A moment of silence for the fallen

Those with bits shorn or crumpled

A moment for the things that never were,

That won’t come to be,

Because a pencil was left

Forgotten on a tabletop made from sycamore trees.”

— Anonymous, Blocked

There once was a boy too small, too dark, too bland, too everything it seemed. In elementary school, of the memories that hadn’t yet faded to sepia tones and blurred edges, the boy sits in a corner and draws. Draws his first tree, his first cat, and his first home. The cat leaps out of the corner of his lined studies, purrs at him silently, then recedes to its two-dimensional house of graphite squares. The eyes doodled in his maths book wink at him in turn. The boy smiles, a secretive little tilt that softens his edges.

His first love: the press of pencil to paper. The world of limitless imagination.

He grows, ages, fills out and broadens. Secondary school comes and people begin to take note of the changes brought on by time and genetics playing well. More likes and wants and desires come to pass. And they do, they pass like the rustling of leaves at the end of fall. With the change of seasons, they dull to disinterest and fade, disintegrating to dust. Unmemorable faces laughing, shyly confessing, angrily demanding, some scornfully pitying. And yet…

His first love glows, deep and unwavering close to his heart, keeping him warm at nights when human affection left him lacking. Those nights, he watches as kangaroos jump across his walls with joeys in their pouches, puppies yipping and nipping at their owner’s ankles, children tugging at kite strings careful not to let them snag on wayward branches.

He watches worlds form, collide, then fall from his bed in kaleidoscopes of colour and silence, a ketchup smear on the edge of his latest piece. Character, he thinks. Like a barber accidentally t too light, a new look, something different he’d say.

He sleeps on dream clouds made of gold and silver, a pencil in hand to complete the noseless puppet, add a charming dimple to a child as she passes by, crow’s feet to an elderly mailman on his way to work. Small things that give meaning to a person, hides stories in the shadows and nooks and crannies, waiting for someone to trip across them. Findings made of spun silk and warm salt-scented winds.

Jongin shudders awake to the tinkling of glass brought back to a bedroom shrouded in morning stillness. Lamplight flickers dimly to glint against broken glass collected beneath his now-broken window. There is a considerable hole torn through the cat’s home, its tail almost swishing in agitated graphite .

He fingers the tear with growing consternation when a subtle pop sounds alongside more glass-shattering and-- shock. A woman stands across from his balcony window, entrenched in black from head to steel-toed boots. Her face is impassive when the sounds of police and an ambulance increase as they near. There is a man a floor below him bellowing into the air for someone, something, a greater being to save his wife.

Jongin breathes and his lungs refuse to reinflate, a heavy weight pressing down, invisible hands clenching around his trachea. Slow panic simmers in his abdomen. Somehow he has enough motor control to call emergency and request an ambulance for himself. This he does not remember when he asks how they knew to trudge into his home hours later. Shock, they tell him. May’ve caused selective memory loss.

He wonders if it were for the best if he not remembers at all.

Police come in on the tail of a weary-faced doctor and mutedly cheery nurse who’d given him the latest dose of anaesthetics. He complies to the barrage of questions they ask, watches as the woman nurses a burnt coffee and the man jots down notes in a wrinkled notepad, both looking underfed and overworked. Try as he might, he doesn’t last long and they excuse themselves when his head nods off into his pillow.

Jongin dreams of waterlogged boots sitting in an open doorway, chatoyant eyes flickering from place to place in the shadows beyond. A graphite tail flicks metronome-like, and from the corner of his eye, he catches a blotch of red. Tears in the wall, where fibres stick out from their woven brethren, out of place in the beautifully fabricated tapestries. The red bleeds out when he goes to touch, curiosity fleeing for safer grounds as panic swells unexpectedly in his chest.

He can’t breathe. He clutches at his chest, fingers coming back crimson, so bright against the fading greys. His vision tunnels and swims and dims, ears pinpointing sounds of people rushing to his side, clawing at where his fingers dug into his clothing and an incessant beeping.

Jongin asks if someone would kindly end the ruckus. Then there is nothing but dark and silence.

He rests.

Wakes to the white noise of a tv and the antiseptic smell of hospitals burning his sinuses. Watery morning light falls through a crack in the shades.

Sleep again.

A sunny-eyed nurse comes by with a cup of red gelatin hours, or days for what it felt like, later that had him heaving over the bedside. She rubs his back in apology and holds a tin for him to retch into, then lets him rest some more.

