Love is in the people – if you look close enough.

[part one]

You see them for the first time on a cold Winter morning.

It’s early, the sun barely up in the sky, and it hasn’t snowed as they said it would have in yesterday’s forecasting. And it’s bad, you think, ‘cause the white flakes would have brought the temperature up some degrees, at least, instead of leaving the city frozen several numbers below zero.

You don’t like the cold.

It’s not that you’ve just realized it – you’ve always known – but you notice it more often when the wind filters through your clothes reaching the bare skin and wounding the pale complexion with its invisible needles, leaving no signs except for the shivers inside your body. You notice it more often when you cannot enjoy the small walks from the metro station to the company building, admiring cherry blossoms coming to life in Spring and the fallen Autumn leaves: dead, yet so beautifully alive in their colors. You have to run, instead. As you have to do from the small country yard to the main entrance too, from the gym to the cafeteria back to the gym again, in order to avoid whatever bad weather winter just decided to give you today. And you have to run because you cannot risk getting sick, you cannot risk skipping days of practice, days of getting better, of getting somewhere.
Your voice is all you have and you cannot risk blowing it all away. Nobody can. And everybody knows it. That’s why everybody runs.
You first thought that people just liked to run in Seoul, but now you’ve noticed the reason behind that too: people run to live.

You see them for the first time on a cold Winter morning and you find them smiling.

There are two of them, tangled within each other that you don’t get immediately that there are two different people. And that’s actually the first thing you notice about them – before their weird hairstyles, before the deep colours of their eyes, before the shapes of their own bodies: their intimacy.

The first of them is lying back on the wall of the lonely practice room, messy hair and a sleepy expression revealing the only few hours he must have slept. And it reminds you of chocolate for some reason – maybe because of the shade of his hair – but it’s not the colour itself what you’re thinking about, it’s more the feeling: warm. Suddenly this frozen winter feels so warm.

You see him stretching his legs out on the floor, one hand following beside them, the other one covering a sudden yawn. You see him closing his eyes and throwing his head back involuntary and hitting the wall behind it with a loud bang.

And that’s when you hear him, the second one. You hear his voice before having the time to distinguish his features and he has a warm laugh, you think. Actually, it’s not even a laugh. It’s a light chuckle, almost gone unheard, but you’ve caught it and you know the other guy has done so too because now he’s smiling – the pain from the bump long forgotten – looking down at the figure laying on the floor, his head carefully held in his own lap. They’re too far away for you to be able to observe them in depth, half hidden by the big door of the practice room, but you see the sweetness they look at each other with clearly and the way the first guy’s hand slowly caresses the other’s hair doesn’t slip away from your eyes either. It feels familiar, you think. Your father used to do the same with your mom when she was sick, fingers entangling through her soft hair, pushing the pain away touch after touch.

And you suddenly realise it’s warm – too warm.
Winter isn’t supposed to be this warm and even though you don’t like its glacial weather, even though it kills your flowers and buries your leaves, you tolerate it because it is as it should be. But now it’s not. Now is too warm. The logical part of your brain tells you that it must be your imagination, that the thermometer is still stuck at minus 5 degrees and god you’re almost trembling, of course it’s still cold. But then the other part of your brain – the one you never listen to, the one you always label as too emotional, too weak – tells you that it is too warm indeed, but that’s ok. Warm can be ok too. And you swear you can feel their affections getting closer, hitting your body, your soul, and you don’t understand how is it possible to feel this much just by looking at them, but then–

“Who are you?”

His voice startles you and you jump. God, you jump– and you crash against the door – and god your head is the warm one now, hurting from the sudden pain.

Embarrassing, you think. And caught eavesdropping: what a wonderful start.

The guy – the one who was laying on the floor, the one with the nice voice – is now looking at you from the end of the room and you see him getting up and coming near you and now that he’s closer you notice things you hadn’t before. Like the long fringe almost covering his eyes, like the striking contrast between his pale complexion and dark hair that suddenly reminds you of the night sky during a full moon: so dark, yet so unusually bright. You notice his lips too, bright red sticking out among the shadows of the room.

It’s a lot to take in, you think. A lot of details, a lot of differences. And he’s so beautiful, you realise. How can a guy be this beautiful? How can all those opposite colours find a perfect balance on his face? You wonder if you’ll ever find an answer.

You see him studying you from behind his dark iris, waiting for the answer you just realise you still haven’t given him.

“I’m Changmin” you whisper in reply, “Shim Changmin”.

He arches an eyebrow and stares back at you without saying anything. And suddenly, just how you first noticed it, you feel that warmth gone, disappeared in the blink of an eye, and what’s worst is that you feel missing it.

He stretches out a hand.

