Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

It’d only be a dream,

To be loved by you.

X

On the first day he wakes up next to him between the wrinkled sheets of the king-sized bed, Jongin feels a pang of pain shoot right through his chest.

He just shrugs it away.

Five weeks later, shrugging it away is not enough anymore.

Jongin is on all four on the cold tiles of his kitchen’s floor one Thursday morning, he can’t see clear. There’s something stuck down the back of his throat and he can’t breathe.

He lifts a hand to his mouth and spits down blood-crumpled petals.

He doesn’t need research to know.

When Kyungsoo rings his bell on the next night, he lets him in.

X

Jongin meets Kyungsoo for the first time on a Sunday night.

There’s never that much people out on a Sunday night, but this Sunday, the November rain has a cold and vicious bite to it, the sidewalks are all slippery and the sky is crushing down on the city’s roofs, so there’s literally no one. Except them.

They’re sitting at a cabaret’s counter. The keyboard of the piano standing on the stage behind them is closed. Someone left a marooned clarinet to hang around.

There’s some jazz music slipping through the speakers on each side of the bar. Jongin can tell it’s a Chet Baker’s record, he has the same one at home, and he’s beating time with his finger pads while staring at the bottom of his glass of brandy.

The man sitting beside him raises a quiet hand, the barmaid puts down the glass she was wiping and fills his up. Jongin absent-mindedly watches her from the corner of his eye. There’s a bit of something enthralling in watching a bottle of Jack’s pouring itself empty.

He hears the distinctive crackling of a match being struck and feels an acrid smell invading his nose. Jongin bats his eyes and shuts them tight. He quit smoking three years ago.

“You know the music?”

The voice is deep, pleasant. Soothing. With his eyes closed this way, Jongin can almost hear him sing.

He answers with a nod.

“I like it a lot. But I don’t know that much about jazz.”

“It’s called Alone Together.”

He can feel the stranger staring at him with a question mark popped up between his creased eyebrows.

“The music” Jongin says.

“Oh!” he gives a small contemplative nod.

“It’s Baker. Chet Baker” Jongin adds not quite knowing why. “He was a trumpet player.”

“ ‘Was’?”

“He died in 1988.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“Do you like him?”

“I have a few of his records at home.”

“A few?” and Jongin can hear the grin in the stranger’s voice.

“Fifteen, actually” he admits, and the stranger laughs, and it’s so sudden, so unexpected and candid, that it has Jongin shivering.

“Quite a fan you are, right?”

Jongin smiles again. He downs his drink in one go.

“What about you?” he asks, glancing at his right for the first time.

His eyes fall into the ones of the stranger. He has big, very dark eyes, with thick eyebrows and long lashes. A smooth forehead. Full lips. And burgundy hair.

He’s also wearing a black dull suit which kinda looks out of place inside the casual decor of the jazz club, and a navy blue tie hanging loose around his neck. There’s a leather briefcase on his lap and his feet can’t reach the first bar of the stool.

If Jongin had passed him by in the street, he wouldn’t even have looked at him.

But he’s looking at him right now, and his throat has gone dry and his hands are shaking.

“What about me?” the stranger asks, a tad lower.

“Anything you’re a fan of?”

The smile he’s wearing softens – saddens.

“A stockbroker cannot be fan of anything.”

Jongin frowns.

“I’ll have to disagree on that.”

The stockbroker merely shrugs and smiles a bit wider. It also looks a bit sadder.

“No, really” Jongin insists, and he stands up, and he doesn’t know why exactly, and there’s a voice in his head screaming at him what the hell are you doing right now, but he holds out his hand anyways for the man to take.

He turns to the girl behind the counter and asks her “Put on Goodman, please?”

The girl smiles and winks at him before changing the record. The man’s eyes widen and lighten up as he starts to laugh “I know that one!”

“Everybody knows it. Here, come on.”

On that rainy Sunday night, Jongin teaches him how to swing on Sing Sing Sing.

–

Jongin meets him for the second time on a Monday – the next Monday, actually.

Even though it’s Monday, Jongin goes back to the cabaret. The stockbroker is there and he smiles at him, shyly. There’s a blues band on stage, singing Baby Please Don’t Go.

Jongin pays for the drinks and asks for his name in return.

Another heart-shaped smile and he replies, the sole of his leather shoes beating rhythm against the stool’s legs: “Kyungsoo. Do Kyungsoo.”

“Jongin. Kim Jongin.”

