
spoke. He seriously should look into voice acting gigs, although he got the idea that he took
himself too seriously for something like that.

“Yang Jungwon, as a member of your school newspaper and as the son of my partner in crime here,
we’d love for you to do an article for us. It will be a paid gig, of course.”

Oh, wow.

Now don’t get him wrong, he did have a passion for writing, in all of its forms: prose and poetry,
along with things more scholarly and editorial. However, writing for a real newspaper was
something he hadn’t even considered; the school newspaper was just an extra-curricular that he
thought he’d excel in, he hadn’t even entertained the idea of pursuing it as a career path.

Despite that, he recognized what a golden opportunity this was. He smiled his best show-stopping
smile, the one he pulled with people he was trying to impress, and hoped he was glowing with
promise and all things pleasant.

“That would be wonderful! I mean, thank you for this opportunity, I would love to.”

His father gave him a wink. Mr. Park seemed contented, and continued:

“And so, as for the subject of the article, I was thinking of touching on the magnificent
achievements that your school’s debate team has managed to accrue so far this semester. And of
course, who better to collaborate with you on this effort than the captain himself, my son
Jongseong here.”

The smile fell from his face.

Jongseong. Jongseong? Jongseong is the name of Mr. Park’s son. Park Jongseong. Park Jongseong
is across from him—obnoxiously seated, hand still propping up his head by his temple as if it were
a bother to be here, crooked grin on his face like he was observing a mouse that just got stuck in
his trap—and he wanted to walk out of the office now.

There was no way.

He’d idealized this Park Jongseong in his head: well-read and intelligent, teeming with ideas and
quips and scholarly, kept to himself yet still charming and fun.

A bit ridiculous, yes, he recognizes this.

But this is Park Jongseong?

Jongseong was still fixated on him, and his gaze grew too searing all of a sudden—because now it
was Jongseong’s gaze, not the unnamed menace he’d seen around school. And what was worse
was that his smirk persevered—all smug and haughty and taunting—and he knew, he just knew,
that this was something he’d hold over his head for however long they would be stuck together.

He forced a tight smile onto his face.

“That sounds great.”

Little sparks of electricity danced in the air and the space between them was charged now, like
they’d create a thunderstorm inside The Daily News if the tension occupied any more space than it
already did.

Jongseong reached forward to swipe a miscellaneous paper off of the desk, still staring at Jungwon
with eyes that he could not figure out for the life of him, lurking from behind the page.

“I look forward to working with you, Jungwon.”

Smile tighter now, hands balled into fists to the point where his pants were definitely wrinkled
now.

“The pleasure is mine, hyung.”

“You don’t understand Sunoo, this is horrible,” Jungwon exclaimed, pout only growing stronger as
he found it increasingly frustrating to pull a rogue piece of paper from the depths of his backpack.

“Absolutely diabolical of them to do that to you,” Sunoo responded from the desk beside him,
unamused.

Jungwon paused his paper-retrieving endeavor to shoot him a curt look.

“Why are you not standing with me in my pain like a best friend would?”

“Because you have some weird, fucked up delusion that this guy is out to get you.”

“He is,” Jungwon retorted, “he is out to get me. Do you not remember what he said to me the first
time I met him?”

Sunoo took a therapeutic breath, leaning back into his seat and stretching.

The classroom was teeming with chatter—not atypical for a Monday morning—and the two of
them, seated nearly in the epicenter of the commotion, always find it hard to keep their little
reprieve going, especially when there were certain individuals in the mix like Nishimura—

“Hey.”

A light tap to Jungwon’s shoulder, a pencil. He turned.

“What? I’m in the middle of a very important conversation.”

The aforementioned boy performed a frustratingly cute habit of his—pouting and pressing his
index finger to his lips when he was scandalized.

“Sorry hyung,” he managed, “I was just wondering…uh…since you’re so smart with words and
stuff, this assignment is so difficult. Like I can’t wrap my brain around this, seriously.”

Jungwon gave him an assessing look. His gaze proved near lethal judging by the way Nishimura
began to cower, retracting his pencil and pout persevering.

And then, Jungwon smiled—no, smirked—eyes roaming to the boy in the seat next to him, a sly
face mimicking the suggestive side-eye emoji.

“Well I’m busy, but, I’m sure Sunoo would be happy to help!”

“What?”

Nishimura shifted his gaze to Sunoo in an instant—the latter shaking like a stray branch in the
wind, eyes propped open in fear. He was glaring at Jungwon with an intensity and a disbelief that
only made him smile even larger.

“Really? Can you help hyung?”

“Of course he can, he’s actually looking to become a part-time tutor!”

Sunoo made an animalistic noise. “Jungwon!”

Before he had much time to revel in the stunt he just pulled, there’s a tap on his shoulder again.
Wondering why he was the target of so much pestering today, he turned, exasperated, and was
immediately affronted by expensive cologne and a belt buckle reading Balenciaga and he
grimaced.

“Yo Jungwon,” he flicked his head toward the door of the classroom. “Can we talk for a bit?”

The chatter of the classroom halted all at once and everybody turned to them, like he’d just
spontaneously combusted into flames or some other supernatural spectacle.

Except there was no supernatural spectacle—no smoke and mirrors, no magical display of anything
—there was absolutely nothing to ogle at, and Jungwon’s skin crawled at the realization that now,
he was being watched carefully.

People would get the wrong idea.

“Before class starts?” Jongseong added, voice reverberating throughout the silent classroom.

Jungwon groaned, standing with indignation.

“Fine,” and he pushed past him—past Wonyoung perched on her desk who was glaring at him like
he just stepped on her cat, and even past the teacher who was nodding slightly, impressed.

The hallways were thankfully near vacant, the bell signaling that class was about to start
impending. Jungwon leaned against the window and watched as Jongseong emerged from the
classroom, stuffing his hands in his pockets and sizing him up with a smile.

“What, hyung?”

A little bit of venom was tacked onto that, maybe more than he intended, but he shrugged it off.
Jongseong didn’t seem fazed, which was starting to vex him, but he never seemed fazed.

He was quickly finding out that he wasn’t just sometimes like this, he was like this all of the time.
The smirks, the hand-in-pocket move, the taunting head-to-the-side, the opting-to-stare-instead-of-
speak—and oh, when he does decide to speak, it’s either at the most inopportune moment or the
exact words he doesn’t want to hear—and his voice comes out in that choppy, hanging-on-every-
syllable way that people do when they want to sound smart but it ends up presenting as pretentious,
and he—

“So what’s the plan?”

“What plan?”

He leaned against the window of the classroom—the blinds were closed, thankfully—so they
mirrored each other, opposite ends of the small hallway.

“I’m not sure if you forgot or what, but we’re supposed to be working on an article for our fathers’
newspaper? You know the one.”

Obnoxious. Obnoxious and annoying and condescending and haughty and—

“It’s been days and you still haven’t contacted me, so forgive me if I’m taking time out of your day
to—“

“Why did you have to come to my literal classroom?”

Jongseong crossed his arms, guarded now.

“I’m busy. This was the only time where I could find the opportunity to talk to you.”

“Oh sure, yeah, I’m sure you’re very busy and have many obligations.”

“I do,” he shot back, the declaration searing through him like a bullet. “I have obligations. So if
you’re not going to take this seriously then—“

“Focus on your part, and I’ll focus on mine.”

“That’s the thing,” he shook his head, frazzled. “If only we could sit down and talk we could figure
out what we are going to do and how we’re going to do it. I never knew you were like this
Jungwon, you’re being difficult.”

He thrived under the accusation of being difficult, adding it to a facet of himself like loading a gun
and cocking it. He sat atop the windowsill and crossed his legs and returned a hardened glare,
because if Jongseong could be the kind of douchebag who skulked around thinking he can critique
others’ art unprompted and be so loud in all of his mannerisms, then he could be difficult. Being the
bigger person was cruelly overrated.

Jongseong was tapping his foot against the floor impatiently, and with the way his face had
tightened and his arms were crossed and his well-kept bangs started to stray and he was pushing
his back against the wall opposite, he’d begun to unravel. The pleasure he got from seeing him like
this was almost sadistic, and a pang of pride followed—proud that he had the ability to bite back at
him with the same ferocity with which he was wounded himself, proud that he finally had the
upper hand for once.

“If you don’t cooperate with me, I’m telling my telling my father. This'll reach him and he won't
take kindly to—”

“You’re gonna cry to daddy?”

Another pang of pride as Jongseong flinched. Jungwon grinned, delighted.

“You’re gonna cry to daddy because little Jungwon’s being difficult?”

Even he was surprised at the ease with which he spoke—the words seamlessly falling from his
lips, saccharine yet sour—but he didn’t refrain, not a little bit. Not when he found he could evoke a
real reaction from Jongseong, not when he now knows that he can prod at him with his words.

Jongseong’s mouth dropped slightly open in disbelief, jaw going slack. Jungwon regarded him
smugly for a little while, a raised brow complemented with dimples, before continuing:

“Relax, this is a huge opportunity for me and I’m not going to let you get in the way of it,” he
started.

“You are the one getting in the way of it, Jungwon.”

The bell only just rang, but it felt like they'd been here for hours. Jungwon kicked off the
windowsill and strode past him, hand clasped around the door handle.

“I’ll take some pictures at your next club meet, or session, or competition—whatever you guys do
—and I’ll come up with some questions for you to answer and you answer them, simple enough,
right?”
Jongseong went stiff. “So like, interview style?”

“Right. Interview style,” he nodded, “except not a real one. Just write down your answers to the
questions and it’ll be fine.”

He pushed open the door and stumbled into his seat before Jongseong had the chance to propose
exchanging numbers or anything adjacent to it, and heard the clacking of his dress shoes echo
faintly down the hall. He didn't give any attention to the curious stares he got as the lesson started
—or the fact that he didn't know whether they even were curious, because there may have even
been a little bit of envy, or confusion—he didn't know. He didn't want to think about it.

He'd haul himself through this impromptu collaboration and try his best to make it out alive—even
though working side-by-side with Park Jongseong might prove to be the worst form of torture—
and then he could move past this. They all could.

He didn’t understand how Jongseong had at once introduced himself into his life, and now, he was
seeing him everywhere.

Maybe he was parading around town with the words painted in bright red ink across his chest
reading Park Jongseong magnet, but no matter where he scurried in the cramped small town—the
busy hallways, the benches by the baseball field, the shopping district downtown, the cinema, the
town library—he left traces of himself there, the essence of him marking everything like paint. And
what really got under his skin was that every time, every single time, when they’d catch wind of
each other—it was eye contact, it was a disparaging knowing writhing in their gut—he’d do a
quick nod and either a lop-sided smile or a wink.

And he didn’t know what that was supposed to mean.

Because Jongseong was growing more and more enigmatic by the day. He thought he was the
stereotypical cool kid—the persevering belief that he was above everyone else, that he went about
everything with an unearned levity and be arbitrary—but he may have been building a case against
that, unknowingly.