“I’m Jaejoong” he says. “And the one over there is Yunho”. He looks back, realizing the other is still laying on the wall, watching them from afar. “So lazy” you hear him adding with the slightest of a smile. And for a second the warmth is back and you feel so drawn to it you could jump under a train to catch it. And you wonder what’s wrong with you, where are all these feelings suddenly coming from.

You look at the hand in front of you and you slowly raise yours too.

It’s cold, his hand, you realise. A physical mirror of the iciness you’re now welcome with.

“How old are you?” he asks then.

“Fifteen”

“I’m seventeen. Him too.” he says, pointing his finger backwards.

You find yourself out of place, so you just nod in answer.

“Do you know why you are here?”

You have no idea. You were just told to get to the company earlier that day. 6.00am. Basement room. You just realise the guy called Jaejoong has long bangs under his eyes and he probably hasn’t slept a lot either. Maybe they just slept here, you wonder.

The other guy – Yunho – reaches you and put a hand over Jaejoong’s shoulder.

“Be nice” you hear him saying and you see Jaejoong’s features changing, a shocked expression painted on his ethereal face.

“I am being nice!” he remarks “Just for the matter, I am the one who stood up while you kept on sleeping over there” he adds, but you know there’s no anger in it, just a playing tone he cannot hide. You notice this too: when the other guy is around, he seems to light up.

“I am Yunho” the guy suddenly repeats, reaching out to shake your hand too. You see him smiling and you notice things – like it happened with Jaejoong. You notice his crooked teeth, his sincere smile, the delicacy of his hands when he touches the other, but their strength when he shakes yours.

“Changmin” you repeat “And I don’t know why I am here”.

Yun Ho smiles again and you think his smile makes him look younger.

“We’re here to debut” he suddenly says, and you cannot help the frown that’s now decorating your face. Debut?

You see Jaejoong punching him before speaking.

“Don’t listen to him. We’re here to practice, we have been told we will be put in another formation, but whether we will actually debut or not is not for us to tell”.

You listen carefully to their words and from beneath the warm winter jacket you’re still wearing, you try to find a logic in the way their sentences connect, a meaning behind the musicality they speak with, how their voices seem to blend together so well.

“I–” you try, “I don’t–” but before you can continue, some managers enter the room and ask you to move – please – they say, – we need to organize things. Another trainee follows a while after and even if you don’t know him, you know the others do because you hear a faint “Sleep in, didn’t you?” before seeing them exchange some weird kind of handshaking greeting. And it’s not long before another one enters and this time you’re sure nobody knows him because he introduces himself as soon as he steps into the room. “I’m the American” he says, and everyone burst out laughing.

But then the peaceful atmosphere of that lonely winter morning is suddenly gone, swallowed up by a storm of things-to-do, things-to-check, things-to-practice-on and you don’t understand where all this rush is coming from, why you can’t go slow like you’ve been doing for the past year. And it’s not laziness, you just want to go a little bit slower. But nobody slows down, everybody starts running again and they’re running faster this time and you’re scared you’ll fall behind. But you don’t want to fall behind, you’ve worked so hard and for so long, you don’t even want to take into consideration the possibility of it: of all your efforts to be suddenly vain. So you run. You catch your breath and run the faster you can and for the first time you don’t feel alone. You see Yunho grabbing your wrist and bringing you closer, between him and Jaejoong and even though you notice the other’s annoyed expression, you also see a smile behind it. And then Jaejoong takes your other hand and you feel good, you think, for the first time since you’ve started your training you feel at home.

§

You do debut in the end.

It’s a late December night and you’re performing in front of a small crowd, an American artist watching you from afar. Brittany. Or Britney. You don’t remember exactly, but you know it’s something too difficult to pronounce anyway.

You nod and bow awkwardly at the nice words you’re regarded with. Nice boys, nice voices. You hear their talking but you aren’t really listening to them, you’re searching instead. You’re searching for a soft smile and big hazel eyes, for red lips and a moonlike complexion.

And you find it. You find him, hidden in a small changing room, crying on Yunho’s shoulders ‘cause you’ve finally made it. You’ve debuted. And now the road will be even harder than before but at least you’re there, you’re getting somewhere. And you’re getting there together.

Yunho smiles at you when you open the door, without letting Jaejoong go for a second. He caresses his back, trying to get him relaxed, trying to soothe the racing heartbeats you swear you almost see through his ripped outfit.

And you see that old warmth again, you feel it on your skin behind the leader’s sweet gestures, behind the way Jaejoong’s fists are squeezing his shirt, behind the sudden feeling of being intruding you feel raising inside you. You wonder if you’re imaging it, if it’s just a consequence of all the adrenaline and excitement of the show. It’s the end of December: rationally, you know it cannot be this warm. But again, when you look at them you see no logic, no apparent reason why the way Yunho’s fingers are moving some of the other’s hair away from his wet face looks so familiar, so domestic, why the way Jaejoong’s tears seem to take away Yunho’s heart, beat by beat.