Once more he wakes alone, foul taste on his tongue and a cup of ice chips fresh near his elbow. Two slip between chapped lips, pasty tongue trying valiantly to bring back moisture through two more chips and a small cup of water. His chest aches and the skin beneath the bandages feels tight and itchy. The nurse comes in to check his vitals and asks to try once more, handing over a cup of green gelatin that tastes like lime and plastic. His stomach does not stage a revolt, so it was alright.

Jongin finds he misses the feel of graphite pencils pressed to the grain of well-weighted paper, the smell of recently sharpened wood and eraser shavings littering a table top in pink and blue and beige. The nurse is more than happy to oblige. She leaves relieved and sunny-eyed once more.

His hands shake on the first try, the second goes just as well. By the fourth he gives it up as a lost cause and retires the pencil and poor-quality legal pad to the nightstand, lowering drooping eyelids.

Just before he slips under, he catches the cat at it again, hopping out of its frame to loop its way around the wires and IV lines trailing around him and resting on his pillow, in the alcove of his shoulder and neck. He feels like a puppet waiting for its master to unstring its limbs; Pinocchio waiting for the fairy to grant him a wish.

Jongin sleeps again.

✏흑연 고양이✏

Someone is humming, bitter-sweet melancholy Jongin can almost taste on the tip of his tongue. Or maybe that’s just wishful thought and sleep caught in his throat, in the corners of his eyes, refusing to let them budge. He decides to wait them out, and instead, attempts to place the song, so vaguely familiar in its haunting tune. It ends with the rustling of pages and muffled scrape of the guest chair shifting, towards him, he assumes.

‘I know you’re awake,’ says his sickbed guest, voice like smoked honey.

The man is short, in the average standard of men and height, or rather in comparison to Jongin’s own stature at the very least. Not stocky, but lean. Though the comfortable slouch and confidence he wears make him, if for a moment, larger than any figure he’s seen, too large for the cramped hospital room. Such lovely eyes, he thinks, so large and speculative. A presence that demands an audience with the slope of his shoulders, in the upturn of lips, the crinkle and smoothing of a brow.

Something tells him the man is aware of his surroundings, has the air of danger and false geniality about him. Jongin chokes on a greeting, only to be saved by a generously filled cup placed under his nose. A few sips after, he tries again.

‘Hello,’ the man says in reply, dark hair curling slightly around his ears. There is a beauty mark there, peeking just beneath his right ear. Before much more could be exchanged, the sunny-eyed nurse comes in to check his vitals, his bandages and respiration. His body aches from lack of use, muscles degrading in his sickbed. Jongin thanks her nonetheless.

She pats his shoulder. ‘You’ve quite the handsome fellow, Jongin. Mr Kim here has run himself ragged worrying over you. Lucky, you two are, for having one another,’ she says and walks out leaving Jongin with more questions than answers, though he is thankful that the device connected to his chest will be removed by day’s end.

‘Husband?’ He couldn’t have married off within the span of days he’s spent in the hospital. Jongin is sure he’d at the least remember getting married. Unless he’d gotten a blow to the head, with undetected retrograde amnesia settling in for the long haul. He nearly says as much.

‘Platinum band and all, darling,’ Mr Kim grins and shows off the aforestated ring.

He chuckles again at Jongin’s disbelieving stare and continues more amicably. “Agent Kyungsoo Kim-née-Do of Secret Services, assigned spousal duties as protection coverage for the foreseeable future. Your assets have been displaced to a safer location, though no one in your immediate family has been informed of your current condition. Absolutely romantic documentation of our sordid love affair, I assure you. We’ll be the talk of the town yet.”

Jongin works his jaw, fingers tapping at the medical tape keeping the cannula in place. He isn’t allowed to itch, so tapping at them has become somewhat of a habit. He’s been shot by an unknown gunner whose whereabouts are currently up in the air, hospital-bound for another three days until his lungs can handle unfiltered air and his immune system is up to its normal capacity, and he’s allegedly married to a man he’s only met an hour prior who has somehow wormed his way into the hearts of the hospital staff.

Kyungsoo shifts in his seat, a deliberate movement that brings attention to wool-clad thighs and slightly scuffed oxfords. Jongin only raises a tired brow, hands migrating towards pencil and pad again. They shake less this time around, something for which he is extremely thankful; a life of wobbly lines and imprecision make his heart flutter with unease. The heart monitor blips in the corner before easing to a steady noiseless beat.

