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The lake had frozen over early that year. Winter in its entirety had come early—they had, for the first time in Jeonghan’s life, seen first snow in October. It had not been taken by most as a good omen. A long winter to come, more bad news in a year of bad news. Jeonghan agreed in conversation, popular topic as it was, but privately disagreed. That morning he’d leaned out over the sill of his window, without gloves, and let the snowflakes melt on his hands until his fingers began to hurt. It didn’t feel like an omen of any kind. It only felt like something new.
It was for this reason, among several others, that the winter solstice festival celebrations were muted. Jeonghan didn’t mind that either: his parents’ store was usually flooded with orders during that week, forced to keep its doors open for longer hours each day, which meant Jeonghan was in the storeroom from morning until night. He had his evenings free, this year.
They still had their church services the same as always and, as always, Jeonghan couldn’t escape the Sunday morning service. He sat on the frozen pew wedged between his mother and Boo Seungkwan, who sat with good posture for the whole hour and knew the words to every hymn. The priest read a particularly interminable passage to do with duty and perseverance and other topics that held very little interest for Jeonghan. He led the prayers for Joshua. The upcoming solstice marked three months, thereabouts, since he had been asleep.
For this part, Jeonghan can never resist watching. To his left, a slight tremor in Seungkwan’s voice. Sat diagonally to him and across the aisle, Seungcheol with his head hanging, chin almost pressed to his chest. Kim Mingyu, hands clasped in his lap and his eyes firmly shut as if putting physical force into his prayers might have some effect. Beside Mingyu sits Jeon Wonwoo, eyes open. He’s looking directly at Jeonghan.
Jeonghan couldn’t explain how he could say, if he were asked—and there’s no one who would ask him, anyway—but Jeon Wonwoo knows.
Wonwoo only watches for a while.
They don’t live far from each other, which is something Jeonghan has never had to think about before. They went to school together—naturally, they’re of similar age—but never had all that much to do with each other. Both of them had been sickly children: frequently absent from lessons, often confined to their bedrooms for days at a time. They had both missed an entire summer, years ago now, with the same illness the doctor could never quite identify and evidently did not know how to treat. It had passed, eventually, and they had both emerged skinny and pale and permanently sensitive to the slightest chill.
It could have built camaraderie between them, perhaps, but didn’t. Wonwoo was particularly studious and had no interest in games. He was younger than Jeonghan, but difficult to tease. Besides, Jeonghan had no need for a new friend. He had Joshua, and he had Seungcheol, and it had always been the three of them.
Jeonghan could count on one hand the amount of times Wonwoo has come to his parents’ store, and even then he usually came trailing after his mother, dutifully carrying the basket as she filled it. If he’s often around, Jeonghan has never noticed.
He notices Wonwoo now.
This time of afternoon is always quiet in the store, with most people at home and beginning to prepare for dinner. His mother is in the kitchen herself, so Jeonghan is at the front of the store for once, a task not normally left to him outside of this small window of time. Jeonghan doesn’t mind it, really. There’s few customers to bother him. He sits at the counter by the door, chin propped in one hand, and watches the gas lanterns being lit in the twilight. He’ll be able to lock the front door once the sun goes down and shoo any straggling customers out because his father isn’t there to see him do it.
Across the street, one of the figures on its way home stops. It looks in Jeonghan’s direction, through the wide glass windows at the front of the store, and Jeonghan steels himself to be bothered by one last customer before closing. From this distance, and with the figure bundled up against the cold, Jeonghan can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Silently, he wills the figure to turn; forget what it thinks it wants from the store, decide it’s too much bother to shake the snow off its boots and come inside. The figure does not move.
The longer Jeonghan looks, the more detail he picks out of the gloom. It’s obviously a man, or a tall boy. Skinny under what looks like two layers of furs. The figure shifts, and as he does his glasses catch the reflection of the gas lantern above his head, a sudden sharp glint. In that moment, Jeonghan places who he’s seen in those grey furs.
Jeon Wonwoo—he’s sure of it.
He sits up a little straighter, then. Wonwoo is still looking. Jeonghan raises his hand in greeting—just a tilt to his wrist, but enough to be seen from across the street.
Wonwoo does not wave back. He does nod, though, and after a brief hesitation he continues down the street, in the direction Jeonghan knows his house to be.
The sun sets soon after, and there are no more customers, so Jeonghan doesn’t even have to shoo anyone before locking the door from the inside and turning the sign to face outward. He does a cursory tidy, straightening a few items left askew on the shelves and shifting the mat to hide a boot print on the floorboards. He leaves the money at the till for his sister to count. He feels oddly unsettled, which is stupid, because Wonwoo doesn’t truly know anything, regardless of whatever he believes he knows. Certainly nothing he could use against Jeonghan. It would make no sense. There was no one else around.
He sees Wonwoo three more times in the next few days, on his way to the bakery and on his way home from the doctor. Once, while he’s walking with Seungcheol. Jeonghan still cannot remember whether he used to see Wonwoo before, often, and never registered it as something worth noting.
Logic doesn’t particularly help. Jeonghan is equally as convinced that it’s nothing as he is that it’s worth being paranoid over it.
It’s not difficult to find Kwon Soonyoung. He’s not with Wonwoo—Jeonghan wasn’t really expecting him to be, but Soonyoung is the obvious choice to ask about him. Wonwoo is friends with few people, and Soonyoung is friends with everyone.
Lee Seokmin is there, which Jeonghan did expect. They’re building a small village of snow people in the patch of land that serves as Soonyoung’s mother’s herb garden in the spring and summer. Jeonghan wanders in past the gate, and the two of them invite him to join, as they usually do, so Jeonghan makes a version of himself with fat clumps of snow.