You move some steps backwards and leave them alone. You smile lightly and decide that it will be a question for another day, one in which the emotions of the night won’t cloud your judgement and blur your mind. You don’t forget it, though. You never could. And even if you know it’s something that doesn’t concern you, something that doesn’t belong to you, you are still determined to find a name to define that warmth they keep on displaying so freely to the world. That warmth you yearn to feel, that warmth you keep on chasing, but that seems to be theirs only.

§

Jaejoong grows on you.

It happens slowly but while the days go by, you can see the frozen shield he built around himself melting under the not-so-sunny weather of winter.

You can see his features getting a little less sharp when he looks at you, you see his eyes following you during your daily routines – alert – ready to catch you if you were ever to make a wrong move.

He doesn’t say it, but his gestures speak loud – loud enough for you to hear them, at least – even though they still end up being unexpected.

Like that bowl of ramen you find in the kitchen every Sunday morning, no texts attached, but a familiar taste no restaurant could ever replace. And even if he’s not home, you know he made it, you know he thinks you’re still a kid who can’t cook his own meal – which maybe you are – and you know he doesn’t want you to starve yourself.

Like the note you find between the pages of your school book – fighting! – and again he doesn’t sign it and you have to hold back a smile because even though there is no name, that scrabbled calligraphy couldn’t belong to anyone else. You fold the small piece of paper and put it in a small box along with the others. Sometimes you reread them and while your eyes move on the worn out texture you suddenly feel so much loved.

You find it cute, the way he cares for other people. Jaejoong surely has it a lot: that innate need to check that everyone is ok, that everyone is doing good; that innate need to make everyone feel loved. And then you realise that maybe the reason he does that is because he hopes for the same love to be returned to him. And you start confirming your theory when you face his eyes again, day after day, and find in them a desperate and mute desire to be acknowledged, to be appreciated, to be cherished, to be genuinely loved.

Jaejoong grows on you the same way a wild rose grows between the rocks: aggressively and delicately at the same time.

And so does Yunho.

With his leader attitude, making sure everyone is in the right place at the right moment. He squeezes your shoulder and says “Changmin move a little, that’s not your position” and you’d like to tell him that a few centimeters won’t make the difference – and it’s practice anyway – but even before you can make out a sound he looks at you with that expression that implies no complaints. So you don’t say anything and shifts a little bit, murmuring something in your mind.

Yunho strikes for perfection. That’s something you’ve learned after months spent by his side. But the thing that annoys you the most is that he doesn’t stop at his own perfection, – no– he wants everything around him to be perfect too. And that translates in more hours of training, less sleep and more tiredness. Sometimes you find yourself hating him, he and his ed up aspiration for perfection, but then again when the people around you start recognizing your efforts, when you win on your first music show and the tears Yoochun and Junsu are sharing are tears of joy, then you realize that maybe it was worth it. Maybe Yunho always knew it would have been worth it.

Yunho is a child inside.

Far away from the fans and the cameras and the journalists, Yunho whines if he’s not given enough attention. He closes his fists and shakes them in the air until somebody – usually Jaejoong – makes the effort to give him what he’s desperately asking for. Away from the public eye, Yunho sleeps with a stuffed deer at his side. He hugs it during the coldest nights and you have lost count of how many times you’ve seen them fighting: Jaejoong just wanting to wash the damn animal and Yunho hiding it between his arms, not willing to part ways with it, not even for a night.

And they grow on you together, too.

It’s weird, you think, the way they are. The way they exist as individuals, but somehow exist together too, as a single entity.

And when they are together you cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. You see their bodies and rationally you know that that arm is Yunho’s and that that leg is Jaejoong’s, but then one of the two laughs and the other follows soon after and their voices melt together in a melody that mixes everything again. Then one of them lays a hand on the other’s thigh and you look away and think of other things, but when you look back the hand is still there and their fleshes are now tangled so tight that you cannot distinguish their own features anymore. Then Jaejoong starts singing and you can see so clearly Yunho’s eyes following the soft movements of his lips and even though they’re apart, even though there are people there – even though you are there, in between them, separating their bodies with yours – you feel invisible, transparent in the middle of the way their gazes meet and lock in a mutual understanding. Then Yunho starts dancing and if you dared looking at your right you know you’d find a smile full of admiration, a smile full of pride, full of love. And you know that Yunho sees that smile too and treasures it and takes from it the strength he needs to do the next step, the energy he needs for the next jump, for the next turn.

You observe them for a long time, trying to figure out how they work.

