2014: Waiting Round the Bend (1/2) for ginnomori
For: ginnomori
From: ANONYMOUS until May 22, 2014
Title: Waiting Round the Bend
Rating: R
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/D.O, Suho/Kai
Length: 10552 words
Summary: A make-believe saxophonist and a jilted architect reconcile under the moon and teeter on the edge of giving in to the selfishness of the heart.
Notes: i sincerely hope my spin on your prompt isn't too far off from your expectations and that you enjoy this... thank you for the opportunity and the extra breathing space in writing, really really thank you! ;__>;
11:20 PM
“Hyung!” a round voice still fresh out of puberty calls out from not too far.
It is enough to snap the man out of half-sleep-a characteristic feat of practiced humming to the low vibrations emitting from the phonograph. Even while acknowledging the boy’s presence the man continues to hum the succeeding bars to whatever track it was from The Magnificent Trombone of Curtis Fuller that currently filled the room. It is hard to tell exactly which track was playing, the record having been on loop since a few hours ago.
A few hours ago it had been Spurs versus the Mavericks on the forgettable television sitting on the countertop the man has his arm rested on. Not that friends congregate at the diner to watch basketball games over greasy hamburgers and imported beer, or that any of the staff slyly intend to steal glances at the screen while on duty; the contrasting shift from a sports match to a jazz record was more of a matter of setting the right atmosphere at the right time. It was unsurprising how seldom locals dined in the restaurant, but the business gets by enough to continue operating from hungry graveyard shift employees and loaded tourists who miss the taste of home. For a 24-hour diner that ran on a largely American menu, the lack of seats filled was rarely a practical concern. The exhilaration the basketball game exuded sufficed to compensate for the seats that were left unfilled. Naturally, deeper into the night-empty seats, dim fluorescent lighting, jazz records and all-languor aptly reigns.
The younger boy could not blame the man. Sometimes he would hum along to the records too despite being a lesser aficionado of the genre.
He observes the older man in amusement before allowing himself to continue: the easy melodies come from thin lips shaped out of marble skin. He is dressed in a burgundy plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up, and a black apron over it; not very different from what he himself was wearing. “Junmyeon”, the tag on his chest reads. It is small but noticeable, because nobody else wears their tag over the apron.
“Any plans for tomorrow?” the boy winks.
Junmyeon arches an eyebrow. The boy points to the calendar behind him, smiles, then Junmyeon finally returns the gesture.
“Same old, same old. I’m so sleeping all day. Maybe walk my mom’s dog if I ever wake up.”
“Hyung,” the boy whines.
“What?” Junmyeon laughs. “Are you gonna ask me out or something?”
“That would've been the plan but…” the boy trails off, positioning himself closer to Junmyeon. “I got into the program, hyung, they’re shipping me off to Camberwell next week!”
Junmyeon’s eyes widen, and he straightens his back. He is filled with vigor; it doesn’t take him a lot to recover lost energy.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Junmyeon frowns. “Don’t think I haven’t been watching you more closely in the past month; I knew something was up! All righty then, to Han Chu it is tomorrow! It’s on me. Now if you had at least told me before our shift today maybe we could’ve had chicken for lunch but-"
“But that’s the point,” the boy sighs, leaning away and crossing his arms. “I don’t want all of tomorrow or any of today. Just the lining between it and tonight.”
“I don’t get you right now.”
“I’ve been planning to stay at my parents’ until my flight, hyung. A surprise visit from a vagabond, their only son. I don’t know if they’ll even let me in, or if they’ve forgiven or forgotten…but it’s only fair that I gave them that. That I tried, at least. After everything,” the boy says. Junmyeon nods, but his eyebrows remain furrowed. “Afternoon today would have been a little too early, and any time tomorrow would be a little too late.”
“So you wanted to celebrate for the both of us,” Junmyeon says. “What a thoughtful kid you are. But sometimes I wonder just how much you’re keeping from me.” The smile that forms on his lips is fatherly, reassuring; one the boy has already seen plenty of times before, but never once tired of.
“For you and me both, together. I want it to be special. Two years is a long time," the boy says. “Things can change. Things will change.”
The door chimes jingle and staff turn their heads towards its direction supposedly in passing, only for their gazes to remain out of curiosity. It is an old woman with a toned build, but she is not an exemption to small, inevitable handicaps of her age. She saunters over to Junmyeon and the boy, oblivious or perhaps even indifferent of the glances being thrown at her. At midnight, elderly locals were anticipated to be snoring comfortably in recliners if not in dingy floral-patterned bed sheets, not at cheap diners asking for an unhealthy fix of cholesterol.
The lady half-opens her mouth presumably to tell them her orders despite having no menu to reference, but Junmyeon is quick to guide her before she could say a word.
“Welcome to Frank's, ma'am. Would you like us to escort you to a seat so we could properly hand you our menu?” Junmyeon says. His smile is patient, a small deviation from the one earlier.
“Have you any Coltrane, dear?” she says, grip on her purse growing tighter.
Junmyeon perks up. The boy looks to his older friend in delighted confusion.
“Coltrane…John Coltrane?” Junmyeon says. The woman nods and smiles, as if a tremendous weight were lifted off her shoulders. “Ah. Of course. Jongin?”
The boy navigates around the diner with the woman in tow looking for the right seat, but instead she settles herself in an empty four-seater table close to the phonograph and an open window facing the just as empty street outside. Adequate natural ventilation saves the business money by cutting off the air conditioning past peak hours.
Junmyeon lifts the Curtis Fuller record from the player, rendering the late night celebration of the Baptists a floor above slightly more discernible. After Jongin hands her the menu, which she doesn’t spare a glance, the woman expectantly watches Junmyeon rummage through a box of LPs behind the counter.
Something different finally spins on the phonograph: John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. The woman closes her eyes and Jongin patiently waits beside her. Eventually she does order. A small serving of Crab Louie and iced tea.
Before Junmyeon and Jongin could return to their conversation cut short, the woman calls them again for another request.
“Would you skip to side two of the record for an old lady, dear?” she asks, “I'm too much, aren't I?” The woman says it less out of modesty than because it is something she has grown to brag about and poke fun at in all her years.
“No, ma'am, that's perfectly fine by us. Customers don’t usually come here to listen to our LPs, but we're more than glad when they do. Mr Watson would be proud,” Junmyeon says as he returns to the counter to fiddle with the phonograph. “Anything in particular that you wanted to listen to?”
“‘Naima’,” she says. “Take me back to ‘Naima’.”
11:46 PM
Junmyeon continues to hum along to the Coltrane record, absently watching the woman nibble on her salad as he waits for his shift to end. He hasn’t resumed his conversation with Jongin, who was now at the far end of the diner chatting with a familiar face, a mutual friend.
The woman spots him alone. Their eyes meet, and she urges him closer.
“You must be wondering what an old hag would be doing here at this hour,” the woman laughs to herself. She fishes for a packet of Virginia Slims from her purse and adroitly lights the stick she set between her brittle lips. A poised huff. “But why not!”
Junmyeon diverts his attention away from the odor of the smoke to her plate. She hasn’t touched the tomatoes.
“How long have you been working here, dear?”
“Three years going on four at the end of this month, ma’am,” Junmyeon says, and after some hesitation, he adds, “There’s not much you can do with a Psychology major without getting into law school these days.”
The woman lets out an obnoxious, almost hysterical laughter. Junmyeon tries not to look uncomfortable, but Jongin and their friend snickering at him from the other end of the room tells him he isn’t doing a good job at it.
“That almost made me want to eat the tomatoes!” she quips.
“Really though, ma’am. Competition’s tough out there. But I’ve been saving up for law school since I got here, so I reckon in about-"
“You must think about that one again! There’s not much you can do? Are four years in this diner not enough to qualify for that? There is much you can do in the world, my dear. Funnily, your words don’t align with the strong youthfulness I sense in you!”
Not even Junmyeon has given his own disposition much thought. He thanks the woman, having no truer words to say.
“Youngho and I danced a lot back in the day. And by that, I mean a lot,” she says. “But on some days he used to tell me the same things you say. It drove me mad!”
