Oneshot - Where Skies Meet End on End
Title: Where Skies Meet End on End
Pairing: Yoochun/Jaejoong (main); YunChun!bffery, MinSu!bffery, OT5
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Romance
Length: 19,480
Summary: For a long time, Yoochun's life has been tough. Having been fired from his latest job, he leaves town and begins his search of self-discovery. Reconnecting with an old friend and meeting new ones along the way, he discovers what it feels like to have a home, true friendship, and everlasting love.
A/N: Written with mitzuki_chan along with art by su_zuna for the 2009 Partners Challenge over at dbsk_secretgame. (We tied for third place for the "Best Yoochun" category!) Also, because of this monstrous length, we thank anyone who finishes reading this, you are amazing. We worked really hard on it, so we appreciate the feedback. ;; Okay, enough rambling, onwards to the fic!
i. “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson
Yoochun wakes up in the morning with frozen toes and icy premonition sliding down his spine, pooling into a horrible, biting feeling in his stomach that murmurs of misadventure scheduled in the coming hours. Briefly, he toys with the idea of calling in sick to work, dreaming of a day spent indoors with a mug of coffee and flannel pyjamas in his warm, heavenly bed. However, the landlord’s been knocking at the door for the past two weeks, tongue clicking and hand like claws outstretched for money Yoochun doesn’t have.
“I’ll have the rent money soon, sir. Please just give me a bit more time.”
‘Soon’ never makes it around the corner, and it becomes the empty promise that hangs over his doorframe first thing in the mornings, curling up in the corner of his shoe cabinet and mingling with the sound of the landlord’s heavy, receding footsteps.
“End of this week, Park. Or you’re out of here.”
“Yes, I understand.” He knows he should be grateful to have a few more days with a roof over his head, but he can’t help but feel like a prisoner waiting for the guillotine, watching as the walls close in.
The city is still draped in a blanket of darkness when his alarm clock breaks the silence of sleep with shrill, obnoxious beeps. Yoochun stumbles out of bed and switches it to his favourite radio station, soft jazz that is slightly fuzzy with static.
The weather grows steadily colder with each passing day, and Yoochun’s breath fogs up the window as he pulls aside the curtains to peer into the shadowy street. His finger squeaks as he slowly traces the word ‘hope’ in the sea of condensation gathered on the glass. With this, he gets by, day after day.
On good days, it’s just enough. On days like this, when ghosts dance in his shadows and he’s left watching the letters fade away, he thinks that maybe it might not be after all.
~
In the past two years, Yoochun has worked over ten jobs; some of them clerical, some of them construction, some of them simple, miscellaneous errands. All the same, they each ended with an apologetic shrug from his employer and a big, brown, empty cardboard box.
As he walks into the office, he doesn’t see the looks of pity sent over work cubicle walls - the cardboard box sits stoically on his cluttered desk and stares blankly back at him.
“So we meet again,” he sighs ruefully and checks his watch. He’s got twenty minutes to pack.
~
He walks slowly out of the automatic doors with his leather briefcase in hand, cardboard box bruising his hips. The office building stretches blue and silver above his head, catching sunlight in its steel and glass panes and throwing them into puddles left over from last night’s rain, where they glare blindingly into his eyes.
This job had been Yoochun’s shortest so far: three weeks and a handful of days.
He doesn’t bother turning around to say goodbye.
~
He ransacks his apartment and digs quarters out from between the couch cushions, collecting all the money he has into one small pile in the middle of the coffee table. It doesn’t amount to much: six twenty dollar bills and four fifty, plus a palmful of quarters, dimes and pennies. He sorts them into little towers and wonders briefly about the lack of nickels.
The copper pennies are swept into his palm and tucked away into little corners of the apartment; one in the closet underneath the little flap of carpet that’s peeling up; one at the back of the topmost shelf of the bookcase, next to the old musty dictionary that has been here before he; one right behind the front left leg of the dresser, on top of the fish-shaped water stain; one underneath the right corner of his mattress; and one inside the tin teapot that has served hot water for his coffee faithfully throughout one and a half winters. He’s always liked to leave a bit of himself in places that he has loved.
Money for the rent comes from an old envelope stamped with the bronze ‘Bank of Korea’ insignia, hidden in the dresser, underneath four pairs of his boxers. Three of the twenty dollar bills go in, along with one slip of fifty and two quarters. He slides his thumb and forefinger along the fold of the flap, saying a silent goodbye to the shadow of hollow words lingering by his guest slippers.
~
The landlord lives on the first floor, in the apartment right underneath Yoochun’s. Their doorsteps could be twins if it weren’t for the brass plates carved with differing numbers on top of the mail slot.
Money in hand, Yoochun knocks nervously at the old man’s door.
“Hmph, Park. You have the money?”
“I do, sir. Here,” he hands the package over. “Thank you for these past years. I won’t be a bother to you any longer.’ He glances down at his feet, curls his toes into the bottom of his sandals. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning.”
“Oh… oh, yes, all right.”
“Thank you for everything,” he says one last time and bows. Head down, he turns to leave, blinking quickly against the mist clouding up his eyes.
“Do what you want in life, kid. I know you’ve had it tough, but life’s about living it the best you can.” The words are gruff and unexpected.
“Sir?”
The old man waves him off, “Good day, Park. It’s been nice knowing you.”
The door clicks shut before Yoochun has a chance to say anything else.
~
The sun is just edging past the horizon when Yoochun leaves behind the old apartment building, his life gathered up and packed into two battered suitcases stashed in the trunk of his car.
Daybreak is cold and the city is quiet like a ghost. Yoochun murmurs a silent farewell to each familiar establishment he passes - the bakery that hands out free hot chocolate with their Monday croissants; the 7-11 convenience store that always seems to be manned by the same sleepy teenager; the pet shop whose windows attract groups of children on the way home in the afternoons; the noodle stand owned by an old lady with kind hands that clicks her tongue at his skinny arms and slips him an extra egg and two pieces of pork, hidden at the very bottom of his bowl, every time he goes in for dinner.
Two years is a long time, Yoochun realizes. He thinks that he might miss this town after all.
~
On the highway, the sun is steady in the sky, bright in the chill of early morning.
Yoochun has the windows rolled all the way down, and the wind teases icy fingers through his hair and kisses his cheeks numb with cold. The stereo hums tracks from his favourite mix CD and he sings along, pretending that the notes that come out of his throat are tiny birds that sprout wings and take flight on the northern breeze.
The road stretches in front of him for miles, straight and heading towards nowhere. His hands guide the steering wheel with the far-off horizon as a destination; he has no idea where he should go, where he can go. But freedom is fresh in the morning air, sweet and light like the music that is slipping off his tongue as mountains flash by him in streams of green shadow.
Yoochun takes a deep breath and, breathing out, feels as though the cobwebs accumulated in the corners of his lungs are washed out along with the last of the city smog.
~
He comes across a fork in the lone road and, on a whim, abandons the open skies for a path into the forest.
Not long after, the tang of salt and brine sneaks into the wind, which has begun to carry the distant sound of waves. A bend in the road reveals the glitter of sunlight on blue water, startling in the green monotone of his surroundings.
He stops where the road ends, shuts off the engine in a lonely parking lot, deserted and littered with leaves. An old wooden sign stands at the edge between mountain and ocean, bleached bone white on one side and mossy green on the other. Its letters have been smudged into illegibility by time, and it looks to Yoochun like a straight-backed sentry marking the entrance to this nameless stretch of beach. Yoochun steps out of his shoes and leaves them neatly at the foot of the wooden sign.
The sand is cool under his toes and gradually warms up as he ventures further away from the shadowy reach of forest. The grains shift and slide around his feet, white and fine with tiny sparkling crystals. When he was a child, he used to think these were diamond pieces, marvelling at the mysterious beauty mixed in with the ordinariness of brown sand and chips of bleached coral.
He walks out until he is ankle-deep in waves, watching the sun play in spider webs of light along the bottom. The water is cold, for all that it reminds him of tropical places, and he slips back out moments later, settling on the sand a distance away. The waves just barely manage to lick at his toes and it makes him smile, stretching his feet just the slightest bit away so that the surf withdraws in what he imagines is frustration and then comes back in, crashing with renewed vigour.
He leans back and closes his eyes to the sun spots flirting behind his eyelids. The roar of the ocean surrounds him in this place, and he feels his heartbeat recede to a steady thump at the back of his mind as his ears fill with the sound of the sea. A deep breath brings in the scent of the salt breeze coming off the water; he takes it and adds it to this memory of being at peace and finally free.
~
A name and a face come to mind while Yoochun is sitting with his legs dangling out of the open door of his car, brushing sand from his hair and the folds of his clothes.
The uncertainty presented by the lack of shelter for the night is one he’s avoided worrying about so far, too caught up in the joy of the day to ruin the memory with the monster he’s lived with for the past two years. But a final destination is crucial in all journeys, as is the home that sees the hero off in the beginning and brings him back to rest after all is done. Yoochun no longer has the home that saw him off, but he thinks that he may be able to find a new one with this old friend whose memory the ocean has brought back to him.
~
He finds himself ringing the doorbell outside the lobby of an apartment building, an hour later.
“Hello? Who is it?” The intercom at the gate fizzles to life, catching him off guard.
“H-hey,” Yoochun says, suddenly feeling awkward. Away from the sound of the ocean and back in the city, he’s starting to wonder if this path of thought was a good one to follow. “Yunho, it’s me. Park Yoochun.”
“Yoochun?” Even the gray static doesn’t manage to hide the tone of surprise evident as the other exclaims, “Micky Yoochun?!”
Yoochun nods, shifting from foot to foot. He only realizes after a beat of silence that the intercom isn’t camera-equipped. “Ah, yeah. It’s me, hyung.”
“Okay, wait! Wait right there!”
“Gotcha, hyung,” Yoochun smiles. Yunho doesn’t seem like he’s changed at all.
“Don’t go anywhere!”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
The door swings open a few minutes later, and he’s met with a pair of eyes as round as saucers. “Yoochunnie! It’s really you!”
Yoochun can’t help but laugh. “Of course it’s me. How many other Park Yoochun’s do you know?”
“Well, just you…but I haven’t seen you in forever!” Yunho grins sheepishly. He’s matured a bit, Yoochun remarks, but he still has his boyish cheeks. Coupled with the shy smile, Yunho used to make all the noona’s swoon when they were in school.
“It’s good to see you, hyung,” he says and pulls Yunho into a hug. The other claps him on the back warmly and Yoochun suddenly realizes what he’s been missing in the two years he’s lived alone.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe it’s you,” Yunho sighs happily, pulling back. “Wait, wait, let me look at you.”
Careful fingers smooth themselves over Yoochun’s cheekbones; Yoochun watches as Yunho pulls a frown at the eyebags prominent under his eyes. “Chun-ah, have you been sleeping lately?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Truth be told, he hasn’t been fine, but he doesn’t need Yunho to worry. “Are you going to let me in, or what, hyung? It’s cold out here.” He hunches his shoulders and runs an exaggerated shiver down his torso.
“Oh, that’s right! Come in! We can talk upstairs.”
Warms hands tug him through the glass doors, into a lobby that is stylish and designed with simple colours, the latest fad in the cities. He glances in the back-left corner of the room and smiles, noticing that a little china vase holds itself in all elegance there as it had five years ago. Some things don’t change, and that makes him glad.
~
The ride up the elevator is just as familiar as the memories of the rides that preceded it. Yunho has always been a chatterbox and that about him hasn’t changed either, Yoochun finds, smiling fondly as he watches the other’s hands gesture animatedly, reminded of puppets that acted out storybook fairytales manned by the gentle old man down in the park during his early childhood.