“You need a nose,” Soonyoung says, inspecting Jeonghan’s work quite seriously. He digs around the garden a little, rejecting various stones and sticks for reasons unknown to Jeonghan. Eventually, he produces a long, straight twig and places it carefully in the centre of snow-Jeonghan’s face.
“He’s handsome,” Jeonghan says, leaning back on his heels to admire himself in sculpture. His gloves are damp and the chill of it stings his fingertips.
Soonyoung grins broadly, his own nose red from the cold. Jeonghan wonders how long they’ve been out here building their army. “Just like hyung.”
“Who’s this?” Jeonghan asks, pointing to a particularly misshapen snow person, and lets the two of them walk him through their creation, inspecting their work as though he’s their supervisor. Both of them like such things, and immediately fall into their own characters, bowing and scraping at their boss’s feet to earn the most praise.
Once he’s finished he takes a seat on a small ladder under one of the bare fruit trees, watching Soonyoung and Seokmin add their finishing touches.
“Have you talked with Jeon Wonwoo lately?”
It’s a question Jeonghan would be wary of asking anyone else, although it’s innocent enough in and of itself. Still, it’s hard to guarantee it won’t end up passed back to Wonwoo. Soonyoung has no natural intuition, though, and no interest in gossip.
“Yes, yesterday. We played cards and drank. Why?” Soonyoung asks, with curiosity but without suspicion.
“He’s acting strangely.”
“He always acts strangely,” Soonyoung says, in that good natured way of his. Soonyoung is fond of every living creature, including pale and sickly boys who don’t enjoy jokes. And Soonyoung himself acts too strangely to ever notice the strange behaviour of someone else.
“How is Shua hyung?” Seokmin asks, then. He’s used the affectionate nickname whenever referring to Joshua over the past few months, despite rarely ever using it while he was awake. Joshua had always liked to torment him. Seokmin was an exceptionally easy target—foolish, easily whipped into anger, with perpetually bruised feelings. He was incapable of holding a grudge, which also left him far too trusting for his own good. He would fall for the same tricks again and again, as if they were new every time.
He was also too sentimental for his own good. Jeonghan had always liked his soft-heartedness. It now left him apparently incapable of remembering the rotten parts of Joshua, leaving only the sweetness behind.
“He’s the same,” Jeonghan says, “I saw the irises you left him.”
Seokmin puffs up a little at that. “I picked them myself, from the greenhouse. I heard that scents can help. Familiar smells and sounds, things like that. I wondered if I should sing for him,” he says, ears flushing red with boyish embarrassment, “but I thought that might be silly.”
“I think he’d like that,” Jeonghan says, although Joshua probably would think it was silly. Embarrassing, maybe. Or perhaps he’d enjoy it—he always did like overtures of that kind. He was always far better at accepting them without laughing than Jeonghan ever was.
“Wonwoo went to visit Joshua. Maybe that’s why he was acting strangely.”
Jeonghan tries to keep the interest out of his voice, responding with nothing more than mild curiosity. “Oh? When?”
“Last week. Maybe it was Friday,” Soonyoung says, mostly distracted by the hat he’s trying to construct out of snapped off pieces of twig, but beginning to pay closer attention to the conversation.
Wonwoo has never been to visit Joshua before; not as far as Jeonghan is aware.
“You know Mingyu will be in fits if he sees you haven’t made one of him,” Jeonghan says, although there would be absolutely no way to tell which lump of snow was meant to be who. It serves as an adequate distraction, because Seokmin immediately jumps to the defence of an apparently previously held stance that a snow-Mingyu is unnecessary, while Soonyoung agrees that they should probably make one in case he comes by.
Jeonghan leaves them to the argument, citing his need to warm up his hands. It’s not untrue, anyway. This winter is colder than usual, and Jeonghan has never been able to withstand the cold.
Jeonghan visits Joshua most days, and Mrs Hong always greets him with the same warmth. She could not have been lonely, exactly, given the constant stream of visitors and neighbours bringing hot food and fresh wine. She ate all her meals next door, with Seungcheol’s family. Still, she smiled as if she was grateful to see him every time.
Prior to this year, Mrs Hong would not have been quite so warm. Since their childhood she had been convinced that Jeonghan was the ringleader behind any trouble Joshua got into—only true half the time—and often scolded Joshua for spending all his time with Jeonghan, almost to the exclusion of other friendships. They were firmly inseparable, though, and she spoiled Joshua far too much to ever be strict about it.
Things are different now, and Mrs Hong sees him as Joshua’s loyal friend, convinced now that his presence by Joshua’s side will help wake him up.
“Come in, honey,” she says, ushering Jeonghan over the threshold and stripping his coat off neatly. “It’s much warmer inside. I could make you some tea, if you’d like?”
“That would be lovely, thank you.”
It’s just the two of them in the house, and Joshua’s bedroom is up the stairs and down the very back of the house, affording him a level of privacy Jeonghan had always been jealous of. Mrs Hong did not work, but rather was sent a monthly allowance from Joshua’s father, who was apparently working somewhere very far south of here. Joshua never spoke of his father, ever. There was no evidence of him in the house: no letters, no belongings. He had never been to visit. Jeonghan had suspicions that Mrs Hong was not and never was his wife—that there was some other family bearing his name who had never heard of either her or Joshua.
Jeonghan’s own bedroom shared a wall with his parents’ room, making sneaking out at night far more difficult, among other things. It was also a perpetual mess, clothing always finding its way to the floor and garbage rarely finding its way out. Joshua’s bedroom was pristine now, carefully curated by his mother as it was, but he had always kept it in a similar state himself. His bed was perfectly made every morning, his belongings kept neatly away in various drawers and boxes. The room was decorated with things he had made himself; crafts and stitchings of varying quality.