You watch them sharing food, sharing clothes, sharing life.

You watch Jaejoong cooking and you know he’s not making the dishes too spicy, not because he doesn’t like it – he definitely does – but because he knows Yunho cannot eat stuff that’s too spicy. And you watch him serving food and you know he will give it first to him, with a soft smile and a warm gaze.

And again, you watch them looking at each other and you wonder if they realise that everybody can see, everybody can see it. Except for them, maybe.

You watch Yunho entering the shower when Jaejoong’s not out yet and you hear some muffled screams before a very angry Jaejoong exits the bathroom with an annoyance you know being just a façade: you heard him laughing and whispering a broken good morning before the door was shut closed.

You watch them at night too. How they cuddle on someone’s bed before going to sleep. How Yunho reads a book with Jaejoong’s head carefully laying on his lap and you see him passing his fingers through the latter’s hair while turning the pages. How even when they do sleep they seem so linked, their breaths following the same rhythm – breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Repeat. – their fingers still intertwined.

§

One day you dare to ask them.

You’re in the small room you share with Junsu and Jaejoong is lying down on your bed on his belly, feet in the air swinging back and forth. He keeps on humming a melody you heard in some advertisement on tv and the soft rhythm plays in the back of your mind while you finish the assignments you’ve been given for school.

You’ve never seen the beauty of history. Too many dates. Too many names. Too many mistakes. And no lesson, you come to realise. ‘Cause one war ends and you think finally, it’s going to be ok now, there’s going to be peace. Broken buildings are going to be rebuilt, broken strings are going to be healed. But then someone gets angry, someone starts spreading hate and in so little there’s war again. And people die. And children grow up alone. And you hold your breath and turn the pages, hoping the next one will show you something more than the dark shadows of a past nobody seems to learn from.

History reminds you of time too. Hundreds of years become numbers on the corners of a book and page after page you look at them being reduced to scientific achievements, third-world conquers, business deals, nothing more than ink on the white texture of paper. And you wonder what has remained in the end of those people who did live those years, of those who worked their land day after day until the weather became to hard to even step outside, of those who sewed the fabric morning after morning until their finger became ruined and the thick nails couldn’t find the needle anymore. Time destroyed them. And time will destroy you too, probably. You wonder what will remain of you in five hundred years.

But then the soft voice of Jaejoong wakes you up from the depth of your thoughts and you find yourself staring at him. He sings with his lips closed and his eyes glued to the small notebook in his hands, scribbling something over it from time to time. You look at his messy hair crowing the soft features of his face and you try to remember how was your life before knowing him. And you suddenly remember that early morning from so long ago and you decide that time matters. This time matters. These moments stolen from the nights matter and you don’t want them taken away from you.

Jaejoong raises his gaze from the paper and locks it with yours. He smiles. And you think that his is a smile that truly warms those who witness it.

So warm.

And suddenly you find yourself thinking of that other warmth too.

The one you always see whenever the two of them are together. That warmth that’s even hotter: it burns the walls of your soul and leave you with no explication and an insane desire to touch it again.

And again you wonder how. You wonder why. But no answer ever comes to your mind.

That’s why you suddenly decide to ask. You gather your courage and try to roll the words over your tongue a few times before actually saying them aloud.

“What’s between you and Yunho?”

There is a long moment of silence in which Jaejoong freezes and slowly raises his dark iris to look at you. And then you feel his astonished gaze overwhelming you: you see his eyes growing in size, a shade of horror – or fear – hidden behind them. You see his eyebrows rising and furrowing in a confused and scared and worried expression you don’t manage to look through. You see his lips parting a little, but no sound lingering over them now.

And suddenly everything feels wrong: wrong place, wrong moment, wrong question.

But then it changes again, so quickly.

He shallows the notes that got stuck in his throat before your question and moves around a bit in order to sit on the bed. He let his legs swing a little bit from the side and you can see the now so clear nervousness behind the way he plays with his fingers, digging his nails into the skin until it starts hurting and the feeling gets a little uncomfortable.

He’s not angry, though, you realise. He’s anxious. Small reddish dots climbing over the pale complexion of his neck. And he’s worried. His breath is quicker as well as the rhythm of his heart, now unusually fast.

And you think Yunho’s the only one who’s able to truly break through all his barriers and touch the pure essence of Jaejoong. He’s the only one that manages to make him vulnerable.
Or maybe it’s just that he’s the only one Jaejoong allows himself to be vulnerable in front of.

When he looks at you again you see affection in his eyes, mixed with an unusual angst you somehow feel responsible for. And you think that his eyes are really the mirror of his soul, a fragile window over the struggling emotions of his heart.

“I love him”

There is no tremor in the way his words fill the silence of the room. No lie in the way his voice portraits the confession of an old truth, of an emotion always felt but never shared.

