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The beach was the attraction of the otherwise small and quiet town. It spanned the town for miles on the north side, white sandy beaches with fallen logs and the roar of the waves. In a certain area, there are bushes of roses and other flowers Jeongguk couldn't put a name to. The red rose bushes were the topic of a small legend going around this town, it's that if you court someone with a rose from those bushes, you were guaranteed to land a date with the person. That's the folk legend Jeongguk grew up with and the legend that was the most popular amongst giddy teens. He'd sometimes bike up to that point, roll the petals of a plucked rose in his hand, wondering if one day he'd ever need it.
It's the folk legend that Jeongguk grew up with, but it isn't the one that renders true. (Not for Jeongguk at least. Never for him.)
+
A bundle of roses for success, but only in ribbons and roses alone because anything else would be a big mess.
+
The wind brushes the curtains of Jeongguk’s room, sweeping in only to brush at the exposed leg that’s found it way out of the blanket. The hint of summer pours into the room, and Jeongguk awakes with the smack of his lips, tasting salt. He blinks wearily as he shoves his feet into his slippers, hand coming to scratch at his hair.
After he’s finished with his shower, throwing on whichever garment smelled the cleanest, Jeongguk heads into the kitchen to heat up last night’s seaweed soup. He tips his head out to sneak a glance at his mother’s room, the door ajar but otherwise, the faint snores still signified that she was asleep.
Jeongguk takes a small sip of the soup before pouring the rest into a container and slips it into his bag, along with the book Seokjin read but never finished. He grabs his keys and jacket and quietly slips through the door, throwing his bag over his shoulder as he takes off on his rusted bike.
The wind blows him in the face this time, the familiar smell of the sea whiffing past him accompanied with the faint scent of roses as he bikes past the blooming shoreside.
+
When Jeongguk first met Seokjin, he was ten. He was ten, and he hated Seokjin. At 15 years old, Seokjin stood two heads taller than him, scrawny arms on a scrawny body, not at all the soccer-playing enthusiast that would be willing to play around with Jeongguk, not at all the exciting and experienced older boy Jeongguk had expected. Instead, Seokjin was quiet, even more so when the two families had dinner together. He’d linger in the back until his mother would prod at him to go play with Jeongguk, he was the type to melt into the background. Jeongguk was expecting much more when his mother had told him he'd have a babysitter. He was expecting someone who would play tag and hide and seek with him, buy him junk food and let him stay up past curfew. Someone who was fun, was what Jeonggguk had wanted.
It's not that Seokjin wasn't fun. Seokjin just wasn't the type of fun Jeongguk liked. Jeongguk wanted someone to show off to his friends at his school, tell them all about his cool older brother-like babysitter that did cool soccer tricks and had loads of charisma. Someone Jeongguk could be proud of. Seokjin wasn't that. Seokjin wasn't any of that when he was 15, pale skin having never touched the sun, black hair with no thread of brown, and crooked fingers that have never held a surfboard.
He was boring, Jeongguk thought. So boring. (But then, Seokjin turned 17 and began leaving Jeongguk behind for other things. He'd began pursuing sports, working out, going to loud parties just across the streets with his friends. He'd became the older Jeongguk dreamed of and wanted, but the pride that Jeongguk thought he'd have stumbled from his throat to his heart in something akin to regret. It felt like many things to Jeongguk, it was like tucking your toes into the warm sand only for cold waves to strike upon you, going to the beach only for it to start pouring, and it felt like ice cream from the convenience store, bright and pretty in it's advertisement, but soggy and flimsy in your hands. It was disappointment. Jeongguk never thought he'd be disappointed for Seokjin's change.)
Before, he hated Seokjin for all of that. But now it's different. (Now, Jeongguk hates the way Seokjin laughs behind his hand, loud giggles that turns into hushed whispers, as if someone had clamped his mouth shut and told him, long long before, that his smile was awkward and cracked at the corners and the sound of his laughter was disturbing. He hates the way Seokjin would light up like a lit match whenever something interested him, before dimming down as if someone had blew out the fire. Most of all, Jeongguk remembers, he hated the way Seokjin had left and stayed and left and stayed, with school schedules and his friends and growing up and everything that didn’t include Jeongguk.)
Back then he hated Seokjin for a lot of things, now he just hates Seokjin for digging a hole in his heart, but having never planned to ever reside in there.