Like now, at the city library.

And this was another confounding factor, because Jungwon was not simply a regular at the library,
he was essentially a part of the staff. Everybody knew him, everybody greeted him when he
walked in, and (don’t tell this to anyone else) he has special privileges when it comes to
information on the next shipment or placing books on hold for his own consumption.

And so, as he was pacing down the non-fiction aisles, a keen eye out for anything space-related
that would pique his interest, he came face-to-face with one of those wooden ladders that people
used to get to the highest shelves. And his eyes drifted upward, and he immediately felt a
condemnation chain itself around his ankle as there Jongseong was—wire-framed glasses and
rolled up shirt sleeves—precariously handling a stack of books and pushing them into their allotted
places.

If he ran now, maybe he wouldn’t notice him. No, actually, he would definitely notice him if he
ran, so that was off the table. Speedwalking, then. Right.
“Oh, hey.”

Damn.

He turned, doing his best to feign an absentminded ditziness, letting his mouth drop open slightly
in false realization.

“Oh, hey,” he echoed without actually meaning to.

With a clearer view now, Jongseong’s body turned to him, he got a better view of his chest—and
besides the fact that his pecs were incredibly filled out and nipples were poking through obscenely,
god, the dude really needed to get a size up—a shiny, gold glint caught his eye, a nametag.

The greasy, good-for-nothing, probably-didn’t-work-a-day-in-his-life cool kid had a part-time job.

Huh.

“You...work here…” he grimaced, a reluctant concession rather than an inquiry.

Jongseong smirked. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Yeah,” he replied, not planning on elaborating on it.

Jongseong did that thing again where his eyebrows shoot upward for a bit and he does a little half-
eyeroll and he pulls his lips inward so that his mouth resembles a straight line, and it reminds him
of what people do when you pass them on the street where they barely know you but they kinda
know you and it’s just. It gives him goosebumps in the worst way.

“You ever planning on answering my texts?”

“Not really.”

“Cool.”

And yes, it was completely intentional. Jongseong had obtained his number through unknown
means, and he slept very well at night with his phone under his pillow, vibrating with the
unanswered wails of one Park Jongseong. And he never opened them, but through the notification
banners, it all sounded desperate and annoying and overbearing, so no.

“You’re a real brat, you know that?”

“Ouch,” he mimed an arrow piercing his heart. “You wound me.”

Jongseong rolled his eyes, returning to his business of organizing the Animals & Nature section,
the top shelf pertaining to oceanic creatures—the ocean was a brief fixation of his, fleeting but
entertaining for the meanwhile—and inexplicably, he was still planted here, white sneakers on the
carpet and staring at him.

Jongseong could probably feel his eyes drilling into the side of his face, and it was unfortunate that
he couldn’t even get his cheeks to rouge or him to fumble his stack of books even. If he was one
thing, it was headstrong and stubborn, and the thoughts running through his head were probably
that he didn’t want to entertain Yang Jungwon and his antics anymore.

But that was too bad, because he had to stay here, meaning Jungwon had an opportunity to meddle
—and it was just too golden not to take. Plus, there was a legitimate curiosity that had been
ingrained in his mind for over a week now, and it was as good a time as any to collect some
answers for the little bit of peace of mind he could salvage from this situation.

“Do you read?”

He scoffed, insulted. “Of course I fucking read.”

“Geez,” he took a step back, “okay Ebenezer, no need for profanity. Aren’t you on the clock?”

A scowl. He beamed. Every scornful reaction he managed to rouse from Jongseong was like a tic
on a scoreboard, a little congratulatory ribbon he could add to his trophy case entitled: Park
Jongseong is a loser and I’m better than him, even if he thinks the opposite.

“What I mean though, is like, the books in the school library, did you actually read all of those?
And how did you get to all of them before—”

“You?” He temporarily halted his book sorting, steeling his expression and glancing over at him.

“Yeah, before me.” Jungwon admitted, hands clasping in front of his waist as he resigned himself
to silence and waited for the explanation that he’d been anticipating for a terribly long time.

“My father is a well-respected benefactor of the school, and frequently donates his collection to the
school’s catalogue.”

He didn’t know if there was any way to phrase that more pretentiously. He wretched.

“And so, yes, I’ve read them. Many a long time ago, many I don’t remember the contents of, but
yes. I’ve read them.” He angled his head to the side. “Does that bother you, Jungwonie?”

He wretched again, the affectionate nickname not only catching him off-guard but resulting in him
visibly cringing. Pleased, Jongseong donned a satisfied smile and went back to his work. Jungwon
balled up his fists and debated in his mind whether or not he wanted to press further for anything,
try to annoy him anymore; but it was evident Jongseong had finally managed to gain the upper
hand, and he didn’t want to fall any further.

He got his answer. In a way. But he still wasn’t satisfied. And so he stormed to the end of the aisle
before catching himself by placing a hand on the bookshelf and turning back to him. And he was
itching to say something, anything, as a lasting reminder that he’d dwell on likely until the end of
his shift, because Jungwon had the idea that he ran through his mind a lot—if the incessant texts
were any indication—but he came up with moot.

And so he just observed him for an uncomfortably long bout of seconds, and it was likely that
Jongseong knew he was lingering, but it didn’t matter.

What was it about his stupid face and his stupid jawline and his stupid way of talking and his
stupidly undersized shirt that was obviously intentional so that he could show off what little muscle
he had that made him want to stay and bother him and inundate him with more and more snark?

Whatever. Fuck. He was catching himself in another spiral. He managed to leave him, finally, but
he headed straight for the doors, thoughts about learning more about space long gone from his
agenda.
He’d written a love poem once. All in one sitting. It flowed from his pen easily, pouring a fresh
bottle of soda over ice—bubbling like the way his stomach sizzled when he brushed his hand
against his, hissing like the way his heart yearned for his, unrequited.

It was easy, really, and a little obsessive.

Forever crafty, he’d cut up pieces of paper into strips, and write down anything that reminded
Jungwon of him: strawberry flavored things, fluffy dogs, snapbacks, flavored chapstick. Then, he
deposited it into a jar, and he thought it would be romantic—and please, excuse him, he was
twelve and just met a high-schooler who wasn’t ashamed to be around him—and when they finally
got together, it would be the pinnacle of everything he’d idealized. A young romance blossoming
like an evening primrose in moonlight.

Of course, that never happened. He moved away to Australia out of nowhere, only leaving behind
a stray flannel. It fit him perfectly, and so he kept it—made it a part of himself and whined and
thrashed whenever someone would touch it—and cherished it, no matter how insane it was. Sunoo
mentioned, several times, that he was psychotic. He reasoned with him that this was what true
romance was like, and tortured artists feel everything more intensely, so he wouldn’t get it,
complete with a roll of the eyes and scoff.

It was fair to say Jungwon’s lack of experience in the realm of love and romance was dreadfully
conspicuous, a walking billboard advertising—this one’s inexperienced and will, in fact, fall for
you, hard and fast—or, at least, that’s what he felt like on some days.

On some days, with emphasis, he’d walk around doing his best to look cold and unwelcoming, and
whenever Sunoo or another “friend” (vaguely, because he only associates with one person outside
of school) would try and indulge him in boy talk, he’d cringe and shoo it away and proudly say that
he was staunchly against dating. And everybody seemed to react rather extremely, jaw dropping
open and countering—but Jungwon, even if for sure, there was someone willing to date you, you
wouldn’t even try?

And he’d pick his chin up and shake his head nope! and he’d hurry the conversation onto
something else and it would always circle back around to the joke that Jungwon is dating his
books, and then there'd be a laugh, and it would be settled.

Sometimes he chalked it up to the ghost of the boy who he was never able to move on from five
years ago, and sometimes he thought that he was simply protecting himself. Because he didn’t
want to divert any time or energy into convincing himself that he’d found another love of his life
and start making them love jars and writing them love poems and seeing them in everything and
becoming grossly attached to anything and everything them .

Lately, he’d been overcome with the sickly feeling that it was the latter.

The afternoon bell ringing pulled him out of his thoughts by force, staring down at all the work
he’d been able to get done during the remainder of his last class of the day during free time: an
outline for the article, detailing the type of questions that he’d ask, and any particular points they
should touch on for what would make an interesting story.

Because, really, he wasn’t looking to just report on the debate team’s progress, he was looking to
tell a story. He was a storyteller after all, and something like the debate team captain juggling
classes and a part-time job and college applications and debate team being able to lead the team to
victory at regionals or whatever their competitions were dubbed was inspiring, and he’d have to
assuage his gripes with Jongseong in order to talk him up well. It was all professional, of course.
Professional business.
Speaking of Jongseong and his tendency to appear out of thin air, in the commotion of the herd of
classmates bustling through the door like the classroom was about to explode, he’d bumped into
another expensive-looking shirt—likely another European brand, he hadn’t paid attention this time
—and he groaned, pushing past him.

“Hey, hello?” Jongseong caught up to him despite the fact that he was trying to pick up the pace,
and his hands were in his pockets where he was convinced they were glued and was walking
backwards like in the movies. And the only thing on his mind was how he’d get him to run into
someone, or a locker, or the wall.

“What?”

“Have you made any progress on anything?” He said, accusatory. “Because while I’ve been
studying, working on my arguments for debate, prepping my college essays, doing—”

“Fucking hell,” Jungwon interrupted him, pulling a piece of notebook paper from the book he had
hoisted to his chest. “I already outlined the article, the whole thing.” He shoved it in his face and
hoped he’d forgot to check behind him and crash into the incoming pillar; it was a failure,
unfortunately, he took the piece of paper and scanned it.

“Seems satisfactory.”

“Hmm, seems satisfactory,” he mimicked, a high-strung voice that moreso vaguely resembled a
Victorian man from the 1800s than Jongseong himself. “You see how stupid you sound when you
talk like that?”

Jongseong wheezed, incredulous, staring at him like he’d just shapeshifted in front of his own
eyes.

“You are such a brat, huh? It just never ends with you.” And it made a tingle run up his spine at the
way he sounded like a disparaging parent rather than a high schooler. “Also, you’re the poet, I
thought you liked big words.”

“Yeah, in writing, not when you’re having a normal conversation.” Jungwon asserted, eyes
darkening as he shot Jongseong a look.

They arrived at his locker, where Jongseong did another typical movie move—leaning his side
against the neighboring locker—instead of standing idly behind him like a normal person. His gaze
bearing straight into him was uncomfortable, to say the least.

“Can you not, like, stare at me?”

“You did this exact same thing to me at the library the other day.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Whatever,” he dismissed, a revitalizing shake of his head to realign his hair before opening the
locker.

“Next debate meet is Thursday, by the way, FYI.”

