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Jeongguk grows up with no big plans for life, just a laundry list of things they want to live long enough to do like: one waltz in a small kitchen... kiss at the back of the bus when nobody’s looking... knowing every tree by its name and visiting the lighthouse in Oryukdo in summer.
By age twenty-four, Jeongguk’s done all of those things. Or most of those things. They think they can always tell a jolcham from a galcham oak, they have a ballroom of a small kitchen … and when they travel southeast in July, someone else matches their footsteps, their shadows stretching out behind them like twin flames.
His name is Jimin, and he’s the love of their life. Simple as that. Jeongguk knows from experience that keeping things simple minimises how much they have to lose — and for the most part, it works. Jeongguk and Jimin make life all about cooking rice and peeling fruit, and kissing, and sleeping; and love the active practice of filling the time in between.
At age twenty-four — as it turns out — Jeongguk’s life is only just beginning.
They don’t exactly remember how it starts, apart from the occasional backward glance into the past, and the ‘aha’ moment it brings forth. The realisation is a slow buoy, but before they know it they’re trawling through reddit posts and “Am I Nonbinary” quizlets and info sites clearly designed by and for fifteen year olds.
Jeongguk supposes the move to Seoul had much to do with it. Seeing men, much including Jimin, embrace things they’ve always thought to be traditionally feminine, and take on more fluid forms of expression... had awakened something in them. A deep wanting to be as untethered, and as free as the word itself. It’s not to say they’ve never seen gender non-conforming people in the media, or in real life back home — it’s just that those people have never really looked like them. Unapologetically Korean.
Jeongguk goes through the motions, after. They try to perform as a gender non-conforming cis man for a bit, but it only works to service their growing detachment from a male identity, their ambivalence towards pretty skirts, and, well, maybe it does also teach them that Jimin is right to swear by Moonshot as the holy grail bb cushion brand.
So Jeongguk is nonbinary.
Jeongguk knows what the implications of being queer in Seoul are. Knows that visibility and acceptance is far different from what it’s like in Virginia, where they had spent most of their adolescence — and even then they’d had a tough time.
Jeongguk has been lucky, all things considered. The thought runs through their head every day like a mantra, when they wake up in the morning and Jimin is still there; when their heart closes around the idea that their life would be a lot worse if he wasn’t. That they have Taehyung and Namjoon, ex-dates turned gym buddies; Hoseok — their best friend from KU, his boyfriend, Seokjin; Yoongi — their favourite bartender in Itaewon.
Being nonbinary is just… different here. More unheard of, even within the queer spaces they frequent, and sometimes it feels like they’ve just traded one closet for another.
Still, Jeongguk grows their hair out, starts privately going by they/them pronouns, holds their breath a little whenever they follow Namjoon and Taehyung into the locker room to cool down.
The Men’s locker room.
And they do wonder, every time…
Still, Jeongguk is affirmed in feeling the small changes in themself, even if nobody else sees them yet.
Perhaps the bigger truth is that they’ve had to keep things simple, because of how strangely life moves around them. Jeongguk’s lived as a thousand different people before they’d come to just… be , and if that has taught them anything, it’s to love deeply as much as they love indefinitely.
And… Jeongguk loves everything they’ve become, everything they are: their broad shoulders, toned arms, their big, full eyes, the slope of their nose. The way their hair kisses the back of their neck like it’s memorised it a dozen times over; fisherman borne back to a shore.
Jeongguk loves themself — and nothing about themself is a boy.
——
The world shifts one Thursday night.
They have a bath drawn for two, as the weight of day dissolves into a precipitation of soft hands. Gentle and methodical hands, working the shampoo into their scalp — Jimin’s hands, Jeongguk remembers — and laps up everything in between; the bathwater, the smell of vanilla bean, the quiet jingle of Jimin’s pendant against his sternum…
Inly, they make a mental note to return the favour. Maybe tomorrow, Jeongguk thinks, Jimin has a busy day at the studio tomorrow.
Neither say a word, but there’s assurance in knowing they’re already speaking. Jeongguk closes their eyes against the measured silence, and feels a bit like a newborn— cleaved from the amnion of new life. Clean. Renewed. Life has stilled on its axis and all is well in the world.
Faintly, they make out the hum of a showerhead, as Jimin turns the tap on again and applies himself to them. Feels his soft hands under the steady stream of water, up and down, then rinsing and repeating, repeating, repeating.