His mother kept the curtains drawn wide at all times, letting the sunlight stream in, and she turned on the lamps at night, never allowing Joshua to lie there in the gloom until she went to sleep herself.
Joshua looks as beautiful in sleep as he does awake. He’s still, other than the steady rise and fall of his chest. His hair fans prettily over the pillow, brushed regularly by his mother. Even now, his cheeks still hold the healthy glow that Jeonghan’s never do.
“Ya, Shua,” Jeonghan says, using the drawl he always did to annoy him, “I’m back. Did you miss me?”
Joshua breathes in, and then out. Jeonghan takes a seat in the armchair stationed beside his bed. Seokmin’s irises are still there on the nightstand, now a little wilted. Mrs Hong won’t tolerate them once they start to brown. Beside the irises, there’s a book—from the cover, Jeonghan thinks it might be poetry. It’s certainly not something Joshua would ever choose to read himself. Jeonghan reaches out to touch the thick leather of it, the raised pattern running down its spine.
“Xu Minghao has been reading to him,” says Mrs Hong from the doorway, voice wavering with emotion, clearly touched by the gesture of it, “once a week or so.”
“Yes, he’s very thoughtful,” Jeonghan says, as if he knew this information already, which he did not. “They’re friends.”
He says the last part with confidence, although he doesn’t know that either, but wants to see how Mrs Hong will respond.
“Are they?” she asks, a little absently, and then seems to recall she has a tray with a cup and a small pot of tea in her hands. She lays the tray down on the dresser and fusses with pouring the tea for a minute, garnishing it with a sprig of rosemary. Jeonghan thanks her sweetly when she hands it to him. “I’ll leave the two of you alone,” she says, as if they might like to gossip about something without being overheard.
Jeonghan does talk to him, actually, despite how ridiculous it feels given the circumstances. Sometimes about real things, sometimes about nothing. He waits until he hears the last stair creak before he puts his teacup down, balancing the saucer on top of Minghao’s book. He leans forward to touch Joshua’s arm, as if rousing him.
“Have you been talking to Jeon Wonwoo?”
Jeonghan had thought of speaking to Minghao about Wonwoo earlier, but had quickly dismissed the idea. He knew that the two of them spent time together occasionally. He had seen them reading together, presumably when Minghao grew tired of spending time with Mingyu and Seokmin, perpetually fighting for his attention and competing for the title of village idiot.
They were not friends, though, and if Wonwoo had confided anything to him, Minghao would certainly not tell Jeonghan about it. He had an interminable need to do the right thing, and he had no qualms about making it clear when he felt someone else was not following the code he had firmly decided upon. He did not particularly like Jeonghan, and—as far as Jeonghan knew—he did not particularly like Joshua, either.
Minghao is especially shrewd and would not miss even a fraction of the things that can pass under Soonyoung’s nose like the wind. He would want to know why Jeonghan was asking about Wonwoo. He would ask Jeonghan directly, too, rather than try to find some other way to get to his answer.
Jeonghan could ask about Joshua, though. Joshua is firmly within the realms of his business.
He’s considering the best angle to make his approach when his sister breaks out in a rash, spreading bright red and itchy all over her upper arms, and their mother has Jeonghan take her to the apothecary for a salve. She complains the entire way and Mr Xu coos over her as soon as they enter, easing her gently out of the arms of her coat while she squirms with discomfort. He takes her into the examination room—really just a small annex with a curtain for privacy—and Jeonghan is left to wait in the main room, where Minghao sits at the front counter. He has a paring knife in one hand and an apple in the other, and apparently no inclination to speak.
“Hello, Myungho,” Jeonghan says cheerfully. Minghao greets him politely in turn, and they fall into silence.
“How have you been?”
“I’ve been well,” Minghao says. Jeonghan searches for any hostility in his tone and finds none. “And you?”
“Freezing fucking cold,” Jeonghan says, which gets a small smile out of Minghao. “Thank you for asking.”
They lapse into silence again, and Jeonghan cannot find any roundabout way of asking, so he just asks.
“You’ve been reading to Joshua,” Jeonghan says, not a question, allowing space for Minghao’s answer.
“Yes, I have,” Minghao says, simply. His knife slices through the flesh of the apple and he twists the fruit in his hand, like a little moon rotating on its axis, cutting out a neat ribbon of skin. He looks back up only once the apple is bare.
“I didn’t realise the two of you were friends,” Jeonghan presses, to which Minghao only shrugs.
Jeonghan looks at Minghao, and Minghao looks back. He gives nothing away.
“He doesn’t like poetry, you know.”
It’s uncharitable, probably. Minghao is only doing a nice thing. He’s expecting annoyance, or possibly defensiveness, and gets neither.
“You don’t know everything there is to know about Joshua Hong,” Minghao says, and that little smile is back, and he’s biting into the apple, the skin of it coiled in one long piece on the counter top.
Yes I do, Jeonghan wants to say, I know things about Joshua Hong that would make your hair stand on end.
“That’s true,” Jeonghan says instead. “He’s a mystery to us all.”
Minghao seems to agree with this, for his own private reasons Jeonghan doesn’t have access to. Jeonghan wants to push—he hates secrets being kept from him, and he’s good at pressing his fingers into soft spots until he can pry those secrets loose—but the curtain is being pulled back, and Mr Xu appears with his sister in tow.