“Ok”

You don’t really know how to react to his blunt and so honest confession. It’s not like you didn’t known. You’ve always suspected it: their hands were always a little bit too close, their gestures a little bit too intimate, their feelings a little bit too powerful for others not to notice it. However, the moment Jaejoong admitted it, it somehow became real. Truly real. And it’s not like you’re not ok with it. God, it’s Jaejoong. And it’s Yunho. They’re two of the people you care the most for, two of those people that managed to win a little piece of your heart and take it with them. And it’s loveyou’re talking about, it’s not like they killed someone or made something illegal. They just love each other. And you feel a piece of for answering Jaejoong with a simple “ok” after the courage he must have taken to confess to you, after the barriers he must have fought down before being able to admit it to himself in the first place.

Maybe you’re just afraid, you realise.

Afraid that their love will somehow affect the relationship you have with them, afraid that you might have less of them from now on.

But then you remember that you were never first. That when you met them they were already together. That you’ve never known a Jaejoong that didn’t know Yunho or vice versa. You suddenly think that maybe it never even existed that kind of person.

“Ok?” Jaejoong breaks through the silence again.

“Ok” you repeat.

Jaejoong sighs in the awkward silence between you, small breaths of air coming out heavy of a resignation that looks too seasoned to be just the result of your outcome.

And then it hits you. That maybe the sadness your question brought on his face wasn’t because of the love topic in general, but because of an unrequited kind of love.

And then everything makes sense: his relaxed features turning dark, haunted by a long befriended sufferance, his eyes getting bigger and teary, his lips trembling unconsciously under his words.

“Does he know?”

He looks back at you with sad eyes and you can see both devastation and acceptance in it. And you feel them too, straight to your heart.

“He knows” he answers. “But he doesn’t love me back”

You stare at him for what seem ages, a blank expression painted on your face.

You don’t understand.

You’ve known them for almost a year now, you’ve seen them every day, together, making every gesture seem so loved, making every song seem so felt. You’ve observed them, maybe more than what you should have, and still there is no reason, no explanation that would make what the other is telling you know any realistic.

Jaejoong quickly interrupts your flow of thoughts.

“It’s rude to stare, you know”

“He does love you back” you answer.

Surprise flies on his face before a chuckle pushes the news away.

“Believe me, he doesn’t”

“He does” you repeat. “He does love you. Maybe he doesn’t know it and he’s just mistaking it for a way too deep kind of friendship, taking for granted all the little affections you share. Maybe he knows it and he’s just denying it, pushing the feeling away and convincing himself that it’s friendship, again, the name of that thing that connects the two of you. Maybe he’s still trying to find an answer in the chaos of his mind, in the chaos of your soul; an answer that he will probably never find” you say, voice firm and gaze stable piercing through his weak eyes. “But he does love you Jaejoong”.

And you don’t know where all this wisdom is suddenly coming from, but what you know is that as soon as you linked the word love to them, everything started to make sense, to have a deeper meaning. And it looks real. It looks pure. You cannot believe you have imagined it all.

And you’re sure Yunho loves him back. You’re sure it’s not just friendship ‘cause Yunho is a nice person, it’s true, and he treats everybody with a lot of care and attention but with Jaejoong it’s different. He doesn’t just take care of him, he takes little pieces of him too – suppressed laughs, cheers, wasted goodnights and sleepy goodmornings, hidden tears and big smiles – he takes them and treasure them there where nobody can see, in a small room inside his heart. And you have seen him open the door of that room again, you have seen him reminiscing them in the darkest nights as well as you’ve seen him stealing glances at the other when nobody else was looking, you have seen what was there behind the strong leader façade. And it was love. You’re sure of it because you’ve seen him treasuring it the same way you’ve seen Jaejoong relying on it, taking small pieces of Yunho when the other was busy practicing or giving you advice on this or that choreo. You’ve seen him ignoring the alarm just to be woken up by Yunho’s hands shaking him lightly, his soft words a sweet morning melody; you’ve seen him giving Yunho a little bit more food, a little bit tighter hugs, a little bit longer looks. And you know that that thing that’s between them goes both ways.

So you ask him too, some other day.

It’s an early Sunday morning and everybody is still sleeping except for you two. The police sirens in the streets outside woke you up around eight and when you got to the living room Yunho was already there, music low on the stereo, stretching his muscles along with the rhythm. You sat on the sofa with a book in your hands – the exam session getting closer and closer as the days go by – and you started reading through the lines, mind elsewhere.

It’s something after nine when you glance at the big clock hang on the wall, but Yunho is still moving on the different melodies and the others are still lost in their dreams so you decide that maybe it’s a good moment.