Touch has never really been their favourite medium, but it’s always been Jimin’s. Naturally, they'd come to enjoy it as well. And it isn't because Jeongguk’s had to compromise, rather … they’re becoming each other, just as they love. They even smell like each other now, and — to have the person you love smell like you? Of you? And you of them? The thought is simple, but it makes Jeongguk go all warm and giddy inside each time.
“Your hair’s grown so much, Jeonggukie,” Jimin comments out of the blue.
“Oh,” Jeongguk freezes, as Jimin tucks a stray lock behind their ear. “It’s a — uh — kind of a new look I'm trying out?”
“What, like Rapunzel?”
“Yeah… I’m trying to get it long enough to bun up, actually.”
“Well it’s pretty,” Jimin decides, “I think it’ll look good— pretty— on you. Everything does, really.”
Jeongguk blinks, slowly.
Pretty. Jimin thinks they’re pretty. And he’s definitely called them that before, but for some reason, it only clicks now. They're only just deciding which descriptors feel congruent with their identity.
Jeongguk wears the word for themself, and their skin comes alive.
It’s affirming— even more so when they’re hearing it from the prettiest person they know.
“Hmm… maybe I should grow mine out so we can match?” Jimin teases. He leans forward in the water, pressing a kiss onto their temple.
And if Jeongguk melts into the kiss, of course they do.
Strangely enough, something about the gesture feels like a quiet acceptance; like they’re moving along and Jimin wants to move along with them. Jeongguk doesn’t know what to make of that just yet, but their heart turns and turns anyway and infarcts itself on words too big to keep within them.
“I love you,” Jeongguk says, the confession tumbling out of them as if caught in the frigid whirl of a dryer.
Jimin laughs. There’s a kindness in his voice where he doesn’t see how Jeongguk turns red with shame; or maybe he does, and it’s only intensified by the knowing. “What, all of a sudden?”
I love you?
Doesn’t this feel like the first time?
Should it?
“You’re so lovely,” Jimin coos, recentering them both. He’s so close now, it almost feels like he’s breathing through them, through all the layers of agita — like a river possessed by two moons.
“Not as much as I am lucky,” Jeongguk says simply.
Because Jeongguk is. Because it’s already been two years since that nascent day in October, when they’d walked Jimin home, stopped him right outside his apartment unit and asked, hands shaking, if he’d like for them to be boyfriends too.
Jeongguk realises it’s a promise they hadn’t been able to keep, after all.
“I’m luckier,” Jimin whispers, despite that and despite the desperate occurrence of a heart aflutter, a winging in Jeongguk’s chest as they — and they —
“I think it’s a special thing to be in love with such a beautiful boy,” Jimin decides.
And —
Jeongguk stiffens.
Jimin’s talking about them. Or talking around them.
Boy? That's what Jimin thinks they are, isn't it?
It’s so jarring; the sudden wrongness of the word, against the lovely shape Jimin's made for it, rounded out from his lovely mouth. How lovely the evening had been, too, in every moment leading up to this one.
And now the evening is over and they’ve been so horribly amputated from the feeling. Everything is wrong. It almost makes Jeongguk want to climb out of the tub right then and there, but they also know there's nothing they can do to curb the way their body soaks up the realisation like a second skin. Even then, Jeongguk only feels more naked.
They hate it, of course; that it’s the way Jimin sees them, even if he doesn’t mean to. It isn't the first time Jimin’s accidentally misgendered them, but it’s the first time since the day — not too long ago — that they’d finally, truly felt confident in their identity.
Jeongguk’s acutely aware of how it’s the way everyone else probably sees them as well. Every other international student who’d mispronouned them in class, every other guy in their gym, even the Ewha U barista who’d scribbled her number on their serviette this afternoon.
But this is different… this is Jimin. It’s who they love. Who they live with. It’s part of their identity, in many ways. Sometimes even looking at Jimin is self-recognition.
What Jeongguk recognises now is a reflection of themself, unable to saturate itself where the light catches. Once, they'd been that pupating assembly of a person. Once, two years ago, they'd been the person standing outside Jimin's apartment door— their apartment door— hopeful and half-healed by the light.