“Do you happen to be a friend of Mr Park, ma’am?”
“At least I like to think that I am.”
“A better time to come visit the diner would be around mid-afternoon to just before supper time on weekdays. That’s when Mr Park comes to help around and oversee things in Frank’s.”
“Ah, but dear, contrary to what appears on the surface, the world is much truer, more alive, at night than at day,” she says, resting her cigarette on the ashtray. She peruses the scene outside. “Must have something to do with the darkness and the lonely moon that illuminates it. If you are not dreaming, you find yourself peering inside you and everything around you, yes?”
Junmyeon nods tentatively, as if weighing the notion in his hands. “But I can’t say the same for everyone else.”
The woman laughs again. “Did you know that the word ‘lunatic’ is synonymous to ‘crazy’ because people used to think the phases of the moon had something to do with one’s sanity?”
“Yes, I’ve read about that somewhere.”
“I’ve learned to believe that they’re not entirely wrong. That Youngho…he’d wasted his youth on an empty future. Now, lo and behold, he still keeps the Coltrane I gave him. He still keeps the records, even when Frank already had passed away,” she says, leisurely pushing the leftover tomatoes on her plate back and forth. “Quite endearingly foolishly so. What big fools we all are. Knowing that relieves me.”
Junmyeon studies the woman’s face. Perhaps it was the moon playing tricks on his eyes, but she looks decades younger than she was just moments ago.
“Most of Mr Park’s records are gifts?”
“You could say that. Gifts from other people to him, gifts from him to himself. Gifts.”
A lapse in their exchange follows, within which Junmyeon returns to humming to the Coltrane record still on play. It is the woman’s turn to study his face.
“Can you promise something to me, my dear?” she says, holding his right hand with her frail, weary ones.
“Depends on whether I can manage to do it, ma’am.”
“No-no, I am certain you can. Dear, don’t ever waste your youth on anything but your passions,” she says. With a knee-jerk reaction, Junmyeon wryly turns to the clock. Two minutes to midnight. “Be a fool to not be the bigger fool.”
“I can try, ma'am.”
“And a final favor?”
The woman’s voice grew softer, leading Junmyeon to lean in slightly closer. At a comfortable but manageable distance, she bends over the table and pecks a kiss on Junmyeon’s left cheek. She smells of odorous menthol, but its mental equivalent that lingered within Junmyeon was not at all appalling. He bashfully cups his cheek as the woman continues.
“I wish I’d brought home a charming, foolish young man like you, dear. But we weren’t foolish enough,” the woman smiles, then asks for her bill. “Don’t go looking back at the past with remorse like this old hag.”
She still hasn’t touched the tomatoes.
Junmyeon nods and rises from his chair, bumping into Jongin who has been beside him for some time.
“Shift’s over, hyung,” Jongin whispers. “You know what that means.”
“How much have you heard?” Junmyeon asks him from behind the counter, waiting for the woman’s bill from the register.
“Not much, just the few words after she kissed you,” Jongin smirks.
“Don't laugh, but she’s pretty witty once you get to know her.”
“I could tell. Really, I do,” Jongin says. “When she said something about bringing home a young man, though. The notion sounded oddly nostalgic, chivalrous even, coming from her. Do parents still expect that much these days?”
“Funny, my mom probably still wants me to bring home only the person I truly love. She told me that just once, but you know, I’ve been thinking about it every day…” Junmyeon says meekly, and very quickly he adds, “Uh, and Korea’s got a pretty filial culture. We’re rather collectivist.”
“I got ya,” Jongin says. “The bill.”
The woman was staring outside the window when Junmyeon came back to her table, as if looking for daisies in a rose bush. She looks visibly bothered the moment he cuts in her reverie, but her features eventually soften anyway. She had already prepared the exact amount down to the decimals.
“I doubt that we will ever meet again, but believe it or not, this night has truly been memorable for me. Thank you, dear,” the woman says. “Ah, my driver has waited long enough.”
Junmyeon stops her before she could go near the exit. “Ma’am! You forgot your cigarettes!”
The Alice blue packet lies innocuously on the linoleum tabletop, among a used ashtray, an empty glass, and a plate with leftover tomatoes.
“Have it given to Youngho. He’ll know, I’m certain of it.”
“Thank you for dining at Frank’s, ma’am. Have a pleasant evening,” Junmyeon says with a rehearsed smile, but not any less genuine. The woman was the last he served for the night.
12:00 MN
At the end of their shifts, Junmyeon and Jongin would usually head to the staff room to change out of their uniforms, chat for a while, and then leave the diner together on Junmyeon’s hand-me-down motorcycle, Jongin dropping off at his dorm not too far from the diner. After the woman left, Junmyeon went inside the room thinking Jongin would follow suit, but once there he realized he was alone.
Still in the empty room, Junmyeon finds company in the the Coltrane record muffled by the walls separating him from the phonograph. Somewhere in between changing out of his uniform, he punctuates a strong note that resounds from the record player outside by stepping his foot on a wooden bench. Eyes sealed tight and upper half still bare, Junmyeon settles in “Syeeda’s Song Flute” by deftly situating his fingers along the body of a makeshift saxophone hewn out of air. With precise, staccato movements he adeptly blows into and fingers the instrument at the right times, only that the sound would exist regardless of however earnest his efforts were. He accentuates his impromptu performance with convincing theatrics here and there. They come naturally.
Jongin finds Junmyeon in the middle of his performance, the resident saxophonist not the least fazed by a sudden audience.
“Someone’s in his element tonight,” Jongin quips, standing by the doorframe with his hands tucked behind him. The older blushes.
Junmyeon wipes the few beads of sweat that formed on his forehead and puts new clothes on. “Hey! I don’t say anything when your hips twitch to Django Reinhardt.” Jongin smirks as he steps in the room. “What’cha got there?”
“It’s so cliché, but you’d do it anyway…close your eyes.” After fidgeting for a while, Jongin cues Junmyeon to open his eyes, holding out a lit lemon blueberry marble cake small enough to fit in the plate on top of his palms. “I know it isn’t anything special, but…”
Junmyeon grins from ear to ear, and even suppresses a hearty laugh. He takes the cake from Jongin’s hands and places it on the bench. With nothing in the way, Junmyeon draws the younger in closer by the crown of his head and ruffles it, as if circumstances were the same as they were years ago. He had long come to terms with the end of his own growth spurt.
“But…happy birthday, hyung,” Jongin mumbles, quivering slightly in Junmyeon’s embrace. His eyes wander to the clock above the door. Ten minutes past midnight. “Isn’t it about time you made a wish and blew the light off the candle?”
Junmyeon kneels down to the cake, purses his lips and closes his eyes. He muses silently for a moment before blowing the candle. He finds Jongin behind him with his own eyes closed the moment he opened his. In a few seconds, Jongin blinks at Junmyeon staring at him.
“What’re you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Making a wish, of course!”
“Last time I checked, it’s my birthday we’re celebrating.”
“Can’t I wish anything for the celebrant too?” Jongin says, blinking at Junmyeon again.
“Nope!” Junmyeon dips his finger along the rim of the cake, smearing the icing on Jongin’s cheek.
“I didn’t come in early and get yelled at by Soojung while baking just so you could play with the cake…” Jongin pouts, but eventually he caves in and laughs along.
“Thank you Jongin, always,” Junmyeon says, standing up. “You’re really unfair. I didn’t even get to prepare anything for you.”
“You sticking by me all these years in Seoul’s more than enough a gift for just me getting into a university overseas.”
Junmyeon puts his arm around Jongin’s shoulders. “I can already see it. ‘Kim, Jongin. Solipsism. Acrylic Gouache on Canvas, 30 x 40”, 2018.’”
“Not as much as I can hear the tenor saxophone solos on ‘The Best of Junmyeon Kim’.”
“That has got to be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever heard.”
Jongin wipes the icing off his cheek. “Let’s face it, hyung, we’re both embarrassing!”
Junmyeon raises a fist at Jongin in pretend annoyance, causing him to flinch, but both end up laughing.
“So what time are you leaving for Suncheon tomorrow?”
