Shattered Glass and Bleeding Gold

The Weight of Six Years

The rain hammered against the windows of the small apartment like accusations Joong couldn't answer. He sat on the edge of his secondhand sofa, phone clutched in his trembling hand, staring at the message that had appeared twenty minutes ago.

Dunk: I need you. Now.

Three words. That's all it ever took.

Joong looked at the textbooks spread across his coffee table—corporate finance, strategic management, and marketing principles. His final exams were in two weeks. Two weeks until he finally had his degree, seven years after he should have graduated. Seven years of night shifts at convenience stores, of choosing between textbooks and groceries, of his mother's tired eyes pretending she wasn't disappointed.

He was twenty-four years old and still chasing a finish line that kept moving.

His phone buzzed again.

Dunk: Joong. Don't make me wait.

Joong's fingers moved before his mind could catch up, typing the only response he ever gave:  On My way.

He grabbed his jacket—the good one, the only one without patches—and stepped out into the Seoul rain. The subway would take forty minutes. Dunk's penthouse was in Gangnam, a world away from Joong's cramped studio in Geumcheon-gu.

Six years. They'd been together for six years, since Joong was 20 and Dunk was... 11.

No. That wasn't right. That wasn't when it started.

Joong closed his eyes as the subway rattled through the tunnel, letting the memory surface like a bruise he kept pressing.

Six Years Ago

Joong had been teaching dance classes at a community centre to earn extra money. Contemporary, hip-hop, whatever people would pay for. He was good—good enough that the wealthy parents from Gangnam had started sending their kids to him instead of the expensive studios.

That's where he'd met Dunk.

Fifteen years old, all sharp edges and sharper eyes, sitting in the corner of the studio while his bodyguard waited outside. Not enrolled in the class. Just... watching.

"Can I help you?" Joong had asked after the third session of this strange, silent observation.

The boy had looked up at him with eyes that seemed to contain entire universes of loneliness. "You move like you're trying to escape something."

Joong should have walked away then. Should have told the kid to leave, to find friends his own age, to go home to whatever golden cage he'd escaped from.

Instead, he'd asked, "What makes you think I'm not?"

Dunk had smiled. It wasn't a child's smile.

"Because you're still here."

They'd talked. Just talked, that first day. Dunk had told him about painting, about colours that didn't exist in the real world, about a father who looked at him like a failed investment and a mother who'd died giving birth to a son who'd disappointed everyone by existing.

Joong had told him about dancing until his feet bled, about singing in empty rooms, about a father who'd left before Joong could remember his face.

When Dunk had asked for his number—"just to talk, I don't have anyone else who understands"—Joong had given it to him.

That was his first mistake.

Or maybe his first mistake had been answering when Dunk called at 2 AM, voice raw from crying, saying his father had locked him in his room for ruining a business dinner by existing too visibly, too queerly, too much like a disappointment.