Seven hundred days and seven hundred nights later, and Jeongguk feels both inside and outside of the house. Feels like if their devotion had hands, perhaps they'd be shaking too. They know the terror still lives, it just has a different name: it's a different kind of confession, one that begins with C and ends with a because Jeongguk loves Jimin, and Jimin doesn't know who they are.
Jeongguk takes a breath. It's fine. They'll be fine. It's just something they're going to have to explain. They're not mad at Jimin either, not in the slightest. It's just that the water's gone cold.
Jeongguk reaches forward, and pulls the plug out.
——
They’ve heard about this working theory before: how people don’t really keep memories of events, only of memories of previous memories— and they can’t really tell if Thursday had been as terrible as they remember it to be— but there’s simply no way to be scientific about a heart steeped in sadness.
They give it a week. They figure between submissions and Jimin working overtime at the studio they’d probably be hard pressed to find the right moment to tell him now, anyway. One week, Jeongguk thinks— they’ll be ready by then.
They’re sitting on the couch with Jimin when it knocks at their conscience, and Jeongguk lets this sleeping dog of a thought back in.
Jeongguk knows — because sleeping dogs never do lie well — that their head has been in all sorts of places this week.
They’re scared, plain and simple; and they know the context is different — Jimin is different — but the trauma of their first coming out still adjudicates how they should feel about this one. So much of what they are is still determined by what was safe when they were fourteen.
For now, at least, this is their safe place— here, with Jimin.
Jimin’s holding them, their fingers playing with the ruffles on his chiffon pajama top in turn; a small assurance that they’re there. Present. They know how much he needs this to unwind; the length of his exhaustion evident with his every exhale.
“Tickles,” Jimin grumbles, gently swatting at the hand. He sounds soft and sleepy in a way that makes Jeongguk want to turn around and sweep him into a hug, to contain him in love.
And— there are always going to be moments like this. Of sleeping and eating and washing, despite having done those things the day before; of falling for the same person, despite having done so over and over and over again. Not because it’s routine, Jeongguk thinks, but because it’s a continued effort. Love is something they nurture.
“It’s pretty,” Jeongguk takes the fabric between their fingers again, thinks of the Thursday in the tub— and really does mean to say you’re pretty, too. I love you. Sometimes it’s almost dumbfounding how much they do.
Instead, Jeongguk sighs, as Jimin mumbles something to their right, face pressed flatly against their arm for comfort. It’s not exactly something they can give him right now; and they’re compelled to feel bad about it, even when they know they shouldn’t.
Jeongguk loves Jimin, but they’re only human, which means they can’t stop thinking about last week, that they don’t also know how to be honest about the things that hurt.
God, Jimin thinks he’s dating a boy.
They don’t even know how they could begin to confront that.
It’s through no fault of his own of course — Jimin doesn’t know. Still, it doesn’t change how the ache sits in them, so ungainly and misshapen Jeongguk almost wants to give it another name, like something they can pull out and slip under a pillow at night, pretend it was anyone other than their favourite person in the world who’d misgendered them, too.
It’s a scary thought to place—that they don’t quite know how much of themself resembles what Jimin sees, and who he loves.
“Yah,” Jimin says, tearing them from the thought, “Were you listening?”
“… what were you saying?”
The older makes a show of rolling his eyes and Jeongguk leans in, lips finding the bridge of his nose in tandem as they nurse an apology onto it.
“Sorry hyungie.”
“You’re distracted.”
Jeongguk frowns at the accusation, pulling away. “I’m always like that.”
“Uh-uh. S’not what I mean.” Jimin steals a glance at them. A small, shifty look that makes Jeongguk’s heart curl a little in their chest — like Jimin knows they’re hiding something from him. Hell, he’s always been intuitive like that.
“You’ve been distracted… as of late,” he says, and something in Jeongguk sinks.
A wet knowing, that beats with their whole body like every part of it is a heart — and they’re already trying so hard not to make a sound.
“... is there something on your mind… ?’’
... Jeongguk’s not ready.
It occurs to them just then; that they can’t, that it’s barely the right occasion, that they're still lacking the words, that they don’t think they could survive a rejection. Jeongguk feels, if only for a moment, their singularity as the room slips away — another memory of a memory of… back when they were a…
Jeongguk doesn’t want to be alone. They have so much more to lose this time, and maybe that fear is testimony to how much they have to love; but there’s no romance in that, either. Jeongguk just feels scared.
“Not really,” Jeongguk replies curtly. It’s a lie and they both know it, but it’s also the easier pain, the softer landing.