He discovers that the photography studio Yunho had been trying to set up when Yoochun last saw him had taken off three years ago, and he’s managed to secure a decent-sized storefront in downtown Seoul. Yoochun is genuinely happy for him, and tries to swallow the slight pang that the thought of his own difficult and unstable jobs bring back.
“So how has life been treating you, Yoochunnie?” The question is temporarily lost as the elevator doors slide open, revealing another minimalistic hallway with black doors lining each side. Yoochun follows Yunho as the other leads the way down the corridor and through another, turning lefts and rights until he thinks the doors might be shifting along the walls, never staying in one spot.
Yunho’s door is at the end of a hallway, and Yoochun recognizes the faint scar of a crack on the upper-left corner of the doorframe. He’s sad to see that the childish pictures and messages they used to scrawl along the doorjambs have since been exterminated by a coat of flat white paint.
Stepping into the apartment, however, is like stepping back into memories. The same threadbare rug, still in all its fuchsia repulsiveness, is the first to greet the feet, just as the same printed ocean is there to greet the eyes on the opposite wall.
Yunho kicks off his sandals into a corner, not bothering with the shoe cabinet, and Yoochun surprises himself with the automatic sigh of exasperation that slips past his lips, as he steps out of his own shoes and bends down to line them up next to a gray pair of sneakers, then sweeps up the discarded sandals and settles them beside his. He’s dismayed to find that, in the years he’s been gone, Yunho’s front hall has become a battlefield of footwear, Nikes and Oxfords and Birkenstocks in different styles and age scattered like the corpses of wounded soldiers across the entryway. He eyes the closet on his right and tries not to think about what sorts of things would have migrated into there by now.
When he turns around, Yunho is there, lips quirked in the sheepish smile again. “Sorry about the mess?” the other offers and breaks out into a full-out grin as Yoochun shakes his fist at him and snaps in mock-irritation, “How the hell did this place turn into the local garbage dump while I was gone?!”
“Well, I don’t know,” Yunho whines like a guilty child with his hands caught in the cookie jar. “Things just grew legs and walked around while I wasn’t looking.” He laughs and ducks as Yoochun dangles an old sneaker by its tattered, gray laces between thumb and forefinger and mimes chucking it at him.
“Okay, okay,” Yunho says, chuckling. “Coffee? To appease the anger of the Almighty Park Yoochun, Lord of OCD.”
Yoochun has to struggle to keep his lips from curling. “It’d better be good coffee,” he says, releasing the sneaker.
“I got some Turkish beans from a customer last week. Don’t lie to me, I know you love the stuff.”
“You know I do.” He really does.
“Then, what’re we waiting for?” Yunho sweeps a little bow. “After you, sir.”
“Why thank you, kind sir.”
He really has no idea how he’s lived without this for the past two years.
~
“So, how has life been treating you?”
The scent of coffee is thick in the room, swirling like smoke. Yoochun imagines that he can see the little spirals of steam spin into the corners of the apartment and fade into the paling wallpaper.
“I’ve been all right. Getting by okay.” He doesn’t know how much he should reveal to Yunho. The older man is renowned for worrying himself to death.
Yunho frowns at him, eyes sharp over the steam of his cup. “Did something happen, Yoochunnie?”
“Um. No?” He’s forgotten about Yunho’s inconvenient knack for being perceptive at the worst of times.
“Really? Be honest with me, dongsaeng.”
Yoochun hesitates, sipping at his coffee to put off the moment of decision. Yunho mirrors his movement and they could be two sides of a looking-glass, staring across the table at each other. Reluctantly, he sets down his mug and clears his throat. “Well, um. I sort got fired yesterday. For the eleventh time.”
Sharp-eyed suspicion immediately melts into sympathetic concern. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“Not really. No.” He stares down at the table, tracing the whorls in the wood. His ears are starting to ring a bit, echoing in the gray static in his head. Self-pity begins to rise bitter-sour at the back of his throat and he takes a gulp of coffee to wash it back down. He hates feeling sorry for himself.
He hears, rather than sees, Yunho clamber over to his side of the table, the quiet whoosh of a magazine pile sent in an avalanche to the ground. A warm shoulder bumps against his and Yunho’s asking into the noise in his head, “Hey. Wanna stay with me?”
Yoochun turns his face away. “I can’t bother you like that, hyung. This apartment’s too small for two.” He doesn’t know what he was thinking, coming here.
“Nonsense, this place is the size of the queen’s palace!”
Yoochun stares pointedly at the piles of clothes and photography magazines accumulated in mountains all over the floor. Yunho’s grinning that sheepish grin again and he mumbles, “Well, it’s a little cluttered, I guess.”
Yoochun hides a snicker in his coffee cup. The noise in his head has died down a little bit. He presses his shoulder against Yunho’s and mutters a quiet thanks into the air between them.
He’s getting ready to leave, picking his way across the battlefield of shoes again, playing I spy with Yunho’s entryway, which seems to have swallowed up his sneakers in the time Yoochun’s been gone. Yunho follows behind him, picking up things and putting them on shelves as if he could clear away enough space to fit in another body and its belongings before Yoochun steps out the door.
“Well,” Yoochun says, turning around, hand on the doorknob. “Thanks for the coffee, hyung. It was nice seeing you again.”
Yunho nods, looks at him with concern furrowed on his brow, but smiles. “It was good to see you, Yoochunnie. Come back and visit me sometime, okay? My door’s always open to you.” He frets with the purple beret in his hands, picked up off the music box sitting on the chiffonier.
Yoochun tries to convey reassurance in his smile, but he thinks it might be just a little bit wobbly at the edges. “Catch you later, hyung,” he says and turns the knob.
The door sounds like the end of grace as it clicks shut behind him, and he wonders if this desolation is what Adam and Eve felt when the gates to Eden slammed shut on their paradise. He’s faced with a confusion of white walls, navy tiles and black doors that march on in a line and sudden vertigo tilts his world upside-down for a dizzying moment.
The musty smell of paint and wallpaper paste fills his lungs as he takes a deep breath and steadies himself. He’s just about getting ready to leave when the door behind him is yanked open.
“Chun-ah! I’ve got an idea!” Yunho sticks his head out and his eyes are sparkling in boyish excitement. “How about you work for me??”
“I. Um. What?” Yoochun isn’t terribly eloquent when in shock.
“In my studio! We’ve been short on help lately, with the Christmas season just around the corner and you’d be perfect!” Yunho is bouncing on the balls of his feet now and the purple beret perches lopsidedly on his head, Yoochun notes in amusement with the corner of his brain that isn’t busy getting over a near heart attack. “It’s perfect! Junsu’s been wanting some help for ages and we could put you in Jae’s old apartment and then you’d have work and a place to stay, Yoochunnie!”
“Hyung…” Yoochun sighs.
“Yeah?” Yunho cocks his head at him like a curious puppy, the purple beret clinging on for dear life.
“I have no idea what you just said.” Yunho has always had a tendency to slip into his Sattori accent when excited. Yoochun supposes old habits die hard.
“Oh. Oh well.” A shrug and Yunho’s grinning from ear to ear. “Come with me! I’ll show you your new apartment. Oh, we can get Junsu and Changmin to help with the luggage!”
Yoochun sighs, a wry smile tugging at his lips. He has no idea what’s going on, but he supposes this is the beginning of something new.
ii. "Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief." - Joseph Addison
Kim Junsu and Shim Changmin, he discovers, are the owners of the two black doors between Yunho’s and his new home. Sleepy-eyed, they each emerge in pajamas after five minutes of Yunho’s pounding and shouting at their respective doors. While Yunho babbles quickly and excitedly at them, Yoochun considers wedging himself into the little space between the wall and the box that hides a fire extinguisher.
“Your friend is trying to merge with the wall, hyung,” the one named Changmin says, lips curving wickedly. The one called Junsu laughs, high-pitched and squeaky.
Yoochun has never been more embarrassed.
~
It takes only one trip to get all his things up into his new front hall. His two sad suitcases sit in the middle of the entryway and look like they’re drowning in empty space. The apartment is white and bare, like the ribs of a dead animal, bleached bone-white with time. Yoochun wonders if he can ever manage to make this echoing space into his own.
Yunho clucks at his lack of possessions and declares a shopping trip in the afternoon. Yoochun realizes, with some surprise, that it’s not quite noon yet.
Changmin and Junsu are herded out, needling at Yunho for a noodle lunch out of his wallet in return for getting up so early on a day off. Yoochun is left alone beside the vestiges of his old life, surrounded by the walls of his new.
He wanders through the apartment, its structure familiar in its likeness to Yunho’s, and considers the mass production of apartment rooms with a big growling machine, just like how they make identical plastic doll houses for seven-year old dreams.
Giant sheets of tarp hang over the furniture and the carpet of the living room, but a layer of dust paints the linoleum in the kitchen a fluffy gray. Yoochun treads careful footprints through the room, from doorway to counter to sink to fridge. The fridge is unplugged and dark as a cave when he cracks open the door, but there is - for some reason - a shrivelled Granny Smith apple huddled in the back corner. He’s just glad it went for fossilizing as opposed to rotting.
The kitchen leads him to a corridor lined with doors. He counts each off on his fingers, guessing from the layout of Yunho’s apartment pre-imposed in his mind: closet, bathroom, workroom, balcony, bedroom. The bedroom is tucked right in the corner, and when he opens the door, he finds that its arrangement is foreign to the image he had conjured up.
The bed crouches against the far wall, wedged up against the heater as though for warmth. A low table sits next to it, sporting a plastic blue lamp. A wardrobe stands tall across the room, sandwiching between its bulk and the window a small desk that Yoochun only discovers after venturing into the room. He perches gingerly on the tarp covering the mattress, then swears as his hands come away gray with dust. He groans, not wanting to think about what this has done to his favourite pair of jeans.
He’s rummaging through one of his suitcases when a knock sounds at the door and the high, breathy voice he recognizes as Junsu’s slips in through the cracks between door and doorjamb.
“One second,” Yoochun calls out, wrist-deep in threadbare t-shirts and underwear. He quickly pulls on a pair of track pants and pads over to answer the door.
Junsu is bright-eyed and chirpy on the other side and tells Yoochun that lunch is happening in the noodle place two blocks down, on Yunho’s tab. He chatters the entire way down the elevator shaft and Yoochun has a brief sense déjà vu. By the time the doors open with a soft chime to reveal the lobby, he’s learned all about Junsu’s affinity for soccer, his fraternal twin who lives with their family in Incheon, his stupid best friend who works at a dance studio across town.
Yunho and Changmin are chatting on the sofas in the waiting area and they laugh at the sight, calling them slowpoke turtles. Junsu’s pout sits in a moue on his lips but it dissolves quickly into giggles that make Yunho grin and Changmin slap him playfully. Yoochun watches all of this and wonders at the surrealism of being surrounded by friends when, just five hours ago, he was leaving his apartment key in his landlord’s mailbox, suitcases in hand and nothing but a long, uncertain road stretched ahead of him.
~
Yoochun settles in quickly enough, accumulating furniture like points on a bingo card.
Yunho drags him shopping for random things over the weeks, and sometimes Changmin and Junsu tag along, pushing at each other and filling the air with laughter. His apartment soon becomes a joint creation of their making, housing a big plush sofa that Yunho insisted on, a 42 inch plasma and a Wii console, courtesy of both Changmin and Junsu. Yoochun himself has invested in blue curtains with plastic fish beads that he hangs outside the kitchen entrance, partly because it’s the most-used entrance in his apartment and it makes him laugh to see the expressions the others pull when they get a faceful of blue plastic. The other reason he keeps to himself, not wanting to tell the others it’s because he’s discovered that the sun slants through the kitchen window at just the right angle in the late afternoons to throw shimmering blue shadows on the walls and floor. It lets him dream of walking through water, filtering salt water and breathing bubbles.