And of course the cat nestles down in the corner of the page while graphite streaks his fingers and smudges skyscrapers, Big Ben in a mound of fog, and a cutting figure in a suit, pistol held aloft, ready for greater adventures. Kyungsoo leaves an hour later when guest hours are at their end and they’ve shared cups of decent Earl Grey. He leaves a box behind, sitting innocuously beside his head.

The lights are low to accommodate the night’s early rise, wind strong enough to rattle the window panels. It sends a shiver of unease down his spine and a throb where tender flesh is on the mend. The hospital’s psychiatrist tells him it is natural to be paranoid, to develop fear triggered by sounds, visuals, or scents that bring him back to the moment of assault. It would be more worrisome if you did not, the woman assures him over the rims of her bent spectacles. That would lead to a long battery of tests he’d rather avoid.

Within the box lay legal-seeming paperwork, a pen with beagles in rubber boots dancing on its surface, and a ring that complemented Kyungsoo’s. He slides it on, nary a second thought.

And just like that, Jongin is married.

✏흑연 고양이✏

Two men in uniform blues come to take him home, or rather, to a place he will be calling his own for the ambiguously “foreseeable future”. Jongin would have been intimidated had he not been recently weaned off sedatives. What was previously a numb sort of ache, returned with the vengeance of a felled warrior, screaming bloody murder whenever Jongin went to move in any direction. He allows himself to be manoeuvred out the car -with minor jostling, thankfully- and finds himself in a small neighbourhood in Wales.

Brine soaks the air with salt and fish, a reminder of how close to the sea it lay. He could almost feel it collecting on his exposed skin. The policemen lead him to an aquamarine door whose paint was flaking off the corners where metal met wood. There’s a delicate wind chime above the front-facing window and a slowly revolving pelican model sitting in the small front garden hidden within the heavy foxgloves.

Before either could knock, the door opens revealing a put-together Kyungsoo in black slacks and pale blue button down, not a hair out of place. The brunet thanks the policeman and ushers Jongin in with a hand at the small of his back, casually possessive.

Jongin shivers, but allows Kyungsoo to assume it is from aching ribs; though, considering the way pain flares with every step, the silent answer wasn’t half untrue. The policeman tips his hat and shuts the door for them.

Jongin is unable to believe how much rest he needs despite spending nearly a month in recovery, unable to leave the bed without someone to assist him when his vision inevitably waivers. It felt as if he has spent most of his life in bed, nowhere to go but down, down, down into the land of dreams. He is thankful for the readied bed nonetheless, sinking deep into the atrociously antiquated floral comforter, drifting off just as Kyungsoo retreats to the kitchen.

Jongin dreams of soft hands brushing his hair away from his sweaty brow, urging him to sit up, to swallow, to rest some more. He dreams of blue; cyan waters filled to bursting with silverfish, cobalt depths and pale eyes looking up at him curiously. He dreams of smoke and velvet rubbed wrong murmuring in his ear 'There’s a love,' and, 'Just a bit more,' and 'Rest, sweetheart.'

Eventually, even those fade, leaving his mind blissfully silent.

The following weeks pass by the same as they’ve done while Jongin stayed at the hospital. He wakes to his husband coming in with medicine and drink, sometimes a bowl of soup or a plate of tidbits that go down easily enough.

Then time becomes a liquid thing, hours blending into one another and at one point Jongin thinks he feels someone lying beside him in bed, their arm lax over his stomach. At the time, all his muddled mind could think was ‘warm’ before it fell back into blissful darkness. He does not remember much of those weeks beyond the vague impression of warmth and the faint smell of rain and sandalwood.

In a promnesic moment, Jongin wakes to the sounds of Kyungsoo humming a haunting tune, though this time, the sound comes from a different room altogether. It is accompanied by the metallic taps of cutlery on ceramic and the heavenly scent of brewed tea and sautéd vegetables. Moments laters, Kyungsoo quietly walks in. 'Light on his feet,' Jongin notices, 'like a cat.'

A panther, more like.

‘Ready for the merry life of newlyweds, love? Breakfast in bed sounds like a wonderful place to start. Way to a man’s stomach and all that.’ 'Had he always had a mildly English accent flavouring his tone,' Jongin wonders blearily. It was certainly doing devilish things to his body he would rather it avoid doing with Kyungsoo so close to his bed.