You straighten up a little and close the book, now forgotten on the small glass table. As soon as the last notes of Tri-Angle echoes in the room, you grab the remoter and stop the flow of songs.

Yunho turns around immediately and looks at you with a surprised expression, sweat coming down through the side of his face following the fast-paced rhythm of his heart.

“I need to talk to you about something” you state. And it sounds so weird, you think, somehow talking with Jaejoong was so much easier. You wonder why you are doing this too, what’s you role in their relationship, why couldn’t you just mind your own business and leave them alone.

‘Cause Jaejoong deserves to be loved back, you answer yourself somewhere along your running thoughts.

Yunho raises an eyebrow, the confusion never leaving his face, but nods anyway and comes near you, sinking on the sofa with a loud pluff.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks, and you know you cannot escape the question now – even though you’re not so sure anymore if it’s the right thing to do.

You breath in deeply and think of Jaejoong’s sad eyes and the words slip out your tongue in a whisper.

“What’s between you and Jaejoong?”

You see his eyes getting darker and then soften at the mention of the other. He lowers his gaze and close his eyes before laying his head back on the sofa. He sighs and let his shoulder sink deeper into the fluffy texture of the pillow.

“Where’s this coming from?” he asks, eyelids still shut. “Did Jaejoong tell you something?”

“No. It’s just so-” you try to explain, “So-” you search for words you cannot find.

“It’s so here” you conclude, waving your hands around. “I can feel it. I can see it”.

“And I cannot avoid it” you finish.

“I’m sorry Chang-”

“Don’t!” you interrupt him immediately “I didn’t say I’m not ok with it. I asked what is it”

His eyes are looking at you now. Straight into your iris and you feel a little intimidated by the power you see in them.

“It’s nothing”

“I know it’s something”

“You did talk with Jaejoong. What did he say?”

You think he sounds a little angry, but not that anger he shows when you get the steps wrong for the tenth time or when you play games with Junsu at night and end up being too loud. It’s a different kind of anger, maybe it’s not even anger. More like annoyance, irritation. Of you digging into his feelings, you believe.

You decide to tell the truth.

“He said he loves you”

“I love him too” he quickly answers, but you know he’s referring to something else.

“He said he doesn’t just love you. Like I love you, like you love me. Like we all love each other. He meant he is in lovewith you”.

Yunho doesn’t answer. He shifts his gaze beyond the big window and follows the birds moving on the railing.

But you know he’s listening so you just go on.

“And I know you love him too. I know you’re in lovewith him too”

“It’s complicated”

“You didn’t deny it, though”

Yunho places his gaze on you again and takes another deep breath.

“You’re a smartass you know?” he chuckles, a hint of red covering his face.

“You’re right, I guess” he adds, but before you can jump in, he shuts you up with a finger. “You’re right” he repeats, looking over the window again “I don’t love him like I love you. I love him differently. I love him deeper. He’s stuck on me like some kind of disease that won’t go away and his love is eating me alive from the inside. Sometimes I feel like I am suffocating. Like, if he’s away for the whole day and I don’t get to see him, I feel the air fighting to enter my lungs. I feel like I cannot breathe. I miss him more than I miss you too. He’s like an addiction. Maybe it’s because I’ve known him from the start, maybe it’s because we’ve grown up together all these years – I don’t know. But I know that I cannot live without him and this thing you’re hinting at, this thing you want me to admit, this thing could take him away from me. And I don’t want it, Changmin. I don’t want him taken away from me. I love him too much. And I hate it that he makes me so weak, but I cannot help it. It’s him. It’s just him, I don’t know any other way to explain it”

You realize you were holding your breath when a heavy pant fills the room. You play with your fingers trying to find an answer for the sudden confession you were just welcomed with.

“You just love him hyung” you try to repeat and this time he doesn’t deny it.

“I guess”

“But why don’t you want to love him?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to love him. I already do, it’s not something I can help. But there’s so much at stake I cannot jump into it just because I want to. It’s not that easy”

“But it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course, Changmin. It’s Jaejoong. How couldn’t it be worth it?” he answers with a familiarity in pronouncing his name that looks so intimate, so deep, so meaningful.

And while you look at him talking about Jaejoong, honey made words, you think that you’ve never seen two people so much in love. You’ve never seen a kind of love this strong, either. This powerful. This emotional. And you also think that maybe that’s why it’s so difficult, why it’s so painful. And the reason why it would be so worth it indeed.

§

They become awkward after it.

You see them acting like nothing happened, pretending the heaviness hanging between them being nothing more than the result of their tiring schedules, but you catch the small changes in their relationship that tell you that something happened indeed. Something changed.

They are little details, really, but you feel that something’s missing, that something’s not as it would normally be.