He finds that he’s not often alone in his new apartment - there always seems to be a body sprawled across the couch, or another rummaging through his cupboards, or another swinging the hell out of his new Wii controllers. He doesn’t find out until three weeks into these strange new friendships that his suite - being a corner apartment like Yunho’s - is bigger than Changmin’s and Junsu’s. It is also with the added benefit of not having two inches of clothing and papers all over the floors.
“Besides,” Junsu tells him, “We figured you’d be bored and lonely, with only your big screen TV and your four-person Wii to keep you company.”
Changmin snorts. “We all know you’re just here for the Wii, hyung.” He’s sprawled across the couch, craning his neck at the laptop on his stomach.
Junsu swats at him, all righteous indignation. “Lies!”
“I never lie.”
“That was a lie right there!”
Yoochun feels his lips tugging up in a grin around the rim of his coffee mug. He’s long since learned to read the smiles underneath their bickering and see the love reflected in bright eyes and laughing hands that shove at each other. He glances over at Yunho, curled up with the paper in the single armchair, watching their two youngest roll around like puppies. There’s a soft look on the other’s face and Yoochun knows that the two of them are seeing the same thing.
“Hey, hey. guys,” Yoochun says and feels a swell in his heart as two pairs of eyes turn to him, crinkled with laughter, “Thanks. I mean. It’s great having you guys around.” He’s always been awkward with words and feelings, but some things just have to be said.
Changmin and Junsu pause in their impromptu wrestling match and grin at him and at each other and kind of all over the place all at once. Yunho smiles at him from across the room.
Wickedly, Yoochun adds, “Even if Junsu is only here for my kick-ass Wii.”
In the middle of the floor, Junsu’s shrieking protests and the wrestling match develops into a tickle fight that somehow expands from two-person to four.
And life couldn’t get better.
~
The time passes quickly and they are into the dead of winter before Yoochun is aware. Wintertime in the city is cold, but its buzzing neon lights and the never-ending sound of wheels across concrete manages to keep off the suffocating feeling of ice and snow globe silence.
Mornings start off early, the shriek of the alarm clock in the darkness of 6:30 a.m. reminding him unpleasantly of his previous years alone. He spends twenty minutes with his head on the kitchen table, inhaling the smell of coffee and the sound of jazz before Yunho and Junsu come to collect him, bundling him up half asleep and shuffling him out the building and off to the studio. There, he spends the day setting up props and adjusting lighting under Junsu’s direction, occasionally hijacking the sound system to blast raunchy Christmas tunes that set Junsu and the modelling girls off in giggles.
In the afternoons, Changmin comes in, lugging a backpack bulky with binders and cursing under his breath at all the morons he’s met on the bus that day.
Within his first week, Yoochun learns that Changmin is still a student and is juggling modelling work at the studio alongside three full-credit courses. It boggles his mind that the younger boy has time to play four hours of Mario Kart with Junsu every night and still stay at the top of his third-year Calculus class.
Yunho leans over the counter and whispers conspiratorially that Changmin is a genius. Yoochun has no objections.
~
On the day of the first snow, Yoochun searches through every corner of his apartment until he finds an old space heater hidden at the back of the coat closet, wrapped in dusty shadows like a sleeping old man. It takes up residence at the foot of the couch in the living room, whirring softly as it radiates heat and brings circulation back to frozen fingers and toes.
The other three are constant presences in his apartment, and days of biting cold end with the four of them curled up on the living room sofa amidst blankets and pillows stolen out of Junsu’s closet. His world in those moments is a lazy, burgundy red, bright and warm with smiles as frost creeps silently across his windows and shadows collect in the dark corners of his other rooms.
“It’s just like back when Jae-hyung was still here,” Junsu murmurs sleepily one evening, when he and Yoochun and Changmin are tangled in a knot of limbs and fleece on Yoochun’s couch, watching a late-night rerun of The Godfather. Yunho is out on their dinner run, carrying orders for sweet-and-sour pork, seafood chow mein, lemon chicken, and a pudding from the 7-11 downstairs because Junsu’s craving again.
It is on easy, drowsy evenings like this that memories come slipping out from dusty drawers, and Yoochun learns all sorts of things that would otherwise seem an edge too sharp under white, fluorescent lights.
“Who’s Jae?” he asks, wondering at the note of familiarity threaded in the name. The glance Changmin throws him is almost comical in its incredulity, laced with a hint of amusement in the lift of his eyebrow. Oh, thinks Yoochun, a silent syllable of revelation that forms on his lips and frames a shallow intake of breath.
“Well,” Changmin drawls, rubbing salt in the wound. “He’s only the guy whose apartment you’re living in.”
Junsu’s laughing again, pressing his face into the brown velvet of Yoochun’s couch. Yoochun prods him sullenly in the ribs and Changmin yelps as he gets an accidental foot in the leg. Before the apology can leave Yoochun’s lips, vengeance has already been exacted in the form of two fingers between his own ribs. If nothing else, Changmin has always been quick at revenge.
The scuffle reaches a truce when the rasp of a key turning in the lock announces Yunho’s return and the arrival of dinner.
“Welcome back,” Changmin calls, scrambling off and running to intercept the lemon chicken and possibly Junsu’s pudding cup for blackmail purposes.
“Hands off my pudding, dongsaeng!” Junsu yells, pattering light footsteps after him. Yoochun laughs quietly to himself, burrowing into their bird’s nest of blankets. He knows that the food will migrate back here eventually, where the heater pumps heat like blood into the air and chases away winter’s curious fingertips.
By the time he’s wrestling blankets back from Changmin and stealing bits of shrimp out of Junsu’s bowl, he’s already forgotten about their shadow named Jae.
~
Winter thaws slowly, like glaciers inching back over millions of years to reveal bedrock and the barest hints of green. Early one morning in late February, Yoochun’s sitting at the kitchen table and staring absently down at the pinkish light of dawn playing along the linoleum floor when he realizes with a start that spring is on its way.
The perpetual breath of frost detailing his windowpane becomes beads of perspiration clinging in wet kisses to the glass, and gradually, birdsong filters through his bedroom curtains in the morning, singing in a strange counterpoint to Yoochun’s favourite slow jazz.
February progresses into March and the sidewalks are constantly wet with melting slush. It’s the type that they all loved to step in as little children, just for that hot-knife-through-butter feeling as saturated ice explodes in sprays like a little liquid grenade. Yoochun’s not surprised to find Junsu and Changmin engaging in an ice-stepping competition, on their way to lunch on a day off. He supposes he shouldn’t have been so surprised to get sprayed by Yunho all over the back of his jeans either.
The four of them don’t see each other as much anymore; the arrival of the spring season means mountains of paperwork for Yunho, a brief trip back home for Junsu, and the approach of final exams for Changmin. Yoochun gets a little bit restless with the warm currents of air that are carried up from the south and he takes to spending more and more time outside, taking the bus away from the city center and into residential areas, searching out little magic places where cats’ footprints go.
On days of rain, he holes up inside, exploring the corners of his apartment that had gathered winter’s chill in tiny cobwebs during his absence. With the soundtrack of raindrops mixing with a lonely saxophone, he finds aged, forgotten things tucked into drawers and at the back of closets, and thinks about this mysterious stranger named Jae.
He’s leafing through an outdated issue of Photo Life when he finds the photo, an old Polaroid that is yellowing slightly at the edges. He feels a bit like an outsider as he peers in and there, in coffee-stain sepia is Yunho and a dark-haired, dark-eyed stranger, smiling with the glitter of stars in his hair and the reflection of citylights in his eyes.
~
“Jae-hyung?” Junsu’s hands pause, knife halfway through the round orange distance of a carrot. Yoochun looks and thinks he sees a tint of sadness smudged at the edge of his wistful smile.
“I found a picture,” Yoochun says, eyes averted, thumb skating the blade of the paring knife across the surface of his apple, watching as wax-red skin peels away to flesh-yellow in ribbons that spiral down to the water-stained linoleum floor. It’s the day after he finds the photo, three days into a week’s forecast of rain, and he and Junsu are making mix-and-match curry with the box of vegetables that Yunho had received from home.
“Oh.” Junsu’s knife unfreezes and meets the cutting board in a continuation of its previous steady cadence. “Hyung used to work with us,” he tells Yoochun, head tilted and long bangs hiding the seep of nostalgia from the world. “He was Yunho-hyung’s first photographer. He had a gift for finding beauty in the ordinary things.”
Yoochun thinks about the frames lining Yunho’s office walls, silent exhibitions of guttering candles flashing red and the delicate irregularity in the mix of passerby umbrellas on a rainy day in shades of charcoal-gray. He understands. “Why did he leave?”
Junsu’s laugh is a quiet and wistful thing, slipping off to curl up in the space behind the refrigerator. Yoochun watches it blink big wet eyes at him from the shadows. “He couldn’t stand to be in the same place for too long. Jae-hyung was the sort of person you could never cage. It made him crazy.” Junsu sweeps up the carrot rounds and tumbles them into the pot. He picks up a peeled potato and starts in on that. “He just upped and left one day. Bought a plane ticket and was off the next day for Europe. Yunho-hyung was devastated.”
Junsu’s eyes are soft and sad. Yoochun feels like he’s walked in on a private moment.
“Jae-hyung used to make the best bulgogi, you know? Changmin tells me he still dreams of it sometimes.”
The moment is silent. Junsu’s knife has slowed down again, hesitating as though it’s forgotten which way is up and down. Light filters through the filmy green curtains above the sink and throws shadows like that of trees across the walls.
“He never visits?”
“He phones occasionally. And I think Changmin’s still got some sort of email correspondence going on between them. But it’s not nearly enough, you know?”
Yoochun nods, dropping his peeled apple into the bowl. “Yeah,” he says, and wonders about the rooms of this apartment and the memories of its ghosts.
~
April blurs through May and soon the tourists are crowding into town and the air is carrying a hint of summer heat. Changmin finishes school and takes up full-time at the studio, and Yoochun forgets the feel of loneliness.
“Hey,” Yunho says to him during break one day, crunching on a mouthful of cornflakes that he’s stolen out of Junsu’s bag. “Your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?”
Yoochun pauses, left index finger hovering in sudden contemplation between ‘t’ and ‘e’ on the keyboard. He glances at the desktop calendar leaning against the computer screen and realizes with a start that they’re already on the last week of May. “Wow, yeah.”
Yunho’s laughing at him, eyes squinting into crescent moons. “Chun-ah, you forgot your own birthday?”
“I was busy, hyung,” Yoochun makes a face at him. Changmin, coming out of the washroom, spots it and points and laughs. Yoochun turns and makes a face at him too.
“Sorry, but constipation is not a flattering look on you, hyung.” Changmin’s draping himself over Yunho’s shoulder like a lazy cat, then, just as capriciously, is off and sauntering away with the bag of cornflakes.
“I’m older than you, dongsaeng! Have some respect!” Yoochun calls to his retreating back.
“And give me my cornflakes back!” Yunho adds.
“Wait a minute!” Junsu hollers from the back room, where he’s trying out the focus on a set of new lens. “Those are my cornflakes!”
“Well, Changmin’s got them now!” Yunho yells back, chuckling. He’s grinning like a schoolboy, caught up in the excitement of mischief made. Yoochun hides a smile. He can’t imagine devastation on that face. He doesn’t want to.
“So,” Yunho says, turning back. “You want anything?”
“For…?”
“Your birthday! Aish, you’re getting old, Yoochunnie,” Yunho laughs. He’s reaching curious fingers over the countertop and it ends with the kidnapping of the tin of paper clips. Yoochun is reminded of the times in school when they would string together all the teacher’s paper clips just to watch wrinkles of frustration knot themselves across her forehead.
He shakes his head. “I’m happy with what I’ve got right now, hyung.”
Yunho purses his lips, linking a pink clip to a forest green one. “You sure?”
Yoochun steals the tin closer to him and starts on the other end of the chain. “One hundred and ten percent.”