“Thanks.”
“No problem, also, for the column where—”

As Jungwon’s locker swung open, a rectangular piece of paper slid from being lodged in its
opening, floating down as if in slow-motion before landing on the ground. It was pink, and
Jungwon did not remember having anything like that in his locker.

He looked at Jongseong, as if suspicious, and Jongseong shrugged—the entire exchange wordless,

hilariously—and bent down to pick it up.

“What do you think it is?” Jongseong teased, although the same thought was likely on both of their
minds. Jungwon didn’t want to admit it, for fear of looking like an idiot—and Jungwon would
rather fucking die than look like an idiot in front of Jongseong, or give him any room to taunt him
—and so he stayed quiet.

He bent down and picked it up, opening it gingerly, as if it were laced with anthrax or something,
and it read:

meet me at bulguksa temple. friday at 6. before the sun sets.

- your secret admirer

Very, very puzzling.

This...could it have been a joke? Was there something sinister behind this? But who would do this?

It was hard to deny the pang of delight in his chest at the words—reading them over and over again
as if confirming it were real—the idea that he had charmed somebody so emphatically that they
just had to confess to him and they just had to go through the hoops of slipping a note in his locker
surreptitiously. Everything about it, if it went the way he envisioned it in his head, was so
hopelessly romantic.

The problem was, though, that he hadn’t the first clue as to who it could be. And unless Shim
Jaeyun had returned from Australia out of the blue, his middle school crush was off the table. So
who did that leave?

Jongseong, clearly the type to stick his nose into everything, had his head floating dangerously
close to Jungwon’s as he read the note intently, and the scent of his expensive cologne encroached
swiftly—it smelled like fancy shirts and expensive watches, and basically Jongseong in a bottle—
and he wrinkled his nose at it, pressing his palm flat to the side of his face and pushing him away.

“Get away from me, please.”

Jongseong smiled asymmetrically, and Jungwon detected a hint of a taunt at the surface, a wink-
wonk of his eyebrows.

“Ooh, secret admirer, how exciting.”

“Whatever,” he responded, which seemed to be his new favorite word.

“Somebody’s got the hots for you Jungwon, how does that make you feel?”
He grimaced. The way it made him feel was like his guts were filled with Coca-Cola and
somebody dropped a mento in there, or like a bird had perched itself on his shoulder. Metaphors
and similes would instantly flood his mind whenever he experiences any sensation, particularly
anything out of the ordinary, and he never ran low in his arsenal of poetic language.

However, that was not something he was keen on sharing with Jongseong. Jongseong, who thought
in squares and blocks and when asked the weather would likely respond with a degree, and if he
said something adjacent to—receiving this love letter feels synonymous to staying up until midnight
and being able to open a Christmas present early —he’d be teased relentlessly, and be called
cheesy, and so he refrained from it.

Rather, he shot him a tight smile, the one that he himself was the recipient of that day in the
library, and returned to his business with exchanging the appropriate books and the like.

“Boosts my ego a little,” he said off-handedly, “you wouldn’t know how it feels to be the recipient
of a love letter though, would you?”

“Oh ho ho,” he boomed, “feisty. But uh, of course I do, look at me.”

Jungwon paused, letting his eyes roam over him, head to toe, and he pressed his index finger to his
tongue. Jongseong laughed incredulously.

“Anyway, are you actually going?”

Jungwon shrugged, shutting his locker and glancing at the note again.

“I mean, maybe? Like, why not?”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

Jungwon caught him looking dazed for a moment—but only a moment, and he might’ve missed it
if he blinked—before he regained his composure and his signature grin returned, more toothy this
time.

“Just, didn’t take you for the kind of guy who’d be into that." He pursed his lips. "It could be
dangerous, you know," he then added, as an afterthought.

Doubt spread through him like food coloring splashing into liquid, and his brow arched with
suspicion, observing Jongseong much more closely now, finding it a bit easier to read him.
Because, see, he usually didn’t speak with his body language, it never revealed anything too much.
But now, he could see the bulge of his fingers drumming underneath the fabric of his slacks in his
pockets, and his lean against the locker looking the slightest bit more unnatural.

And it begged the question, what was his aim here?

“Why are you trying to talk me out of it?”

“I’m not.”

He returned upright, maintaining eye contact, but less hardened this time and more uncertain, like
their line of vision was walking on eggshells, and whoever broke it first would fall through the
cracks.
Jongseong frowned, then immediately, a small smile jolted up, and his gaze shot to the other end of
the hallway.

“Gotta go now, but uh, see you at the meet then, I guess?"

Poetry had a way of making everything beautiful—even pain, even loss, even hardship—and that is
why he was in love with it.

He could stand at the base of a tree, glance upward, allow himself to feel for a moment, and would
return with a half-page of words thoughtfully strung together to produce meaning. He could assert
himself in the present, demanding that the emotions he was feeling speak to him directly, and put it
on paper.

Alluring was poetry. He loved to let himself be drawn in.

With the precarious nature of his preferred art form, it came as no surprise that he found himself
cringing every second he had to listen to Jongseong speak—hands gripping the podium like he was
willing the wood to bend to him, words spoken in a sporadic craze, all sharp edges and imposing.

“There have been extensive studies on the harmful effects of cell phone radiation on the
composition of a young brain—”

He knew he didn’t have the attention span of a goldfish, nor was he an idiot, but he simply did not
know what Jongseong was talking about. And at that point, it’s on Jongseong, not him.

Clearly, with the mind that he has, a more eloquent speaker would’ve been able to convey the
message well, and he would’ve been able to absorb the information readily. But something about
Jongseong’s tone jabbed mercilessly under his skin like a splinter. He looked around and wondered
if everybody else was as scandalized as he was.

His body language was extremely forward, bordering on aggression. He was leaning over the
podium like a predator preparing to pounce, glaring with an intensity and bulging his eyes to
accentuate certain points, and he even caught a bit of spit flying out whenever he’d enunciate a
particular s sound. It was garish and crude, and he must’ve been a wealthy old woman in his
previous life, because he would’ve been clutching his pearls if he had any.

From his position at the back row, he was able to observe the audience—the back of their heads,
but that surprisingly elicited quite a bit of information—and unfortunately, he may have been in the
minority here. He didn’t know if he had a legion of fans, but a majority of them were bobbing their
heads thoughtfully, or turning to the person beside them and going—he’s right, I heard that too .

Was he going insane?

The clock ran down and the judge called time—the hastiness in his voice made Jungwon giggle,
and Jongseong sent a cryptic look his way—and before long, everybody was packing up or
crowding at the stage to discuss whatever they were to discuss.

He didn’t know how these meets worked, and he didn’t know if there was an award ceremony of
some sort that he’d have to stay around for. It didn’t appeal to him, and he only promised a couple
shots of the debate team and then he would head home, and all that would be left is the interview
part, where Jongseong would have to fill in the gaps.
And so, he got up and started to head home.

But then, there was an obnoxiously loud slam of shoes hitting the floor and in the span of about
three seconds, Jongseong was first standing on the stage and now between him and the auditorium
doors.

He paused, mouth agape in utter shock at what he just witnessed. The display of absolute fitness he
just watched Park Jongseong pull off was ineffable to him. He quickly gathered his bearings,
remembering how much he hated looking out of sorts in front of him—Jongseong saw an
advantage, and he would use the opportunity to poke and prod at him even more than he already
did.

He straightened.

“Okay Barry Allen, get out of my way please.”

“Let me see the shots you took.”

He tilted his head to the side, then placed a tapping finger at his chin and pouted.

“Hm….” He feigned consideration for a short while, then returned upright. “Nope!”

“Come on,” he whined, “I need to see if I look good or not.”

This struck Jungwon as a little more than hilarious, keeling over in laughter as Jongseong watched,
hands tucked into his pockets.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he said with no remorse, “it’s just that of course you’re the type of guy who’d ambush
the photographer taking his pictures to ask if you look good.”

Jongseong rolled his eyes. “I have to look good.”

Jungwon crossed his arms. “You’re a real treat to be around, aren’t you, hyung?”

He forced a smile onto his face, and he felt like if he tugged it upward anymore it would fall right
off of his face. “Positively delightful,” he chimed, “now, pictures.” He put his hand forward,
beckoning, motioning to the camera slung around his neck.

Jungwon clutched it in his hands like Jongseong would reach forward and snatch it from him—and
honestly, he wouldn’t put it past him—and arched a challenging eyebrow at him.

“Don’t you have to get back on the stage for something or other?”

“Judges take about ten minutes to reach a decision.”

Jungwon gave a cursory glance to his competitor, currently speaking with her own circle of friends.
He returned his attention back to Jongseong.

“Well, I wish Yujin all the best, now excuse me.”

He tried to push forward but Jongseong’s body quite literally blocked him from getting to the door.
He glared at him, more fierce this time, less tauntingly.

“Jongseong,” he spat. “Move.”

“You’re starting to get on my nerves, Yang.” His tone swelled with all of the importance of an
aristocrat, with an insidious kind of threat lurking underneath.

It was then that the harmless banter careened into dangerous territory, and he felt himself start to
get only a little intimidated by Jongseong’s face turning to stone, all of his hard edges being pushed
to the forefront; his skin like gravel, his breath like fire.

“We’re not doing this now. Not here.” Jungwon put his foot down, rising to him.

Jongseong seemed to be in agreement at least, and pushed past him, leaning a little too much
weight into barrelling through his shoulder, and rejoining his crowd at the front of the stage.
Jungwon glared lasers into the back of his head as he walked away, and realized that he was
watching the real Park Jongseong come into focus.

Poetry and moonlight were two phenomena that went hand-in-hand. Sitting in his desk chair as
dusk settled comfortably into night, and leaning over his journal with his pen, and watching the
people pass by his apartment complex below him. It was his sacred space.

His sacred space now, was disrupted. He was tucked into the corner, pulling himself into a ball in
his bed as he watched Park Jongseong take his place in his desk chair next to his window. He
thought it may have been dramatic to say Jongseong is ruining his life, but he is ruining the
sanctity of his space, everything he treasured.

He considered inviting a stranger into his home a less herculean feat than donning a smile and
welcoming Jongseong into his room, and yet, here he was now; like all of the build-up passed him
by in a flurry, or maybe, like he were a ghost. He was uncharacteristically silent—void of his
condescending jabs and infuriating smirks and his Jongseongisms—and it was as if he could reach
forward and instead of colliding with his back, he’d be swiping at air.

It was both marvelous and unbelievable that Jongseong was in his room. The night after the debate
thing, he'd received a barrage of texts:

Park Jongseong

I’m coming over tomorrow night by the way

Park Jongseong

I don’t necessarily know how newspapers work, and you’re the expert here, so you’re gonna help
me.

Park Jongseong

And you can’t say no, I already cleared it with both of our parents. Whatever stupid game or
vendetta you have with me is not going to ruin this. I’m a professional.