Like Yunho knocking on the bathroom door before entering, an unusual caution in his gestures, like Jaejoong’s stares being a little shorter, a little less furtive, a little sadder, like their hands retrieving when bumping into each other instead of being gently squeezed, like embarrassed smiles getting caught in between their glances.

And you notice less touching too: less caress, less hugs, less kisses between lingering over soft hair.

You see Jaejoong entering Yoochun’s room at night and you hear their spontaneous laughs fill the silence, little moments of peace in the frenetic rhythm of your days. But at the same time you see Yunho too, laying over the armchair scribbling something in his notebook, and you think that something is missing, a strange sense of emptiness surrounding his body, and you can’t figure out why until a memory of past evenings spent studying on the background noise of their laughs flashes into your minds.

You see Yunho staying on the phone more often, hiding the smiles behind a hand, and you think it’s weird ‘cause Yunho used to laugh so openly, without a care in the world: so genuinely, so purely. And you notice a pair of big eyes glaring at those long calls from behind his long eyelashes and you swear you see a twist of something in them, an annoyed sparkle of what you dare to define as jealousy.

You try to find a scheme in the chaotic disorder of their new habits, a hint of affection behind the indifference they now wear as a mask, as if the new fake expressions were enough to hide their feelings. And you wonder the reason for all of this: you’re not an expert on love, but even you can see how this game of pretending isn’t leading them anywhere. How this avoiding each other is only going to bring them back to each other eventually, at the start of an invisible circle they don’t seem able to escape. They run after each other, then run away just to come back again soon after. It’s a twisted game the one they’re playing, a risky one, but while looking at them from afar you also wonder if they’re aware of it. Because the more you get to know them, the more you dig into the complex psyche of their souls, the more you realize the obliviousness of their feelings.

Jaejoong is deeply in love.

And it’s so clear, you think. So evident in the care every one of his gestures portrays. So tender in the way his eyes are glued to Yunho, always watching him, always following him. Yunho knows it too, but what he fails to notice is how those same eyes get hurt every time he scolds Jaejoong for a missed step – a little bit too much for such a small mistake – every time he refuses one of his affection or just sleeps on them, unaware of the thoughts behind them.

Yunho is deeply in love too.

But it’s a different kind of love. Or maybe it’s the same kind of love, but he just has a different way of showing it. He doesn’t favour him over the others – like Jaejoong does, always giving him more food, more hugs, more love – no. Yunho is too blinded by the ideal of being right to do so, but he does treat Jaejoong differently. At night before going to sleep he stops on his doorframe and look at the other guy sleeping, treasuring the softness of his features when he’s finally relaxed and not so under pressure as they’ve been in the last period. Sometimes during practice he offers him his drink ‘cause he knows that Jaejoong is always so generous – too much at times – and probably gave part of his to you or Yoochun before.

Yunho has also this strange habit of losing and picking things up.

You all have lost count of how many things he forgot in dance rooms, backstages, coffee shops as well as the incredible amount of the ones he has taken up from tables, shelves, offices. And they’re not candies, pens or simple pieces of paper, they are always important things: the keys of your apartment, mobile phones, your dinner.

And your conclusion is that this strange habit of his somehow applies to Jaejoong too. Yunho picked up Jaejoong from the streets that night of some years ago, saving his from a fight he couldn’t win, and somehow ended up keeping him in his pocket. And Jaejoong started growing there. Like a wild rose, he started spreading his leaves and blossoms around Yunho, embracing him in that strange way of his.

But roses, for how beautiful and ethereal they may appear, have thorns too. And Jaejoong’s love is tight and strong and it’s starting to leave the first blood marks on the other’s skin.

It’s the calm before the storm, you think. The passive aggressiveness they’re treating each other with: fighting, but not really.

Jaejoong starts going out more at night. The days you don’t have inhumanly early schedules he grabs Yoochun’s hand and says “Let’s go clubbing. I wanna relax”. Sometimes the other joins, other times he doesn’t, too worn out from the day’s practice. But Jaejoong always finds somebody to go with him. And you wonder where he finds the energies to go out, to dance, to just stand up from the couch when all you did for the past twelve hours was moving – running, exercising, practicing.

You notice Yunho notices this increasing habit too. And you know he doesn’t like it, you know he breathes in deeply to calm his disappointment, you see him staring at the closed door for hours hoping for a not too wasted Jaejoong to comeback soon, safe.

He usually does. Around two in the morning the door opens and the guy stumbles in, grabbing the shoes drawer to steady his balance. And Yunho stands up from the couch, grabs him and put him to sleep.

But one night he doesn’t.

It’s already three in the morning and the door is still shut. Yunho’s hands tremble while staring down at the time displayed on the phone and even if you’re still sleeping and get told this later, you know his mind his probably making up the worst-case scenarios possible. And given the guy’s looks, you know they must be really bad ones.