~
On the first morning of June, Yoochun walks into the kitchen to find a plain white envelope sitting on his countertop.
It isn’t sealed and when he tips it upside-down, a pair of plane tickets slip onto the marble tabletop, alongside a piece of notepaper, folded in half with mismatched corners.
Yoochun-ah,
I know you said you didn’t want anything, but you’ve worked hard for the past half year and you deserve a break ^__^
Take the day off today and pack! Your plane leaves at 8:00 am on Thursday. I’ve got a meeting then, so Minnie will drive you there. Don’t be late!
Happy birthday, my dear dongsaeng!!
From your favourite hyung,
Yunho ♥
“You’re my only hyung,” Yoochun mutters, rubbing at his eyes. He turns the note over and chuffs out a surprised laugh.
PS. Changmin says that you’d better bring him back something nice and parisien. And Junsu wants chocolates and an Eiffel tower keychain. I don’t need anything, but pictures of you having fun would be wonderful ^_____^
Underneath, in big loopy brackets, he reads:
[Yoochunnie! Yunho-hyung is so unfair! Changmin and I never got to go anywhere! Please take us with you? ;______;
Just joking! Have enough fun for the four of us, okay! ♥
From your bestest friend,
Junsu ]
[[Have a safe trip, hyung. make sure to bring me back something. I’ll remind you again at the airport so you don’t forget ;)
Don’t miss us too much!
From your favourite dongsaeng,
Changmin ]]
Yoochun picks up the tickets and squints at the tiny automatic font. They’re round-trip tickets to Paris and back, dated a week apart. He slides onto the floor, disbelief in the set of his bones.
He’s going to Paris.
~
The night before his departure, Yoochun is visited by an old monster.
It’s a nightmare he’s had ever since college graduation, rooted in the apologetic smile on his then-girlfriend’s face, sewn together like a wound gaping wide, as she told him that they just weren’t working out.
In his dream, the scene plays like part of a collection of classic movie moments, black and white with lines of static jumping across the screen.
“It’s not you,” she’d said, fingers like physical apparitions of guilt, wringing the folds of her graduation gown. “It’s me, you see.”
He’s always trapped in a windowless room, suffocation breathed in through his nostrils and pressing like lead against the walls of his lungs. He doesn’t know why he always picks the wrong ones and tells himself that they are finally it each time.
The spinning reel clicks through eleven minutes of film, hits the end and reverses with a screech. in the rewind, Yoochun watches as his life flashes by in Polaroid snapshots: a chubby baby waving a pacifier; a five year-old hand-in-hand with his baby brother; a teenager waving fear and excitement from a plane window; two brothers surrounded by abandonment and collapsing heart-walls; another plane carrying an older boy and all things broken; a sullen high school graduate staring past the camera and trying to hide loneliness behind his eyes; college notebooks scribbled in the margins with love in all its fleetingness; and finally, a shot of his old apartment, empty, with hope dying on his windowpane.
“Don’t take it to heart, okay?” she’d asked, lipgloss-tinted lips pursed. “No hard feelings?”
Shadows stretch and dance her features into that of a monster. The trill of her cell phone is jarring amidst the static.
“I’ve got to go,” she’d said, eyes turning away to a distance he couldn’t see. “Take care, Yoochun. Bye bye.”
Take care, the walls sigh as they shrink in on him in warping shadows. Bye, he sees Yunho and Junsu and Changmin murmur as they walk away.
I’m sorry.
It’s not you.
It’s me.
Take care.
Bye bye.
~
Thursday morning dawns bright and clear, a perfect spring day. Changmin’s there and knocking at his door by 7:00.
Yoochun drags himself out of bed and pretends he doesn’t see the remnants of shadows slip along the bottom of his walls and into his closet. The world is always muted a little bit gray and concaved at the edges on days like this.
“Ready to go, hyung?”
Yoochun pieces together his best smile and hopes none of the gaps show through. If Changmin notices anything, he doesn’t say so.
The ride to the airport is quiet, permeated with the sound of Changmin’s favourite acoustic tunes. Yoochun stares out of the window and hums absently along to the glide of melodies that catch at his vocal chords.
The airport is bustling and just a bit overwhelming on not enough sleep. Yoochun stares at the revolving doors eating up people and bags and nearly turns right back around.
“We’ll see you in a week, right hyung?” Changmin has a hand placed firmly on his back. Sometimes, Yoochun forgets that their youngest is more observant than he gets credit for.
“Yeah. I’ll see you guys in a week,” he says. With the world curled at the edges like a spyglass, a week feels like a distance far away on the horizon, rather than seven days of twenty four hours.
“Have a safe trip, hyung.” Unexpected arms wrap around his waist and Yoochun stops feeling like the world is tilting on its axis at 7:30 in the morning. “Enjoy yourself.”
Five centimetres away from a waiting ear, whispers carry like foghorn blares in the middle of a crowd. Yoochun pushes forward and lets himself be swallowed up by the glass doors.
A brief glance back and Changmin’s still there, waving, steady like a lighthouse in the middle of an ocean of people.
His ear packs up the sound of reassurance and stores it carefully away.
Don’t worry.
Colour starts filtering back into his surroundings and Yoochun feels like everything’s going to be alright.
We’ll be waiting right here for you to come home.
iii."The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched- they must be felt with the heart." - Helen Keller
Paris is lights and noise when his plane touches down, a breathtakingly beautiful rendition of all the post cards he’s seen.
Yoochun flips through his travel book like clinging onto a survival line, stumbling over words that his tongue doesn’t know how to say.
He’s lucky Yunho has thought it all out for him, or perhaps Changmin has, because there’s a chauffeur with his name on a board, waiting right by pick-up.
”Monsieur Park?” the man asks him. Yoochun fights the panic slithering up his spine and nods, recognizing his name. "Êtes-vous prêt à partir, monsieur? Il faudra un peu de temps pour arriver à l’hôtel.”
The foreign syllables all run together in a mess to his ears and panic surges in a wave. Yoochun gestures to the guidebook in his hands, not sure what he’s trying to say. ”Um, I don’t. French. I don’t speak.” He stammers in rusty English.
There’s a moment of icy nausea that settles in the pit of his stomach as the chauffeur blinks at him, incomprehension stiff in the muscles of his face. Yoochun repeats it a second time and like a miracle, the chauffeur nods and beckons towards the exit. ”Are you ready to go, sir?” he asks in accented English.
Yoochun sighs relief like smoke from the pinched-closed cavity in his chest. ”Yes.”
~
His hotel is in the fifth arrondissement, separated by the Seine River from the heart of Paris.
Yoochun steps a foot into the lobby and knows right off that Yunho has overdone it again.
His suite is beautiful, adorned in soft shades of tan and russet, a charming mix of contemporary and classic. The best part of his entire night is summed up in the king-sized bed, piled high with pillows. He lets himself collapse onto the mattress, imagining that the cotton-candy clouds he’s dreamt of as a child would feel just like this.
His suitcase is unopened and he’s filthy with airport dust. None of it matters as he buries his face in this rare luxury and sinks into the neutrality offered by apathetic hotel rooms.
~
He sleeps all throughout the night and late into the next day.
When he wakes up, is room is golden with the trapped afternoon sun, giving off an illusion of heat. Feeling like a gleeful child, Yoochun pulls aside the curtains and discovers that his windows face away from the street, offering him a peek onto Parisian rooftops. He stares down at the quiet backstreets, lost in chasing dreams along the cobblestones. The sun ambles along his windowsill, sneaking into his eyes with a conclusion like the splash of cold water into reality.
Wandering further into his new space, Yoochun discovers on the bedside table a note stamped with the hotel’s insignia. Curious fingers pull it close and he can’t help the upwards tug of his lips as he notices Yunho’s name.
My favourite dongsaeng,
Happy birthday! I hope you're enjoying it so far. ^_^
I made a special dinner reservation at one of my favourite restaurants here in Paris, especially for you! A limo will pick you up outside the hotel at 7:00. Dress nicely, and remember to smile lots!
Hyung loves you,
Yunho
P.S. Don't be too shocked if you find any more surprises. (^o^)/
He sighs with a rueful smile, folds the note neatly into his pocket. He doesn’t know what he’s done or who he’s saved in his past life to deserve a friend like Yunho, but he’s glad he had the good fortune of doing it.
~
7:00 is slow to come in the golden taffy light that is Paris’ afternoons. Yoochun sits out in the balcony and marks the orbit of the sun across the sky and down into the green treetops.
When his vision starts to dim in the light, he goes back inside and shakes out his suit from its cramped position in his suitcase, wondering if he should search out an iron to press out the travel wrinkles along the seams.
Time doesn’t flow quite the same in this place, Yoochun finds, because the clock is suddenly ticking past 6:35 and he barely has time to pass a comb through his bedhead before he’s out the door, the uncertainty of a foreign environment channelling into wired-tight nerves that thrum along his veins.
A white limousine pulls up in front of the hotel at 6:57 and Yoochun takes so long trying to pick the pieces of his jaw off the floor that he’s nearly late. The chauffeur, a young French man, opens the door for him with a bow, like he is royalty, and Yoochun doesn’t know what to do except answer with his own awkward bow.
The drive to the restaurant isn’t long, flashes of Paris life sliding smoothly across dark-tinted windows. The chauffeur plays a mix of baroque music, from Handel’s Water Music to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In between the familiar strains of violin and the murmurs of the cello, Yoochun finds a calm place where his muscles loosen and his heart relearns its normal one-two beat.
It lasts until they pull up in front of the restaurant, the inside of which seems to be dipped in gold leaf and dressed in mother-of-pearl. In the competition for Most Extravagant Place Park Yoochun Has Set Foot In, his current hotel is swept out of the top spot and replaced with this restaurant instead.
Elegantly concealed speakers are in the middle of the last movement titled Haydn’s Surprise Symphony No.94 in G, and Yoochun feels his heartbeat speed up again, swept along with the rushing wave of violins.
He’s seated at a table in the corner, neighbour to a waist-high vase of flowers. It drips sunset-coloured lily petals and stamen down emerald green leaves and Yoochun is surprised to find the sensation of fleshy silk rubbing against the pad of his finger as he slides it along the rib of a petal.
Five minutes after 7:30, Haydn’s Surprise Symphony has melted into the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 and a stranger is escorted to his table. Yoochun looks up in surprise and is about to call the waiter over about the mistake before he recognizes the dark hair and dark eyes from the sepia-toned Polaroid he keeps propped up against his plastic blue lamp at home.
”Oh, bonsoir. Je m’excuse, je ne savais pas que quelqu’un allait joindre à moi aujourd’hui.” The stranger Yoochun knows as Jae says, French syllables rolling off his tongue with a hint of an accent.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” Yoochun says, and watches as realization dawns.
“Sorry about that. I’m Kim Jaejoong. You must be Yunho’s friend?” It’s good to hear the round familiar syllables of Korean in a place like this, Yoochun realizes. It makes him feel not so much alone.
“I’m Park Yoochun. Yunho-hyung is paying for my trip, actually. It was a surprise gift for my birthday.”
“Oh! Oh, it’s your birthday!” Surprise is a quick bird that darts across Jaejoong’s face and leaves his lips parted in a shape like agitation. “Happy birthday, Yoochun-sshi! I’m so sorry, if I’d known I would’ve brought a gift!”
“Ah, no, don’t worry about it. It’d be great just to have you eat with me.” Yoochun smiles ruefully, “I have no idea how I’m going to order when I can’t even read half the words on the menu.”