Jongin watches from where he is perched on the bed, hair in disarray and pillow fort firmly supporting his back, as the agent-turned-spouse goes about setting a bed tray chock full of breakfast foods.

Jongin’s eyes zero in on the mugs Kyungsoo brings in last. Kyungsoo notices.

‘A man after my own heart,’ he grins. ‘You know what’s important, I see. No way to start the day than with a perfectly brewed cuppa. Ta.’

‘Ta,’ Jongin returns -or tries to at least.

Speaking, Jongin realises, may not be a possibility at present. Something catches painfully in his chest, setting off even more painful coughs that leave him pale and shaken. Kyungsoo rubs his back soothingly, thumb going counter- and clockwise in degrees.

Breakfast after is a quiet affair, broken only by the start of a rainshower and Kyungsoo’s commentary on the aforementioned weather. In the afternoon, Jongin’s husband leaves to tend to the business he’s set up for himself; a repair shop working as a front for agents and families that resided nearby.

They part ways at the door, where Kyungsoo pecks Jongin’s cheek and whispers, 'Mrs Smith loves to peek through her curtains every now and then. We should definitely give her a show to remember once your lungs are up to it.'

Jongin stands at the door longer than he should. Long enough to have Mrs Smith, who looked a few days shy of labour, take another peek through her window. She waves at him.

He waves back and locks the door.

The day is spent dozing on the stuffed sofa in the common room, feet tucked underneath a fuzzy throw. A teacup lay on its side in a saucer on the coffee table. The book he’d planned on reading had found its way to the floor, broken-spined and blending in well with the rustic rug. The house was done up in warm ochre and russet tones, set off by multicoloured pieces hung on the walls.

It takes Jongin a moment to realise that half the pieces hanging are works he’d had on his own walls back home. There were the children swinging on rainforest vines, and the Faun-and-Knight piece he’d won his first contest with; even the cat piece seems to have found its way on the mantelshelf, content in being a centrepiece between dried pinecones and glossy photos of Kyungsoo and Jongin respectively.

Warmth blooms in his cheeks thinking of others looking through his work, picking and choosing their way through them and deciding which fit best in a newly furnished home. He imagines Kyungsoo, immaculately-dressed, silver-tongued Kyungsoo, sifting through his portfolios and selecting the few that have found their place in this borrowed life. Jongin wanted to know why those specifically, whether there was a reason behind his choice and how anyone could have known the cat’s importance in keeping Jongin sane and calm.

Maybe it was coincidence, Jongin thinks harshly, it was probably nothing but luck for him to have picked Jongin’s favourites. A throw of the die, the first piece that caught his eye. Kyungsoo may not have even furnished the house at all. Strangers could have come by one day and set it up for a newlywed couple to live in and make it seem homey. Professionals doing their job.

Despite the pessimistic thoughts, Jongin couldn’t help but wonder why…

Why the art?

Why the aloof demeanour, then a complete turnabout to the perfect, caring husband? Why assign Kyungsoo to Jongin? Why was he caught in this mess?

Why have the stirrings of something now when he’d been unable to completely feel for years when his mind knew it was only a ruse that would soon be resolved? Why must his heart betray him at the worst of times? Why was it always him?

Why was his heart so weak to an English lilt coming from a heart-shaped smile? To a deceivingly innocent figure that could become predator sleek at the tip of a hat?

Why, why, why…

✏흑연 고양이✏

Here the story derails, as do all stories when an unknown character throws a wrench in the plot. While the boy grows into a man whose first love will always be art, there comes a second love, a third, fourth and fifth. None have come close to the first, though some nearly destroyed it in their path towards cruelty, ending the story with the man as the of every joke.

This would dishearten anyone. For we humans are not made of stone, our hearts were meant to be given, to be taken care of, to be risked for the sake of a gratuitous happily ever after. Though some may disagree and call the believers hopeless romantics, deep inside they crave this absolute acceptance, a devotion pure of doubt in their beloved’s returned devotion.

Kyungsoo is the wrench that displaced the smoothly running gears of Jongin’s steady life. Or maybe it was the bullet meant for his heart, but that would be splitting hairs.