And yes, this is how Jongseong operated apparently. Utterly delightful, just as he said.
By the rumbling of his pencil against his workbook, he observed that he was fast, a diligent
worker. He didn’t dawdle, he was the type to prioritize logic, and to get to the finish line in the
most efficient way possible—Jungwon always thought efficacy was a ridiculous thing.

Doubt wormed its way in. He raised a mirror to himself and asked why he was studying the boy so
closely, why the Jongseong on the opposite side of the room was the subject of his frequent
glances—furtive and unnerving—when he could’ve been busying himself with writing, or with his
phone.

Why was it so damning, he thought, to want something he couldn’t have. Was it even desire he was
feeling, or was it intrigue? What was the primordial force compelling him to stare at him, what was
pulling his thoughts into Jongseong’s orbit?

Maybe it was the full moon, but the air in the room was off-kilter. Where there was usually a
tension between them—an invisible barrier that had to be broken through name-calling or teasing
or insults—one simply did not exist. Jongseong was glued to his work, Jungwon was lost in his
thoughts.

Warm lamplight was their only companion, and Jungwon flipped to a blank page, immediately
getting to writing. Because this was something strange, unprecedented even. He’d expected the
night to be thrown off somehow, for an argument to erupt over the specific parameters of the
assignment, for him to show up late so Jungwon could have something to hold over his head.

But with the particular calmness of the night, he had to write this.

Minutes passed. The space was filled by the sound of pencil etching against paper, pen gliding
smoothly over a journal. Staring at the back of Jongseong’s head, it reminded him of their first
meeting—the first time he discovered that Park Jongseong was a complete asshole, the first time
he found that he would make him his mortal enemy until the end of time.

He still didn’t like him. He didn't know if he ever would, unless he changed. He didn’t like the
way he was rigid instead of fluid, anchored to the ground instead of floaty. He didn’t like that every
other thing out of his mouth was an assertion, not a suggestion or an observation. He didn’t like
that he was entitled, or that he talked down to him, or that he was fact-oriented, or that he spoke
with a particular cadence that was exhausting to follow.

He didn’t like Park Jongseong. He didn’t.

But the wonders of the full moon were elusive, and its possibilities were boundless. And the clock
ran down, and a mist floated into the room, and more and more, as time passed slowly, Jungwon
felt the space between them charged with electricity. Possessed, he stirred, a movement of blankets
causing Jongseong to cease his writing.

Jungwon was in Jongseong’s lap, straddling him with his legs hanging loosely off the sides,
carding his hands through his hair while their lips were locked.

He’d never admit that he wanted this. Never.

Because Jongseong was not what he saw in his dreams. He was not a dazzling bouquet of flowers,
he was not gentle hand-holding, he was not introspective talks at 3am, he was not spontaneous
shows of romantic affection.

He was rigid, immovable, stuck in his ways, uppity, gross, and crude.

But why was that so exciting?

This wasn’t what he expected the subject of his next poem to be about: making out with Park
Jongseong, the root of all of his troubles. He tried to keep his lack of experience from showing, but
he wondered if it did—in the way he ran out of breath when they were stuck to each other’s faces
for too long, in the way he bashfully pursed his lips together before letting Jongseong in, in the
way his tongue sloppily collided with the barrier of his teeth.

A quaint, romantic poem about his first kiss was what he wanted. This is not that. They went at
each other greedily, hungrily, they didn’t want to give each other time to think about what they
were doing, or what this meant, or what it could lead to. All they knew was that they wanted this in
the specific moment they found themselves in. All they knew was that Jungwon slinked out of bed
and lay a curious hand on his shoulder as he leaned forward to inspect his work, and Jongseong
swiveling in his chair accidentally resulted in Jungwon landing in his lap with a frantic arm bracing
himself around Jongseong’s neck, and now that curious hand on his shoulder grew even more
curious, even more adventurous.

They broke off of each other after what seemed like an eternity. Jungwon didn’t know whether or
not he was wishing it to end sooner or later. He was heaving, lips shiny with Jongseong’s saliva,
eyes half-lidded and dreamy, hands still clasped at his shoulder to keep himself upright,
Jongseong’s were at his waist.

He was busy trying to scoop more air into his lungs, but Jongseong enforced eye contact with him.
He couldn’t look away, no matter how shy he felt, no matter how ashamed he was of what just
happened. Jongseong eased on a triumphant smirk, and said:

“You look pretty like this, Jungwon.”

Summery and silent, even though the seasons had taken its first step into spring.

It was always much warmer than he liked. On any given day, he’d take to long sleeves and
sweaters, and preferred hot drinks to cold ones. He preferred the sanctity that the snow brought,
dressed in white, as opposed to the bugs chirping and flitting, surrounded by harsh greens.

And this is where he stood.

On the steps of an old, dilapidated temple—a historic landmark of a bygone era—with its rough-
hewn stone sculptures of animals standing vigilant, eyes following closely as if they could spot
trespassers, as if they were ready to move at any point. It was beautiful, and cloaked in the dense
assemblage of trees around it—a spotty canopy of leaves allowing just the right amount of sunlight
to pierce through—it was almost elusive.

Which is why he mounted the steps with shaky legs, not only because he was afraid the stone
might crumble beneath his shoes, but also because why exactly did this mystery admirer want to
meet with him in the middle of nowhere?

It was a small town, and he never got any truly malicious vibes from anyone at school, but it was
still odd. There was a nagging voice at the back of his head berating him, convincing him that this
was all a setup and he was going to be on the front page of the newspaper in a few days, all black
and white. He cringed at the thought. His school picture was hideous.

And no, Park Jongseong did not necessarily qualify as someone who he’d suspect of committing a
crime, but he was the default enemy. Whenever suspicious of anyone or anything, Jongseong’s
face flashed across his mind first.

And no, he didn’t have Park Jongseong on his mind right now because he expected him to be the
secret admirer. Not at all. The shifty way he acted when the love note fell from his locker was not
at all something that was constantly running through his mind in the hours leading up to this. He
was not frequently glancing around the pillar he was now leaning against in anticipation—er, dread
more like—and tapping his foot anxiously against the gravel and grimacing. He wasn’t doing any
of that.

He wouldn’t be caught dead admitting he thought about him at all. Never.

And he finally decided to sit, convincing himself that he didn’t need to stay alert and focused, as if
he were preparing for a battle and needed intel on the enemy as he approached. He let out a deep
breath and allowed his eyes to flutter closed for a little while, the exhaustion of a Sunday afternoon
turning into a sleepy evening encroaching, the sun floating dangerously close to a sunset.

And then, he heard footsteps.

And he convinced himself, still now, that he wouldn’t overreact or do anything too hasty. He
wouldn’t stand and confront him and press his finger to his chest and go there’s no way you have a
stupid little crush on me and demean him, because he was better than that. He’d let go of all of that
toxicity, all of the pent up juvenile anger he had locked inside of him in a little birdcage—an
amalgam of all of his frustrations derived from that puny conversation they had weeks ago where
he’d referred to his poetry, his heart and soul, as cheesy.

That was behind him now, he didn’t care about Park Jongseong’s opinions. He didn’t care about
Park Jongseong. Full stop.

“You actually came.”

A shadow casted from above him, and for a second, he didn’t recognize the voice. He opened his
eyes and looked up and—

Fuck. Oh fuck.

He couldn’t even hide his shock—the way his eyes bulged, his mouth dropped open for a
millisecond, the way he scrambled to stand and dust off his pants and look presentable despite his
eyebrows being emphatically wound together in confusion.

“Nishimura?”

And there he stood, still in his baseball uniform, as he assumed he just came from practice. He had
a delightful smile on his face, reaching up behind his head to scratch at it, before pulling his
baseball cap down and shaking his head, allowing his hair to fly free.

“Yeah, guess my secret’s out now,” he laughed. There was an incredible lighthearted and boyish
manner in the way he spoke, in the way his eyes bashfully flitted upward and winced in the way
that he assumed locking eyes with him would be overwhelming, in the way he was reduced to
awkward laughter and he was stuck in a permanent cheesy grin.

Jungwon was at a loss here.

Because he lied earlier. He was lying to himself. He did, in fact, plan everything around the
assumption that Park Jongseong would saunter up with his smug, lopsided grin and his cocky one-
liners and he could hit him with an insult or two and they’d part ways.

But this…

Oh no, what would Sunoo think?

He gulped, feet planted and buried under the soil, at a crossroads. There was no big winner here.
He didn’t harbor any feelings for Nishimura and, by the looks of the boy in front of him now, he
most definitely did. And Sunoo will be absolutely heartbroken beyond belief at finding out that the
one who held his affections in the palm of his hand, oblivious to it all, had his eyes on his best
friend.

“Nishimura…” was all he could muster, faint and non-descript.

This sparked some concern in the other, the grin plastered on his face now dashed in favor of a shy
pout.

“Jungwon hyung, I…” He briefly glanced down to his shoes, still unable to make eye contact. “I
know this is...odd. But this is the only way I knew how to confess to you without it getting back to
anyone, I don’t know, it just felt weird to do it at school...and I really wanted to do it now because
if I didn’t, then one of the other guys would probably get to you first, and—”

“What?” His brain was racing, trying to keep track of everything he was saying and match it to his
own knowledge of the ordeal, but he had to stop him before he went into overdrive. “What do you
mean the other guys? ”

Riki clenched his teeth in worry, as if getting caught doing something bad by his parents.

“They see you, hyung, we all do,” he explained, “when you come to our practices every day? And
when you cheer for us at the games? Even the practice ones? And when the game’s over and we
all go to the locker room, some of them talk about if they impressed you or not, who showed off
for you more...and I just got so fucking jealous because I liked you before that! I liked you the first
day you walked into pre-calc and you asked to borrow my calculator, and these guys , just out of
nowhere…”

Riki kept rambling, but Jungwon was finding it increasingly hard to focus. His brain was officially
out of gas, and all he could do was turn away, turn his back to him and close his eyes.

“And then I...Jungwon hyung?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, faint like a ghost, as if he was asking if he could do this.

“I don’t like you that way, Riki.” He tried to say it in the most stern, yet gentle way possible. Let
him down easy. But it may have come off a bit too cold. “I’m sorry, I…you’re a good friend,
really, you are. But I just…” It scratched at his throat like it had steel claws that burned, leaving
scars, he wanted, needed to say it.

But he just. Couldn’t.

“Oh.”

And like going to pick at a rose and getting stabbed by its thorn, Riki withdrew his hand with a few
extra ounces of pain weighing him down. With a shaky inhale, Jungwon was afraid he drew blood,
pooling at his fingertips as a reminder of his hurt.
He waded in the silence for a bit, and Jungwon didn’t know what he was doing exactly, but he
hadn’t left yet.

“Do you...do you like someone else maybe? I can talk to them...I can match you guys up...if it’s
someone on the team…”

His voice was shimmery and muted, like broken glass cascading down a pool of water. It had lost
all of its form, its entire foundation crumbled with the few words Jungwon had uttered, and he felt
fucking awful about it—that he held the power to reduce the exuberant Nishimura Riki to a little
hermit crab.