Jaejoong laughs and it’s a warm and breathy sound, reminding Yoochun of autumn leaves and the smell of roasting chestnuts. He has no idea why, but sudden vertigo tips the world upside down for a moment and when the walls stand themselves back up, he feels himself still freefalling into the earth. Somehow, it seems just right.
part two
Masterlist: here
Pairing: Yoochun/Jaejoong (main); YunChun!bffery, MinSu!bffery, OT5
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, Romance
Length: 19,480
Summary: For a long time, Yoochun's life has been tough. Having been fired from his latest job, he leaves town and begins his search of self-discovery. Reconnecting with an old friend and meeting new ones along the way, he discovers what it feels like to have a home, true friendship, and everlasting love.
A/N: Written with mitzuki_chan along with art by su_zuna for the 2009 Partners Challenge over at dbsk_secretgame. (We tied for third place for the "Best Yoochun" category!) Also, because of this monstrous length, we thank anyone who finishes reading this, you are amazing. We worked really hard on it, so we appreciate the feedback. ;; Okay, enough rambling, onwards to the fic!
i. “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” - Maria Robinson
Yoochun wakes up in the morning with frozen toes and icy premonition sliding down his spine, pooling into a horrible, biting feeling in his stomach that murmurs of misadventure scheduled in the coming hours. Briefly, he toys with the idea of calling in sick to work, dreaming of a day spent indoors with a mug of coffee and flannel pyjamas in his warm, heavenly bed. However, the landlord’s been knocking at the door for the past two weeks, tongue clicking and hand like claws outstretched for money Yoochun doesn’t have.
“I’ll have the rent money soon, sir. Please just give me a bit more time.”
‘Soon’ never makes it around the corner, and it becomes the empty promise that hangs over his doorframe first thing in the mornings, curling up in the corner of his shoe cabinet and mingling with the sound of the landlord’s heavy, receding footsteps.
“End of this week, Park. Or you’re out of here.”
“Yes, I understand.” He knows he should be grateful to have a few more days with a roof over his head, but he can’t help but feel like a prisoner waiting for the guillotine, watching as the walls close in.
The city is still draped in a blanket of darkness when his alarm clock breaks the silence of sleep with shrill, obnoxious beeps. Yoochun stumbles out of bed and switches it to his favourite radio station, soft jazz that is slightly fuzzy with static.
The weather grows steadily colder with each passing day, and Yoochun’s breath fogs up the window as he pulls aside the curtains to peer into the shadowy street. His finger squeaks as he slowly traces the word ‘hope’ in the sea of condensation gathered on the glass. With this, he gets by, day after day.
On good days, it’s just enough. On days like this, when ghosts dance in his shadows and he’s left watching the letters fade away, he thinks that maybe it might not be after all.
~
In the past two years, Yoochun has worked over ten jobs; some of them clerical, some of them construction, some of them simple, miscellaneous errands. All the same, they each ended with an apologetic shrug from his employer and a big, brown, empty cardboard box.
As he walks into the office, he doesn’t see the looks of pity sent over work cubicle walls - the cardboard box sits stoically on his cluttered desk and stares blankly back at him.
“So we meet again,” he sighs ruefully and checks his watch. He’s got twenty minutes to pack.
~
He walks slowly out of the automatic doors with his leather briefcase in hand, cardboard box bruising his hips. The office building stretches blue and silver above his head, catching sunlight in its steel and glass panes and throwing them into puddles left over from last night’s rain, where they glare blindingly into his eyes.
This job had been Yoochun’s shortest so far: three weeks and a handful of days.
He doesn’t bother turning around to say goodbye.
~
He ransacks his apartment and digs quarters out from between the couch cushions, collecting all the money he has into one small pile in the middle of the coffee table. It doesn’t amount to much: six twenty dollar bills and four fifty, plus a palmful of quarters, dimes and pennies. He sorts them into little towers and wonders briefly about the lack of nickels.
The copper pennies are swept into his palm and tucked away into little corners of the apartment; one in the closet underneath the little flap of carpet that’s peeling up; one at the back of the topmost shelf of the bookcase, next to the old musty dictionary that has been here before he; one right behind the front left leg of the dresser, on top of the fish-shaped water stain; one underneath the right corner of his mattress; and one inside the tin teapot that has served hot water for his coffee faithfully throughout one and a half winters. He’s always liked to leave a bit of himself in places that he has loved.
Money for the rent comes from an old envelope stamped with the bronze ‘Bank of Korea’ insignia, hidden in the dresser, underneath four pairs of his boxers. Three of the twenty dollar bills go in, along with one slip of fifty and two quarters. He slides his thumb and forefinger along the fold of the flap, saying a silent goodbye to the shadow of hollow words lingering by his guest slippers.
~
The landlord lives on the first floor, in the apartment right underneath Yoochun’s. Their doorsteps could be twins if it weren’t for the brass plates carved with differing numbers on top of the mail slot.
Money in hand, Yoochun knocks nervously at the old man’s door.
“Hmph, Park. You have the money?”
“I do, sir. Here,” he hands the package over. “Thank you for these past years. I won’t be a bother to you any longer.’ He glances down at his feet, curls his toes into the bottom of his sandals. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning.”
“Oh… oh, yes, all right.”
“Thank you for everything,” he says one last time and bows. Head down, he turns to leave, blinking quickly against the mist clouding up his eyes.
“Do what you want in life, kid. I know you’ve had it tough, but life’s about living it the best you can.” The words are gruff and unexpected.
“Sir?”
The old man waves him off, “Good day, Park. It’s been nice knowing you.”
The door clicks shut before Yoochun has a chance to say anything else.
~
The sun is just edging past the horizon when Yoochun leaves behind the old apartment building, his life gathered up and packed into two battered suitcases stashed in the trunk of his car.
Daybreak is cold and the city is quiet like a ghost. Yoochun murmurs a silent farewell to each familiar establishment he passes - the bakery that hands out free hot chocolate with their Monday croissants; the 7-11 convenience store that always seems to be manned by the same sleepy teenager; the pet shop whose windows attract groups of children on the way home in the afternoons; the noodle stand owned by an old lady with kind hands that clicks her tongue at his skinny arms and slips him an extra egg and two pieces of pork, hidden at the very bottom of his bowl, every time he goes in for dinner.
Two years is a long time, Yoochun realizes. He thinks that he might miss this town after all.
~
On the highway, the sun is steady in the sky, bright in the chill of early morning.
Yoochun has the windows rolled all the way down, and the wind teases icy fingers through his hair and kisses his cheeks numb with cold. The stereo hums tracks from his favourite mix CD and he sings along, pretending that the notes that come out of his throat are tiny birds that sprout wings and take flight on the northern breeze.
The road stretches in front of him for miles, straight and heading towards nowhere. His hands guide the steering wheel with the far-off horizon as a destination; he has no idea where he should go, where he can go. But freedom is fresh in the morning air, sweet and light like the music that is slipping off his tongue as mountains flash by him in streams of green shadow.
Yoochun takes a deep breath and, breathing out, feels as though the cobwebs accumulated in the corners of his lungs are washed out along with the last of the city smog.
~
He comes across a fork in the lone road and, on a whim, abandons the open skies for a path into the forest.
Not long after, the tang of salt and brine sneaks into the wind, which has begun to carry the distant sound of waves. A bend in the road reveals the glitter of sunlight on blue water, startling in the green monotone of his surroundings.
He stops where the road ends, shuts off the engine in a lonely parking lot, deserted and littered with leaves. An old wooden sign stands at the edge between mountain and ocean, bleached bone white on one side and mossy green on the other. Its letters have been smudged into illegibility by time, and it looks to Yoochun like a straight-backed sentry marking the entrance to this nameless stretch of beach. Yoochun steps out of his shoes and leaves them neatly at the foot of the wooden sign.
The sand is cool under his toes and gradually warms up as he ventures further away from the shadowy reach of forest. The grains shift and slide around his feet, white and fine with tiny sparkling crystals. When he was a child, he used to think these were diamond pieces, marvelling at the mysterious beauty mixed in with the ordinariness of brown sand and chips of bleached coral.
He walks out until he is ankle-deep in waves, watching the sun play in spider webs of light along the bottom. The water is cold, for all that it reminds him of tropical places, and he slips back out moments later, settling on the sand a distance away. The waves just barely manage to lick at his toes and it makes him smile, stretching his feet just the slightest bit away so that the surf withdraws in what he imagines is frustration and then comes back in, crashing with renewed vigour.
He leans back and closes his eyes to the sun spots flirting behind his eyelids. The roar of the ocean surrounds him in this place, and he feels his heartbeat recede to a steady thump at the back of his mind as his ears fill with the sound of the sea. A deep breath brings in the scent of the salt breeze coming off the water; he takes it and adds it to this memory of being at peace and finally free.
~
A name and a face come to mind while Yoochun is sitting with his legs dangling out of the open door of his car, brushing sand from his hair and the folds of his clothes.
The uncertainty presented by the lack of shelter for the night is one he’s avoided worrying about so far, too caught up in the joy of the day to ruin the memory with the monster he’s lived with for the past two years. But a final destination is crucial in all journeys, as is the home that sees the hero off in the beginning and brings him back to rest after all is done. Yoochun no longer has the home that saw him off, but he thinks that he may be able to find a new one with this old friend whose memory the ocean has brought back to him.
~
He finds himself ringing the doorbell outside the lobby of an apartment building, an hour later.
“Hello? Who is it?” The intercom at the gate fizzles to life, catching him off guard.
“H-hey,” Yoochun says, suddenly feeling awkward. Away from the sound of the ocean and back in the city, he’s starting to wonder if this path of thought was a good one to follow. “Yunho, it’s me. Park Yoochun.”
“Yoochun?” Even the gray static doesn’t manage to hide the tone of surprise evident as the other exclaims, “Micky Yoochun?!”
Yoochun nods, shifting from foot to foot. He only realizes after a beat of silence that the intercom isn’t camera-equipped. “Ah, yeah. It’s me, hyung.”
“Okay, wait! Wait right there!”
“Gotcha, hyung,” Yoochun smiles. Yunho doesn’t seem like he’s changed at all.
“Don’t go anywhere!”
“I won’t, I won’t.”
The door swings open a few minutes later, and he’s met with a pair of eyes as round as saucers. “Yoochunnie! It’s really you!”
Yoochun can’t help but laugh. “Of course it’s me. How many other Park Yoochun’s do you know?”
“Well, just you…but I haven’t seen you in forever!” Yunho grins sheepishly. He’s matured a bit, Yoochun remarks, but he still has his boyish cheeks. Coupled with the shy smile, Yunho used to make all the noona’s swoon when they were in school.
“It’s good to see you, hyung,” he says and pulls Yunho into a hug. The other claps him on the back warmly and Yoochun suddenly realizes what he’s been missing in the two years he’s lived alone.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe it’s you,” Yunho sighs happily, pulling back. “Wait, wait, let me look at you.”
Careful fingers smooth themselves over Yoochun’s cheekbones; Yoochun watches as Yunho pulls a frown at the eyebags prominent under his eyes. “Chun-ah, have you been sleeping lately?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Truth be told, he hasn’t been fine, but he doesn’t need Yunho to worry. “Are you going to let me in, or what, hyung? It’s cold out here.” He hunches his shoulders and runs an exaggerated shiver down his torso.
“Oh, that’s right! Come in! We can talk upstairs.”
Warms hands tug him through the glass doors, into a lobby that is stylish and designed with simple colours, the latest fad in the cities. He glances in the back-left corner of the room and smiles, noticing that a little china vase holds itself in all elegance there as it had five years ago. Some things don’t change, and that makes him glad.
~
The ride up the elevator is just as familiar as the memories of the rides that preceded it. Yunho has always been a chatterbox and that about him hasn’t changed either, Yoochun finds, smiling fondly as he watches the other’s hands gesture animatedly, reminded of puppets that acted out storybook fairytales manned by the gentle old man down in the park during his early childhood.
He discovers that the photography studio Yunho had been trying to set up when Yoochun last saw him had taken off three years ago, and he’s managed to secure a decent-sized storefront in downtown Seoul. Yoochun is genuinely happy for him, and tries to swallow the slight pang that the thought of his own difficult and unstable jobs bring back.