It’s around four when you hear a loud noise in the living room and suddenly wake up from the few hours of sleep you managed to have. The first morning rays are filtering through the curtains and even though your mind is still blurred and your eyes are still closed, you register the noise clearly.

Jaejoong.

There are voices now too and you distinguish Yunho’s among the screams that are now breaking the peacefulness of dawn. Did he even go to sleep yesterday? You’re not sure, but you know that he probably stayed up the whole night – waiting.

You slowly wake up and get closer to the half-closeddoor trying to catch some words in the mess of their voices all mixed up with each other.

“It’s four in the morning Jaejoong” you hear Yunho saying “Four!”

“I know! But it’s my time and you cannot tell me what to do. It’s my free time, not yours!”

“I can when you’re going to mess up today’s practice!” he shouts back.

“I am not messin-” he starts, but Yunho stops him midsentence “Don’t you even try to finish that sentence ‘cause we both know you’re going to. And it’s not fair Jaejoong. We have worked hard for this, we cannot let everything slips away ‘cause mister royalty needs to take his free time at ing four in the morning!”
 

“I work hard too Yunho, don’t you try denying it”
 

“I’ve never said you don’t” from the tiny open space between the door and the wall you see Ynuho grabbing the other’s arm. “I’m saying you’re ruining all our work too, though”

Jaejoong looks away.

“Let me go. I want to sleep”

“Oh now you want to sleep” Yunho laughs. “This has to stop Jaejoong”

The guy tries to break free from the other’s grip but Yunho is stronger.

“Why do you even do it. I know you need your free time and I’m not against clubbing, but that’s too much and I know you know it too”

Jaejoong breathes in deeply the morning air, his eyes tired, heavy in their movements.

“I know. And you also know why I do this” he raises his gaze, locking it with Yunho’s. “You know it” he repeats.

“No I don’t” Yunho replies. And now it’s Jaejoong’s turn to laugh. But it isn’t warm, it’s a cold and sad laugh that reminds you of that first time you saw him, a glacial stare in his eyes.

“You don’t?” he laughs again “Then thank you Yunho, I thought you just couldn’t return my feelings but now I know you totally walk on them”

Yunho’s eyes open in surprise.

“That has nothing to do with this”

“Of course it does idiot” Jaejoong shouts back, his voice rising again. “Why do you think I need to get away from here? Who do you think I am escaping from?” he keeps on, his eyes icicles into the other’s chocolate ones.

“From you, idiot”

There is a moment in which nobody says anything. Jaejoong waves trying to get free from Yunho’s hold, but the other doesn’t let him go, still trying to process the words that filled that common morning with a deeper meaning. And even though you cannot see them clearly, just shadows among the early sunrays, you know that Yunho is about to let him go, you know he’s still not ready to jump inas he said, but then something happens again. Yunho’s hands steady Jaejoong’s shoulders and move his top a little bit, revealing the bare skin of his collarbone marked in deep red.

“What’s this?”

The first thing you notice is the volume of his voice, a whisper almost gone unheard. Then you notice the change in the tone too, no longer angry, but deadly serious, and if you could see his eyes you know you’ll find a huge hurt in them.

Jaejoong tries to walk back, but the move turns out being useless.

“What. Is. This.” You hear the other repeating, and even though is Jaejoong the one being scolded you swear you feel shivers running through your own body.

“Let me go. It’s none of your business”

“Jaejoong” Yunho growls.

“Yunho please I really cannot do this right now. What do you care anyway?” he screams and if that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back, you don’t know, but Yunho’s definitely makes all your certainces tremble when lowering down and biting the same spot on Jaejoong’s skin. If you weren’t so caught up in the moment you’d make fun of them for how weird they looked, almost resembling vampires, but then you remember they’re Yunho and Jaejoong and that maybe their never-ending circle is finally melting in a road.

Jaejoong moans in surprise, still trying to get the other off him.

“What are you doing Yunho, this hurts” he screams, noticing the blood on the pale complexion. “Are you in-” but the sentence gets stopped midway again, this time by a pair of lips laying over his, ravishing his mouth in a very yearned-for first kiss.

You honestly weren’t expecting this kind of turns of events and somehow you also feel a little guilty for having spied on them, making their moment a little less theirs. A little creepy, to tell the truth. But you also cannot help the smile that starts building on your lips and which Yoochun – now stirring in bed – will ask for a reason in a while.

You think that maybe that’s how it was supposed to happen. Maybe it wasn’t bound to be easy: things that are easy are never rewarding after all. Maybe all this running around each other will make their love grow stronger. And you think that maybe, maybe, everything is finally getting into the right place for once.

[end of part one]