He wanted to turn around with a renewed fire, to yell at him and say my best friend is in love with
you, idiot, but he couldn’t. Maybe it was that he didn’t have the heart to, or maybe it was because
he himself felt like he was beginning to crack and break.

He shouldn’t be the one who’s broken here, he was the one who held the sledgehammer to Riki’s
heart, the one who would soon break Sunoo’s as well.

“I don’t,” was his simple reply. “Sorry, you can tell all of them that I’m not looking for a
relationship right now.”

“Okay,” he responded. “I’m sorry...for dragging you all the way out here, for this.”

“Don’t be,” Jungwon finally turned, and was at least happy to see that Riki wasn’t in tears.
“There’s definitely someone out there who has their eye on you, but I don’t think that we...I don’t
think we’d work out.”

Riki nodded solemnly, and he didn’t know if he even heard the words he said. That’s the way
rejection goes, the things said with intent to cushion the blow often going unheard, often subdued
and labeled as condescension.

He wanted to say that he knew a particular person who had their eye on him, he wanted to give an
encouraging smile and say he has someone for him, but it got stuck in his throat. He was afraid to
even mention his name. He already had to carry the burden of going to Sunoo to tell him that Riki
was his secret admirer all along; but if he proposes Sunoo to Riki, and Riki recoils and shakes his
head and says no, I’m not into him, and if he, too, had to break the news to Sunoo that the boy he’s
been pining over for almost a full semester didn’t reciprocate his feelings.

No, he couldn't. And he wouldn’t.

“Have a good rest of your day, hyung.”

He couldn’t even fake a smile with his wave, taking a few steps backward before he turned and
started jogging out of sight. Jungwon was glad he wasn’t the type to needlessly conceal his
feelings, it was a good trait to have. He didn’t need to force a content smile onto his face, and
Jungwon didn’t either.

Jupiter has seventy-nine moons. That’s what scientists think, at least.

Seventy-nine cosmic satellites. Jupiter must be a popular guy, he thought.

He slung his satchel around his shoulder and clutched the strap spanning the width of his chest,
giving a quick farewell to his father and barrelling out of the doors of the office.

Maybe he looked too antsy, forcing his completed section of the article into his father’s hands with
a shaky hand and an expectant look as his eyes scanned it—checking primarily for any
grammatical mistakes, further revisions involving the actual content would come later. A slow turn
and a proud smile, and then he was allowed to go home.

Thank God.

It was near impossible to even exist in the same room as Jongseong for the length of time they
were in there. He was unsuccessful in campaigning to be able to work in separate rooms—“it’s just
for privacy and focus purposes, nothing else!”—and so he settled on separating themselves to
opposite sides of the room, desks angled at the corners of the wall.

Their fathers may have thought this a bit strange. They either didn’t pay attention, or didn’t care.
Jungwon’s had a tendency to be aloof anyway, and being suspicious that his son had a tense
relationship with his boss’s son probably wasn’t even on his radar as something to look out for.

The article was done, their collaboration coming to an end, and they could finally, finally, put
whatever strange thing they had going on behind them. If Park Jongseong claimed he hated him,
fine. He hated him too.

With a renewed energy, he left the office, prancing down the steps and stuttering at the last one.

Of course, of fucking course, Park Jongseong appeared once again—like the masked tuxedo from
Sailor Moon—ever-present and ready to make his day worse.

He locked eyes with him, leaning against the shade of a large oak tree, tucking his phone away in
his pocket as he glanced up, a gecko-like smile tugging at his lips.

Jungwon approached with apprehension, disgust more than prominent on his features.

“Why are you—“

“Waiting for you?” he interjected, finishing his sentence.

“If that’s what you’re doing…”

“It is,” he assured. “Figured we could walk together, we’re going the same direction after all.”

This new Jongseong appearing to him was—well, it was completely unprecedented. He had to
wonder what quarter life crisis he’d undergone in the span of twelve hours, or if last night had an
astoundingly grander effect on him than he’d thought.

Park Jongseong wouldn’t offer to walk him home, nor would he immediately grace him with a
smile or wait for him—not the Park Jongseong as of recent, at least.

He shifted uneasily on his feet.

“Hyung, what do you think we are?”

It was an open-ended question, one that allowed a bit of creativity in its answer—a test.

“What do you think we could be?” A glimmer of hope emanating in his tone, flirty and smooth,
with a quick eyebrow raise.
Jungwon crossed his arms and stepped back a few paces.

“Don’t think that just because of what happened last night, we’re some sort of thing now.”

“Oh,” he said mockingly, “so you sitting on my lap and shoving your tongue down my throat,
that’s just like, something you do with anybody then?”

“No,” he stammered, “I don’t mean…I’m not like that, I just—“

“What are you like, then?”

“Listen,” he huffed, everything floating around in his brain starting to get muddled. Jongseong was
doing that thing again where he threw him off and left him lost. “Jongseong, that was just a fluke.”

“A fluke.”

“Yes,” he cleared his throat, trying to seem like he had everything together, like he could be uppity
too. “I was just…you were just there. And it was a lapse in judgment.”

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

Jongseong started to press forward, and Jungwon’s feet skittered backward without him willing
them to; he wanted to stand his ground—Jongseong forever imposing and large—but something
about the way he encroached forced him to back up. His back hit a pole, an unlit street lamp in the
middle of the day.

“I know you, Jungwon, and I know you’re not like that. If you make out with someone, then that
means something.”

“Why are you talking like you can read my mind?”

“Because I can,” Jongseong retorted, utterly serious, not an ounce of doubt trembling in his voice.
He almost believed him. “I could read your mind back then and I can read your mind now, so don’t
bother trying to put up a front.”

A caustic exhale through his nose.

“I’m not putting up a front of any kind.”

“You are, because you’re different than you were last night. When you got out of bed and put your
hand on my shoulder and I turned, and you were staring at me, and maybe you thought you were
being dubious but you weren’t. Your eyes were completely lucid. You knew what you wanted and
you went for it, but you’re running away from it now.”

“I—I what?” Jungwon croaked out an incredulous laugh, airy and disingenuous, dimples not even
bothering to show themselves. He shook his head. “No no no, hyung, you’re gravely mistaken if
you think I wanted you.”

“Fantastic,” he cocked his head to the side, observing him like an experiment going haywire.
“You’re still intent on lying to yourself.”

Jongseong never shut up. He never shut the fuck up. Heat rose from the bottom of his soles and
into his whole body.

“I’m not lying to myself or anyone else, Jongseong, maybe it’s hard to believe but you’re not all
that. Not everybody wants to get in your pants, you aren’t the center of our solar system.”
“You and I are different.”

“I completely agree,” Jungwon hissed, “you’re insufferable, I’m not.”

“I know what I want, and when I’m going to get it.” Jongseong clarified, leaning over him now,
dwarfing Jungwon in size by propping himself against the pole behind him with his arm. “Last
night you clearly wanted me, so what changed?“

Jungwon ignored him. “What do you want then, hyung?”

He stopped, the smug look on his face slowly disintegrating into something more wary.

“What?”

“What do you want? Tell me,” he challenged, suddenly feeling bigger. “Do you want me, hyung?”

Jongseong hesitated, a quiet austerity now settling into his features. He removed his arm from
above Jungwon’s head, allowing him a little room to breathe, and stepped back. Again now, he was
observing him like something that belonged in a lab and under a microscope—something
anomalous, something that needed to be studied and figured out.

“What the fuck is your problem with me?”

It hit him like a freight train, and all of a sudden he was confronted with something more than Park
Jongseong; something that had claws, something that bit back.

Still though, he tried his best to not waver. Despite the sudden shift in Jongseong—from something
taunting and imposing and characteristically Jongseong to a silence, a solemnity—he couldn’t let
himself give any ground. It was the quietest rage that was the deadliest.

He looked away, allowed his field of view to be filled with something other than Jongseong for a
moment, and it was refreshing. There was still something visually repulsive about looking at him
for too long that he couldn’t figure out—why his urge to make out with him and his disgust at
setting eyes on him could co-exist—and his gaze landed on a pile of leaves under the oak tree they
were just under.

It was eerie, fallen leaves gathered in a pile at the base of a tree during spring—during a time when
trees were in the beginning stages of getting back their clothes. It made him wonder, as his
introspection always did; wonder about how it made him feel, wonder about what it had to say.

“Jungwon, fucking look at me.”

Not even Jongseong’s fury could disturb him. And that was another thing he disliked about
Jongseong: his crudeness, his vulgarity.

“Leaves falling from a tree,” was all he said, meditative and calm. He looked back at him—all
wound and tight, anger simmering in his clenched jaw and angular face. “What does it remind you
of?”

“I’m not in the mood for your woo-woo shit, I’m sick of this and I’ve had enough, just tell me
what’s your problem with me.”

“That, exactly.” He took a deep breath, but found that he was already calm. “You lack taste, a
refined palate. You don’t hold appreciation for anything besides science and solid facts and you
don’t recognize the beauty in anything.”
Jongseong’s small rage dissipated into confusion—balled-up fists unloosening, jaw unclenching—
and his face twitched a little bit, trying desperately to make sense of it. Jungwon wasn’t surprised,
his brain wasn’t necessarily wired to follow what he said.

Sometimes, he thought, they spoke different languages.

He glanced back toward the oak tree, and to the leaves, and turned back to him, his lips parted to
speak and then closed. His ability to parse together a coherent sentence—his undying need to
always sound the most intelligent, to always be above others in conversation—being drowned out.
Unfathomable, but the truth weighed him down like an iron ball and chain clasped to his ankle.

“It’s a leaf,” he muttered. “A falling leaf is just a leaf, nothing more. It can’t hold on to the branch
anymore, and gravity pulls it down.

Disappointment prodded at his side. He thought he could reach a breakthrough here, he thought he
could finally fix him—get him to recognize his fault—and hopefully mold him into something he
wouldn’t feel sick looking at.

But this was Jongseong, made of steel and unrelenting, not willing to bend.

He closed his eyes and strained, swiftly turning his head to the side as if having trouble processing
a hard truth; swallowing down the realization that not everybody saw the world through your lens,
that not everybody saw beauty wherever they looked, it was crushing.

“How do you think life is beautiful if a leaf is just a leaf and love letters are just letters?”

They were both stuck, like the grass beneath their shoes turned to quicksand, slowly sinking and
not moving a muscle.

Jungwon was almost unreasonably worked up—lips quivering in a pout and eyes rocky with
something troubled and searching—and he didn’t know why he needed Jongseong to be on his side
so badly; why he desired Jongseong to find poetry in everything, why he wanted to see those hard
edges streamlined into soft curves.