Kyungsoo is still wearing one of those dull-looking suits and his brown briefcase. As for Jongin, he has a nice leather jacket, a red shirt and washed-out blue jeans on. He tried to style his hair this morning and approximately succeeded.

The barmaid hands them their drinks. The band on stage switches styles and starts playing In the Mood. Jongin likes it better than the blues. Blues is for Friday nights at home all alone, not for a nice Monday evening in good company.

They do small talk, listen mostly. Jongin can see Kyungsoo’s legs twitching below the counter, while he forces himself to sit still. The swing from yesterday night still burns inside of him, he can tell, and he watches those dark eyes wander from a couple to another, raking over the dancefloor with want.

They’ll wait just a bit longer, until there’s no one left but them and the girl behind the bar, to dance again.

–

They have for the first time on the next Sunday. They stumble on Jongin’s threshold after their trip to the cabaret, slightly wasted, drunk in jazz and giggles. Kyungsoo takes his clothes off and kisses him everywhere, and Jongin can feel his heart tap-dancing inside his chest, and they dance the swing under the sheets.

When Jongin wakes up, it’s Monday morning, he missed his first classes and Kyungsoo missed the currency exchange’s opening. Yet, he doesn’t move, stares instead at the sleeping face of the man lying next to him.

Suddenly, he feels a burst of pain explode in his chest, and it takes his breath away.

He can’t breathe.

X

He knows about it. He has heard of it before. Boris Vian even wrote a book about it.

And it doesn’t surprise him.

Kyungsoo doesn’t love him. Kyungsoo loves the jazz; he loves it just as much as Jongin used to love it a few weeks back. Kyungsoo loves the boogie and the swing, he loves the kicks and the twists, the jive and the tap-shoes’ sounds.

But Jongin, Jongin, he fell in love. And he forgot Chet Baker.

The first weeks are the hardest, those when he can feel the roots growing inside his lungs. When he can feel the plant crawling up his throat, cover it all, choke him through their growth.

The worst is when he throws up for the first time.

He’s coughing and spitting and crying and he ends up passing out next to a mess of bile and blood and flower petals.

The flowers are red roses just like in Louis Armstrong’s song, and when What a Wonderful World is played that night at the cabaret, Jongin shuts his eyes tight and tries not to cry.

What a wonderful world it is indeed.

–

Sehun is the first to talk to him about it. Sehun is one of the other teachers at the dance school, a tall, stone-faced, lanky man, all in sharp angles and brisk manners. He looks older than Jongin when he’s two years younger than him. He’s nowhere near the most pleasant person to talk to, but that might be the reason why Jongin likes him.

Sehun knows everything, sees everything, notices everything. And he knows about Jongin, of course he knows.

He hands him a smoke on their coffee break.

Jongin stares at him for a while. Sehun knows he quit smoking.

“Considering the you got in there, smoking ain’t going to make anything worse” Sehun spits scornfully.

Jongin feels the petals bubbling up in the back of his mouth, blood-flavored.

He quickly figures out he’s not gonna be able to keep on dancing.

The rose obstructs his trachea all the way up to his nose, suffocating his throat, spreading and taking all the space inside his lungs. He can’t breathe properly anymore, not even when he’s walking, then dancing? He can’t. Not anymore.

He doesn’t go to the cabaret that often anymore. And when he knows Kyungsoo is coming over, he swallows down all the pills he can take, throws up what he can and hopes for the best.

One night, however, it’s not enough.

And Jongin wakes up right in the middle of the night, next to a screaming Kyungsoo who’s shaking him awake, utterly freaked out, vomiting his lungs and flower petals right on the white cotton sheets.

Kyungsoo doesn’t ask who it is. He helps Jongin clean up, brings him a glass of water and a painkiller. He changes the bedclothes while Jongin tries to collect himself, sitting in a corner of the room with his head hanging low between his knees. And he brings him back to bed, gently, lays him down on the fresh sheets, holds him in his arms and rocks him back to sleep.

Jongin feels so relieved that Kyungsoo doesn’t believe their relationship that serious for him to actually be the reason of Jongin’s condition – but at the same time, the thought tears him up. That night, he feels the rose grow even bigger.

–

The day he faints right in the middle of the dance studio, Sehun tells him he has to stop.

“Stop what?” Jongin asks, with bags under his eyes, a weak tone and exhausted face.

“You’re the one who should know” Sehun replies dryly, and Jongin doesn’t think he has ever seen him this angry.

