It only takes Yunho two alarms to yawn out of bed for his last first day of high school. He performs his familiar waltz: brush teeth, eat breakfast, sling his backpack over one shoulder and kiss his mother goodbye. It's a twenty minute walk filled with birdsong and the click of his heels on brown cobblestones. He entertains himself by jumping over the cracks in the pathway spilling with moss and dandelions. By minute fifteen, he is not the only boy in uniform walking to his destination, but he is clearly the loneliest of them all. He meets no one at the snack store beside his school, does not stop to talk about his summer with back leaning on a lamppost. The least he gets is a smile from a passer-by he unintentionally makes eye contact with as he dumps textbooks for his afternoon lessons into his locker. The sunshine seeping through the window opposite has made the metal door hot to the touch. He does not flinch away from the burn when he clicks the lock back into place.
He scrapes his chair and props bony elbows on his assigned desk in the middle of the form room. It sits slap bang in the centre of the classroom. He knows he is not nearly worthy enough for a window desk- it's reserved for main character, protagonist kids who get to romanticise life. All he can do is put his earphones in and block out the chatter around him.
There is a new addition to his form, his teacher says before he registers them. Only then does he look up.
(Psalm 139:13: "The Lord does not treat us as our sins deserve." If that is so true, then Yunho has no words for his God right now.)
Song Mingi stands facing forwards, rubbing his nose with the back of his palm in nervousness. They share a glance, and nothing more. Parallel streetcars, passing by in opposite directions. Different destinations. There is a free seat at the back of the room. Window seat. He gets a couple fist bumps as he makes his way towards it. A classmate asks why he moved forms. He replies, "I talked too much, so they kicked me out" with a humorous grin. His classmates laugh.
Song Mingi is the same boy he's always known, in the same way he is still the Yunho that Mingi once knew. He is quiet until spoken to, like a match before it is struck. Struck in a second, a flame unable to be ignored. He cackles graciously and loudly, lingering like fire to fuel. He is still until prompted, then untameable and filling up space with his presence. It takes a certain kind of person to ignite him. Yunho is the opposite, the double-edge of the sword. Loud and playful, easy to extinguish. Yunho is a used wick- difficult to re-light, stubborn and disintegrating into ash; left forgotten.
Form disperses, and he leaves to his classes. Science, Advanced Calculus, English. His heart does not grant him peace. It thumps around his ribcage at the mere suggestion of Mingi's presence, beats to the possibility of a rekindled friendship, swells towards the idea of reciprocation.
That would be the cure. The answers to all the questions Yunho has ever asked in his lifetime. He would never have to even think about flowers for the rest of his time. A cure so simple, yet so out of reach it hurts.
Lunch rolls around. Mingi's desk is surrounded by his friends, encircling him in boyish jokes and banter. Yunho wipes the blood from his mouth and leaves to find a quiet place outside.
Sixth period, and Yunho breathes a long exhale of relief. History. He's early to class. Overachiever. He cracks his back in two places as he bends over to grab his textbook from his bag.
"Uhm, do you mind if I sit here?" Someone asks. In hindsight, Yunho's ashamed he didn't recognise the voice at the first uttered syllable. It's deep, far deeper than any other boy in their year. Low and soothing, and just the right amount of raspy. A bit like rocks in a tumbler; edges smoothed and curved to perfection. Song Mingi peers down at him, hand on the chair sat beside him, poised to pull it out, inviting himself in.
"Yeah, sure," Yunho replies, looking away quickly.
Fuck. Fuck, shit, crap, fuck!
Shut up, he tells himself; get a grip. He clears his throat as the all-too familiar tinge of iron coats his gums. Swallowing, he splutters for a split-second on a petal at his tonsils. Mingi, the bastard, offers Yunho his water bottle nonchalantly. Like it costs him nothing, like a reflex motion. He declines with an outstretched hand and takes a swig of his own. It's better not to talk, better not to interact. Despite what his heart yearns for, he dares not address it.
Yunho has figured it out earlier than most. He supposes that's what happens when hanahaki strikes- at that point, there's no denying you're in love. Psychologists say that as children as young as four-weeks-old display gender-specific behaviours. After they develop their gender identity, they begin to align with others of the same gender, believing themselves to be superior to the other group. He could've play it off as boys being boys, could've screamed "girls have cooties!" at the top of his lungs. But there is no point dwelling on memories, revising and reworking his past. Because, how should he have known where the line between liking Mingi as a friend and liking him more than a friend started and ended? How should he have known how boys are meant to love, who boys are meant to love? At eight-years-old, Yunho realised love was not meant to be this cruel. It was not meant to stick its twisted, sharp fingertips to the basin of his larynx and scoop up ecosystems that tore him from the inside out. Eight-year-old boys are not meant to bleed so much, cry so much, feel so much.
Consequently, he has learnt so much. How to cauterise his emotions at the root of this wounds and hold his breath before the flowers spill. How to ignore boys with gummy smiles and pouting lips. How to endure the yells and cries of boys who ask, no, scream, why Yunho won't speak to them anymore.