Jeonghan pays for the salve, and he thanks Mr Xu for his time, and his sister complains the entire walk back as well because he’s irritable instead of attentive as all big brothers should be.
The sky goes dark before the sun sets that afternoon, and Jeonghan likes the idea of being stranded at Seungcheol’s house in the rain, so he ducks out of the store while his mother is busy fussing over his sister and the handwritten instructions Mr Xu had attached to the pot of salve.
The gas lamps are lit early to accommodate the heavy sky hanging low overhead. The small hairs at the nape of Jeonghan’s neck stand on end - he’s sensitive to all kinds of shifts in the weather these days. The sensitivity makes him feel older than he is by more years than he can account for. It reminds him of Lee Jihoon’s father, a fisherman, who would complain of the pain in his right knee at the slightest drop in temperature. Jihoon himself would catch up to his father, some day, and spend his time predicting the season based on his various aches and pains, and Jeonghan would be right there with him complaining of the chill.
He cannot imagine Seungcheol as an older man, unwell and injured and unable to withstand the winter. He would always be young and always be healthy and strong.
Jeonghan would have, even just a few years ago, climbed the lattice at the rear of the house and crawled in through the window. There’s no need to, now. He goes in through the front door and greets Seungcheol’s parents as well as their dog, Kkuma, who presses her paws into Jeonghan’s shins and barks up at him.
“He’s upstairs,” says Seungcheol’s mother, tucking a piece of Jeonghan’s hair behind his ear.
Seungcheol is half-dozing when Jeonghan enters, wrapped in a nest of blankets. He’s left the window ajar, curtains restless in the wind preparing for rain, and without his coat the chill sinks through Jeonghan’s skin to his bones quickly. He crosses the room to shut and latch the window.
“Make room,” he says, and Seungcheol stirs, digging through the nest to find an opening for Jeonghan to crawl into.
Jeonghan’s skin aches where it touches Seungcheol’s, but it’s the kind of ache that only aches because it’s being sapped out of him. Seungcheol has always been warmer than him by degrees. While Jeonghan struggled through the winter, Seungcheol struggled through the summer; he was perpetually overheated, damp and uncomfortable with flushed red cheeks. His skin was terribly pale and couldn’t withstand the sun—he was always forced to retreat inside before anyone else, and he always ended up with pink burns striped across his nose and his cheeks. His shoulders, if they went swimming.
It was always Joshua who would bring him cool aloe, and it was always Jeonghan who would flick at his peeling skin until Seungcheol squirmed out of his reach.
“Hi,” Seungcheol says, his face pressed into Jeonghan’s hair. Jeonghan, in turn, presses his frozen feet to Seungcheol’s ankles. “Ugh,” Seungcheol grunts, without any real annoyance. He curls around Jeonghan fully, arm heavy around his middle.
He considers rolling the two of them, tugging at Seungcheol’s clothing until he uses his weight to press Jeonghan down into the mattress. He’s tired, though, and his body is sore. He could fall asleep like this. Seungcheol wouldn’t ask anything of him.
The sky breaks, then, unexpectedly ferocious, icy rain rattling at the window panes.
“You haven’t been over in a while,” Seungcheol says, voice heavy and slow. He’s not far away from sleep.
“Mmm. Sorry,” Jeonghan replies, because Seungcheol takes note of these things, and he is easily injured. “It’s been too cold to go out. And I’ve been at Joshua’s more,” he continues, adding the second part knowing it will tug at Seungcheol.
Seungcheol is quiet, then. Jeonghan’s face is pressed right up to his heartbeat.
“Do you miss him?”
“Yes,” Jeonghan says, truthfully. “More than ever, now.”
The two of them doze for an hour or so. A particularly strong gust of wind rattles the window in its frame and startles them out of sleep, enough so that Seungcheol extricates himself from the mess of blankets and goes downstairs to fetch some of the food left out for them by his mother. They eat together in the bed; a habit Seungcheol picked up from Jeonghan which Joshua had always been horrified by. Seungcheol’s mother is not a good cook, but Jeonghan doesn’t want to do much more than pick at the food in any case. He could never eat so soon after waking up, with half of his mind still occupied in a dream.
It had been daytime, at the tail end of summer. The grass had grown so tall that Jeonghan couldn’t see the edge of the field, where the path back would have started. The scream of the cicadas drowned out any other sound, all noise flattened into that deafening hum, so Jeonghan couldn’t hear Joshua. He could see his mouth moving, though. And he already knew what Joshua was saying.
The rain doesn’t let up until well after the two of them fall asleep again, so the streets are frozen over with ice by morning. Seungcheol’s mother wakes them early, as it’s Sunday, and the five of them walk to the church in a little cluster with Jeonghan hidden from the windchill in between Seungcheol and his brother.
The church is mostly full by the time they arrive, all five of them being inclined to move faster at night than in the morning, so there’s few seats left and plenty of eyes to watch.
From his seat in the middle aisle Seungkwan nudges at Chwe Hansol, trying to point out the two of them with some subtlety. Hansol undoubtedly cares very little about them showing up to church together, but invariably manages to show interest when it’s Seungkwan doing the telling. He makes a face of surprise to match Seungkwan’s, mouthing something at him that Jeonghan doesn’t catch.
The priest has evidently come down with a seasonal infection, because his breath rattles around in his chest with every laboured inhale, and his voice comes out in a weak stream with frequent pauses. The service moves at half speed.
Jeonghan imagines a set of eyes boring into the back of his head for the entire hour; imagines that they’re Wonwoo’s, seated at the back of the church by the door. He does turn though, once, and Wonwoo is not looking at him.
The priest leads the prayers for Joshua, and Seungcheol bows his head and takes Jeonghan’s hand in his own.