“You sure?”
“I think I’m just… tired, hyungie…”
Jimin sighs, ever so slightly; absolves faith from the space between them where Jeongguk makes two prayers:
One, for Jimin to stay, always — and two, for Jimin to forgive them today.
There might be a third, Jeongguk thinks, and maybe it is for them to stop seeing the rest of the world with their mother’s face, but Jeongguk doesn’t get to it.
——
Jeongguk loosens themself from the heat of Jimin’s hands one night in November.
Yet another night they feel here, and here, and nowhere; like an imposter of sorts. They’re their own but they’re not really Jimin’s — whatever that implies — they’ve sat on this same thought for so long they’ve forgotten why they had to honour a smarting backside in the first place.
The fear has only grown since; and Jeongguk sees reflections of it everywhere. Some part of them knows it’s irrational, that when Jimin makes comments about their hair getting so long he doesn’t also mean too long; that Jimin asks after them more these days only because he’s worried.
I’m sorry, Jeongguk wants to say, despite it all. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry and I won’t be long — and I know you were just trying to help and I’m sorry about that, too. The grass is greener on the other side where I’m too afraid to jump.
Probably. Hopefully.
Jimin is a good person, Jeongguk tells themself, someone who’s always going to accept them, no matter which way they ebb and flow and— god, do they want to keep this belief. But Jimin is also the person they love, and nobody wants to believe they could be in love with a bad person.
Litany of worst-case scenarios that Jeongguk knows they need to stop worrying about like: something something, Jimin thinks they’re just confused, or stupid, or disgusting, something something, Jimin leaves.
They start for the edge of the bed, which has begun to grow in their loneliness. Everything is too big. Too much. Too anxious. They just need a cooler, kinder place to lay themself down where nobody can see.
And if only it were that easy to lay down a fear, to make a child out of it and turn a blind eye — they would. Jeongguk would. Hope and beg and plead for it to stray from them but — you know— all children know how to look for their mothers, no matter how neglectful.
Everyone finds their way back home, Jeongguk supposes, and when they can’t, well, they still know how to replicate the old feeling.
The night slips away. At its end, Jeongguk settles for the crawl space of Jimin’s body, props his arm right over theirs, and swelters.
The idea is enough to make them tear up a little, so Jeongguk does, quietly conscious of the way Jimin lies sound asleep behind them. They pray to every god to be right about that second part.
——
Eight in the morning and Jeongguk puts the phone down. Jimin’s still asleep — but he’s a late riser, so that’s expected . If anything, it gives them more time alone to think.
Jeongguk’s eyes flutter shut; they can’t erase it: their mother’s voice, the nagging adeul, the unspoken displeasure as she’d asked if they were still dating that Jimin boy, if they were thinking of finally settling down proper.
The words wash over them and take nothing; because Jeongguk’s identity isn’t affirmed by pain. It’s built on solid ground, on something studier. There are no half-truths about who they are; nothing up for debate.
Jeongguk blinks. Their gaze sweeps over Jimin’s frame and doesn’t linger, but the guilt settles regardless.
They’ve been out for ten years and their mother still thinks they just haven’t found the right girl. Like it’s phase, something they can muscle out but refuse not to.
And that’s fine, Jeongguk thinks, because she doesn’t count. Doesn’t matter.
But Jimin does, which is why it’s all the more unbearable — that awful, awful thought: that they’d come out as nonbinary and Jimin would think it’s just a weird phase, too.
That he’d be sweet and kind, and understanding — because he is — tell them that it changes nothing, tell them that he’d love them all the same, as he’s meant to. That he’d be holding on, ten years later, wondering what on earth is taking them so long to grow out of it.
Isn’t it funny? This punchline? About how being honest about themself has always meant losing someone else. About how people they’re supposed to love are the hardest to sometimes.
Jeongguk can only nod and nod and nod and put a phone down. They cannot find it in themself to laugh.
——
By the time Jimin catches up to them, something between them is broken, and it sounds like heart, though Jeongguk can never be too sure.
There’s a muzzle on theirs; a silence unlived by the words Jeongguk can’t bring themself to say, because they’re not ready, because they’ll never be ready enough. They’ve spent a month biting into their bottom lip, the same patchy wound that bleeds as it heals and heals only to split open again.