Jongseong’s face was unreadable, a little forlorn, perhaps. Or maybe it was apprehension, and
slight dismay in the way his lips tugged downward, his hands hidden in his back pockets rather
than his front ones, his usual go-to. He shifted his eyes away from Jungwon’s in a manner that
suggested he couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, once again concentrating on the pile of leaves.

Another one floated down, swaying.

“Try,” Jungwon pleaded, broken and frazzled, more like a whisper. “Just try and think about it, that
leaf falling right now, what does it make you feel? What does it remind you of?”

Jongseong was still silent, as he had been for a while now. And Jungwon thought this might be
good, that he was listening more than speaking for once, for the first time maybe.

He looked back at him, still guarded and wary, afraid to overstep—or, maybe—afraid of where
he’d venture into with his following words. He gulped, and skepticism drew itself onto his visage,
plain as day.

“Loss, maybe?” he inquired, before his tone dipped. “I think of something sad. I think, maybe, that
the poor tree is losing a part of herself.”

Everything all at once shooting through him like a bullet to the heart and mind, an overwhelming
barrage of elation and relief and reverence coalescing into him.

Yes, that’s what it was, or rather, what it could be. Jungwon saw a tree without its clothes, naked
and vulnerable and afraid and out of place; Jongseong saw a tree losing a part of herself, an identity
crisis, a complete fallout.

He could feel his heartbeat in his throat, speeding up when Jongseong found something in him—a
brief flash of recognition sweeping through in the way his eyes jolted—and that familiar gecko
smile quirked upward again, both of them unable to tear their eyes away from each other.

“There it is,” he said quietly, “there you are.”

For further proof that Jungwon is an Aquarius through and through, his recent search history has
looked like this:

astral calamities

what is a supernova

how exactly do people die in space

pluto’s irregular orbit

It’s funny, he thinks, sitting in front of the library computer with an unfinished to-go cartridge of
sushi next to his keyboard, how his brain works—its need to be entertained, its tendency to drift
between things like bees to flowers.

In the past month, he’s filled his head with a superfluous amount of information pertaining to the
undiscovered parts of the ocean, then cold cases (his place of interest was the American mid-west
and serial killers), then Greek mythology, and now space.

This deep well of knowledge reflects in his writing. His trusty journal—which was unfortunately
subject to a pair of prying eyes—has been collecting little factoids of knowledge lodged in between
first drafts of poems and little notes to people, both dead and alive, both known and unknown.

His titles may have sounded pretentious, but he didn’t care:

the thing with challenger deep

holcomb, kansas (1959)

apollo and hyacinth (and daphne, and cyrene, and kalliope)

And his latest, which he was still debating on.

He’d recently been fascinated by Pluto, everything about it—its unusual orbit, its status fluctuating
between planet and not, the fact that one of its moons is so big that they practically orbit around
each other—it made the perfect subject to wax poetic.

Pluto was an outcast; yet, there’s a rambunctious planet approximately three billion miles away
that’s chock full of people that have opinions about it. These humans, we’re probably like little
ants to him, Jungwon thought. Opinionated and feisty and debating about Pluto’s legitimacy and
rank—as if he can’t hear us. He has enough to deal with.

“Pluto?”

He nearly jumped, a voice piercing through and derailing his meditative thoughts.

“Science project or something?” Jongseong always knew the exact wrong thing to say.

He grimaced, watching as he took the unoccupied seat next to him, eyes trained on the monitor and
hands tucked into his jean pockets.

“No, I’m just interested in him.”

Baffled, Jongseong smirked.

“Him?”

“Yes, I think Pluto would be a boy,” Jungwon retorted.

Jongseong shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Without asking for permission, he scooched the plastic tray of sushi closer to him and grabbed the
pair of chopsticks, depositing one in his mouth with a swiftness. Jungwon rolled his eyes, and
returned to the article he was reading. Jongseong observed obediently.

“What do you think of Pluto?”

He finished chewing and swallowed. “Like…just in general?”

Jungwon nodded.

“Cool dude,” he said in that off-handed Jongseong manner of his, “haven’t heard much about him
such like, primary school. Respect for anybody who can orbit around the Sun from that far away
though, and still be intact. Especially since he’s so small.”

Impressed, Jungwon let out a throaty sound of approval.

“So you think he’s strong? Interesting,” he hummed, “I never thought about him that way.”

He could hear Jongseong’s smirk grow larger, hiking up the side of his face and the glint in his eye
brightening. Loser.

“I’m like your little muse, aren’t I? My little poet.”

“Not at all,” Jungwon scoffed. “You’re the exact opposite of that actually.”

“Don’t lie, I literally give you good material, don’t I?”

Breaking his focus from the monitor, Jungwon turned to him—and at first he thought, wow, seeing
your face doesn’t make me want to hurl—and then he softened, finding it a little easier to be close
to him like this. Even though there was a good amount of space between them, he wasn’t
immediately stricken by discomfort or unease or disgust.

And that was…well. It was new.

He’d apparently popped another bite of sushi into his mouth while he wasn’t looking, forming a
lump on the right side of his mouth as he chewed. And Jungwon would’ve thought this gross,
because Jongseong was gross—repulsive in every aspect, from the way he ate to the way he talked
—but he…

Goodness, Jongseong looked cute. It almost gave him the shivers.

“What? Something on my face?” Jongseong broke him out of his stupefied daze.

“No,” Jungwon quickly reoriented himself. “Just…”

No way to claw himself out of this one. Nope. Not when Jongseong caught him spacing out after
(what was supposed to be) a brief glance at his face—slack-jawed and ahh -ing—and his smirk
grew comically bigger until teeth started to show. And all Jungwon could do was purse his lips
into a pout and return to scrolling through nasa.org .

“Aww, Jungwonie, you’re finally coming around.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You like me, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“Hyung, this is not middle school.”

“But you’re being so shy and avoidant it’s cute,” he teased, tone crescendoing upward
dramatically, practically into a squeal. “You’re such a cutie, such a cutie-cutie!” He sing-songed,
planting his chin on Jungwon’s shoulder.

“Stop,” Jungwon stammered through giggles. He couldn’t help it. By the time Jongseong was face-
first in the crook of his neck and blowing raspberries and tickling at his sides, he was already
wrought with laughter, trying his best to mute his stream of giggles so that they wouldn’t attract the
attention of anybody nearby.

He finally succeeded in shoving him away, allowing him some time to catch his breath and wipe a
tear from his eye. Jongseong withdrew looking triumphant, going to speak before something
interrupted them both.

“Uh…”

An idle voice from behind them, prompting both of them to stutter in their seats and straighten.
They turned slowly, Jungwon’s eyes bulging with recognition, then with trepidation.

“Nishimura?”

Alarms sounded—blaring red lights, horns, drones—the whole thing. Everything sank, pooling at
the bottom of his feet, all soggy and regretful, as he bit his lip in anxiety.

He wanted to ask him how much of it he saw, how long he was standing there, but he held himself
back. He didn’t want to insinuate anything. After all, there was nothing to assume, right?

Nishimura cleared his throat, every negative emotion he’d observed color his face on that prior day
—the day of the confession—was present, only amplified tenfold. He couldn’t draw any solid
conclusions from it, but dread was drenched across his features like socks splashing through a
puddle; eyebags on display, dry skin splotchy on his lips, a permanent frown forming fine lips on
his youthful face.
He gulped, clutching a cupcake encased in saran wrap to his chest—almost crushing it, like it
would wilt—and quickly shooting forward to place it on the desk in front of Jungwon, occupying
the space his sushi did before it was pulled over to Jongseong’s side, and then retreating back to
where he stood, a safe distance away.

“I just…uh, I brought cupcakes to school for a class party, and I remembered how you said you
liked sweet things so I figured I’d save you one…you don’t have to eat it though…”

A ball of anxiety that made Jungwon’s hands clammy just by being in the same vicinity, making
him want to rock in his chair and fidget in the same way he did—scratching the back of his head
absentmindedly, staring down at the floor, playing with the hem of his t-shirt.

“I don’t mean anything by it though…if you guys are…if you two are like…”

His chest was heaving, and the unease within Jungwon only grew and grew, propagating like mold.
A part of him wanted to reach out and hold his hand, and reassure him and calm him down, but he
was reluctant. He didn’t even want to think about looking over at Jongseong right now.

“I’m sorry, I’ll just go.” He muttered quickly before dashing out of the library, the double-doors
swinging open and a surprised yelp from the librarian soon to follow.

Jongseong turned to him, perhaps the most serious he’s ever seen him.

“What was that about?”

He wished he had an eloquent answer. He remained silent.

Unease slowly grew into a genuine sadness—a particular kind of heartache that another’s misery
was totally and undeniably the fault of his own, and there was little to nothing he could do about it.
Helpless and beset with disdain, all he could do was watch as he slowly destroyed Nishimura Riki,
and cling onto the belief that this would resolve itself. The belief that this, too, would pass.

Pluto is a dwarf planet within the same solar system as Earth. Pluto has five moons, and is
oftentimes not included in the same conversation with the other planets.

He envied Pluto. Its strength and its solitude.

“Sometimes, I think about what it would be like to be wanted.”

“Sunoo,” he stirred, “what?”

He wondered if the sudden onset of spring heat had gotten to him.

It was a quiet day, and they were at the bench again. This time, for some reason or other, there was
an assortment of birds in the trees. And he was specifically antsy to come here, as they walked by
and caught sight of it, and he thought they were having a conference—that they had important
business matters to discuss that humans had no right sticking their nose into. That was okay, he was
keen to be a bystander. The sky was especially blue, but he’d forsaken staring at it in favor of
glaring inquisitively at the side of Sunoo’s face—there was a longing, a sadness harboring in the
way his eyes squinted slightly while looking upward, not even being able to be distracted by the
rare birds flying overhead.
“I know, Won.” He stated simply.

Jungwon’s heart skipped a beat, before he closed his eyes and pursed his lips, a knife to his heart
and feet steeped in quicksand.

The knowing was scary, the knowing was inevitable. It felt almost inappropriate to talk about it
here. He’d been avoiding it like something filthy—it was a dirty, dirty secret that he wanted
nothing to do with and wished to never have to bring it up at all—and for it to come up here of all
places, his refuge, the very place he’d begun to mend things, it was troubling.

Sunoo looked at him, slipping his hand in his gently.

“I finally worked up the courage to say something to him, like you were urging me to do.”

He winced.

Like you were urging me to do.

It circled back to him. He didn’t want to bear the burden of blame, but maybe he should.

“I caught him after practice, when he was leaving. He was alone, so it was easier. And I asked him
to walk together…to walk home and…”

Jungwon was staring straight at the ground now. He didn’t want to look up. He didn’t want to see
the pain on his best friend’s face, whatever it was—anger, betrayal, sorrow, disappointment. Not
even the vibrantly decorated bird flying in the periphery of his vision could make him look up.