They separate outside the church. Seungcheol’s father needs both of his sons’ help shifting some lumber, a task for which Jeonghan is entirely useless, and Jeonghan takes the long way back to his own house. He could use a bath, probably. It’s a chore Jeonghan dislikes even in summer and dreads in winter—the thought of sitting hunched in their tub, only half of his body protected from the frigid air, holds very little appeal for him.
Perhaps he’ll read, instead. Perhaps he’ll practise sums like his father has been pressing him to at length. He can’t yet be trusted with balancing their books; he always ends up with an entirely different number to his father, and he can never quite explain how he got there. The store will be his, eventually, but Jeonghan has never been able to look that far ahead of himself. Seungcheol talks often about marriage, about the possibility of having children some day. He talks of taking over his father’s business with an authority that feels childlike to Jeonghan.
Jeonghan looks into the future and only sees himself, as he is now, only with more lines around his eyes.
He considers his options for the day while walking the long path—all three outcomes seem unlikely, if he’s honest with himself—and he pays little attention to his surroundings, which is probably how Wonwoo is able to come up on him without his notice. One moment Jeonghan is alone, and the next Wonwoo is falling in step beside him.
“Hello,” Jeonghan greets, hoping his pleasant tone covers his surprise. He hates to be caught on his back foot. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
Wonwoo cuts him a sideways look, and he doesn’t reply immediately. Jeonghan wonders whether he’s doing it for dramatic effect—to build tension, to make Jeonghan worry. If so, he’ll only be disappointed. Jeonghan could wait forever with that same placid look he knows drives people to frenzy when they’re angry enough.
Their walking has slowed, now, the path having barely enough space for two people to walk side by side. Wonwoo stares ahead at nothing—again, perhaps for effect. He isn’t wearing his glasses, which means he cannot see a thing beyond the end of his nose. Jeonghan has never understood why he ever goes without them.
“Why did you do it?”
Jeonghan’s feet do not stumble. He stays on the path, he keeps his pace.
“Do what?” he asks, a hot stone sliding down his throat and sinking heavy to the base of his stomach.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Wonwoo’s voice has always been serious, and very deep ever since it first cracked at ten years old, well before any of the other boys.
“Of course,” Jeonghan says, forcing a laugh into his own voice, “the frog in Mingyu’s bedroom. I can’t help myself, I suppose.”
Wonwoo stops, then, and Jeonghan turns but does not stop, walking backwards until there’s a distance between them. Wonwoo’s eyes, unseeing, are on him.
“How can you laugh?”
Jeonghan wants to turn immediately. He wants to turn and run until he cannot feel Wonwoo’s eyes on his back.
“You should try it,” Jeonghan says, instead of running. “It’s good for you.”
There’s an unpleasant twist to Wonwoo’s face. It’s only the two of them out here, now closer to the forest than they are to even the nearest of the homes. Wonwoo could say what he wanted to say. He could shout it, even; Jeonghan is fairly certain that no one is close enough to hear.
He says nothing, though. He only looks.
Jeonghan waits, and waits, and then he walks. He doesn’t run.
Jeonghan doesn’t visit Joshua for three days, which is the longest he’s gone without seeing him since the day Joshua didn’t wake up. It’s the longest he’s gone without seeing him ever, really. Even when he was too sick to leave the house, that summer years ago, Joshua would come to see him. Throw stones at the window, if Jeonghan’s mother wouldn’t let him up. Joshua spent so many hours in his bedroom that summer it was almost as if he was sick himself, missing out on daylight to play improvised games on Jeonghan’s bedroom floor.
Even during their fights—which were frequent, and often ferocious—they would see each other. Neither of them had the stamina to hold a grudge, and neither of them found anyone else half as interesting as they did each other. The fights were entertainment in and of themselves: to see who could land the most vicious blow, to see who could invent the cruellest revenge. In the choice between nursing their hurt or avoiding boredom, the avoidance of boredom always won.
Those three days coincide with heavy snowfall, which provides as good an excuse as any, and Jeonghan does not leave the house at all.
The fourth day is bitterly cold, but the sky is clear and bright winter blue, and Joshua is waiting for him.
“Oh, darling,” says Mrs Hong, the endearment still strange coming off her tongue. “Have you been sick?” She presses the back of her hand to Jeonghan’s forehead to feel for a phantom temperature.
He tells her that he’s fine, actually, he’s just been a little under the weather, and he’s sorry he couldn’t come by earlier. He allows her to fuss, to insist that she heat up some of the soup Seungkwan’s mother brought. It’s an odd routine they’ve fallen into.
Upstairs, the bedroom is mostly unchanged. Joshua is serene in the centre of the bed, and the sweet bow of his lips suggests a smile, even at rest. There are fresh irises by the bed.
“Did Seokmin sing to you?” Jeonghan asks, taking one of the waxy petals between his thumb and forefinger. “I can picture his face. So serious,” he says, the thought of it bringing a laugh bubbling up his throat. He can picture Joshua’s face, too, that carefully blank expression he does when he’s refusing to laugh, when he’s tolerating something ridiculous in order to seem mild and sweet. He’s careful in ways Jeonghan never cared to be.
There were times that annoyed Jeonghan—angered him, even—but he enjoyed it for the most part. It only made it all the sweeter, later, when they would laugh together. Joshua was always more careful than Jeonghan, but the blade of his tongue was also sharper.