“...Around six in the morning.”
“What are you waiting for then? Come on, I’ll just have the cake wrapped up by the other guys and then we can head home. You’ve already missed out on a few hours of sleep.”
Jongin doesn’t move an inch.
“I already figured as much.”
“You’re still in uniform,” Junmyeon sighs.
“Hyung,” Jongin says, his expression now unreadable. “Remember what you said earlier, about how much more I’ve possibly been keeping from you?”
“You can tell me anything Jongin, you know that,” Junmyeon says, wary of the tensing atmosphere. Jongin has his eyes on the ground, contemplating on something. At the last minute, he returns his gaze to Junmyeon.
“I’ve told you a lot of things about me and what I’ve been through, what I’m still going through. A lot of times I’ve been selfish to you about myself,” Jongin says, looking at his older friend straight in the eye. “You always stuck by me. In the end, all that selfishness even helped me get my way around things stopping me from becoming a better person and having a better life; because you were there by my side. But now, I don’t know if this selfishness is going to get me anywhere at all.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You needed someone to be there. It’s only fair that-"
“I could try and forgo the many selfishnesses of the mind. But hyung, the selfishness of the heart… I imagine I’m too young to make sense of it, let alone sate it. Yet here I am.” Jongin laughs out of spite. “Who’d have known you’d be my first?”
Junmyeon lowers his full eyebrows at Jongin, slowly taking in what he has just heard. “But why, Jongin? Why do you make it sound like you’ve already given up when you haven’t even tried?”
“Because Kim Junmyeon is no stranger to the selfishness of the heart. Like a splinter in his chest, the selfishness-sometimes forgotten, always ignored-has always been there. Because Kim Junmyeon can’t afford to give and give and give tirelessly all his life,” Jongin says. Junmyeon stiffens at Jongin’s words. “And Kim Jongin, all too young for the world, has plenty to learn about it by himself, because Kim Junmyeon’s heart could only give so much.”
“But Jongin…”
“No, hyung. Nothing needs to be explained. It’s high time you started being selfish for yourself,” Jongin says, rubbing the back of his neck. The quivering of his joints give away more than he allowed. “I’ll always keep you in my heart.”
Junmyeon tugs Jongin closer, tighter. Jongin is warm, and only then does the stark difference in their sizes truly dawn on Junmyeon. “You’re brave, Jongin, very brave. Braver than I am, even,” he says. “You’ve got a lot ahead of you.”
12:32 AM
Another unsleeping soul wanders into Frank’s: a male who appears to have an affinity for plaintive but inconspicuous clothing, although somehow he is not as suspect a sight as the woman from earlier. He blends in perfectly among the blurred faces of the demographic of guests past midnight, distinguished perhaps only by the paradox between his youthful physical appearance and stern countenance.
The fellow takes a while to find the one seat he wouldn’t move away from, much to the vexation of the staff catering to him. But the waitress has dealt with much worse, and thus easily forgets his face on her way back to the kitchen. She returns to him with nothing but a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich, no particulars.
He alternates between staring at the blank pages of his small Moleskine and peeking at his phone methodically, almost forgetting the food on his plate and the coffee in his mug. Still, he finds himself incrementally tapping his graphite pencil to the beat of the catchy tune playing in the room instead. He has the name of the musician on the tip of his tongue, but it refuses to unveil itself to him no matter how hard he tried to scrape from what little memories he had of jazz. He concedes to his curiosity and asks the waitress who served him with pitiable attempts at name-dropping musicians of either a different genre or a different era. She laughs, knowing not any better than he does.
“I’ve never been too keen on jazz, you see. The songs all sound the same to me.”
“Tell me about it! Well, there’s this one waiter who could tell you who it is right off the bat, but his shift just ended at midnight so…” She strokes her chin and looks around her briefly. Her eyes light up the moment she spots whom she was talking about. “Why, speak of the devil, there he is! Junmyeon! C’mere a sec.”
The fellow doesn’t think much of the name at first, but paired with an all too familiar face, he reflexively knits his eyebrows and narrows his eyes on this particular Junmyeon before him. The Junmyeon is ambling towards his table, but he is still juggling a conversation with another friend. Still likeable as ever, the man mumbles to himself. He shakes his head with a lopsided smile.
“What is it?” Junmyeon asks the waitress. The same placid voice. Junmyeon glances at the man for a second, then does a double take. The man maintains his expectant but unaffected look despite Junmyeon’s distractingly gaping mouth.
“Sir here wants to know who it is playing the trumpet on the record right now,” the waitress says, but it barely registers in Junmyeon’s mind.
“…Kyungsoo?” Junmyeon manages to breathe out.
“Funny seeing you here, of all places. So Seoul isn’t as big as people make it out to be after all,” the man apparently called Kyungsoo says.
“Speak for yourself!” Junmyeon laughs a little uneasily. “And at this hour too.”
“So who is it?”
“Who is it?” Junmyeon repeats Kyungsoo’s question unthinkingly.
“The trumpeter, Junmyeon,” the waitress reminds.
“Oh! Right, right.” Junmyeon laughs again to himself. The same stupid laugh. “That’s an easy one. Louis Armstrong, of course. ‘La Vie en Rose’.”
“I was thinking Lance Armstrong. Well, at least I almost got it right,” Kyungsoo says with a tight-lipped smile. “Louis Armstrong, huh? Louis Armstrong…”
Junmyeon instantly invites himself to the seat opposite to Kyungsoo. He leans in the table, not satisfied with the distance between them. “But seriously, what in the world are you doing here past midnight?”
“I could throw the same question right back at you, you know?” Kyungsoo asks, lifting his cup of coffee to take a sip from it. Junmyeon’s eyes hover over to Kyungsoo’s ivory hands, and the silver band wrapped around his left ring finger. He retreats slowly at the sight of it, sinking slightly in his seat.
“I…work here,” Junmyeon says.
“Hey, happy birthday. Have a good one,” the waitress mumbles as she backs away to the kitchen, lowering her voice to intend it only for Junmyeon. It isn’t completely out of earshot; Kyungsoo arches an eyebrow, but he doesn’t say anything more. Junmyeon nods and thanks her.
“My car broke down,” Kyungsoo finally replies.
“That’s…interesting. At 12 AM? How do you expect to go home then?”
Kyungsoo shrugs nonchalantly. He takes a bite of his sandwich for the first time. Junmyeon sighs and slumps in his seat, perking up again and excusing himself from Kyungsoo the moment he realizes Jongin still waiting for him. He finds him talking to their friend from earlier.
“Ah, Jongin, I’m sorry that took so long. I was kind of catching up with an old friend and-Sehun! You would know a lot about cars, right?”
“Yes?” the slender male says.
“Can you do me a favor? Oh man, sorry Jongin but-"
“No, it’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“Just a moment?” Junmyeon bargains. “I'll get back to you in a bit, okay?”
Jongin smiles.
Junmyeon drags Sehun over to Kyungsoo’s table, much to Kyungsoo’s obvious perplexion. Jongin follows them and tries to look as discreet as possible behind Junmyeon.
“So where’s your car?” Junmyeon asks Kyungsoo who maintains indifference, taking his time consuming the food.
“Just a few blocks from here,” Kyungsoo says. Junmyeon relays the message to Sehun, and asks him if he could check Kyungsoo’s car.
“The garage is closed until 9 AM, but I’ll see what I can do. Anything for hyung’s friends,” Sehun says. “Do you have any idea what happened to your car?”
“I don’t know. I own it and have a license, but my fiancée knows about cars more than I do. I never tried to know more than I think I need to anyway,” Kyungsoo says. “Although I can safely say that it’s ran out of gas.”
“If that’s the case then we can just fill it up at the gasoline station. No sweat. But worst case scenario, you’ll have to wait until 9 AM and take a cab home. I can sneak your car in the garage until then though. Like I said, anything for hyung’s friends.”
“That’s… thank you.” Kyungsoo smiles sheepishly, and Junmyeon doesn’t let the rare moment slip past his notice.
“You’re lucky Junmyeon-hyung’s got a lot of friends. Always handy having him around, if you ask me.” Sehun winks to Jongin. Junmyeon protests, but he blushes anyway.