“So how has life been treating you, Yoochunnie?” The question is temporarily lost as the elevator doors slide open, revealing another minimalistic hallway with black doors lining each side. Yoochun follows Yunho as the other leads the way down the corridor and through another, turning lefts and rights until he thinks the doors might be shifting along the walls, never staying in one spot.
Yunho’s door is at the end of a hallway, and Yoochun recognizes the faint scar of a crack on the upper-left corner of the doorframe. He’s sad to see that the childish pictures and messages they used to scrawl along the doorjambs have since been exterminated by a coat of flat white paint.
Stepping into the apartment, however, is like stepping back into memories. The same threadbare rug, still in all its fuchsia repulsiveness, is the first to greet the feet, just as the same printed ocean is there to greet the eyes on the opposite wall.
Yunho kicks off his sandals into a corner, not bothering with the shoe cabinet, and Yoochun surprises himself with the automatic sigh of exasperation that slips past his lips, as he steps out of his own shoes and bends down to line them up next to a gray pair of sneakers, then sweeps up the discarded sandals and settles them beside his. He’s dismayed to find that, in the years he’s been gone, Yunho’s front hall has become a battlefield of footwear, Nikes and Oxfords and Birkenstocks in different styles and age scattered like the corpses of wounded soldiers across the entryway. He eyes the closet on his right and tries not to think about what sorts of things would have migrated into there by now.
When he turns around, Yunho is there, lips quirked in the sheepish smile again. “Sorry about the mess?” the other offers and breaks out into a full-out grin as Yoochun shakes his fist at him and snaps in mock-irritation, “How the hell did this place turn into the local garbage dump while I was gone?!”
“Well, I don’t know,” Yunho whines like a guilty child with his hands caught in the cookie jar. “Things just grew legs and walked around while I wasn’t looking.” He laughs and ducks as Yoochun dangles an old sneaker by its tattered, gray laces between thumb and forefinger and mimes chucking it at him.
“Okay, okay,” Yunho says, chuckling. “Coffee? To appease the anger of the Almighty Park Yoochun, Lord of OCD.”
Yoochun has to struggle to keep his lips from curling. “It’d better be good coffee,” he says, releasing the sneaker.
“I got some Turkish beans from a customer last week. Don’t lie to me, I know you love the stuff.”
“You know I do.” He really does.
“Then, what’re we waiting for?” Yunho sweeps a little bow. “After you, sir.”
“Why thank you, kind sir.”
He really has no idea how he’s lived without this for the past two years.
~
“So, how has life been treating you?”
The scent of coffee is thick in the room, swirling like smoke. Yoochun imagines that he can see the little spirals of steam spin into the corners of the apartment and fade into the paling wallpaper.
“I’ve been all right. Getting by okay.” He doesn’t know how much he should reveal to Yunho. The older man is renowned for worrying himself to death.
Yunho frowns at him, eyes sharp over the steam of his cup. “Did something happen, Yoochunnie?”
“Um. No?” He’s forgotten about Yunho’s inconvenient knack for being perceptive at the worst of times.
“Really? Be honest with me, dongsaeng.”
Yoochun hesitates, sipping at his coffee to put off the moment of decision. Yunho mirrors his movement and they could be two sides of a looking-glass, staring across the table at each other. Reluctantly, he sets down his mug and clears his throat. “Well, um. I sort got fired yesterday. For the eleventh time.”
Sharp-eyed suspicion immediately melts into sympathetic concern. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“Not really. No.” He stares down at the table, tracing the whorls in the wood. His ears are starting to ring a bit, echoing in the gray static in his head. Self-pity begins to rise bitter-sour at the back of his throat and he takes a gulp of coffee to wash it back down. He hates feeling sorry for himself.
He hears, rather than sees, Yunho clamber over to his side of the table, the quiet whoosh of a magazine pile sent in an avalanche to the ground. A warm shoulder bumps against his and Yunho’s asking into the noise in his head, “Hey. Wanna stay with me?”
Yoochun turns his face away. “I can’t bother you like that, hyung. This apartment’s too small for two.” He doesn’t know what he was thinking, coming here.
“Nonsense, this place is the size of the queen’s palace!”
Yoochun stares pointedly at the piles of clothes and photography magazines accumulated in mountains all over the floor. Yunho’s grinning that sheepish grin again and he mumbles, “Well, it’s a little cluttered, I guess.”
Yoochun hides a snicker in his coffee cup. The noise in his head has died down a little bit. He presses his shoulder against Yunho’s and mutters a quiet thanks into the air between them.
He’s getting ready to leave, picking his way across the battlefield of shoes again, playing I spy with Yunho’s entryway, which seems to have swallowed up his sneakers in the time Yoochun’s been gone. Yunho follows behind him, picking up things and putting them on shelves as if he could clear away enough space to fit in another body and its belongings before Yoochun steps out the door.
“Well,” Yoochun says, turning around, hand on the doorknob. “Thanks for the coffee, hyung. It was nice seeing you again.”
Yunho nods, looks at him with concern furrowed on his brow, but smiles. “It was good to see you, Yoochunnie. Come back and visit me sometime, okay? My door’s always open to you.” He frets with the purple beret in his hands, picked up off the music box sitting on the chiffonier.
Yoochun tries to convey reassurance in his smile, but he thinks it might be just a little bit wobbly at the edges. “Catch you later, hyung,” he says and turns the knob.
The door sounds like the end of grace as it clicks shut behind him, and he wonders if this desolation is what Adam and Eve felt when the gates to Eden slammed shut on their paradise. He’s faced with a confusion of white walls, navy tiles and black doors that march on in a line and sudden vertigo tilts his world upside-down for a dizzying moment.
The musty smell of paint and wallpaper paste fills his lungs as he takes a deep breath and steadies himself. He’s just about getting ready to leave when the door behind him is yanked open.
“Chun-ah! I’ve got an idea!” Yunho sticks his head out and his eyes are sparkling in boyish excitement. “How about you work for me??”
“I. Um. What?” Yoochun isn’t terribly eloquent when in shock.
“In my studio! We’ve been short on help lately, with the Christmas season just around the corner and you’d be perfect!” Yunho is bouncing on the balls of his feet now and the purple beret perches lopsidedly on his head, Yoochun notes in amusement with the corner of his brain that isn’t busy getting over a near heart attack. “It’s perfect! Junsu’s been wanting some help for ages and we could put you in Jae’s old apartment and then you’d have work and a place to stay, Yoochunnie!”
“Hyung…” Yoochun sighs.
“Yeah?” Yunho cocks his head at him like a curious puppy, the purple beret clinging on for dear life.
“I have no idea what you just said.” Yunho has always had a tendency to slip into his Sattori accent when excited. Yoochun supposes old habits die hard.
“Oh. Oh well.” A shrug and Yunho’s grinning from ear to ear. “Come with me! I’ll show you your new apartment. Oh, we can get Junsu and Changmin to help with the luggage!”
Yoochun sighs, a wry smile tugging at his lips. He has no idea what’s going on, but he supposes this is the beginning of something new.
ii. "Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief." - Joseph Addison
Kim Junsu and Shim Changmin, he discovers, are the owners of the two black doors between Yunho’s and his new home. Sleepy-eyed, they each emerge in pajamas after five minutes of Yunho’s pounding and shouting at their respective doors. While Yunho babbles quickly and excitedly at them, Yoochun considers wedging himself into the little space between the wall and the box that hides a fire extinguisher.
“Your friend is trying to merge with the wall, hyung,” the one named Changmin says, lips curving wickedly. The one called Junsu laughs, high-pitched and squeaky.
Yoochun has never been more embarrassed.
~
It takes only one trip to get all his things up into his new front hall. His two sad suitcases sit in the middle of the entryway and look like they’re drowning in empty space. The apartment is white and bare, like the ribs of a dead animal, bleached bone-white with time. Yoochun wonders if he can ever manage to make this echoing space into his own.
Yunho clucks at his lack of possessions and declares a shopping trip in the afternoon. Yoochun realizes, with some surprise, that it’s not quite noon yet.
Changmin and Junsu are herded out, needling at Yunho for a noodle lunch out of his wallet in return for getting up so early on a day off. Yoochun is left alone beside the vestiges of his old life, surrounded by the walls of his new.
He wanders through the apartment, its structure familiar in its likeness to Yunho’s, and considers the mass production of apartment rooms with a big growling machine, just like how they make identical plastic doll houses for seven-year old dreams.
Giant sheets of tarp hang over the furniture and the carpet of the living room, but a layer of dust paints the linoleum in the kitchen a fluffy gray. Yoochun treads careful footprints through the room, from doorway to counter to sink to fridge. The fridge is unplugged and dark as a cave when he cracks open the door, but there is - for some reason - a shrivelled Granny Smith apple huddled in the back corner. He’s just glad it went for fossilizing as opposed to rotting.
The kitchen leads him to a corridor lined with doors. He counts each off on his fingers, guessing from the layout of Yunho’s apartment pre-imposed in his mind: closet, bathroom, workroom, balcony, bedroom. The bedroom is tucked right in the corner, and when he opens the door, he finds that its arrangement is foreign to the image he had conjured up.
The bed crouches against the far wall, wedged up against the heater as though for warmth. A low table sits next to it, sporting a plastic blue lamp. A wardrobe stands tall across the room, sandwiching between its bulk and the window a small desk that Yoochun only discovers after venturing into the room. He perches gingerly on the tarp covering the mattress, then swears as his hands come away gray with dust. He groans, not wanting to think about what this has done to his favourite pair of jeans.
He’s rummaging through one of his suitcases when a knock sounds at the door and the high, breathy voice he recognizes as Junsu’s slips in through the cracks between door and doorjamb.
“One second,” Yoochun calls out, wrist-deep in threadbare t-shirts and underwear. He quickly pulls on a pair of track pants and pads over to answer the door.
Junsu is bright-eyed and chirpy on the other side and tells Yoochun that lunch is happening in the noodle place two blocks down, on Yunho’s tab. He chatters the entire way down the elevator shaft and Yoochun has a brief sense déjà vu. By the time the doors open with a soft chime to reveal the lobby, he’s learned all about Junsu’s affinity for soccer, his fraternal twin who lives with their family in Incheon, his stupid best friend who works at a dance studio across town.
Yunho and Changmin are chatting on the sofas in the waiting area and they laugh at the sight, calling them slowpoke turtles. Junsu’s pout sits in a moue on his lips but it dissolves quickly into giggles that make Yunho grin and Changmin slap him playfully. Yoochun watches all of this and wonders at the surrealism of being surrounded by friends when, just five hours ago, he was leaving his apartment key in his landlord’s mailbox, suitcases in hand and nothing but a long, uncertain road stretched ahead of him.
~
Yoochun settles in quickly enough, accumulating furniture like points on a bingo card.
Yunho drags him shopping for random things over the weeks, and sometimes Changmin and Junsu tag along, pushing at each other and filling the air with laughter. His apartment soon becomes a joint creation of their making, housing a big plush sofa that Yunho insisted on, a 42 inch plasma and a Wii console, courtesy of both Changmin and Junsu. Yoochun himself has invested in blue curtains with plastic fish beads that he hangs outside the kitchen entrance, partly because it’s the most-used entrance in his apartment and it makes him laugh to see the expressions the others pull when they get a faceful of blue plastic. The other reason he keeps to himself, not wanting to tell the others it’s because he’s discovered that the sun slants through the kitchen window at just the right angle in the late afternoons to throw shimmering blue shadows on the walls and floor. It lets him dream of walking through water, filtering salt water and breathing bubbles.