“You would like this,” Jeonghan says, and if anyone had overheard him they would think of him as cruel, but it was only the truth. He knew Joshua better than anyone, and he knew that Joshua would like it. How sweet he was like this, how perfect. How people would visit and leave him flowers and cry for him, how they prayed for him every week. How beautiful he looked with his eyelashes fanned on his cheekbones. How he never had to be anxious of doing the wrong thing, or saying the wrong thing, because he never had to say anything at all.
Mrs Hong appears in the doorway, then, her usual tray of tea in her hands. “The soup will take a little time, darling. I’ll call you down when it’s ready.”
“That’s perfect, thank you,” Jeonghan says, taking the tray from her before she can fuss with it too much. “Who’s been to see him?”
“Lee Seokmin, of course, and Kim Mingyu came with him. The Boo family along with the Chwe boy, with the soup,” she says, clearly pleased, continuing to list off names. All of the Chans, Mr and Mrs Lee. Xu Minghao. Moon Junhui—very odd boy, she says—and Mrs Oh, their old school teacher, came despite the snow.
“Has Jeon Wonwoo been by?”
Mrs Hong stops to think, then, apparently going back over her list to search for any missing entries.
“No, darling. I don’t think so. I only recall him visiting once,” she says. “He’s a very quiet boy. Stiff as a board.”
Jeonghan nods, and thanks her for the tea. He waits until she’s gone to set it down on the bedside table.
The red tongue of a bookmark hangs temptingly from Minghao’s book, and Jeonghan can’t resist opening it to the place Minghao must have left it last time. Poetry, as he knew it would be.
and the sun falls into the ocean
and the moon falls into the earth
Jeonghan wouldn’t have the first idea of how to interpret it. He doesn’t think that Joshua would, either, but he doesn’t understand why Minghao would be reading it to him in the first place, so maybe Joshua would after all. Jeonghan slips the bookmark back in but to the next page instead, just to leave his mark.
“What did Wonwoo say to you?” Jeonghan asks, and immediately knows that Wonwoo wouldn’t have said anything. He doesn’t have even a trace of fancy in him, and would’ve felt far too ridiculous. It’s more likely he was here to look for something. There’s a little pinch of satisfaction in knowing that there was nothing for him to find, and he must have left disappointed.
Joshua gives nothing away, not even to Jeonghan.
It’s too cold to go walking, really, but Jeonghan doesn’t want to linger with Joshua today, and he doesn’t want to go back to the store. He doesn’t want to meet with Seungcheol, who always knows when Jeonghan is unsettled, and never lets it lie.
At the edge of the forest, he finds Chan.
He considers turning back up the path. Chan doesn’t seem to have noticed him, focused as he tends to get on whatever task he’s doing. Chan won’t have any questions for him, though, and won’t make him talk any more than he wants to. Besides that, Jeonghan is curious.
“Hello,” he says, to alert Chan to his presence, and Chan is neither startled nor already aware of him. He’s sitting on the stump of an old tree, long since cut down.
“Hi, hyung,” he replies. There’s a tangle of twigs in his lap, arranged into a kind of wreath. He lifts it up, obviously noticing Jeonghan noticing it. “It’s a ward. It’s supposed to drive out curses, attract good luck,” he says, and adds, unnecessarily, “it’s for Joshua hyung.”
Jeonghan likes Chan very much. He’s terribly serious, and was always more interested in working than playing, even as a child. He has moments of true sweetness, like now, made all the sweeter by how unguarded they are. How unpracticed and lacking in motive. His seriousness is probably why he’s one of Wonwoo’s few good friends.
Jeonghan hadn’t thought to come to him earlier. Chan isn’t the type to take notice of a secret, even one sitting directly under his nose. He’s unlikely to pick up anything suspicious in what Wonwoo says to him. Besides that, Jeonghan knows that Wonwoo wouldn’t tell Chan anything he considered to be unpleasant. He has an odd note of chivalry for all the younger boys, but especially for Chan.
“Where did you learn how to make that?” Jeonghan asks, reaching out to inspect the partially assembled wreath. There are dozens of small twigs woven together—likely hundreds by the time Chan finishes. It must have taken him a long time already. His hands must hurt from the roughness of the wood.
“I read it in a book,” Chan says. Jeonghan looks at him, then, and he amends sheepishly, “I asked Myungho hyung, and he gave me a book.”
Minghao, of course. Who else would it be.
“You’re good at this,” Jeonghan says, wanting to say something kind, and wanting to see the way Chan’s chest puffs up with pride.
“It’s to hang on his door,” Chan says, taking the wreath back with careful hands. “Do you think it could work?”
His face is terribly earnest and terribly open.
“Of course, it could,” Jeonghan says, emphatically. “And he likes things like this.”
Jeonghan has never been one for superstition. He doesn’t keep a talisman of any kind, besides the small onyx statuette Seungcheol had given him years ago. The year he got sick, actually. It hasn’t prevented him from getting sick in any subsequent year, nor has it stopped any other kind of misfortune. Seungcheol would have been crushed if he hadn’t kept it, though, and Jeonghan likes the weight of it in his pocket.
Despite his practicality, Chan—like most of the village—believes strongly in superstition, and Jeonghan’s belief in his wreath visibly pleases him.
Jeonghan sits with him for an hour or so, until the sun begins to set. They talk a little - mostly just Jeonghan, with Chan focused on his wreath as he is. The cold creeps under Jeonghan’s clothes. Chan doesn’t finish the wreath, quite, but Jeonghan convinces him to return to it tomorrow when the sun is back up. Joshua can wait another day.
They walk the path back together, pressed close to create a little warmth between them.
His house is warm and light when he returns, and the kitchen smells strongly of garlic. He drifts towards it, drawn in by the smell of their dinner and the warmth of the fire he knows is burning there.