Kyungsoo clears his throat. “Let me just pay for my orders and then we can-"
“Ah, no, let me. It’s the least I can do for a guy having a bad day,” Junmyeon insists. Kyungsoo sighs and the features on his face soften. He knows better than to argue with Junmyeon about something like this.
“Case in point,” Sehun interjects, eliciting a smirk from Jongin.
***
Lone lampposts were the most noticeable light source in the intersection outside. No neon signs competed with each other for a passerby’s attention, telling of how the closest commercial district was a considerable distance away. Seldom did cars drive through the relatively wide road. One could go looking for a dropped coin in the tarmac for a several minutes and still not be an obstruction to traffic, or the lack of which.
For whatever reason, the Baptists from the floor above Frank’s have only started going home as well. Kyungsoo regards them thoughtfully filing out of their room, like a child watching the delicate process of making chocolate in a factory. Junmyeon catches him mouth But it’s been years.
Jongin, for his part, has been watching Junmyeon for some time now, too. He gives a small smile to no one in particular and approaches Junmyeon when the opportune moment arose.
“I’m heading home now. It’s getting really late,” Jongin tells Junmyeon.
“But…ah, Jongin. I’m such a mess to you right now.” Junmyeon clicks his tongue and scratches the back of his head. “I’m really sorry that I can’t drive you home tonight. Kyungsoo…you know Kyungsoo can sometimes be a frail little-"
Jongin meticulously observes the glint in Junmyeon’s usually dark orbs.
“Hyung. I’ll be fine. I’m well past twenty now.”
“Okay, okay. But here’s some money. You know how cabs are more expensive at these hours.” Junmyeon offers him a few bills, but Jongin doesn’t seem interested in taking them. “Come on, Jongin.”
Jongin stares blankly at the placid face of the Confucian scholar Yi Hwang before spontaneously taking the blue 1000 won banknotes from Junmyeon’s grasp. “On second thought.”
“What’s on your mind this time?” Junmyeon asks. He sighs upon realizing he won’t get a decent answer. “About earlier.”
It manages to capture Jongin’s attention.
“There’s this nagging feeling that…you’re not okay with things going this way. I can compromise, Jongin. Before you leave, I want you to consider that. I want you to be all right.”
Jongin shakes his head. “Have you ever asked yourself if you’ll be all right? If you’re all right?”
Junmyeon’s gaze wanders elsewhere. The air is chilly even at the nearing end of spring, and he hears the Baptists cheer even as they make way to their cars.
“Maybe I’m not okay with it, maybe I am. Whatever the case, I’ll be fine, hyung. I will be fine,” Jongin says. “I told you. Things can change. Things will change.”
Junmyeon, left yet again with no truer words to say, responds only by a way he knows would be best. He hugs Jongin tightly for one last time in what would be years.
“Take care. In Suncheon, in London, wherever. Hyung will always be here. I’ll always keep you in my heart, too.”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Jongin mumbles in the crook of Junmyeon’s neck, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. He hides his face before they could fall.
Jongin waves good-bye at Junmyeon, Sehun and Kyungsoo until he disappears into the uncertain horizon of the night.
1:04 AM
It turns out that Kyungsoo’s car has indeed ran out of fuel on top of a battery gone bad. Sehun claims to have no authority to sell him a replacement on his own, but helps fill in the gas tank in the meantime. As promised, he tows Kyungsoo’s Hyundai into the garage, telling him to come back for it before lunch later in the day.
“Now that’s settled, I should probably get some sleep now too.” Sehun stifles a yawn.
“Thanks so much, Sehun. I’ll make it up to you next time,” Junmyeon says.
“Make it up to me? You’ve gone out of your way for me more than I have for you,” Sehun says, patting Junmyeon’s back. “Happy birthday, hyung, you hear?”
Junmyeon nods in acknowledgement.
“I only met you now but you’ve been a big help. Wasn’t expecting any, so thank you, sincerely,” Kyungsoo chimes in.
“No problem, man! Take care on your way home,” Sehun says, gesturing a good-bye before retiring to his own room above the garage.
“He lives there?” Kyungsoo asks.
“Yeah. He’s still in college, but he helps his uncle with their repair shop business. They own the 24-hour self-service gas station next to the garage too. He tells me that he stays up and watches people gas up their cars by themselves; see if they try to do any funny stuff. But most of the time they bore him, so he crosses the street over to Frank’s and does his watching thing there. Sehun’s an odd kid, but he’s good. I should know.”
“That diner’s still going strong, huh.”
“A bit of an overstatement, but yeah, you know, it’s still there,” Junmyeon says. He toys with the looseness of the straps of his knapsack.
“Still can’t believe you ended up working there.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I can’t believe it too, sometimes,” Junmyeon says. “So uh, do you want me to come wait for a cab with you?”
Kyungsoo starts walking away from the gas station, but Junmyeon trails behind him. “Do you have work tomorrow?” Kyungsoo asks, sensing Junmyeon’s footsteps echoing his.
“I have the day off.”
“Same goes for me.”
Junmyeon notices that Kyungsoo has nothing with him. If anything, they were probably in his car, but if they were any important, he would have retrieved them to take them home with him. By the looks of it, Kyungsoo doesn’t look like he had come from work. Junmyeon keeps his thoughts to himself.
“I feel like walking for a while. Do you mind? It’s still pretty early,” Kyungsoo says.
Junmyeon takes a glance at his wristwatch. On other days he would already be at home around this time. His mother would already be sleeping, but he would stubbornly watch films on the MGM channel until his own body gave up to slumber. Where was the fine line between early and late, exactly?
“I don’t mind if you leave me,” Kyungsoo says in passing, but there is a wistful spin on his words. “Thanks for the help, Junmyeon.”
Junmyeon doesn’t say anything. He is left with no true words to say, and at the same time he doesn’t know exactly what the best course of action was in this situation. Junmyeon continues walking behind Kyungsoo.
Eventually, his tongue betrays him.
“Heh. You’re still not calling me hyung.”
Kyungsoo turns his head to Junmyeon. “Do I have to? You never seemed to have a problem with it anyway-"
“I missed it,” Junmyeon clarifies, digging his hands in his pockets. “It should peeve me-in fact, I want it to peeve me, but it just won’t. I gave up a long time ago. Hearing it…hearing it even calms me, somehow.”
“You’re not that much older than me,” Kyungsoo huffs. “Never saw the point of honorifics, anyway.”
“You wouldn’t.” Junmyeon laughs.
The pair ambles on aimlessly.
“How many more people do you think are walking around in the city like we are right now?” Kyungsoo asks.
“Not a lot, I assume. Nobody would be out here at this hour without a good reason.”
“Without a good reason, huh?” Kyungsoo says. “Would you believe me if I told you there’s at least one empty business class seat in a 9 PM Korean Air flight to Sydney as we speak?”
“Wait, what?” Junmyeon says. “Oh. But why didn’t you go on it?”
“Kept thinking that I’d have left something in Seoul,” Kyungsoo quips dryly. “Went around looking for it for hours, whatever the hell it was, and my car paid the price.”
“Hm. Remember when I used to wear these big-framed eyeglasses? They used to get in the way so much when we played outside, so I always kept them away somewhere. I can’t count the number of times I’d gone around looking for it afterwards only to find out it was just tucked in one of my pockets all along,” Junmyeon says, then he points to his eyes. “Contacts have given me less of those dilemmas.”
Kyungsoo raises his index finger at Junmyeon and says, “A noble attempt at an anecdote. Guess we’re at that part of life now, huh? Reminiscing mundane things and all. Though that one isn’t quite the same as what I’m in right now. Because I'm not sure if I've already found my eyeglasses.”
Junmyeon and Kyungsoo continue trudge in and out of parks and neighborhoods with no fixed destination to speak of. Neither of them push the topic of Kyungsoo’s missed flight any further, but it marked the beginning of Junmyeon’s seemingly endless string of anecdotes, Kyungsoo more than willing to listen to each waning memory be unearthed by the older, albeit not visibly so.
one | two
From: ANONYMOUS until May 22, 2014
Title: Waiting Round the Bend
Rating: R
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/D.O, Suho/Kai
Length: 10552 words
Summary: A make-believe saxophonist and a jilted architect reconcile under the moon and teeter on the edge of giving in to the selfishness of the heart.