In the end, Jongin knows this: Kyungsoo Kim is his for the keeping as Jongin Kim is Kyungsoo’s (for now); they will share a breakfast made by the brunet in bed and squabble over the entertainment section of the morning paper; Mrs Smith will come by once a week with the glow of a new mother and foist her baby off on Kyungsoo while she gossiped about a novel the lady’s book club had chosen; Kyungsoo will kiss him goodbye and kiss him hello out on the porch, but won’t try it away from prying eyes.

Jongin knows many things about Kyungsoo, but does he really know the man, he wonders. After all, Kyungsoo is a spy first and foremost whose loyalty resides with queen and country and then with Jongin. Could this partnership be nothing more than the ruse it was originally constructed to be? Is Jongin seeing things that aren’t there in the shadowed corners of Kyungsoo’s upturned lips and the happy grooves around his eyes?

Too many questions swirl in his mind as Jongin and Kyungsoo share a drink on the porch, out in the open air for once. His lungs are back to working order, body fit to move, with the stray twinge of unease that is more psychosomatic than physical. Jongin jumps when something brushes his cheek.

Kyungsoo’s hand retreats, a questioning grin on the man’s face. ‘Jumpy today, aren’t we. Something on your mind?’ At Jongin’s confused look, he chuckles. ‘You’ve been attempting to drink out of an empty cup for the past half hour, love.’

Jongin feels his face burst into flames, face most surely red and ears faring none the better. His heart stutters when Kyungsoo’s hand nears again, fingers brushing against still-warm cheeks and down slowly to the corner of his mouth where Jongin is biting. His thumb, calloused and rough against overly-sensitive skin, tugs down so that Jongin’s lower lip slides out with a small pop.

He could’ve sworn Kyungsoo’s eyes darken, and the hitch of breath was not his own.

Jongin’s heart is thundering in his chest, beating a tattoo into his sternum that only makes him more aware of the proximity between the two of them. The man’s tongue peeks out in a slow swipe against his own lips that Jongin unconsciously mimics, swiping his tongue against the pad of the man’s thumb on its way. He can taste the honey of their late afternoon tea and the salt of a long day’s work.

‘I…,’ began and ended Jongin, his voice coming hoarse and catching somewhere in his throat.

Kyungsoo beats him to the chase and kisses whatever remnants of linguistic prowess Jongin’s accumulated to oblivion. Plush lips demand acceptance through gentle swipes, encumbering and accommodating in turn, giving Jongin enough space to freely move forward or pull away.

Only Jongin’s mind is a blank slate overwhelmed by how tenderly Kyungsoo held his face, his neck, his side. Their mouths giving and taking and making his nerves stand at attention, heart sing in delight and abdomen clench with desire.

A bicycle bell rings as it passes by.

‘Keep it in your pants,’ shouts Arnold, howling with laughter as the bored housewives, who at some point had crowded their own porches to angle themselves at the Kim household, hiss at the red-headed boy. Arnold was the middle child amongst nine others, and enjoyed nothing more than teasing Jongin for his easy blush and flustered monosyllabic replies. Kyungsoo says it’s the boy’s way of pulling Jongin’s metaphorical pigtails.

Kyungsoo is half kneeling over him, white-knuckled hold on the back of Jongin’s chair unrelenting. His breath is coming in even, nearly-steady counts that warm the juncture of Jongin’s neck and shoulder. Gooseflesh skitter down his arms and back as he tries to catch his own breath.

The man straightens out his button-down and waves at their audience audaciously, presses a lingering kiss to Jongin’s temple, then walks back inside with the tray of evening treats none the wiser. Jongin knows better, has seen the growing bulge in the tailored trousers, the desirous look Kyungsoo throws him as he walks away, the innocent brush of knuckles against his own growing interest.

‘Oh my god,’ he chokes out.

Jongin waves at his shameless neighbours and scurries inside to smother himself in blankets, wondering if it were possible to die of mortification.

A weight settles on the bed, dipping enough to make Jongin’s body tilt into his husband’s side where an arm is at the ready to drape over the silhouette of his shoulder. He smells of soap and apples. A hand teases the covers back enough to card through the mess of Jongin’s hair, dyed a faded blond in a fit of pique, a revolt against the stasis of life in bum nowhere, Wales. Kyungsoo’s fingers untangle knots gently, wordlessly, waiting him out.