But all he does is gulp down another petal and look away.

–

Jongin is standing in front of the currency exchange, staring at Kyungsoo’s face behind the Perspex. The man hasn’t seen him, too busy scribbling down something behind the counter, and Jongin represses the urge to cough when he sees him lift his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his finger and stick his tongue out, looking intensely focused.

Jongin knows that whatever he has with Kyungsoo is nothing. They’re nothing, at least not what he would want them to be – ‘jazz buddies’ as Kyungsoo call them, ‘jazz buddies’ who sleep together and dance the swing at a cabaret after closing time. Jongin knows Kyungsoo never thought of them that way, the way he does, he knows the only feeling Kyungsoo holds for him is nothing more than mild affection – but Jongin doesn’t know if he found out on his own or because of the rose.

He doesn’t listen to jazz when he’s alone that much anymore.

Jongin pushes the door open and Kyungsoo raises his head, mouth slightly opened, ready to say whatever he says to whoever comes in the currency exchange every day – but he sees him, and that cuts him short, has him frowning.

“Jongin?”

His name suddenly sounds like a threat, like a tell me it’s not real, tell me you’re not really here, and Jongin realizes he’s not welcome there.

Perhaps has he never been welcome anywhere else than the cabaret and his small let-down flat.

Once they’re outside, once Kyungsoo told his colleague he was taking five and has taken Jongin on the other side of the building, words shoot out.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Jongin doesn’t know the answer to that either.

“I don’t know.”

Oh but yes, yes, I know. I’m here because I love you and you won’t love me. I’m here because the only moments you love me are when we have on a Ray Charles or a Fats Weller’s record, and I don’t like Ray Charles or Fats Weller anymore. I’m here because I got a rose in my lungs and it reminds me too much of you. I’m here because every night I puke up my blood and my tears because of it.

Kyungsoo’s eyes soften.

“Jongin, if you want to talk about that…” he casts a glance to his chest and Jongin thinks he’s gonna throw up.

“No. No, it’s not about that.”

Yes, it’s about ‘that’, but I would never grow the balls to tell you because I’m too weak, too feeble, and maybe a little too tired.

“Then why?” and Kyungsoo frowns again. “I told you, Jongin, I’d prefer we only meet at the bar.”

“I know” Jongin whispers and he stares at his feet.

And then there was silence and he wishes there was something more.

“I quit dancing.”

“Why?” Kyungsoo exclaims, his eyes widening.

All it takes is Jongin to look at him and he understands.

“Oh. Right.”

“Yes.”

This time, there’s really nothing; and Jongin stops wishing for more.

“Who is it, Jongin?”

It’s you.

He doesn’t want to answer that question.

“It’s you.”

–

On the following Sunday there’s no one sitting on the stool next to his.

The barmaid casts him a worried look, but Jongin just gulps down his drink and takes his leave.

Five months have rolled by and the rose is still there.

Jongin decides to get the surgery.

–

It’s a jazz club-cabaret on one of Seoul’s backstreets. They play some Chet Baker, a bit of Frank Sinatra and sometimes, a few of the Blues Brothers’ records. It’s a nice Friday evening of June and Alone Together has been playing on a loop for half an hour.

Jongin is leaning against the counter, a cigarette between his fingers, a glass of scotch on a paper napkin. Around him, there’s Sehun, and Amber, and Yixing, and other colleagues from work, laughing and chattering and making plans for the year to come. As for him, he started working again after his sick leave and smoking as well – but he has never felt this good.

The bartender sweeps a martini over to him with a wink, and Jongin takes it, a surprised grin blooming across his face. He reads the nametag on the guy’s uniform: Taemin.

He raises his glass to Taemin and drinks it in one go.

When he puts down the cup, his eyes are drawn to a faded-looking figure sitting all alone on the other end of the counter. It’s a man in his early thirties, with the boring looks of a stockbroker, a dull working suit and a black leather briefcase. He’s beating along with the slow, steady rhythm of Chet Baker’s song, fingers tapping against the countertop, and his feet can’t reach the first bar of the stool. The only thing that stands out from his insipid appearance is his vibrant, beautiful burgundy hair.

Jongin meets the eyes of the stranger and he frowns, thinking.

Then the bartender leans over the counter to talk to him, and Jongin looks away.

The hair of the stranger had the same shade as the petals of a withering rose.

X

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

It’d only be a dream,

To finally forget you.