Notes: i sincerely hope my spin on your prompt isn't too far off from your expectations and that you enjoy this... thank you for the opportunity and the extra breathing space in writing, really really thank you! ;__>;
11:20 PM
“Hyung!” a round voice still fresh out of puberty calls out from not too far.
It is enough to snap the man out of half-sleep-a characteristic feat of practiced humming to the low vibrations emitting from the phonograph. Even while acknowledging the boy’s presence the man continues to hum the succeeding bars to whatever track it was from The Magnificent Trombone of Curtis Fuller that currently filled the room. It is hard to tell exactly which track was playing, the record having been on loop since a few hours ago.
A few hours ago it had been Spurs versus the Mavericks on the forgettable television sitting on the countertop the man has his arm rested on. Not that friends congregate at the diner to watch basketball games over greasy hamburgers and imported beer, or that any of the staff slyly intend to steal glances at the screen while on duty; the contrasting shift from a sports match to a jazz record was more of a matter of setting the right atmosphere at the right time. It was unsurprising how seldom locals dined in the restaurant, but the business gets by enough to continue operating from hungry graveyard shift employees and loaded tourists who miss the taste of home. For a 24-hour diner that ran on a largely American menu, the lack of seats filled was rarely a practical concern. The exhilaration the basketball game exuded sufficed to compensate for the seats that were left unfilled. Naturally, deeper into the night-empty seats, dim fluorescent lighting, jazz records and all-languor aptly reigns.
The younger boy could not blame the man. Sometimes he would hum along to the records too despite being a lesser aficionado of the genre.
He observes the older man in amusement before allowing himself to continue: the easy melodies come from thin lips shaped out of marble skin. He is dressed in a burgundy plaid shirt with sleeves rolled up, and a black apron over it; not very different from what he himself was wearing. “Junmyeon”, the tag on his chest reads. It is small but noticeable, because nobody else wears their tag over the apron.
“Any plans for tomorrow?” the boy winks.
Junmyeon arches an eyebrow. The boy points to the calendar behind him, smiles, then Junmyeon finally returns the gesture.
“Same old, same old. I’m so sleeping all day. Maybe walk my mom’s dog if I ever wake up.”
“Hyung,” the boy whines.
“What?” Junmyeon laughs. “Are you gonna ask me out or something?”
“That would've been the plan but…” the boy trails off, positioning himself closer to Junmyeon. “I got into the program, hyung, they’re shipping me off to Camberwell next week!”
Junmyeon’s eyes widen, and he straightens his back. He is filled with vigor; it doesn’t take him a lot to recover lost energy.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Junmyeon frowns. “Don’t think I haven’t been watching you more closely in the past month; I knew something was up! All righty then, to Han Chu it is tomorrow! It’s on me. Now if you had at least told me before our shift today maybe we could’ve had chicken for lunch but-"
“But that’s the point,” the boy sighs, leaning away and crossing his arms. “I don’t want all of tomorrow or any of today. Just the lining between it and tonight.”
“I don’t get you right now.”
“I’ve been planning to stay at my parents’ until my flight, hyung. A surprise visit from a vagabond, their only son. I don’t know if they’ll even let me in, or if they’ve forgiven or forgotten…but it’s only fair that I gave them that. That I tried, at least. After everything,” the boy says. Junmyeon nods, but his eyebrows remain furrowed. “Afternoon today would have been a little too early, and any time tomorrow would be a little too late.”
“So you wanted to celebrate for the both of us,” Junmyeon says. “What a thoughtful kid you are. But sometimes I wonder just how much you’re keeping from me.” The smile that forms on his lips is fatherly, reassuring; one the boy has already seen plenty of times before, but never once tired of.
“For you and me both, together. I want it to be special. Two years is a long time," the boy says. “Things can change. Things will change.”
The door chimes jingle and staff turn their heads towards its direction supposedly in passing, only for their gazes to remain out of curiosity. It is an old woman with a toned build, but she is not an exemption to small, inevitable handicaps of her age. She saunters over to Junmyeon and the boy, oblivious or perhaps even indifferent of the glances being thrown at her. At midnight, elderly locals were anticipated to be snoring comfortably in recliners if not in dingy floral-patterned bed sheets, not at cheap diners asking for an unhealthy fix of cholesterol.
The lady half-opens her mouth presumably to tell them her orders despite having no menu to reference, but Junmyeon is quick to guide her before she could say a word.
“Welcome to Frank's, ma'am. Would you like us to escort you to a seat so we could properly hand you our menu?” Junmyeon says. His smile is patient, a small deviation from the one earlier.
“Have you any Coltrane, dear?” she says, grip on her purse growing tighter.
Junmyeon perks up. The boy looks to his older friend in delighted confusion.
“Coltrane…John Coltrane?” Junmyeon says. The woman nods and smiles, as if a tremendous weight were lifted off her shoulders. “Ah. Of course. Jongin?”
The boy navigates around the diner with the woman in tow looking for the right seat, but instead she settles herself in an empty four-seater table close to the phonograph and an open window facing the just as empty street outside. Adequate natural ventilation saves the business money by cutting off the air conditioning past peak hours.
Junmyeon lifts the Curtis Fuller record from the player, rendering the late night celebration of the Baptists a floor above slightly more discernible. After Jongin hands her the menu, which she doesn’t spare a glance, the woman expectantly watches Junmyeon rummage through a box of LPs behind the counter.
Something different finally spins on the phonograph: John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. The woman closes her eyes and Jongin patiently waits beside her. Eventually she does order. A small serving of Crab Louie and iced tea.
Before Junmyeon and Jongin could return to their conversation cut short, the woman calls them again for another request.
“Would you skip to side two of the record for an old lady, dear?” she asks, “I'm too much, aren't I?” The woman says it less out of modesty than because it is something she has grown to brag about and poke fun at in all her years.
“No, ma'am, that's perfectly fine by us. Customers don’t usually come here to listen to our LPs, but we're more than glad when they do. Mr Watson would be proud,” Junmyeon says as he returns to the counter to fiddle with the phonograph. “Anything in particular that you wanted to listen to?”
“‘Naima’,” she says. “Take me back to ‘Naima’.”
11:46 PM
Junmyeon continues to hum along to the Coltrane record, absently watching the woman nibble on her salad as he waits for his shift to end. He hasn’t resumed his conversation with Jongin, who was now at the far end of the diner chatting with a familiar face, a mutual friend.
The woman spots him alone. Their eyes meet, and she urges him closer.
“You must be wondering what an old hag would be doing here at this hour,” the woman laughs to herself. She fishes for a packet of Virginia Slims from her purse and adroitly lights the stick she set between her brittle lips. A poised huff. “But why not!”
Junmyeon diverts his attention away from the odor of the smoke to her plate. She hasn’t touched the tomatoes.
“How long have you been working here, dear?”
“Three years going on four at the end of this month, ma’am,” Junmyeon says, and after some hesitation, he adds, “There’s not much you can do with a Psychology major without getting into law school these days.”
The woman lets out an obnoxious, almost hysterical laughter. Junmyeon tries not to look uncomfortable, but Jongin and their friend snickering at him from the other end of the room tells him he isn’t doing a good job at it.
“That almost made me want to eat the tomatoes!” she quips.
“Really though, ma’am. Competition’s tough out there. But I’ve been saving up for law school since I got here, so I reckon in about-"
“You must think about that one again! There’s not much you can do? Are four years in this diner not enough to qualify for that? There is much you can do in the world, my dear. Funnily, your words don’t align with the strong youthfulness I sense in you!”
Not even Junmyeon has given his own disposition much thought. He thanks the woman, having no truer words to say.
“Youngho and I danced a lot back in the day. And by that, I mean a lot,” she says. “But on some days he used to tell me the same things you say. It drove me mad!”