“He got all defensive and flustered, and then he said, sure, but just to be clear, I don’t like you like
that. We can be friends.”

Strained and sorrowful were his words, his voice pulled taut like a guitar string, threatening to
snap. He didn’t have the energy to put on a funny voice to imitate Nishimura, he didn’t have the
familiar effervescence he was usually cloaked in like a perfume. He was bogged down in his
retelling, static and withdrawn.

He’d never been more heartbroken to learn that his beliefs were confirmed—the hypothesis he’d
mocked up after the earlier confession he was subject to was true, that Nishimura Riki only had
eyes for Jungwon, and not Sunoo.

It was a precarious thing he thought he’d juggle, a new task he’d set for himself in the days
following; he’d have to go through the motions of Sunoo dragging him to the baseball practices,
being told stories of what he’d observed from the other boy in hushed whispers and giggles in the
cafeteria, and sit on the secret that he was the one being admired and hold onto hope that Sunoo
could take his place instead.

There was no hope any longer.

It was difficult to fathom, and all he could do was envelop his friend in the tightest, largest hug he
could muster; angling completely toward him and engulfing him in his arms before he could lift a
finger.

“I love you Sunoo.”

“I know.”
Still despondent, Sunoo lifted an arm to pat at his gently. It was like gripping onto something
lifeless, something malleable and remarkably empty.

“Nishimura’s an idiot, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If only he saw what I did…”

A small chuckle—one that only signaled something even more disheartening was to come, rather
than something truly laughable.

“Yea, he's an idiot who’s in love with you.”

A moment now where all of the birds decided it wasn’t necessary to squawk or chirp or beat their
wings, and all rested on branches and went solemn. Sunoo grabbed hold of all the life around them
and reigned it in. Jungwon felt like he could barely breathe, head submerged in the crook of
Sunoo’s neck. His grip loosened, fingers barely hanging onto the knitwork of his cardigan.

“How do you…”

“So you know? I suspected as much.”

He gulped, waiting for Sunoo to continue.

“After he rejected me, I said it’s okay, and went to leave, but he stopped me.”

He chose to break from the hug now, and Jungwon was free to look at his face—smiling, despite
his hurt, pulled upward with a bittersweet blush and eye crescents—and he wondered why
Nishimura wouldn’t fall for him instead of Jungwon himself.

“He stopped me and asked if you asked me to make a move on him, or if you set me up to this. I
challenged him— why exactly would you do that? And why were you brought up? Took a bit of
piecing together. He suddenly got nervous and shy, and then I remembered a few memories I’d
repressed—memories of when we were at games or practices and we rarely made eye contact,
because it always seemed like his eyes would linger to the person beside me.”

The truth toppled onto the floor like aged milk—curdled and slimy—and his brain was buzzing
with everything that he now knew he could not deny.

If this was a poem, he thought, it would be the ugliest he’d ever penned. He didn’t have an
elaborate metaphor for the truth that got out, nor did he have a poetic way of describing the barrage
of emotions he felt—a way to depict its range, the scope of it all. He couldn’t even scrounge up a
handful of words. He was completely at a loss.

The Jungwon brain that clamored for poetry in everything the same way a vampire did for blood
was unable to come up with anything.

He could only think back to the way he made Riki feel. How his sadness mimicked Sunoo’s. How
he wielded the sledgehammer to both of their hearts, whether it was willingly or not.

A sanctuary of silent birds. A tree without its leaves. Jungwon’s grip loosened until he inched
backward, holding himself in his arms like he had a great pain of his own.

Selfish and entitled. Pretty without meaning to be. The center of all of the attention. The boy who
had too many people in his orbit. That’s who he was.

The sound of birds returned again, all at once, flooding his ears where there was only silence
before. Sunoo’s hand lingered on top of his for a while, dainty and faint like a ghost’s, before
deciding they couldn’t sit like this any longer. They both needed space, he took the initiative and
was the first to stand and take his leave.

All he could do is wonder how he could fix this, and hope that this wouldn’t be the end of their
friendship. Was it really that damning? Did he really play an active part in this? Did he deserve any
of the blame, despite the fact that what happened was completely unfair to Sunoo?

He didn’t have the mind for this. He was used to observing other people’s troubles and putting it
into words, not his own.

He looked up at the trees, and thought he would never see birds the same way again.

Jungwon soon discovers that Park Jongseong is not a cozy lapping of salt waters against a shore, he
is a tidal wave.

They find each other again, by chance of course, but that point is moot by now. They have both
come to terms with the intangible force that seems to keep pushing them together.

That, or they’re just really good at stalking each other.

Bright white stadium lights pierce through and light up the Friday night. It’s game day—and it’s
just as rowdy and lively in the stands as usual, every other word being shouted from the student’s
section being a player’s name or a let’s go for a homerun!

And even for somebody like him, who everyone would expect to take unkindly to this; the
boisterous noise of fans chanting anthemically with school spirit urging them on like adrenaline,
the school band playing raucously through the cheers after every hit or run; it wasn’t all too out of
the ordinary to find him here every Friday night, because there was a certain inspiration to be
found here.

And so, they were deep into the fifth inning, only two left after this until the game was likely
decided. Nishimura was just up to bat, and he tossed a ludicrously pained smile in the general
direction of he and Sunoo before striking out, sauntering back to the sandbox where his coach and
his teammates were to berate him again for being off his game. And that smile, and that bat
swinging and missing, it was enough to make anxiety pool where it wasn’t welcome—the rift he’d
just mended with Sunoo threatening to gape open again—and he excused himself to the concession
stand.

The line was long. Unsurprising.

What was surprising, though, was the arm carelessly slung around his shoulder.

“Well, well, well,” he spoke with a cadence that was strikingly familiar and erred dangerously
close to resembling a supervillain being confronted in his lair—he figured Jongseong could act a
role of that nature well. “You come around here often?”

It took a few seconds, but his nose twitched and he eyed him like the true skeptic he was—his face
was contorted in a way he hadn’t seen before with a smile that was scarily symmetrical and he was
blinking too rapidly—and he leaned forward, Jongseong flinching backward at the sudden
proximity as Jungwon was now at his literal neck, and then retreated.
“Why are you drunk at a high school baseball game?”

He snorted. “You are such a negative nancy. How else am I supposed to enjoy the game?”

“Sober,” he droned back, karate chopping him in his side. “You’re gonna get in trouble.”

“Relax.” His arm fit a little too snug across his shoulders, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t
subconsciously leaning into him, despite his beer breath. “I didn’t bring it with me, it was just a
pregame.”

And Jungwon shuffled forward a bit as the line moved, Jongseong moving with him—and he
couldn’t help but think that they fit together unpredictably well. And looking up at him now, drunk
Jongseong near struggling to keep his face in working condition like Mr. Potato Man, it was a
wonder to him that he looked completely different—not just because of the alcohol or there was
something in the air that was amorphous—but it felt like he was seeing him through new eyes.

If this was a Park Jongseong from a few weeks ago who’d lumber up to him with clumsy limbs
crashing into his frame and prattling drunk nonsense into his ear, he would’ve thought the limbs
were weapons and his beer-battered breath the fiery jowls of a dragon. But this now, this was just
—he was just a moron. That’s it. Not an enemy, not the cause of his woes, just a moronic guy who
was frustratingly endearing, and also really wanted the fuck out of a corn dog.

“Two corn dogs please, and a popcorn,” Jungwon ordered, fishing his wallet from his pocket.

“No, let me pay,” Jongseong proposed, but the cash was already being slid over and Jungwon
smirked at him triumphantly. “Whatever,” he resigned, an over dramatic eyeroll.

The scrawny-limbed student working the kitchen slid over the requested food items through an
open window and without hesitation, Jungwon moved to return to his seat before the next inning
began.

“Hey, wait!”

But, of course, Jongseong was right on his tail.

“Hey, I lied earlier,” Jongseong muttered in a whisper, abashed.

A meek grunt, puzzled. “What? When?”

“When you asked why I was drunk tonight, the real answer was just…embarrassing…”

He crossed his arms, lips quirking up into a smirk as he found his drunken stumbling amusing,
having to brace himself on one of the nearby stands. His gaze was glued to the floor.

“How so?”

And then, he reached into his pocket and brandished a crumpled up piece of pink paper, then
shoving it into his hand.

“See you later,” he hurtled out, before turning and disappearing into the crowd, corn dog in hand.

The paper in his hand was remarkably familiar, and his cheeks grew the slightest more pink
(mimicking the same shade of the paper) as he unwrapped it. Navy blue ink was splotched in
laughably illegible handwriting, but the meaning was evident:
meet me at bulguksa. tomorrow at 6, before the sun sets.

-j

He didn’t know that the sign-off was necessary, or maybe it was, because he was planning a more
innocuous way to deliver this to him, like slipping it casually into his pocket or leaving it where he
sat when he got up.

The gesture was dastardly reminiscent of Nishimura’s—down to the same location and the same
type of paper—which raised a few questions, but he didn’t care to bite. He’d spent too much time
away and Sunoo would start to get worried. He stuffed the piece of paper back into his pocket and
made his way down to one of the front row seats, just in time to see Nishimura jog back onto the
field again.

He wondered if planets were aware of the pull they exerted on their moons, if they were fully
aware of who they had locked in their orbit.

Because no matter how hard he tried, he’d never expected to have so many moons—Nishimura
from class, all his friends on the baseball team, and one Park Jongseong—more men than Pluto had
moons, and it was almost terrifying to think about, completely ineffable to him. Because he had no
idea where his immense gravity was emanating from.

Sunoo shot lightning bolts from his fingertips and made flowers bloom with his eye smile (this was
a particular superpower that shook upperclassman Park Sunghoon at a terrifying magnitude, and
now that he thought about it, he should look into that).

Nishimura breathed with such an ease that—even for introverts—it was incredibly healing and
nourishing to be around, like stuffing your nose into clean linen, or pouring a half-empty cup to
full.

And now that he thought about it, even though Sunoo and Nishimura were both magnetic, with
superpowers of their own, it was incredible to witness their story unfold from a front row seat;
witnessing both of them pass each other by like ships in the night, one yearning for the other and
the other yearning for someone on a shore on the other side of the world, a shore where another
boat was likely to dock.

They weren’t aware of the close proximity of their ships. They weren’t aware of each other’s
orbits, nor their own. And as he watched Jongseong emerge from the deep wood, the verdant green
and the sunlight casting an ethereal yellow-orange sunset shimmer onto his cheek (or maybe that
was some expensive face wash he wasn’t privy to), it was something submerging within his gut
prompting him to think how in the world he got here, and how he didn’t see it coming. If Sunoo
and Nishimura and everybody he held close to him were unaware of their own gravity, their own
personal charms and self-worth, then did he bear an absolutely abysmal amount of tact?