So they sit quietly through their History lesson, side by side. Parallel streetcars; never intersecting for fear of crashing.
It's nothing short of a relief when the bell drills through his skull for the end of lesson. He packs quickly and quietly, angled away from where Mingi is in polite conversation with a girl at the neighbouring table. He shrugs on his blazer and tugs his backpack over his shoulder, ready to dash.
"Hey, you left your pencil!" Mingi says. It lies pliant between his index and thumb.
"Ah, thanks," he replies quickly, taking it and shoving it hurriedly into his pocket. It sticks out of the opening at a jaunty angle, tilted in mockery towards him. You stupid fool, it laughs.
As he starts to walk away, he can't help but spare a glance back at the boy. He's long since forgotten their interaction, busied with showing his friends the middle finger through the classroom windows. It's easy to smile at the scene. He sinks his teeth into his bottom lip.
The trudge home is long and pitiful, full of Yunho feeling sorry for himself and the question why me? echoing mournfully through his head. So much so, he pauses mid-step several times to slap a hand to his forehead and groan. But alas, he continues on. Despite the odds stacked against him, the world cannot stop spinning just because he spoke to Song Mingi a couple times more than he would've liked.
(Who are you trying to kid? the voice in his head murmurs. You liked it. You enjoyed every second you spent with him.)
And he did. He's guilty; he loved it and he missed being around Mingi so much and he wants to talk to him tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that. Fuck, he wants to be friends again. Maybe more.)
"Yunho? You home?" His mother calls as he closes the front door behind him. Returning home helps ease his frazzled mind. The smell of cooking, the sound of whatever his grandma is watching on TV, the way the sofa sags and sighs as he crashes down onto it.
"No, Ma. it's your long-lost son that you haven't seen in years," he quips dryly, kicking his feet up on the low coffee table.
"Very funny," she replies, volume increasing as she appears through the doorway. Her pointed stare makes his jump to put his feet flat on the floor to appease her non-verbal scolds. "How was school?"
"Same as always. Boring. Good," he says, sparing her the details.
"Nothing bad?"
"Ma, you worry too much. Today was fine, thanks." His mother smiles, brow unfurled and worry ceased.
"Dinner's at 6. Braised pork, your favourite."
"That's your favourite, not mine." She waves her hand in dismissal.
"Same thing. I suggest you take a shower before then." She wrinkles her nose at him playfully. He laughs.
She's right, as mothers usually are: a hot shower would do him some good. He lets the water run until it boils and the rising steam kisses his cheeks pink before stepping into the shower. His muscles breathe a sigh of relief as his tension melts away with the heat. He scrubs the day's events off his skin and lets it slip through the grate of the drain.
His mother was not always like this. Yunho remembers a childhood full of quick tempers and tight-lipped scolds with each cough he failed to conceal and each spot of blood he forgot to clean. She deemed him a troublesome child, riddled with ailments and purposefully causing her sleepless nights. And then, she found out. Stormed into his room late one evening, dragging him into the bathroom to explain the mess of cherry blossoms blocking up her drains. Demanded an explanation, grew furious with his speechlessness. Deathly silent as she searched up the eight letter word. Finally, she had an explanation for everything wrong with him up until that moment. And then she asked who. And then, he had no explanation for her at all.
It didn't matter. She had enough words for the both of them, and more. A stain upon the heart of God, consorting with the devil, cursed with a disease so hideous: homosexuality. Oh, Yunho will never forget the irony of his mother thinking him abnormal for liking boys, rather than his hanahaki disease. He spent that summer dragged ear-first through those tall wooden doors, through pews and confessional booths, drowning in hold water and sermons. Searching for a cure for the sick boy. Amen, amen, amen. Saw the desperation in her eyes and in the tremble of her hands. He will never forget the image of his mother on bruised knees, asking him to just try and be normal. It would stop everything, a win-win: if he stopped liking boys, he wouldn't even have to worry about his hanahaki disease.
The self-loathing was inevitable. To such a degree, where his mother realised the only way he could pull him away from the edge was to love her son wholly. To hold him tightly to her chest, cradle his aching head and heart, say "sorry" with the weight of a thousand anchors. To pull her son to the shore, shielded safe from the riptide.
Yunho turns the tap off and opens a window to let the steam escape. He rubs the condensation off the mirror in one clean swipe and dries his face. His mother had done so much for him since: she wipes his face with a cool, wet cloth after particularly bad episodes of vomiting, she'd cut off all contact with Mingi's mother, even when she stormed to their doorstep to demand why Yunho was being so neglectful to his best friend, her son. She'd held him tightly every time he begged them to move schools, towns, countries to escape the life he was living. Reminded him with gentle tones and sadness that they couldn't move away, otherwise he would die. The distance forced between him and Mingi would send his symptoms into overdrive, choke him out before he could even reach the town's border.
When he sits for dinner, his mother kisses him on the cheek as she lays out dishes. Enveloped by a cloud of steam, cheesy tteokbokki sits smugly on the table. His favourite, instead his mother's. She smiles at his puzzled expression. For you, she says through her love and tenderness.
Thank you, he replies, with a tilt of his head and grumble of his stomach.