“Do you happen to be a friend of Mr Park, ma’am?”
“At least I like to think that I am.”
“A better time to come visit the diner would be around mid-afternoon to just before supper time on weekdays. That’s when Mr Park comes to help around and oversee things in Frank’s.”
“Ah, but dear, contrary to what appears on the surface, the world is much truer, more alive, at night than at day,” she says, resting her cigarette on the ashtray. She peruses the scene outside. “Must have something to do with the darkness and the lonely moon that illuminates it. If you are not dreaming, you find yourself peering inside you and everything around you, yes?”
Junmyeon nods tentatively, as if weighing the notion in his hands. “But I can’t say the same for everyone else.”
The woman laughs again. “Did you know that the word ‘lunatic’ is synonymous to ‘crazy’ because people used to think the phases of the moon had something to do with one’s sanity?”
“Yes, I’ve read about that somewhere.”
“I’ve learned to believe that they’re not entirely wrong. That Youngho…he’d wasted his youth on an empty future. Now, lo and behold, he still keeps the Coltrane I gave him. He still keeps the records, even when Frank already had passed away,” she says, leisurely pushing the leftover tomatoes on her plate back and forth. “Quite endearingly foolishly so. What big fools we all are. Knowing that relieves me.”
Junmyeon studies the woman’s face. Perhaps it was the moon playing tricks on his eyes, but she looks decades younger than she was just moments ago.
“Most of Mr Park’s records are gifts?”
“You could say that. Gifts from other people to him, gifts from him to himself. Gifts.”
A lapse in their exchange follows, within which Junmyeon returns to humming to the Coltrane record still on play. It is the woman’s turn to study his face.
“Can you promise something to me, my dear?” she says, holding his right hand with her frail, weary ones.
“Depends on whether I can manage to do it, ma’am.”
“No-no, I am certain you can. Dear, don’t ever waste your youth on anything but your passions,” she says. With a knee-jerk reaction, Junmyeon wryly turns to the clock. Two minutes to midnight. “Be a fool to not be the bigger fool.”
“I can try, ma'am.”
“And a final favor?”
The woman’s voice grew softer, leading Junmyeon to lean in slightly closer. At a comfortable but manageable distance, she bends over the table and pecks a kiss on Junmyeon’s left cheek. She smells of odorous menthol, but its mental equivalent that lingered within Junmyeon was not at all appalling. He bashfully cups his cheek as the woman continues.
“I wish I’d brought home a charming, foolish young man like you, dear. But we weren’t foolish enough,” the woman smiles, then asks for her bill. “Don’t go looking back at the past with remorse like this old hag.”
She still hasn’t touched the tomatoes.
Junmyeon nods and rises from his chair, bumping into Jongin who has been beside him for some time.
“Shift’s over, hyung,” Jongin whispers. “You know what that means.”
“How much have you heard?” Junmyeon asks him from behind the counter, waiting for the woman’s bill from the register.
“Not much, just the few words after she kissed you,” Jongin smirks.
“Don't laugh, but she’s pretty witty once you get to know her.”
“I could tell. Really, I do,” Jongin says. “When she said something about bringing home a young man, though. The notion sounded oddly nostalgic, chivalrous even, coming from her. Do parents still expect that much these days?”
“Funny, my mom probably still wants me to bring home only the person I truly love. She told me that just once, but you know, I’ve been thinking about it every day…” Junmyeon says meekly, and very quickly he adds, “Uh, and Korea’s got a pretty filial culture. We’re rather collectivist.”
“I got ya,” Jongin says. “The bill.”
The woman was staring outside the window when Junmyeon came back to her table, as if looking for daisies in a rose bush. She looks visibly bothered the moment he cuts in her reverie, but her features eventually soften anyway. She had already prepared the exact amount down to the decimals.
“I doubt that we will ever meet again, but believe it or not, this night has truly been memorable for me. Thank you, dear,” the woman says. “Ah, my driver has waited long enough.”
Junmyeon stops her before she could go near the exit. “Ma’am! You forgot your cigarettes!”
The Alice blue packet lies innocuously on the linoleum tabletop, among a used ashtray, an empty glass, and a plate with leftover tomatoes.
“Have it given to Youngho. He’ll know, I’m certain of it.”
“Thank you for dining at Frank’s, ma’am. Have a pleasant evening,” Junmyeon says with a rehearsed smile, but not any less genuine. The woman was the last he served for the night.
12:00 MN
At the end of their shifts, Junmyeon and Jongin would usually head to the staff room to change out of their uniforms, chat for a while, and then leave the diner together on Junmyeon’s hand-me-down motorcycle, Jongin dropping off at his dorm not too far from the diner. After the woman left, Junmyeon went inside the room thinking Jongin would follow suit, but once there he realized he was alone.
Still in the empty room, Junmyeon finds company in the the Coltrane record muffled by the walls separating him from the phonograph. Somewhere in between changing out of his uniform, he punctuates a strong note that resounds from the record player outside by stepping his foot on a wooden bench. Eyes sealed tight and upper half still bare, Junmyeon settles in “Syeeda’s Song Flute” by deftly situating his fingers along the body of a makeshift saxophone hewn out of air. With precise, staccato movements he adeptly blows into and fingers the instrument at the right times, only that the sound would exist regardless of however earnest his efforts were. He accentuates his impromptu performance with convincing theatrics here and there. They come naturally.
Jongin finds Junmyeon in the middle of his performance, the resident saxophonist not the least fazed by a sudden audience.
“Someone’s in his element tonight,” Jongin quips, standing by the doorframe with his hands tucked behind him. The older blushes.
Junmyeon wipes the few beads of sweat that formed on his forehead and puts new clothes on. “Hey! I don’t say anything when your hips twitch to Django Reinhardt.” Jongin smirks as he steps in the room. “What’cha got there?”
“It’s so cliché, but you’d do it anyway…close your eyes.” After fidgeting for a while, Jongin cues Junmyeon to open his eyes, holding out a lit lemon blueberry marble cake small enough to fit in the plate on top of his palms. “I know it isn’t anything special, but…”
Junmyeon grins from ear to ear, and even suppresses a hearty laugh. He takes the cake from Jongin’s hands and places it on the bench. With nothing in the way, Junmyeon draws the younger in closer by the crown of his head and ruffles it, as if circumstances were the same as they were years ago. He had long come to terms with the end of his own growth spurt.
“But…happy birthday, hyung,” Jongin mumbles, quivering slightly in Junmyeon’s embrace. His eyes wander to the clock above the door. Ten minutes past midnight. “Isn’t it about time you made a wish and blew the light off the candle?”
Junmyeon kneels down to the cake, purses his lips and closes his eyes. He muses silently for a moment before blowing the candle. He finds Jongin behind him with his own eyes closed the moment he opened his. In a few seconds, Jongin blinks at Junmyeon staring at him.
“What’re you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Making a wish, of course!”
“Last time I checked, it’s my birthday we’re celebrating.”
“Can’t I wish anything for the celebrant too?” Jongin says, blinking at Junmyeon again.
“Nope!” Junmyeon dips his finger along the rim of the cake, smearing the icing on Jongin’s cheek.
“I didn’t come in early and get yelled at by Soojung while baking just so you could play with the cake…” Jongin pouts, but eventually he caves in and laughs along.
“Thank you Jongin, always,” Junmyeon says, standing up. “You’re really unfair. I didn’t even get to prepare anything for you.”
“You sticking by me all these years in Seoul’s more than enough a gift for just me getting into a university overseas.”
Junmyeon puts his arm around Jongin’s shoulders. “I can already see it. ‘Kim, Jongin. Solipsism. Acrylic Gouache on Canvas, 30 x 40”, 2018.’”
“Not as much as I can hear the tenor saxophone solos on ‘The Best of Junmyeon Kim’.”
“That has got to be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever heard.”
Jongin wipes the icing off his cheek. “Let’s face it, hyung, we’re both embarrassing!”
Junmyeon raises a fist at Jongin in pretend annoyance, causing him to flinch, but both end up laughing.
“So what time are you leaving for Suncheon tomorrow?”
“...Around six in the morning.”