“Jeongguk-ah,” Jimin sighs, uprooting them both from that deliberate quiet. “You need to talk to me.”
He pats the spot on the bed next to him, right before Jeongguk has the chance to walk backwards from the subject. The difference between then and now is that Jeongguk doesn't want to. He’s right: they need to talk, and they’ve been meaning to, anyway.
As always, Jimin smells of them. Of vanilla, and of coffee they’d left to percolate outside. It’s all Jeongguk can think about as they sit on the bed and breathe in the distance; the casual immensity of two years shrinking down to this very moment. It feels like the world is ending all at once and there’s still comfort in that — the world is ending and Jimin still smells of them…
“Listen,” he starts, “I know there’s something up with you, because I know you, baby…
Jimin looks tired. It’s one of those days where he has early classes scheduled, but he looks really, really tired. As if he, too, has been worn out by Jeongguk’s inner state of exhaustion; picked it up from whatever mechanism it is that couples learn to walk and talk and act like each other.
… I know I’m not imagining things. I can tell when your heart’s not in the right place, when you get so quiet it feels like you wanna be somewhere else, when I touch you and you flinch — if only for a bit — it’s still a bit I…”
Jimin’s voice breaks off, sounding so impossibly small now.
Before he knows it, he’s blinking back tears; and Jeongguk is sorry, so so sorry. The suffering in wearing themself in had felt so banal up to this point they hadn’t stopped to think of the ways it could be wearing someone else out.
“Jiminie—”
“Is there somebody else?”
Jeongguk’s mouth falls open. “What— hyung — no ! Never, god no.”
“I’m sorry for asking,” Jimin smiles, brushing his hair from his face. He’s embarrassed by his desperation but they think only kindly of it; Jimin’s honest heart, a centre left open for Jeongguk to reach their hands into. “I just…”
“I could never,” Jeongguk assures, rolls their tongue over another I’m sorry.
“I love you,” they say instead — because it is the one thing they can never be sorry for — “There is something I need to tell you.”
——
Many times before had Jeongguk looked at Jimin and felt like an imposter.
Jeongguk knows how they look, and how it may seem incongruent with their internal sense of self. They can’t deny their male socialisation, the kind of body type it’s taught them to work hard for, the kind of sport their body had enabled them to pursue, in turn.
Jeongguk was a boy the first time they’d hauled themself over the goal line, the first time a teammate had clambered over them; their blemished lungs raised to a universe that breathed back in applause. Jeongguk was a boy when they’d told their cousin they were gay, when their cousin had outed them to their mother the day after, under the pretense of saving them. And lastly, Jeongguk was a boy when they’d been caught with their first boyfriend, only to be reminded of the type of person they should’ve brought home, instead.
The sun sets on a field, as it does, time and time again; as it did back then, regardless of whether Jeongguk had realised they were alive long before someone in a white coat had slapped them on the back, just to check how well they sustained life.
Jeongguk crawls out of the hard exoskeleton of their body, years later — lymphatic as the day they were born — and begins to define their identity based on what it means to them, instead of what it means to other people.
Jimin is other people, too. Jeongguk is more than conscious of the fact.
They don’t know how much Jimin knows about nonbinary identities, if at all; but they’ve seen the androgynous, “genderless” Korean models he keeps up with online. They know they look little like the beauties in Dongdaemun during Seoul Fashion Week. Jimin, with the way he presents, and carries himself, is probably miles closer to that ideal than they are. And Jimin is very much a cis man — a happy one at that.
Standing at the cross section of their life, Jeongguk can sometimes only gasp at the strangeness of it all.
——
But as Jeongguk looks at Jimin now, they don’t feel like anything close to an imposter. They just are … Jeongguk’s nonbinary. They don’t think anything can change that, not even Jimin.
“I don’t know how to explain this but — I’m not a boy— or a man, or— ” their lips unseal and the words pour out, leaving nothing of the soft shell of their stuckness.
“I might have lived like one — and for a long time I think I might have been okay with it— just — not anymore. I am who I am now, and who I am now is more real than I’ve ever been. It’s the only way I can live.”
Gingerly, Jimin takes their hands in his, and sets them on his lap. They imagine it must be confusing, but they also can’t bear to look at him just yet.