“Where have you been?” Jeonghan’s mother asks as soon as he appears in the doorway, evidently exasperated. Her hands are occupied with slicing a thick bunch of green onions.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, crossing the room to kiss her cheek with a loud smack. She can never hold onto her frustration with him for long. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“No, I can’t,” she huffs, but there’s already a little smile appearing at the corner of her mouth. He wraps his arms around her middle, resting his head on the back of her shoulder. They stay like that for a moment, Jeonghan breathing in the scent of the rose oil she always wears on her neck.
“Your friend came to visit,” she says over her shoulder, trying to scrape the green onions into the pot without jostling him too much. “Jeon Wonwoo. I told him he could wait upstairs.”
Jeonghan tries not to let himself stiffen. He keeps his voice steady when he thanks her, and kisses her cheek one more time.
Dread pools in his stomach as he climbs the stairs, which is stupid. It’s Wonwoo. It’s only Wonwoo.
He pushes the door open, and there’s a moment where they only stare at each other.
“Your bedroom is a sty,” Wonwoo says, clearly exerted. Jeonghan’s room has been upended, as much as a room already in disarray can be. “Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Jeonghan asks, closing the door behind him and willing himself not to react to the chaos of his room. He keeps both hands on the knob of the door.
“Is this really just another game to you?”
He sounds—affronted, almost. Maybe righteous. Like Jeonghan’s existence is offending him.
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Jeonghan says, cooly. “I don’t know why you’ve convinced yourself you do.”
Of this, Jeonghan is confident. Wonwoo is not as clever as he thinks he is, and Jeonghan will always be one step ahead.
“I don’t, do I?” Wonwoo asks, and he’s now beginning to sound actually angry. Jeonghan isn’t sure he’s ever seen Wonwoo truly angry before. “I was talking to Seungcheol last week. He confessed something to me.”
Wonwoo lets it hang in the air between them for a moment, triumphant. Like he has Jeonghan cornered.
“He told me that he kissed Joshua. Last summer, before he fell asleep.”
If there’s one thing Jeonghan is good at—truly good at—it’s swallowing poison. He keeps his face still, and he swallows it all.
“Why are you telling me this?”
Wonwoo’s lip curls, derisive. He turns his back to Jeonghan and continues rifling through the chest of drawers he’d already partially ransacked before he’d been caught. As if Jeonghan will just stand there and allow him to. Perhaps he would—perhaps he will. There are a great many things Jeonghan will stand back and allow.
“Do you know how guilty he feels?” Wonwoo asks, shutting the drawer with a thump so forceful Jeonghan is worried his mother might hear. “He thinks he did something.”
It’s that, more than anything before it, that flares the anger up hot in Jeonghan’s stomach. Seungcheol is his, and so is Joshua, and he loves both of them far more than Wonwoo ever will.
“Get out,” he snaps, and the look of surprise on Wonwoo’s face when he yanks him back by the shoulder is viscerally satisfying.
“I won’t leave until you tell me,” Wonwoo says, squaring his jaw, as if he’s brave for it. As if he isn’t ransacking Jeonghan’s bedroom like an angry child.
“You don’t know anything,” Jeonghan replies, using the same tone of voice he might have used to tease him years ago, when they were at school. “You think you’ve figured something out? Something no one else could? Not the doctor, not the elders, but Jeon Wonwoo?”
Something flashes bright and hot in Wonwoo’s eyes. In a moment, he’s crowding into Jeonghan’s space, and then he’s taking a fistful of Jeonghan’s hair and yanking his head back with it.
“I know what you are,” he hisses, voice low. Wonwoo’s face is close enough for Jeonghan to feel his breath on his skin, sour and warm, and he says, “Witch.”
Jeonghan recognises the feeling boiling in his gut as fear. He is afraid, then.
There is a long moment in which they only stare at each other. Jeonghan’s scalp stings where Wonwoo has his hair pulled taut. Jeonghan does nothing, and says nothing.
The sound of his mother calling for them is so sudden and startling it makes both of them jump, Wonwoo dropping his handful of Jeonghan’s hair like it’s hot coal. There’s a moment of panic in which Jeonghan thinks she’s going to come in, see the scene of his room and ask them what’s going on. It registers then that her voice was far away, clearly coming from the bottom of the stairs, and she’s likely back in the kitchen by now.
The reminder that Jeonghan’s mother—his entire family—is in the house evidently rattles Wonwoo, too. He glances around himself several times, as if he’s surprised at the extent of the mess he created.
He walks out without another word. Jeonghan hears him making polite excuses to his mother downstairs—he can’t stay for dinner, his father is expecting him home. Jeonghan stands there, in the mess, until his mother calls for him again.
Jeonghan is careful, after that. He stays at the store until closing. He doesn't go out alone. He spends more nights at Seungcheol's house, in the security of his bedroom. He tells Seungcheol he had a nightmare recently and Seungcheol postures as if he has the power to protect Jeonghan from such things.
I won't let anything bad happen to you, Seungcheol says, and means it truly.
He had always been that way, ever since they were children. He was—and still is now—particularly close to his father. Jeonghan knows he received semi-frequent lectures on the topic of being a man and the duties that came with the title. Jeonghan's own father had attempted this with him once and it had amused him greatly.
It was the type of thing Seungcheol took seriously, though, as he took most things seriously. His shoulders were already as heavy as a man much older than him.
There's a bonfire celebration on Friday night, on the date considered to be the town's founding day. Jeonghan tells Seungcheol he's too tired to go, and Seungcheol knows that something is wrong. Not that being tired is out of character for him—he's honestly not sure how Seungcheol knows, just that he usually does.