“What are you waiting for then? Come on, I’ll just have the cake wrapped up by the other guys and then we can head home. You’ve already missed out on a few hours of sleep.”
Jongin doesn’t move an inch.
“I already figured as much.”
“You’re still in uniform,” Junmyeon sighs.
“Hyung,” Jongin says, his expression now unreadable. “Remember what you said earlier, about how much more I’ve possibly been keeping from you?”
“You can tell me anything Jongin, you know that,” Junmyeon says, wary of the tensing atmosphere. Jongin has his eyes on the ground, contemplating on something. At the last minute, he returns his gaze to Junmyeon.
“I’ve told you a lot of things about me and what I’ve been through, what I’m still going through. A lot of times I’ve been selfish to you about myself,” Jongin says, looking at his older friend straight in the eye. “You always stuck by me. In the end, all that selfishness even helped me get my way around things stopping me from becoming a better person and having a better life; because you were there by my side. But now, I don’t know if this selfishness is going to get me anywhere at all.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You needed someone to be there. It’s only fair that-"
“I could try and forgo the many selfishnesses of the mind. But hyung, the selfishness of the heart… I imagine I’m too young to make sense of it, let alone sate it. Yet here I am.” Jongin laughs out of spite. “Who’d have known you’d be my first?”
Junmyeon lowers his full eyebrows at Jongin, slowly taking in what he has just heard. “But why, Jongin? Why do you make it sound like you’ve already given up when you haven’t even tried?”
“Because Kim Junmyeon is no stranger to the selfishness of the heart. Like a splinter in his chest, the selfishness-sometimes forgotten, always ignored-has always been there. Because Kim Junmyeon can’t afford to give and give and give tirelessly all his life,” Jongin says. Junmyeon stiffens at Jongin’s words. “And Kim Jongin, all too young for the world, has plenty to learn about it by himself, because Kim Junmyeon’s heart could only give so much.”
“But Jongin…”
“No, hyung. Nothing needs to be explained. It’s high time you started being selfish for yourself,” Jongin says, rubbing the back of his neck. The quivering of his joints give away more than he allowed. “I’ll always keep you in my heart.”
Junmyeon tugs Jongin closer, tighter. Jongin is warm, and only then does the stark difference in their sizes truly dawn on Junmyeon. “You’re brave, Jongin, very brave. Braver than I am, even,” he says. “You’ve got a lot ahead of you.”
12:32 AM
Another unsleeping soul wanders into Frank’s: a male who appears to have an affinity for plaintive but inconspicuous clothing, although somehow he is not as suspect a sight as the woman from earlier. He blends in perfectly among the blurred faces of the demographic of guests past midnight, distinguished perhaps only by the paradox between his youthful physical appearance and stern countenance.
The fellow takes a while to find the one seat he wouldn’t move away from, much to the vexation of the staff catering to him. But the waitress has dealt with much worse, and thus easily forgets his face on her way back to the kitchen. She returns to him with nothing but a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich, no particulars.
He alternates between staring at the blank pages of his small Moleskine and peeking at his phone methodically, almost forgetting the food on his plate and the coffee in his mug. Still, he finds himself incrementally tapping his graphite pencil to the beat of the catchy tune playing in the room instead. He has the name of the musician on the tip of his tongue, but it refuses to unveil itself to him no matter how hard he tried to scrape from what little memories he had of jazz. He concedes to his curiosity and asks the waitress who served him with pitiable attempts at name-dropping musicians of either a different genre or a different era. She laughs, knowing not any better than he does.
“I’ve never been too keen on jazz, you see. The songs all sound the same to me.”
“Tell me about it! Well, there’s this one waiter who could tell you who it is right off the bat, but his shift just ended at midnight so…” She strokes her chin and looks around her briefly. Her eyes light up the moment she spots whom she was talking about. “Why, speak of the devil, there he is! Junmyeon! C’mere a sec.”
The fellow doesn’t think much of the name at first, but paired with an all too familiar face, he reflexively knits his eyebrows and narrows his eyes on this particular Junmyeon before him. The Junmyeon is ambling towards his table, but he is still juggling a conversation with another friend. Still likeable as ever, the man mumbles to himself. He shakes his head with a lopsided smile.
“What is it?” Junmyeon asks the waitress. The same placid voice. Junmyeon glances at the man for a second, then does a double take. The man maintains his expectant but unaffected look despite Junmyeon’s distractingly gaping mouth.
“Sir here wants to know who it is playing the trumpet on the record right now,” the waitress says, but it barely registers in Junmyeon’s mind.
“…Kyungsoo?” Junmyeon manages to breathe out.
“Funny seeing you here, of all places. So Seoul isn’t as big as people make it out to be after all,” the man apparently called Kyungsoo says.
“Speak for yourself!” Junmyeon laughs a little uneasily. “And at this hour too.”
“So who is it?”
“Who is it?” Junmyeon repeats Kyungsoo’s question unthinkingly.
“The trumpeter, Junmyeon,” the waitress reminds.
“Oh! Right, right.” Junmyeon laughs again to himself. The same stupid laugh. “That’s an easy one. Louis Armstrong, of course. ‘La Vie en Rose’.”
“I was thinking Lance Armstrong. Well, at least I almost got it right,” Kyungsoo says with a tight-lipped smile. “Louis Armstrong, huh? Louis Armstrong…”
Junmyeon instantly invites himself to the seat opposite to Kyungsoo. He leans in the table, not satisfied with the distance between them. “But seriously, what in the world are you doing here past midnight?”
“I could throw the same question right back at you, you know?” Kyungsoo asks, lifting his cup of coffee to take a sip from it. Junmyeon’s eyes hover over to Kyungsoo’s ivory hands, and the silver band wrapped around his left ring finger. He retreats slowly at the sight of it, sinking slightly in his seat.
“I…work here,” Junmyeon says.
“Hey, happy birthday. Have a good one,” the waitress mumbles as she backs away to the kitchen, lowering her voice to intend it only for Junmyeon. It isn’t completely out of earshot; Kyungsoo arches an eyebrow, but he doesn’t say anything more. Junmyeon nods and thanks her.
“My car broke down,” Kyungsoo finally replies.
“That’s…interesting. At 12 AM? How do you expect to go home then?”
Kyungsoo shrugs nonchalantly. He takes a bite of his sandwich for the first time. Junmyeon sighs and slumps in his seat, perking up again and excusing himself from Kyungsoo the moment he realizes Jongin still waiting for him. He finds him talking to their friend from earlier.
“Ah, Jongin, I’m sorry that took so long. I was kind of catching up with an old friend and-Sehun! You would know a lot about cars, right?”
“Yes?” the slender male says.
“Can you do me a favor? Oh man, sorry Jongin but-"
“No, it’s all right. I don’t mind.”
“Just a moment?” Junmyeon bargains. “I'll get back to you in a bit, okay?”
Jongin smiles.
Junmyeon drags Sehun over to Kyungsoo’s table, much to Kyungsoo’s obvious perplexion. Jongin follows them and tries to look as discreet as possible behind Junmyeon.
“So where’s your car?” Junmyeon asks Kyungsoo who maintains indifference, taking his time consuming the food.
“Just a few blocks from here,” Kyungsoo says. Junmyeon relays the message to Sehun, and asks him if he could check Kyungsoo’s car.
“The garage is closed until 9 AM, but I’ll see what I can do. Anything for hyung’s friends,” Sehun says. “Do you have any idea what happened to your car?”
“I don’t know. I own it and have a license, but my fiancée knows about cars more than I do. I never tried to know more than I think I need to anyway,” Kyungsoo says. “Although I can safely say that it’s ran out of gas.”
“If that’s the case then we can just fill it up at the gasoline station. No sweat. But worst case scenario, you’ll have to wait until 9 AM and take a cab home. I can sneak your car in the garage until then though. Like I said, anything for hyung’s friends.”
“That’s… thank you.” Kyungsoo smiles sheepishly, and Junmyeon doesn’t let the rare moment slip past his notice.
“You’re lucky Junmyeon-hyung’s got a lot of friends. Always handy having him around, if you ask me.” Sehun winks to Jongin. Junmyeon protests, but he blushes anyway.