(And maybe, the small voice in the back of Jeongguk's head would always say, maybe if Jeongguk wasn't so invested in Seokjin and compliant and willing for the man, maybe he would've grown up normal. With friends who'd take him on parties every weekend, get close and cuddly with that girl that seemed to flush every time he was near: maybe he'd be a normal teenager growing up, worrying about university and future careers instead of a man who's seemingly never going to wake up.)
+
Seokjin leans over Jeongguk’s shoulder and watches in amusement at the mess of notes Jeongguk was trying to review for the test.
“How’re you doing?” He asks, not aware of how his voice sends shivers down Jeongguk’s neck, a warm breath on a cold winter day.
“S’okay,” Jeongguk mumbles, “I’m not really fond of this subject though.”
Seokjin laughs at that, and Jeongguk beams in pride. Jeongguk put his notes on the side and puts his head on his hands, “Hyung, are you free tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” Seokjin shakes his head, “Sorry Guk-ah, I’m going to the beach tomorrow with Jaehwan and Junghwan.”
Jeongguk pauses. Hands sliding back onto his lap as he tries his best to look unaffected, “Oh. Okay.”
Seokjin glances at him with an apologetic expression, “Maybe next time Jeongguk.”
“Okay,” Jeongguk tries to swallow the bile in his throat, “Sure.”
And next time, it seemed, Seokjin would be distracted by his own friends, friends Jeongguk does not know and cannot put a name to. They'd be laughing together as they take Seokjin's pickup truck for a spin near the beach and the ports. Jeongguk knows, because he sees them passing by, the radio playing his favorite song, as he's kneeling down to gather rose petals for his mother's potpourri. His lips unconsciously mouth the lyrics, even as the music fades out, along with the truck, with Seokjin and somebody he doesn't know.
+
Jeongguk feels the wind blowing his face, not daring to open his mouth because of the salt he’d knew he’d taste. He tries not to break into a smile as he sees the hospital on the corner, slowing down to lock his bike on the side of a pole, grabbing his bag and breaking into a run into the hospital doors.
When he’s up on the 3rd floor, he makes his way into the small room just at the end of the hallway, slipping in quietly and closing the door softly even though he knows Seokjin won’t be able to hear, see or feel his presence. But he’ll do whatever to comfort himself, anyways. (Jeongguk has always been like that. Dumb, his classmate used to tell him jokingly, you're just dumb Jeongguk. And he was, he is, when he's still grasping onto loose threads because he's so sure Seokjin's strong enough to wake up from all this. Only because Seokjin told him one that he'd never leave Jeongguk stuck here in shitty ol' Busan, and now - now Seokjin's done exactly that. So, Jeongguk thinks as he stares at Seokjin's pale face, he is dumb, but only for Seokjin.)
Seokjin has been on that exact same hospital bed for the past six months, ever since he’s returned for summer break from university, he’s been different, tired and drained. But Jeongguk hadn’t seen this coming, Seokjin falling over from the sidewalk onto the sandy beaches, body lifeless and frigidly cold. They’ve just returned from the sea, having been drenched in the warm waters and they were planning to grab ice cream, and Jeongguk had slipped roses and chocolates into the pocket of Seokjin's jacket so when Seokjin pulled out his phone, that's what he'd be facing. Jeongguk's confession, delicate and blunt, all at once. Like the thorn of a rose.
The moment Seokjin did reach in to pull out his phone, Jeongguk watched with an anticipated breath only for the whole moment to pass like a blur. Before he knew it, Seokjin was already on the ground. Jeongguk had screamed, then. What it a sight it must've been for passerbys.
A man in a wet t-shirt and shorts, cradling another man who was half covered in sand and water, handsome enough for you to pause in your steps but lifeless enough for you know something was very, very wrong. Jeongguk’s fingers pressing into Seokjin’s skin (softly , everything Jeongguk’s done for Seokjin, amounts to just one word: soft), hands scrambling to shake the him awake, a face of frozen horror and then - and then Jeongguk’s hands come back to his side, chest rising and falling in heavy breaths, as he stares at Seokjin. Seokjin - who doesn’t wake up and tell him that it was all a prank, Seokjin who doesn’t laugh into Jeongguk face about “you looked so scared, I had you for a moment there!” , Seokjin who doesn’t smile and stand up and dust the sand off his pants. Seokjin who, instead, lies there. And all around the two, scattered and crumbled roses, chocolate kisses wrapped up in foil and just lying in the curve of Seokjin's palm, a little heart-shaped card. Wrinkled and wet and the words smudged over the paper.
What a sight it must’ve been, indeed.