It must’ve been that. That everybody was too busy concerning themselves with their neighboring
planets to notice that a special someone was drifting closer and closer by the second. Maybe he was
too busy dunking his head into the nebulous vat of Sunoo this and Nishimura that and he missed
that Jongseong was the Charon to his Pluto all along.

A few steps up the stone staircase, and he appeared before him—towering, because Jungwon
himself was seated against a pillar—and opting to remain at the entrance, a hand brushing up
against the dirty red of the column next to him.

“Hi,” he greeted, smiling. “You came.”

Perhaps it was the fact that today was the hottest day they’ve had in a while, spring fully
embracing itself and the sun unleashed from its wintry shackles, and it was absolutely exhausting
having to walk here in the sweltering sun, but he didn’t even have the energy to roll his eyes or
scoff.

Because looking at Jongseong, his awkward, quirky smile, and his awkward, trying-to-look-
natural pose as he braced himself on the pillar and crossed his feet clumsily, how could he not
smile ear-to-ear?

“I did. A pretty boy invited me here.”

“Oh, really?” Jongseong looked around absentmindedly. “Where is he then?”

A peal of laughter, coming out in giggly exhales through a toothy smile. “You’re a doofus.”

Jongseong waited for the giggles to subside before clearing his throat, and Jungwon tempered his
smile a bit, tugging it downward as he prepared to listen attentively.

“So uh, I know we kinda, uh. Well we didn’t really, but we kinda got over this weird thing we had
going on...and I guess it’s pretty clear that uh…” His eyes were glued to the sky and his face was
puckered like he just swallowed something sour and was trying to figure out the taste, before
continuing: “You know what? This isn’t debate. There’s no need for some long-winded
introduction. What I’m trying to say is I want to date the fuck out of you.”

And honestly, he’d been preparing himself for the confession—it wasn’t exactly some huge secret
that there was something between them, and ever since that fateful night where they exchanged
saliva (not as poetically worded as he would like, but how poetic was that night, really?), it was
completely undeniable that they were headed toward a crash course with each other—but maybe it
was the particularly crass wording, because it hit him over the head like a bag of bricks.

He was confronted by Park Jongseong—a Park Jongseong who’d undergone many metamorphoses
during his time knowing him. He’s seen him in so many different lights and in so many different
moods that now—coupled with his gecko smile and tendency to lick his lips intermittently—he
theorized that Park Jongseong may have been a chameleon in human form. It was unfathomable to
him how only a few weeks ago, this wouldn’t have even been in the cards, and they likely
would’ve exchanged insults, ended up on even footing, and left.

But again, this was reasonable, right? It had to be. Just because he hadn’t been tracking him didn’t
mean he wasn’t right under his nose the whole time, inching inward bit-by-bit.

Jongseong’s gaze was resolute. He was a tempered fire waiting to surge forward; his own passion a
flimsy cage to keep it contained.

But that’s just what Jungwon gathered.

And although his happy ending was within reach, the dreamy one where he’d run into his arms and
he’d be swung around and they’d hop on a boat and ride off into the sunset—and he would find a
way to make that happen, somehow—there was still a dark, oily thing that broiled deeply in his
heart and clung to it without letting go, tugging and tugging, like a fish hooked on a lure.

And he expressed this, straight from the heart:

“Jongseong, I really, really want to go ahead and say yes, because I really do like you, but it’s
just…”

“It’s just what?” The upward inflection and the way his brows formed a small mountain softly
plucked a string tucked away deep in his heart that was likely gathering cobwebs now, and it gave
him that extra push to continue.

“This might sound stupid but...you said something, earlier on, that really hurt me...and it still hurts,
a bit.”

He gulped, and he hadn’t realized how he turned into a turtle: legs pulled inward and caged by his
arms, head angled downward ever-so-slightly. Jongseong took this as a cue to advance, hunching
down and settling in the space opposite him, flat on his butt.

“I can be an ass,” he began, “I’m still, uh, trying to work on that, I guess. This probably would’ve
been a smoother ride if I—”

“Kept your mouth shut sometimes? Yeah.”

Jongseong squeezed his eyes shut, pained from the hard truth, but acquiescing quietly.

“Yeah, but uh, what did I do exactly? So I can apologize. If it hurt you that much then it warrants
an apology, right?”

And yeah, it did.

But honestly, as the weeks went by and he had time to toil over it—sleepless nights spent replaying
the same scene in his head like a traumatizing film—there were two separate selves that warred,
one arguing that it was genuinely awful, the other arguing that the entire thing was juvenile. And it
was hard trying to figure out which side to give merit, but eventually, he decided the fact that it
brought him so much turmoil was reason enough to bring it up.

“The first day we spoke to each other, I was running back to fetch my journal because I left it. And
you were there, and first of all, you really need to work on your first impression on strangers.” He
nodded wordlessly, another critique that scalded him. “And you handed it to me, which you were
reading for some reason, and you told me my poems were cheesy.”

An impossibly large weight was lifted, a giant cinderblock heaved from the confines of his chest.
And it felt like he’d grown wings with the way he was able to cough out the word that he
considered cursed, the word that he had been unable to utter around Jongseong for so long now—
for fear that he would double-down, for fear that he would chuckle and press the knife even deeper
into the laceration that was already there, spitting out blood.

Jongseong’s face flitted through a range of emotions: he detected confusion, then a recognition
shoving its way in as his pupils dilated like he just saw God, and then he turned into a tomato. He
did the thing where his lips flatline and he squeezed his eyes as if he were too ashamed to look at
him, burying his face in his knees and groaning audibly.
“Fuck,” was his first response.

“What an eloquent apology.”

“No, wait, I...ugh.”

He popped back up from the shield of his knees, still a blaring red, and an indescribable expression
etched onto his face. He breathed out slowly.

“I have...an explanation...and it’s really fucking embarrassing.”

“I’m getting the impression that everything you do is fucking embarrassing.”

Jongseong grimaced. “I’m a very fucking embarrassing person.” And he agreed, he definitely did.
He gave a small gesture with his hand, urging him to continue. “So, um, I know I’m a douchebag,
like I’m not the best person, but I swear—I was talking with my friends, and one of them told me
that the best way to get someone to be into you is to insult them. Like a mild insult, of course. And
I was like okay cool, I’ll try that on Jungwon.”

“Hyung, what? ”

“I know, I know, it’s ridiculous, but—”

“Hyung,” he huffed out as if he’d just run a mile. “Why did you...hold on, give me a second.”

He stood, a bit of dust rising with the small bit of wind he kicked up, and pacing over to the railing,
offering a clearer view of the sun setting behind the treeline.

There were many puzzle pieces that didn’t fit, his confession only making the situation in his head
more muddled like a ditch filled with turbid rainwater—the fact that he knew of him prior to their
first meeting, the fact that he was talking about him to his friends, the fact (and he knew he was
guilty of being a complete idiot by all accounts) he was stupid enough to actually go along with the
suggestion of insulting your crush to get them to like you back.

He swiveled and pointed an accusatory finger at him.

“You acted like you didn’t know me back then? Even though you did?”

And he thought he could get used to seeing Jongseong like this, writhing and troubled—his eyes
darted anywhere besides his own, his hands fluttered and danced around his body like he was just
getting to know how to use them, his face jittery like somebody hit the randomize option on The
Sims.

“Yea,” he conceded, “yea, that was—that was another way I thought, you’d like me. Thought I’d
look like a creep if I said I did.”

“How did you know me before?”

He shrugged. “I have a good eye for pretty people.”

How he managed to make his heart jolt even while he looked and sounded as stupid as he did, he
didn’t want to know.

“Plus, Jungwon, I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.” He finally broke from his dazed
state and stood and lumbered over, leaning next to him on the railing. The sun cast a glow on the
side of his face that mimicked the one he had when he first approached, albeit more orangey this
time, as the sun was closer to the horizon; he briefly wished he could exchange his talent in writing
for the gift of visual art, he wanted to paint Jongseong in oranges and yellows and immortalize him
in this sunset. “Jungwon, you’re pretty. And I’m not saying that just to say that, I’m saying that
because there are a lot of people who are into you. More than you know.”

And he had that kind of feeling, he did.

It sank to the bottom of his being and left him anchored to the ground and unable to move—torpid
under the monumental burden of being pretty. Some called it pretty privilege, but was it really a
privilege when you had no idea how to use it? When the said privilege resulted in an arduous
month of breaking the hearts of the people closest to him and pining over a fool who he
simultaneously hated and also wanted to mash his lips into so intensely that an artist passing by
would stop and make a sculpture out of it? Was that a privilege?

It was funny, because he’d likened himself to Pluto, but maybe Jupiter was a more accurate
comparison.

“I think I’m aware of my own gravity now,” he said lightly, the words dancing out of his mouth
like feathers left behind by a dove.

“What do you mean?”

It was nothing. Nothing really that Jongseong needed to be enlightened about. He’d go home and
write about it later. He turned to him.

“I can’t believe all of this started because you’re a world-class idiot.”

Jongseong inched closer, and despite being a few centimeters taller, he did his best to rest his head
on Jungwon’s shoulder.

“You love it though, don’t you?”

Jungwon would neither confirm nor deny.

“I still haven’t gotten my apology yet.”

“Oh shit, yeah,” he stood upright and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry for calling your poems cheesy
Jungwon, seriously. I understand that that hurt you...and I guess I have a better understanding now
of why you were so...yeah.”

“So yeah? ”

“Yeah,” he replied dumbly. “Just...can we leave this behind us now? All of this?”

“I plan on holding this over your head for years, but whatever floats your boat.”

And it was at this point that Jungwon thought that this was his ending scene, their honeymoon
moment—or, rather—the beginning of their honeymoon moment. It was the point in the romcom
that the music starts to play softly as the conversation winds down and the camera floats away
slowly, and the scenery is perfect for it—trees so green they look manmade, a historic temple as
their backdrop, a lion’s mane of a sky hovering over them—and as the both of them stood
overlooking the decorated pathway leading to the entrance steps, he imagined the camera floating
further and further away.

“So you think we’re gonna be together for years?”

 “Just a feeling.”

Further and further, up and up.

“Can I read one of your poems sometime?”

“I’ll think about it.”

They’re out of frame, their voices muffled.

“Can we make out now?”

“Hyung.”

“Sorry.”

The camera settles again and the shot lands on the sun, the entity holding the most gravity in the
solar system. The sun has nine planets in its orbit, including Pluto. Nine supermassive chunks of
rocks and/or gas showering it with attention, and it must’ve felt amazing—but man, with the
butterflies flooding his gut right now, he was certain that having Jongseong in his orbit was
infinitely more lucky.

End Notes

this is post-revision tourn_esol here to say. goddamn. this was a behemoth of a fic to write,
and im honestly and truly not sure how this actually turned out and so i come to u [reaches
through the screen and holds ur hand gently] please leave a kudos and or a comment, i feel
so drained rn and it would help me so much. i apparently cannot write a jaywon under 20k
words. this ship is literally going ot kill me.

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