“… I’m not a girl either,” Jeongguk corrects themself, “Ahhh. People … people like me … when your gender doesn’t fit into precise boxes of entirely male or entirely female, and—”
“You mean like, nonbinary people?” Jimin asks, and Jeongguk nearly freezes over. They hadn't even considered this to be a possibility.
“Hyung— you know?”
“I think I’ve read about it online,” Jimin says simply. “So are you… ?”
Jeongguk nods, slowly. They study Jimin’s features for hints of scepticism and find nothing like that, either. Just the way his eyes droop with adoration, looking at them as if they were a pet who’d brought them something from the yard.
As it is, boyhood is to Jeongguk but a fallen branch, or leaf, or a dead mouse.
“Yeah,” Jeongguk mumbles, “Yeah, okay. It’s different for everyone but for me, personally… I feel neutral? About my gender. Like it’s something both floaty and malleable but also unskewed towards any end of a male-female binary.”
Jimin reaches out and tucks their hair behind their ear.
“How does that make you feel?”
“Free? As if everything's finally fallen in place and I'm ... the most realised version of myself, I guess...” Jeongguk concludes, some time later.
…Hyung, is that okay with you…?”
The hand lingers. Jimin’s lips pull into a smile. “Of course— that’s what you are. And what you are is all I need you to be.”
Jeongguk manages another yeah, yeah, barely processing the words as Jimin lays them down, but already knowing they’re ones that are going to stick with them forever; ones to carry in — with — their body like a second heart.
God, they could cry.
“There’s just another thing.” Jeongguk swallows. There’s a sob in their throat that’s desperate to be heard. “I go by they/them pronouns now — as in, when we… if we speak in english — ah , how do I explain this — you’d use ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ and ‘them’ instead of ‘him’... I know it sounds super confusing right now but I’ll write it down for you—”
“Okay,” Jimin touches them on the wrist, slightly amused. “Maybe later. If you practise with me I think I can do it.”
Jeongguk exhales. The relief is equally evident on Jimin’s face.
“Then I guess all that’s left to say is… I’m sorry — just — I’m sorry about everything before. I felt so guilty and detached and I wasn’t going to stop feeling that way until I told you about … yeah … but I shouldn’t have pushed you away without reason. It was cruel of me.”
“Oh it’s cruel alright,” Jimin rolls his eyes, finding it in himself to laugh now. “You hurt me and now I don’t even have a bad boyfriend to blame.”
Jeongguk readjusts, taking Jimin’s hands in their lap instead.
“But in all seriousness,” Jimin continues, “I love you— whatever you are and will be. You and I both have a lot of growing up ahead of us, and we have all the time in the world to figure the rest of it out, together, you know?”
Jimin looks at them, holding their gaze with a tenderness Jeongguk doesn’t even have the beginnings of words for.
But they lean in anyway, and Jimin plays god, kisses them like he’s breathing life into them both. Jeongguk nurses his lips, and hears themself. Feels his heart beat between them — an impossible region of space — and sound like their own. I know you, Jeongguk thinks, musing through that single organism of affection, I know you I know you I know you. You are everything I know.
Jeongguk pulls away, and the room breathes like two people.
“Hyung…” they start, already wavering with tears.
There is no loss in this. For once, the thought comes to them before the need to convince themself of it; and the hows and whys abandon themselves in their making.
“You’re crying?—” Jimin whispers, wiping at Jeongguk’s tears as they form. He cups their face with the gentleness they’re worthy of, and kisses them on the nose; brings their palms up to him and kisses each one, turns them over for the back of their hands so he can kiss them, too.
“Please don’t cry —” Jimin laughs, though it only makes Jeongguk want to do just that, “— hey — you’re so so so so pretty — please don’t cry.”
A beat passes in which Jeongguk truly feels reborn. They let their heart nag in their chest; their stupid heart — bane of all their viscera — never knows how to act when it gets too big.
“I love you,” Jeongguk confesses against Jimin’s damp sleep shirt, belatedly, and a little apologetic. “I’m so glad.”
Jimin gathers them — all of them — in his arms, and Jeongguk’s come up in tandem, slotting themselves around his waist. They’ve always loved how they fit; like their bodies were made to harbour each other.
There are things about life… love… and their gender that feel the same: places they may never return, homes they’ve had to create anew, a kind of safety in being lulled by tides, by the subtle guidance of their nomadic heart, in belonging nowhere, in belonging anywhere.
Jeongguk smiles, so terribly in love and bound by it.