"We'll do it here, then," he says, and hurries out in the cold to buy food from some of the vendors. He brings back several bottles of wine, as well. He sets a fire of their own and lays out blankets in front of it, pilfering the pillows from his brother's room as well as his own. He looks proud of himself, presenting the finished product, and Jeonghan rewards him with a loud, smacking kiss.
They eat until they're full, and they drink until they're dizzy, and then they lay out flat on the blankets, Kkuma curled up between them with her own belly full of scraps. Seungcheol spoils her terribly. Seungcheol spoils everyone terribly.
"Are you alright?"
He's turned on his side, now, and his face is very serious. He stares at Jeonghan without looking away. Jeonghan has never minded his scrutiny, really. Seungcheol has never seen anything bad in him. He fought with his mother frequently on this topic when they were a little younger. Any thoughtless thing Jeonghan ever did, Seungcheol had some excuse for it already brewing in his mind well before Jeonghan apologised for it; if he ever did at all.
"I'm alright. You made me feel better," Jeonghan says, wanting to make Seungcheol flush with pride. To make him feel as if he did well. He reaches out to pat Seungcheol's cheek, then runs the back of his finger down the bridge of his nose. He can see the emotion on Seungcheol's face very plainly.
"I always want to. Always," he says, even more unguarded than he usually is when he drinks.
"You might not always," Jeonghan says. "I might make you angry. I might make you hate me."
The look on Seungcheol's face is almost comical, exaggerated by the wine.
"That's not true," he says, staring at Jeonghan like he's willing the words to penetrate, "There's no one like you. There's no one I love more than you," he continues, quite forcefully. It feels like a crime to say so in his family's home, surrounded by love as he is. "I could never hate you. Not ever."
Jeonghan lets Seungcheol look at him, and he looks back. There are cheers in the distance, the sound of instruments being played.
"Do you promise?" he asks, and holds out his pinky finger. Seungcheol wraps his own around it and brings both of their hands to his mouth, kissing the join of their fingers twice.
"I promise," he says, and presses another kiss there for good measure, "I promise."
"Even when spring comes?"
If Seungcheol is confused by this, he doesn't show it. He's used to Jeonghan speaking in riddles by now.
"I'll love you more in spring," he says.
Fireworks burst from far away and Kkuma shifts, pressing herself more firmly into Jeonghan's stomach. They fall asleep like that, joined at the fingers, and Jeonghan sleeps through the night.
Jeonghan dreams of Joshua one more time. In the dream, he’s throwing stones at Jeonghan’s window. He climbs up and crawls in, like he hasn’t had to do in years. He’s wearing the pyjamas his mother dressed him in.
“You woke up,” Jeonghan says, surprised.
“No, you fell asleep,” Joshua replies, which Jeonghan accepts as true. Joshua leaves his slippers by the window, damp with melting frost, and crawls into Jeonghan’s bed with him.
“It’s almost spring,” he says, in a way which feels pointed. Joshua never just comes out and says anything, but he does make his meaning known. His skin is warm, despite having been outside. Jeonghan supposes it’s only fair, considering he’s been tucked under blankets the entire winter. He hasn’t felt cold, or sick, or anything at all.
“You must be bored,” Jeonghan says, with a sour pang of gratification.
“Aren’t you bored, too?”
It’s not until Joshua says it that Jeonghan realises it’s true. Under the fear, under the satisfaction. He’s tired of it. He’s had his fill.
“I suppose I am,” Jeonghan concedes.
“I’m sorry, really. I am,” Joshua says, and his face is the picture of sweetness. As innocent as a doll. His eyes seem very large, looking at Jeonghan from this close distance.
“You won’t say that,” Jeonghan says, half accusing and half amused by the show of it. They’re both on their sides, now, curled up like two cats.
“Neither will you.”
Jeonghan is opening his mouth to reply when he wakes up, mid-inhale and thrown off balance. He’s alone in bed, of course, and there are no slippers at his window.
It’s not in Jeonghan’s room. Why would he keep it in his room?
It’s warm enough now that he doesn’t need his fur coat to walk out to the forest. The trees are still bare, for the most part, but there are little red buds appearing here and there. The first signs.
Jeonghan knows the path without having to think about it. It’s the same path he’s walked for years, since back when he and Joshua were still young enough to play out in the forest. Joshua lost his taste for it early; he’d always hated getting dirt on his clothes, or having to pick the crushed leaves out from the tread of his boots. He would still come, though, when Jeonghan asked. They stayed the night out here more than once, when they were a little older, both pretending to be at each other’s houses. They had drunk wine and told other people’s secrets and it was here, actually, that Jeonghan first told Joshua that he had kissed Seungcheol. They must have been around fourteen years old at the time. It feels like a very long time ago now.
Jeonghan buried it, like you do with all secrets. He digs it up now.
Mrs Hong isn’t at home when Jeonghan arrives, most likely next door with Seungcheol’s parents, so Jeonghan lets himself in. Joshua’s bedroom is the same as it always is, for the most part. Chan’s wreath is now hanging on his door.
Sunlight streams in through the open curtains and pours over Joshua’s face. Jeonghan sits in the armchair he’s sat in almost every day of autumn, and now winter too.
“I love you, really,” Jeonghan says. “You know that, right?”
The stone is warm, now, the heat of Jeonghan’s palm having seeped into it. In the light of the bedroom it looks like nothing. It is only a stone.
On the bed, Joshua is still. Jeonghan’s more familiar with the sound of his breathing in sleep than he is with almost any other sound. He presses the stone to Joshua’s lips and they part, just like that, taking the stone in.
Joshua’s eyelids shift; they flutter, and then they open.
✧