+
A knock on his door. Jeongguk groans and shoves his head back into his pillow, waiting for his mother to get the door. But then there’s another knock, and another knock, and another until Jeongguk sits up in frustration. "I'm coming!"
He opens it, half expecting the mailman with a delivery, but what he’s greeted with is Seokjin, looking like he stepped out from yet another magazine shoot. Jeongguk blanches, suddenly aware of his messy bed head and wrinkled shirt.
“Hyung,” Jeongguk breathes out, “What are you doing here?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you,” Seokjin says, already shrugging off his shoes as Jeongguk parts to the side.
“I thought you were heading to Seoul today, back to Konkuk.” Jeongguk says warily, as he watches Seokjin set the cake box on the table, pulling out a few matches from his jeans pocket.
“Yeah,” Seokjin says, smiling, “But when I’m gone I’ll miss your birthday, so I’d thought I’d give you a special celebration before I leave. It’s only fair.”
“Oh,” Jeongguk says, “You didn’t have to.”
“I want to,” Seokjin say as he looks at Jeongguk and smiles, “What kind of hyung would I be if I didn’t celebrate my favorite dongsaeng’s birthday?"
(And it was a tradition, really. Right around the time Jeongguk was 11, every birthday after that has always been spent in Seokjin's company. They'd find new things to do every year, and every year, it would be the best day of his life, again and again. It was, at least. Seokjin missed his birthday this year.)
+
“Hey Seokjin-hyung,” Jeongguk says, scooting his chair closer, fingers dancing at the edge of his seat in a unconscious session of push and pull, “Hope you’re doing okay today. I thought I’d bring some seaweed soup again, your favorite.” Jeongguk ignores the still-full container of soup he brought last time, sitting on the counter. He pushes it aside to put the new container on the counter.
“I’ve brought that book that you said you needed to finish reading for a course, your mom gave me this yesterday so I’ll start from where you left off.”
He opens the book and chokes on his words as he brushes his hand over the notes Seokjin took on the book, all the way to the part where the little sticky tab stuck out, where Seokjin had read up to.
Jeongguk begins reading.
Seokjin stays asleep.
(When he exits the hospital room to head back home, he passes by two nurses who look at him with pity. They're whispering as they pass, and Jeongguk can hear every bit of their conversation. "The poor boy visits almost everyday," the first nurse says, frowning, "I wonder if anyone has told him the news yet."
"Shh," the second nurse replies, voice dropping even lower, "He's right there, he'll hear."
"Yeah but... he should know, that patient's got no hope, he's been stuck in there for months, no signs of internal activity and I-"
His mother would tell him the exact same thing that night at dinner, not even looking at him as she picks at the vegetables. Jeongguk stays quiet, eyes casted downwards as he shoves a handful of rice into his mouth.)
+
“Kook!” Jeongguk turns in surprise at the voice, squinting as the figure draws near. It’s Park Jimin, who smiles at him like the sun inhabited his body. Park Jimin was the boy Jeongguk grew up next to, friends for longest time until they were 10, because that’s when Jeongguk met Seokjin and decided he had wanted to spend the rest of his life in Seokjin’s footsteps. So now, all Jimin was, is the friendly neighbor, the friend you’d take home to show your mother that you weren’t anti-social or a loner, the type of friend you’d show off, but not the type of friend you’d want. (Or at least, not the type of friend Jeongguk wants, not anymore.)
“Haven’t talked to you in a long time,” Jimin says, leaning on a nearby pole, “How have things been?”
“I’m okay,” Jeongguk replies, “School and everything keeps me busy.”
Jimin nods in understanding, “Haven’t seen you at Taehyung’s recently, anything happened?”
Jeongguk bites his lips hesitantly, because here it comes. “I’ve just been visiting Seokjin-hyung.”
“Oh,” Jimin says, and Jeongguk doesn’t even need to look up to see Jimin’s downcast eyes, grim lips and pitiful glance. He’s known Jimin for a while now, far before he knew Seokjin, and just hearing Jimin’s voice tells Jeongguk that Jimin is thinking what Jeongguk’s mother has been thinking, what everyone in this small, puny, town think. See, Jimin was like Jeongguk in every sense of a teenager, and harbors every sense of a big crush on Seokjin, one that passed the hero worship phase now that they're adults, but what Jimin isn't: is that Jimin never held onto unpopular opinion and the statistical minority. Jimin never held onto hope like Jeongguk did - like Jeongguk does - and that's why, Jeongguk concludes, that's why their friendship was never one worth keeping.
“How’s that been?” and Jeongguk stares at the ground, fingering the loose thread of his canvas bag.