This is a game they have played many times over the past year when one of them has had an off-day. Most days it being Jongin who loses patience with their neighbour’s nosiness or the inveterate art block that plagues him for days, but sometimes Kyungsoo comes in with a furrow between his eyes and a facial tick after a harrowing day at the repair shop.

Those days Jongin learns to keep a heating pack handy and the electric kettle full. He remembers to set the vintage phonograph to play a Studio Ghibli tracklist to feed the secretly childish part Kyungsoo hides, needle tripping over vinyl with soothing instrumentals filling their small dwelling. Then the two would sit on either side of the sofa, legs hopelessly entangled in the centre and hidden beneath a fuzzy throw, a book and cup of tea each.

Satisfaction rolls them into a warm ball of comfort, safely tucking them away from the problems of the world. Allowing them a moment to breath deep enough for their chests to ache, to breathe in the scent of freshly baked bread and fallen rain and slowly ageing paper. Allowing them a moment to be nothing more than two men sharing space, no shared last name, no obligations, no desires or forced smiles and polite chitchat. Only Jongin and Kyungsoo. Two men refusing to acknowledge the feelings growing between them.

Well, maybe it would best be described as fear of acknowledgement than ignorance. They both acknowledged the mutual interest in glances and touches that lingered longer than politely recommended. They were fools in love, in love with the idea of love, in love with the overwhelming emotions so close to the surface they nearly suffocate Jongin in their insistent panic towards freedom.

‘Are we going to address what’s between us now?’ asks Jongin, voice muffled into his pillows-and-blankets fort. The bed smelled like a mixture of the two of them, a shared safe space where Jongin knew Kyungsoo slept beside him every night only to awaken every morning with the man already in the kitchen ready with a blinding smile and brilliant omelettes to sidestep Jongin’s questions.

Kyungsoo sighs above him, fingers resting against his temples. Jongin peeks out, letting the fingers drift down his cheekbone, pinky resting over the bridge of his nose.

The man is slumped back against the headboard, eyes closed and head tipped back in resignation. Resignation to a fate he stupidly avoided to keep up with a professionalism he’d already done away with the day he’d seen a sickly boy whose illness detracted nothing from the beauty of his closed eyes, slightly parted lips, and the width of his shoulders hidden beneath pale sheets.

Then he’d fallen arse over kettle for the man once more as the flush of health chased away the sallowness and deep indents of hunger, bringing colour back to deepen his skin, to give back years to a young man at the fruition of his life. Then again when Jongin’s eyes skitter away shyly after being caught staring, supple lips caught beneath perfect teeth.

Kyungsoo should have known he was gone when his heart sings at the hiccupping bursts of laughter Jongin makes when Kyungsoo’s dry humour catches him unawares. He should’ve known, and...

He did know.

He knew and willingly fell.

He falls now, as he looks down at puppyish determination shining through a curtain of blond hair, tassels of the extra throw falling into Jongin’s eyes endearingly.

‘Yes,’ he breathes. ‘Yes, Jongin Kim. Yes .’

The graphite cat sits on the windowsill swishing its tail in satisfaction.

✏흑연 고양이✏

Once upon a time, there lived a boy who piqued the interest of others but found nothing to interest him in return in his fellow humans, so he turned to lines on paper and splashes of colour to whet his imagination. People called him unsavoury names and avoided him after. The boy was fine with it all. He had his art, after all, didn’t he?

In an unexpected turn of events, the boy is grievously injured and set to a sickbed for months on end. Once a day, another boy would come to sit and read at his side, saying he enjoyed the silence of the room and nothing more. Of course, the boy who drew saw no reason to question him, for he too enjoyed the quiet, and though he would not admit aloud, the inflicted solitude frayed his nerves.

This sets a schedule for the following months of recovery. The boys share books and thoughts on favourite comics over dinner, debating the merits of suits over sweats at semi-professional workplaces after brunch, learning one another’s names in the moments between. They become a part of one another’s lives so seamlessly that neither blink an eye. Nor does anyone else for that matter when they walk out of the hospital hand in hand, bickering all the way.

So suddenly, it hits the boy one day he nearly stops breathing and fears the return of a healed wound. The other boy whose name was Kyungsoo holds his hand and waits for the revelation to sink in. Jongin asks him if he knew.

Kyungsoo replies matter-of-factly, ‘ Of course, from the very first day .’

‘Oh ,’ replies Jongin and smiles. ‘ Oh .’

And they lived happily ever after.

—The End.