Kyungsoo clears his throat. “Let me just pay for my orders and then we can-"
“Ah, no, let me. It’s the least I can do for a guy having a bad day,” Junmyeon insists. Kyungsoo sighs and the features on his face soften. He knows better than to argue with Junmyeon about something like this.
“Case in point,” Sehun interjects, eliciting a smirk from Jongin.
***
Lone lampposts were the most noticeable light source in the intersection outside. No neon signs competed with each other for a passerby’s attention, telling of how the closest commercial district was a considerable distance away. Seldom did cars drive through the relatively wide road. One could go looking for a dropped coin in the tarmac for a several minutes and still not be an obstruction to traffic, or the lack of which.
For whatever reason, the Baptists from the floor above Frank’s have only started going home as well. Kyungsoo regards them thoughtfully filing out of their room, like a child watching the delicate process of making chocolate in a factory. Junmyeon catches him mouth But it’s been years.
Jongin, for his part, has been watching Junmyeon for some time now, too. He gives a small smile to no one in particular and approaches Junmyeon when the opportune moment arose.
“I’m heading home now. It’s getting really late,” Jongin tells Junmyeon.
“But…ah, Jongin. I’m such a mess to you right now.” Junmyeon clicks his tongue and scratches the back of his head. “I’m really sorry that I can’t drive you home tonight. Kyungsoo…you know Kyungsoo can sometimes be a frail little-"
Jongin meticulously observes the glint in Junmyeon’s usually dark orbs.
“Hyung. I’ll be fine. I’m well past twenty now.”
“Okay, okay. But here’s some money. You know how cabs are more expensive at these hours.” Junmyeon offers him a few bills, but Jongin doesn’t seem interested in taking them. “Come on, Jongin.”
Jongin stares blankly at the placid face of the Confucian scholar Yi Hwang before spontaneously taking the blue 1000 won banknotes from Junmyeon’s grasp. “On second thought.”
“What’s on your mind this time?” Junmyeon asks. He sighs upon realizing he won’t get a decent answer. “About earlier.”
It manages to capture Jongin’s attention.
“There’s this nagging feeling that…you’re not okay with things going this way. I can compromise, Jongin. Before you leave, I want you to consider that. I want you to be all right.”
Jongin shakes his head. “Have you ever asked yourself if you’ll be all right? If you’re all right?”
Junmyeon’s gaze wanders elsewhere. The air is chilly even at the nearing end of spring, and he hears the Baptists cheer even as they make way to their cars.
“Maybe I’m not okay with it, maybe I am. Whatever the case, I’ll be fine, hyung. I will be fine,” Jongin says. “I told you. Things can change. Things will change.”
Junmyeon, left yet again with no truer words to say, responds only by a way he knows would be best. He hugs Jongin tightly for one last time in what would be years.
“Take care. In Suncheon, in London, wherever. Hyung will always be here. I’ll always keep you in my heart, too.”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Jongin mumbles in the crook of Junmyeon’s neck, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. He hides his face before they could fall.
Jongin waves good-bye at Junmyeon, Sehun and Kyungsoo until he disappears into the uncertain horizon of the night.
1:04 AM
It turns out that Kyungsoo’s car has indeed ran out of fuel on top of a battery gone bad. Sehun claims to have no authority to sell him a replacement on his own, but helps fill in the gas tank in the meantime. As promised, he tows Kyungsoo’s Hyundai into the garage, telling him to come back for it before lunch later in the day.
“Now that’s settled, I should probably get some sleep now too.” Sehun stifles a yawn.
“Thanks so much, Sehun. I’ll make it up to you next time,” Junmyeon says.
“Make it up to me? You’ve gone out of your way for me more than I have for you,” Sehun says, patting Junmyeon’s back. “Happy birthday, hyung, you hear?”
Junmyeon nods in acknowledgement.
“I only met you now but you’ve been a big help. Wasn’t expecting any, so thank you, sincerely,” Kyungsoo chimes in.
“No problem, man! Take care on your way home,” Sehun says, gesturing a good-bye before retiring to his own room above the garage.
“He lives there?” Kyungsoo asks.
“Yeah. He’s still in college, but he helps his uncle with their repair shop business. They own the 24-hour self-service gas station next to the garage too. He tells me that he stays up and watches people gas up their cars by themselves; see if they try to do any funny stuff. But most of the time they bore him, so he crosses the street over to Frank’s and does his watching thing there. Sehun’s an odd kid, but he’s good. I should know.”
“That diner’s still going strong, huh.”
“A bit of an overstatement, but yeah, you know, it’s still there,” Junmyeon says. He toys with the looseness of the straps of his knapsack.
“Still can’t believe you ended up working there.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I can’t believe it too, sometimes,” Junmyeon says. “So uh, do you want me to come wait for a cab with you?”
Kyungsoo starts walking away from the gas station, but Junmyeon trails behind him. “Do you have work tomorrow?” Kyungsoo asks, sensing Junmyeon’s footsteps echoing his.
“I have the day off.”
“Same goes for me.”
Junmyeon notices that Kyungsoo has nothing with him. If anything, they were probably in his car, but if they were any important, he would have retrieved them to take them home with him. By the looks of it, Kyungsoo doesn’t look like he had come from work. Junmyeon keeps his thoughts to himself.
“I feel like walking for a while. Do you mind? It’s still pretty early,” Kyungsoo says.
Junmyeon takes a glance at his wristwatch. On other days he would already be at home around this time. His mother would already be sleeping, but he would stubbornly watch films on the MGM channel until his own body gave up to slumber. Where was the fine line between early and late, exactly?
“I don’t mind if you leave me,” Kyungsoo says in passing, but there is a wistful spin on his words. “Thanks for the help, Junmyeon.”
Junmyeon doesn’t say anything. He is left with no true words to say, and at the same time he doesn’t know exactly what the best course of action was in this situation. Junmyeon continues walking behind Kyungsoo.
Eventually, his tongue betrays him.
“Heh. You’re still not calling me hyung.”
Kyungsoo turns his head to Junmyeon. “Do I have to? You never seemed to have a problem with it anyway-"
“I missed it,” Junmyeon clarifies, digging his hands in his pockets. “It should peeve me-in fact, I want it to peeve me, but it just won’t. I gave up a long time ago. Hearing it…hearing it even calms me, somehow.”
“You’re not that much older than me,” Kyungsoo huffs. “Never saw the point of honorifics, anyway.”
“You wouldn’t.” Junmyeon laughs.
The pair ambles on aimlessly.
“How many more people do you think are walking around in the city like we are right now?” Kyungsoo asks.
“Not a lot, I assume. Nobody would be out here at this hour without a good reason.”
“Without a good reason, huh?” Kyungsoo says. “Would you believe me if I told you there’s at least one empty business class seat in a 9 PM Korean Air flight to Sydney as we speak?”
“Wait, what?” Junmyeon says. “Oh. But why didn’t you go on it?”
“Kept thinking that I’d have left something in Seoul,” Kyungsoo quips dryly. “Went around looking for it for hours, whatever the hell it was, and my car paid the price.”
“Hm. Remember when I used to wear these big-framed eyeglasses? They used to get in the way so much when we played outside, so I always kept them away somewhere. I can’t count the number of times I’d gone around looking for it afterwards only to find out it was just tucked in one of my pockets all along,” Junmyeon says, then he points to his eyes. “Contacts have given me less of those dilemmas.”
Kyungsoo raises his index finger at Junmyeon and says, “A noble attempt at an anecdote. Guess we’re at that part of life now, huh? Reminiscing mundane things and all. Though that one isn’t quite the same as what I’m in right now. Because I'm not sure if I've already found my eyeglasses.”
Junmyeon and Kyungsoo continue trudge in and out of parks and neighborhoods with no fixed destination to speak of. Neither of them push the topic of Kyungsoo’s missed flight any further, but it marked the beginning of Junmyeon’s seemingly endless string of anecdotes, Kyungsoo more than willing to listen to each waning memory be unearthed by the older, albeit not visibly so.
one | two