He shrugs nonchalantly, but when he looks back up at Jimin, he feels a smile tugging at his lips. “I think he might wake up soon.”
“Ah,” Jimin murmurs, smiling hesitantly, a smile that you’d give a child when you knew they were being foolish but you play along anyway, a smile you’d give to hopefully get rid of the awkward atmosphere in the air but it doesn’t work, a smile that screams I don’t believe you so Jeongguk looks back down at the ground, directing his gaze to the stretch of the ocean.
“Ever tried giving him the Lover’s kiss? You never know…” Jimin laughs amusedly at his own joke and Jeongguk stares at the rise and fall of the waves. He doesn’t respond. (Seokjin used to made awful jokes, but Jimin laughed at them anyway. Jimin was like that.)
“Look I-,” Jimin says, hands tucked into his pockets, looking like he wants to be anywhere but here, “I have to go Jeongguk, Taehyung is waiting for me by the port. It was… It was nice seeing you.”
Jeongguk watches as Jimin walks away, but finds his gaze captured by the rose bushes growing on the side. The same ones he had plucked that rose from months ago. He stares at the wilting leaves and almost empty branches and he frowns.
(Like a rose, Jimin’s idea had bloomed in Jeongguk’s mind.)
(Jimin visits Seokjin sometimes. Jeongguk knows because the nurse always mistakes him for the orange-haired boy, and there was only one boy in this entire town that had orange hair, stood out like a creamsicle pop in the crowds. The bundle of tulips, ones groomed out with fertilizer and professionalism - not the type of flowers Jeongguk picked off from the side of the road, because the loose change in his pockets couldn't sustain the weight of a whole bouquet - must've come from Jimin. Jimin was a romantic, he always was.)
+
It was the summer when Seokjin came back from Konkuk, and they were out by the beach sipping on beer and soju, watching as their friends chatter amongst themselves around the fire. Seokjin has his head lying on a log, hair ruffled with sand, occasionally sitting up to only lean back again as he gulps down his beer. Jeongguk tries not to stare at the way Seokjin’s lips wrap around the tip of the bottle, how his adam’s apple moves with each swallow.
Jeongguk wonders if this is what it feels like to be in love. He’s heard stories about it, from friends who spent their saturdays with a pretty girl they met, from friends who drone on about this special person, a wistful and faraway look in their eyes. Most notably, he’s heard about love from his mother. His mother who never fails to bring up stories about his father who used to win her heart by sending her cheesy postcards, giving her bouquets of flowers picked from the side of the road. Jeongguk thinks, by now, that he’s familiar with what love is.
Love is all of the above, but to Jeongguk, it’s the tingly feeling in his heart whenever he’s around Seokjin, the swell of pride and happiness whenever Seokjin smiled at him, because it was a smile reserved for him and him only. Unlike his friends, who have painted love as a pretty girl with a small face and soft lips, Jeongguk’s canvas of love is just of Seokjin.
Seokjin who, currently, is staring at the stars with the most blissful expression. Jeongguk smiles, looks back up at the sky as he takes a sip of his own beer, hearing the soft and gentle waves of the sea tremble in the background.
+
“Hyung,” Jeongguk mumbles as he places the container of warm seaweed soup on the table, brushing aside the old one from yesterday.
“I hope you’re doing okay,” Jeongguk says quietly, fingers twitching hesitantly and nervously.
He stares at Seokjin’s face, lets his eyes fall over the trace of his nose and the lashes that fall against his skin. Lets his eyes slide down to Seokjin’s lips.
“I’m sorry,” Jeongguk whispers, more to himself than Seokjin, and leans in, eyes shut tight.
The first thing he feels is the dry but soft feeling of Seokjin’s lips pressed against his, completely still. Jeongguk had imagined his first kiss with Seokjin somewhere else, perhaps by the shoreside as the stars are lit above them, and there’d be the taste of beer between their lips.
But here, there is none of that.
Just a soft kiss given by a boy who’s yet to learn how to love yet, but has expressed it all the same.
Jeongguk waits, breath locked in his throat, as he entwines Seokjin’s hand in his.
“Come on,” Jeongguk pleads, “Come on, come on, please, please-”
A minute passes.
Two.
Three.
Jeongguk’s lip tremble, as he lets out an shaky breath.
+
Seokjin reminds him of all the good in the world. Jeongguk knows Seokjin isn't perfect, Seokjin still can't quite perfect the art of soccer or understand the difference between hip hop and contemporary dance, but to Jeongguk, he was astonishingly pure and beautiful.
