For the Future

You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.

July, 2016…

            What was originally just an extra trip out of the country turned into another four month extension before enlisting for Ryeowook.  No one was happier than I was.  Again, I wasn’t ready to part with Ryeowook so soon when I had no immediate plans to enlist myself.  The longer they postponed his enlistment, the shorter our time apart would ultimately be.  But moreover, I just wasn’t ready to let him go yet. 

            Just as before, however, since the postponement wasn’t planned, my schedule was tightly packed.  I had absolutely no reason to think he’d still be home.  I promised him I wouldn’t ask him to stay any longer than I already had and I was true to my word.  I just had no means of knowing that Kangin would commit another hit and run or that the company itself would be the one requesting his second delayed start.  So, for the first several weeks following the announcement, I barely saw him.  Kind of depressing. 

            So, when we were scheduled to head to Mexico, I looked ahead and noticed I’d had the foresight to keep my schedule open the day before and began making plans for the two of us.  Ryeowook didn’t even figure out what the hell was going on until about a week before we were supposed to leave. 

            “Hey,” he said, walking into the bedroom one night with his phone in his hand, looking over his calendar.  “I was just chatting with Heechul and he said that he’s leaving for Mexico the day after we are.  Whose schedule is wrong?”

            I set my laptop off to the side.  “No one’s.  We’re heading to Los Angeles and staying there overnight, then heading to Mexico.”

            Ryeowook tilted his head to the side, confused. 

            I pat the spot beside me on the bed and he walked over and sat down. 

            “I felt bad that we haven’t gotten the chance to spend much time together since your postponement started, so I wanted to make it up to you.  We’re going a day earlier than the rest of the members and spending the day at a local amusement park there.  Then we’re staying overnight at a hotel on the ocean.”

            “You didn’t have to do that.  I totally understand that you have prior commitments,” Ryeowook said. 

            “I still want to spend time with you as well.”

            “We shouldn’t be going anyplace alone though.”

            “I have some of the managers coming with us.  You know the company threw a fit about it, telling me that we shouldn’t go without a manager so the government wouldn’t flip out and this time I actually listened because if anyone did get about it, it would be you.”

            Ryeowook nodded.  “Thank you, Kyu.”

            I nodded, leaning over and kissing his cheek. 

            “The government will probably still object to me leaving a day early just to have fun at an amusement park, which clearly isn’t a job-related event, but they won’t about it until I get home,” Ryeowook said. 

            “Don’t kid yourself, dear.  They won’t care that you’re leaving a day early to spend the day in LA.  They’re going to care that you’re spending the day alone with your boyfriend.  Publicly.”

            Ryeowook looked over at me.  “They don’t know that we’re together.”

            “The hell they don’t.  They were suspicious of Donghae and Eunhyuk, but they’re sure about us.  You can tell.  Part of the reason is that we live together, but more of it is probably just because it’s common knowledge among fellow entertainers.  They’ve heard the rumors.  Enough people know the truth, you know they don’t all keep quiet about it.  This is why the company is always breathing down our necks about behaving ourselves in public.  They’re getting heat from the government about us.”

            “They don’t like gay people in the military.”

            “They don’t really give a if we’re gay, as long as we’re not open about it, but we’re dangerously close to being ope