He finds that he’s not often alone in his new apartment - there always seems to be a body sprawled across the couch, or another rummaging through his cupboards, or another swinging the hell out of his new Wii controllers. He doesn’t find out until three weeks into these strange new friendships that his suite - being a corner apartment like Yunho’s - is bigger than Changmin’s and Junsu’s. It is also with the added benefit of not having two inches of clothing and papers all over the floors.
“Besides,” Junsu tells him, “We figured you’d be bored and lonely, with only your big screen TV and your four-person Wii to keep you company.”
Changmin snorts. “We all know you’re just here for the Wii, hyung.” He’s sprawled across the couch, craning his neck at the laptop on his stomach.
Junsu swats at him, all righteous indignation. “Lies!”
“I never lie.”
“That was a lie right there!”
Yoochun feels his lips tugging up in a grin around the rim of his coffee mug. He’s long since learned to read the smiles underneath their bickering and see the love reflected in bright eyes and laughing hands that shove at each other. He glances over at Yunho, curled up with the paper in the single armchair, watching their two youngest roll around like puppies. There’s a soft look on the other’s face and Yoochun knows that the two of them are seeing the same thing.
“Hey, hey. guys,” Yoochun says and feels a swell in his heart as two pairs of eyes turn to him, crinkled with laughter, “Thanks. I mean. It’s great having you guys around.” He’s always been awkward with words and feelings, but some things just have to be said.
Changmin and Junsu pause in their impromptu wrestling match and grin at him and at each other and kind of all over the place all at once. Yunho smiles at him from across the room.
Wickedly, Yoochun adds, “Even if Junsu is only here for my kick-ass Wii.”
In the middle of the floor, Junsu’s shrieking protests and the wrestling match develops into a tickle fight that somehow expands from two-person to four.
And life couldn’t get better.
~
The time passes quickly and they are into the dead of winter before Yoochun is aware. Wintertime in the city is cold, but its buzzing neon lights and the never-ending sound of wheels across concrete manages to keep off the suffocating feeling of ice and snow globe silence.
Mornings start off early, the shriek of the alarm clock in the darkness of 6:30 a.m. reminding him unpleasantly of his previous years alone. He spends twenty minutes with his head on the kitchen table, inhaling the smell of coffee and the sound of jazz before Yunho and Junsu come to collect him, bundling him up half asleep and shuffling him out the building and off to the studio. There, he spends the day setting up props and adjusting lighting under Junsu’s direction, occasionally hijacking the sound system to blast raunchy Christmas tunes that set Junsu and the modelling girls off in giggles.
In the afternoons, Changmin comes in, lugging a backpack bulky with binders and cursing under his breath at all the morons he’s met on the bus that day.
Within his first week, Yoochun learns that Changmin is still a student and is juggling modelling work at the studio alongside three full-credit courses. It boggles his mind that the younger boy has time to play four hours of Mario Kart with Junsu every night and still stay at the top of his third-year Calculus class.
Yunho leans over the counter and whispers conspiratorially that Changmin is a genius. Yoochun has no objections.
~
On the day of the first snow, Yoochun searches through every corner of his apartment until he finds an old space heater hidden at the back of the coat closet, wrapped in dusty shadows like a sleeping old man. It takes up residence at the foot of the couch in the living room, whirring softly as it radiates heat and brings circulation back to frozen fingers and toes.
The other three are constant presences in his apartment, and days of biting cold end with the four of them curled up on the living room sofa amidst blankets and pillows stolen out of Junsu’s closet. His world in those moments is a lazy, burgundy red, bright and warm with smiles as frost creeps silently across his windows and shadows collect in the dark corners of his other rooms.
“It’s just like back when Jae-hyung was still here,” Junsu murmurs sleepily one evening, when he and Yoochun and Changmin are tangled in a knot of limbs and fleece on Yoochun’s couch, watching a late-night rerun of The Godfather. Yunho is out on their dinner run, carrying orders for sweet-and-sour pork, seafood chow mein, lemon chicken, and a pudding from the 7-11 downstairs because Junsu’s craving again.
It is on easy, drowsy evenings like this that memories come slipping out from dusty drawers, and Yoochun learns all sorts of things that would otherwise seem an edge too sharp under white, fluorescent lights.
“Who’s Jae?” he asks, wondering at the note of familiarity threaded in the name. The glance Changmin throws him is almost comical in its incredulity, laced with a hint of amusement in the lift of his eyebrow. Oh, thinks Yoochun, a silent syllable of revelation that forms on his lips and frames a shallow intake of breath.
“Well,” Changmin drawls, rubbing salt in the wound. “He’s only the guy whose apartment you’re living in.”
Junsu’s laughing again, pressing his face into the brown velvet of Yoochun’s couch. Yoochun prods him sullenly in the ribs and Changmin yelps as he gets an accidental foot in the leg. Before the apology can leave Yoochun’s lips, vengeance has already been exacted in the form of two fingers between his own ribs. If nothing else, Changmin has always been quick at revenge.
The scuffle reaches a truce when the rasp of a key turning in the lock announces Yunho’s return and the arrival of dinner.
“Welcome back,” Changmin calls, scrambling off and running to intercept the lemon chicken and possibly Junsu’s pudding cup for blackmail purposes.
“Hands off my pudding, dongsaeng!” Junsu yells, pattering light footsteps after him. Yoochun laughs quietly to himself, burrowing into their bird’s nest of blankets. He knows that the food will migrate back here eventually, where the heater pumps heat like blood into the air and chases away winter’s curious fingertips.
By the time he’s wrestling blankets back from Changmin and stealing bits of shrimp out of Junsu’s bowl, he’s already forgotten about their shadow named Jae.
~
Winter thaws slowly, like glaciers inching back over millions of years to reveal bedrock and the barest hints of green. Early one morning in late February, Yoochun’s sitting at the kitchen table and staring absently down at the pinkish light of dawn playing along the linoleum floor when he realizes with a start that spring is on its way.
The perpetual breath of frost detailing his windowpane becomes beads of perspiration clinging in wet kisses to the glass, and gradually, birdsong filters through his bedroom curtains in the morning, singing in a strange counterpoint to Yoochun’s favourite slow jazz.
February progresses into March and the sidewalks are constantly wet with melting slush. It’s the type that they all loved to step in as little children, just for that hot-knife-through-butter feeling as saturated ice explodes in sprays like a little liquid grenade. Yoochun’s not surprised to find Junsu and Changmin engaging in an ice-stepping competition, on their way to lunch on a day off. He supposes he shouldn’t have been so surprised to get sprayed by Yunho all over the back of his jeans either.
The four of them don’t see each other as much anymore; the arrival of the spring season means mountains of paperwork for Yunho, a brief trip back home for Junsu, and the approach of final exams for Changmin. Yoochun gets a little bit restless with the warm currents of air that are carried up from the south and he takes to spending more and more time outside, taking the bus away from the city center and into residential areas, searching out little magic places where cats’ footprints go.
On days of rain, he holes up inside, exploring the corners of his apartment that had gathered winter’s chill in tiny cobwebs during his absence. With the soundtrack of raindrops mixing with a lonely saxophone, he finds aged, forgotten things tucked into drawers and at the back of closets, and thinks about this mysterious stranger named Jae.
He’s leafing through an outdated issue of Photo Life when he finds the photo, an old Polaroid that is yellowing slightly at the edges. He feels a bit like an outsider as he peers in and there, in coffee-stain sepia is Yunho and a dark-haired, dark-eyed stranger, smiling with the glitter of stars in his hair and the reflection of citylights in his eyes.
~
“Jae-hyung?” Junsu’s hands pause, knife halfway through the round orange distance of a carrot. Yoochun looks and thinks he sees a tint of sadness smudged at the edge of his wistful smile.
“I found a picture,” Yoochun says, eyes averted, thumb skating the blade of the paring knife across the surface of his apple, watching as wax-red skin peels away to flesh-yellow in ribbons that spiral down to the water-stained linoleum floor. It’s the day after he finds the photo, three days into a week’s forecast of rain, and he and Junsu are making mix-and-match curry with the box of vegetables that Yunho had received from home.
“Oh.” Junsu’s knife unfreezes and meets the cutting board in a continuation of its previous steady cadence. “Hyung used to work with us,” he tells Yoochun, head tilted and long bangs hiding the seep of nostalgia from the world. “He was Yunho-hyung’s first photographer. He had a gift for finding beauty in the ordinary things.”
Yoochun thinks about the frames lining Yunho’s office walls, silent exhibitions of guttering candles flashing red and the delicate irregularity in the mix of passerby umbrellas on a rainy day in shades of charcoal-gray. He understands. “Why did he leave?”
Junsu’s laugh is a quiet and wistful thing, slipping off to curl up in the space behind the refrigerator. Yoochun watches it blink big wet eyes at him from the shadows. “He couldn’t stand to be in the same place for too long. Jae-hyung was the sort of person you could never cage. It made him crazy.” Junsu sweeps up the carrot rounds and tumbles them into the pot. He picks up a peeled potato and starts in on that. “He just upped and left one day. Bought a plane ticket and was off the next day for Europe. Yunho-hyung was devastated.”
Junsu’s eyes are soft and sad. Yoochun feels like he’s walked in on a private moment.
“Jae-hyung used to make the best bulgogi, you know? Changmin tells me he still dreams of it sometimes.”
The moment is silent. Junsu’s knife has slowed down again, hesitating as though it’s forgotten which way is up and down. Light filters through the filmy green curtains above the sink and throws shadows like that of trees across the walls.
“He never visits?”
“He phones occasionally. And I think Changmin’s still got some sort of email correspondence going on between them. But it’s not nearly enough, you know?”
Yoochun nods, dropping his peeled apple into the bowl. “Yeah,” he says, and wonders about the rooms of this apartment and the memories of its ghosts.
~
April blurs through May and soon the tourists are crowding into town and the air is carrying a hint of summer heat. Changmin finishes school and takes up full-time at the studio, and Yoochun forgets the feel of loneliness.
“Hey,” Yunho says to him during break one day, crunching on a mouthful of cornflakes that he’s stolen out of Junsu’s bag. “Your birthday’s coming up, isn’t it?”
Yoochun pauses, left index finger hovering in sudden contemplation between ‘t’ and ‘e’ on the keyboard. He glances at the desktop calendar leaning against the computer screen and realizes with a start that they’re already on the last week of May. “Wow, yeah.”
Yunho’s laughing at him, eyes squinting into crescent moons. “Chun-ah, you forgot your own birthday?”
“I was busy, hyung,” Yoochun makes a face at him. Changmin, coming out of the washroom, spots it and points and laughs. Yoochun turns and makes a face at him too.
“Sorry, but constipation is not a flattering look on you, hyung.” Changmin’s draping himself over Yunho’s shoulder like a lazy cat, then, just as capriciously, is off and sauntering away with the bag of cornflakes.
“I’m older than you, dongsaeng! Have some respect!” Yoochun calls to his retreating back.
“And give me my cornflakes back!” Yunho adds.
“Wait a minute!” Junsu hollers from the back room, where he’s trying out the focus on a set of new lens. “Those are my cornflakes!”
“Well, Changmin’s got them now!” Yunho yells back, chuckling. He’s grinning like a schoolboy, caught up in the excitement of mischief made. Yoochun hides a smile. He can’t imagine devastation on that face. He doesn’t want to.
“So,” Yunho says, turning back. “You want anything?”
“For…?”
“Your birthday! Aish, you’re getting old, Yoochunnie,” Yunho laughs. He’s reaching curious fingers over the countertop and it ends with the kidnapping of the tin of paper clips. Yoochun is reminded of the times in school when they would string together all the teacher’s paper clips just to watch wrinkles of frustration knot themselves across her forehead.
He shakes his head. “I’m happy with what I’ve got right now, hyung.”
Yunho purses his lips, linking a pink clip to a forest green one. “You sure?”
Yoochun steals the tin closer to him and starts on the other end of the chain. “One hundred and ten percent.”