"Let me tell you a story," Seokjin had told Jeongguk one night during a babysitting routine, when he was 18 and Jeongguk was 13, when Jeongguk looked up at him with half-closed eyes peeking out from the top of the soft blanket.
"Okay," Jeongguk mumbles into the fabric, "Can it not include scary witches this time?"
Seokjin laughs, "Alright. No scary witches." He coughs to clear his throat as he starts the story, tone smooth and low, "Once there was a boy who lived in a small town, a boy who wanted to grow up and get far, far, away from here."
"Is the town a bad place?"
Shaking his head, Seokjin smiles, "No. The boy just wanted something different. Don't interrupt Guk-ah, questions at the end."
Jeongguk frowns, "You sound like my history teacher."
Seokjin eyes him with a glare, one that would almost scare Jeongguk if it weren't for the laugh lines and the amused wrinkles by Seokjin's eyes and lips. "As I was saying, the boy wanted to get far away from here. And one day in school, he met someone who had the same dream as him. The other boy's name was Joon." Seokjin pauses here, eyes not focusing on Jeongguk anymore.
(Joon, Jeongguk had thought, sounded like the sixth month in english. June. One of the months of summer.)
Seokjin continues, fingers curling in, "Joon had big dreams to leave too. Joon told the boy that when they'd graduate, they can both head to Seoul and they can rent an apartment together. And so, the boy and Joon formed a friendship and a promise. They'd always have lunch together, when the boy was stuck on a course, Joon helped, and back and forth they helped each other like this. They were best friends and inseparable." Seokjin pauses again, eyes casted downward, "Then they were 16 years old, and the boy fell in love with Joon."
"What," Jeongguk blinks warily, "Can boys do that?"
Seokjin smiles softly, "Yeah, they can."
"Oh," Jeongguk says. He had never thought about boys falling in love with boys. "Then what happened?"
"Then the boy told Joon about it. Joon had loved him back, and so they went on dates to the beach and to the movie theatres, they did all the things other couples did, but behind the public eye. They didn't want to get caught. They decided they'd be public about it once they graduate. And so when they turned 18, they had finished all the university applications and the testing and the boy was happy to find out that a university in Seoul had accepted him. But," Seokjin sucks in a breath, "But when the boy told Joon, Joon told the boy that he'd have to break their promise. In fact, Joon hadn't applied for a university in Seoul at all, Joon had been signed by a label to make music so he was going to Seoul, but not in the way the boy was."
Jeongguk stares, "Joon broke the promise?"
"Yeah," Seokjin murmurs, "He broke the promise."
"Then what?"
"Then they broke up on graduation day, because Joon loved music too much to have room to love the boy. And the boy was dumb to realize that there'd be space for him in Joon's heart. They went their separate ways."
Jeongguk blinks. But Seokjin doesn't open his mouth to continue the story with the usual happy ending, instead, Seokjin is staring out the window, and when Jeongguk follows his gaze, he's staring at the house right across, with a room that's dimly lit.
"That's it?" Jeongguk sits up on his bed, "Where's the happy ending?"
Seokjin looks back at him, slightly alarmed, before he purses out his lips in a frown, "There's no happy ending."
"Oh," Jeongguk says, sliding back into his blanket and so his head can lie back down on the pillow, "I don't like that story."
"Me neither," Seokjin says, "Go to sleep now."
Jeongguk nods, closes his eyes and hears Seokjin standing up from the chair, hears the scratch of the metal chair against the wooden floor, and hears the shut of his curtains.
+
“Jeongguk!” Jimin calls out to him one day when Jeongguk is busy gazing out at wide horizon of the beach, walking up to him like an excited dog, “Have you heard about Seokjin-hyung?”
Jeongguk pauses. Uncurls his fingers, then curls them back in so his nails graze the surface of his palm. Lightly, carefully - waiting. “No… why?”
Then Jimin is bursting into a big smile, looking at Jeongguk like he won the lottery, hands waving around in excitement, in tangent with his next words.
“He woke up!”
+
“You’re going to leave me here in Busan while you’re off having the time of your life in Seoul with that job,” Jeongguk murmurs bitterly, “Just like you left me when you were heading for university. I’ll be alone again.”
Seokjin smiles softly, ruffling Jeongguk’s hair as he leans in to knock their foreheads together, “You’re too important to me for me to ditch you like that. I’ll come back to Busan when I finish my internship. I’ll stay with you.”
“Promise?”
“Of course.”