~
On the first morning of June, Yoochun walks into the kitchen to find a plain white envelope sitting on his countertop.
It isn’t sealed and when he tips it upside-down, a pair of plane tickets slip onto the marble tabletop, alongside a piece of notepaper, folded in half with mismatched corners.
Yoochun-ah,
I know you said you didn’t want anything, but you’ve worked hard for the past half year and you deserve a break ^__^
Take the day off today and pack! Your plane leaves at 8:00 am on Thursday. I’ve got a meeting then, so Minnie will drive you there. Don’t be late!
Happy birthday, my dear dongsaeng!!
From your favourite hyung,
Yunho ♥
“You’re my only hyung,” Yoochun mutters, rubbing at his eyes. He turns the note over and chuffs out a surprised laugh.
PS. Changmin says that you’d better bring him back something nice and parisien. And Junsu wants chocolates and an Eiffel tower keychain. I don’t need anything, but pictures of you having fun would be wonderful ^_____^
Underneath, in big loopy brackets, he reads:
[Yoochunnie! Yunho-hyung is so unfair! Changmin and I never got to go anywhere! Please take us with you? ;______;
Just joking! Have enough fun for the four of us, okay! ♥
From your bestest friend,
Junsu ]
[[Have a safe trip, hyung. make sure to bring me back something. I’ll remind you again at the airport so you don’t forget ;)
Don’t miss us too much!
From your favourite dongsaeng,
Changmin ]]
Yoochun picks up the tickets and squints at the tiny automatic font. They’re round-trip tickets to Paris and back, dated a week apart. He slides onto the floor, disbelief in the set of his bones.
He’s going to Paris.
~
The night before his departure, Yoochun is visited by an old monster.
It’s a nightmare he’s had ever since college graduation, rooted in the apologetic smile on his then-girlfriend’s face, sewn together like a wound gaping wide, as she told him that they just weren’t working out.
In his dream, the scene plays like part of a collection of classic movie moments, black and white with lines of static jumping across the screen.
“It’s not you,” she’d said, fingers like physical apparitions of guilt, wringing the folds of her graduation gown. “It’s me, you see.”
He’s always trapped in a windowless room, suffocation breathed in through his nostrils and pressing like lead against the walls of his lungs. He doesn’t know why he always picks the wrong ones and tells himself that they are finally it each time.
The spinning reel clicks through eleven minutes of film, hits the end and reverses with a screech. in the rewind, Yoochun watches as his life flashes by in Polaroid snapshots: a chubby baby waving a pacifier; a five year-old hand-in-hand with his baby brother; a teenager waving fear and excitement from a plane window; two brothers surrounded by abandonment and collapsing heart-walls; another plane carrying an older boy and all things broken; a sullen high school graduate staring past the camera and trying to hide loneliness behind his eyes; college notebooks scribbled in the margins with love in all its fleetingness; and finally, a shot of his old apartment, empty, with hope dying on his windowpane.
“Don’t take it to heart, okay?” she’d asked, lipgloss-tinted lips pursed. “No hard feelings?”
Shadows stretch and dance her features into that of a monster. The trill of her cell phone is jarring amidst the static.
“I’ve got to go,” she’d said, eyes turning away to a distance he couldn’t see. “Take care, Yoochun. Bye bye.”
Take care, the walls sigh as they shrink in on him in warping shadows. Bye, he sees Yunho and Junsu and Changmin murmur as they walk away.
I’m sorry.
It’s not you.
It’s me.
Take care.
Bye bye.
~
Thursday morning dawns bright and clear, a perfect spring day. Changmin’s there and knocking at his door by 7:00.
Yoochun drags himself out of bed and pretends he doesn’t see the remnants of shadows slip along the bottom of his walls and into his closet. The world is always muted a little bit gray and concaved at the edges on days like this.
“Ready to go, hyung?”
Yoochun pieces together his best smile and hopes none of the gaps show through. If Changmin notices anything, he doesn’t say so.
The ride to the airport is quiet, permeated with the sound of Changmin’s favourite acoustic tunes. Yoochun stares out of the window and hums absently along to the glide of melodies that catch at his vocal chords.
The airport is bustling and just a bit overwhelming on not enough sleep. Yoochun stares at the revolving doors eating up people and bags and nearly turns right back around.
“We’ll see you in a week, right hyung?” Changmin has a hand placed firmly on his back. Sometimes, Yoochun forgets that their youngest is more observant than he gets credit for.
“Yeah. I’ll see you guys in a week,” he says. With the world curled at the edges like a spyglass, a week feels like a distance far away on the horizon, rather than seven days of twenty four hours.
“Have a safe trip, hyung.” Unexpected arms wrap around his waist and Yoochun stops feeling like the world is tilting on its axis at 7:30 in the morning. “Enjoy yourself.”
Five centimetres away from a waiting ear, whispers carry like foghorn blares in the middle of a crowd. Yoochun pushes forward and lets himself be swallowed up by the glass doors.
A brief glance back and Changmin’s still there, waving, steady like a lighthouse in the middle of an ocean of people.
His ear packs up the sound of reassurance and stores it carefully away.
Don’t worry.
Colour starts filtering back into his surroundings and Yoochun feels like everything’s going to be alright.
We’ll be waiting right here for you to come home.
iii."The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched- they must be felt with the heart." - Helen Keller
Paris is lights and noise when his plane touches down, a breathtakingly beautiful rendition of all the post cards he’s seen.
Yoochun flips through his travel book like clinging onto a survival line, stumbling over words that his tongue doesn’t know how to say.
He’s lucky Yunho has thought it all out for him, or perhaps Changmin has, because there’s a chauffeur with his name on a board, waiting right by pick-up.
”Monsieur Park?” the man asks him. Yoochun fights the panic slithering up his spine and nods, recognizing his name. "Êtes-vous prêt à partir, monsieur? Il faudra un peu de temps pour arriver à l’hôtel.”
The foreign syllables all run together in a mess to his ears and panic surges in a wave. Yoochun gestures to the guidebook in his hands, not sure what he’s trying to say. ”Um, I don’t. French. I don’t speak.” He stammers in rusty English.
There’s a moment of icy nausea that settles in the pit of his stomach as the chauffeur blinks at him, incomprehension stiff in the muscles of his face. Yoochun repeats it a second time and like a miracle, the chauffeur nods and beckons towards the exit. ”Are you ready to go, sir?” he asks in accented English.
Yoochun sighs relief like smoke from the pinched-closed cavity in his chest. ”Yes.”
~
His hotel is in the fifth arrondissement, separated by the Seine River from the heart of Paris.
Yoochun steps a foot into the lobby and knows right off that Yunho has overdone it again.
His suite is beautiful, adorned in soft shades of tan and russet, a charming mix of contemporary and classic. The best part of his entire night is summed up in the king-sized bed, piled high with pillows. He lets himself collapse onto the mattress, imagining that the cotton-candy clouds he’s dreamt of as a child would feel just like this.
His suitcase is unopened and he’s filthy with airport dust. None of it matters as he buries his face in this rare luxury and sinks into the neutrality offered by apathetic hotel rooms.
~
He sleeps all throughout the night and late into the next day.
When he wakes up, is room is golden with the trapped afternoon sun, giving off an illusion of heat. Feeling like a gleeful child, Yoochun pulls aside the curtains and discovers that his windows face away from the street, offering him a peek onto Parisian rooftops. He stares down at the quiet backstreets, lost in chasing dreams along the cobblestones. The sun ambles along his windowsill, sneaking into his eyes with a conclusion like the splash of cold water into reality.
Wandering further into his new space, Yoochun discovers on the bedside table a note stamped with the hotel’s insignia. Curious fingers pull it close and he can’t help the upwards tug of his lips as he notices Yunho’s name.
My favourite dongsaeng,
Happy birthday! I hope you're enjoying it so far. ^_^
I made a special dinner reservation at one of my favourite restaurants here in Paris, especially for you! A limo will pick you up outside the hotel at 7:00. Dress nicely, and remember to smile lots!
Hyung loves you,
Yunho
P.S. Don't be too shocked if you find any more surprises. (^o^)/
He sighs with a rueful smile, folds the note neatly into his pocket. He doesn’t know what he’s done or who he’s saved in his past life to deserve a friend like Yunho, but he’s glad he had the good fortune of doing it.
~
7:00 is slow to come in the golden taffy light that is Paris’ afternoons. Yoochun sits out in the balcony and marks the orbit of the sun across the sky and down into the green treetops.
When his vision starts to dim in the light, he goes back inside and shakes out his suit from its cramped position in his suitcase, wondering if he should search out an iron to press out the travel wrinkles along the seams.
Time doesn’t flow quite the same in this place, Yoochun finds, because the clock is suddenly ticking past 6:35 and he barely has time to pass a comb through his bedhead before he’s out the door, the uncertainty of a foreign environment channelling into wired-tight nerves that thrum along his veins.
A white limousine pulls up in front of the hotel at 6:57 and Yoochun takes so long trying to pick the pieces of his jaw off the floor that he’s nearly late. The chauffeur, a young French man, opens the door for him with a bow, like he is royalty, and Yoochun doesn’t know what to do except answer with his own awkward bow.
The drive to the restaurant isn’t long, flashes of Paris life sliding smoothly across dark-tinted windows. The chauffeur plays a mix of baroque music, from Handel’s Water Music to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In between the familiar strains of violin and the murmurs of the cello, Yoochun finds a calm place where his muscles loosen and his heart relearns its normal one-two beat.
It lasts until they pull up in front of the restaurant, the inside of which seems to be dipped in gold leaf and dressed in mother-of-pearl. In the competition for Most Extravagant Place Park Yoochun Has Set Foot In, his current hotel is swept out of the top spot and replaced with this restaurant instead.
Elegantly concealed speakers are in the middle of the last movement titled Haydn’s Surprise Symphony No.94 in G, and Yoochun feels his heartbeat speed up again, swept along with the rushing wave of violins.
He’s seated at a table in the corner, neighbour to a waist-high vase of flowers. It drips sunset-coloured lily petals and stamen down emerald green leaves and Yoochun is surprised to find the sensation of fleshy silk rubbing against the pad of his finger as he slides it along the rib of a petal.
Five minutes after 7:30, Haydn’s Surprise Symphony has melted into the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 and a stranger is escorted to his table. Yoochun looks up in surprise and is about to call the waiter over about the mistake before he recognizes the dark hair and dark eyes from the sepia-toned Polaroid he keeps propped up against his plastic blue lamp at home.
”Oh, bonsoir. Je m’excuse, je ne savais pas que quelqu’un allait joindre à moi aujourd’hui.” The stranger Yoochun knows as Jae says, French syllables rolling off his tongue with a hint of an accent.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” Yoochun says, and watches as realization dawns.
“Sorry about that. I’m Kim Jaejoong. You must be Yunho’s friend?” It’s good to hear the round familiar syllables of Korean in a place like this, Yoochun realizes. It makes him feel not so much alone.
“I’m Park Yoochun. Yunho-hyung is paying for my trip, actually. It was a surprise gift for my birthday.”
“Oh! Oh, it’s your birthday!” Surprise is a quick bird that darts across Jaejoong’s face and leaves his lips parted in a shape like agitation. “Happy birthday, Yoochun-sshi! I’m so sorry, if I’d known I would’ve brought a gift!”
“Ah, no, don’t worry about it. It’d be great just to have you eat with me.” Yoochun smiles ruefully, “I have no idea how I’m going to order when I can’t even read half the words on the menu.”
Jaejoong laughs and it’s a warm and breathy sound, reminding Yoochun of autumn leaves and the smell of roasting chestnuts. He has no idea why, but sudden vertigo tips the world upside down for a moment and when the walls stand themselves back up, he feels himself still freefalling into the earth. Somehow, it seems just right.
part two
Masterlist: here