⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞ 5 ⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞

 

Their flesh was cooking, flushing a raw pink under the unabashed leer of the sun. Where movement had always filled in the gaps, this time there was only silence. And despite the clinging heat, everything still seemed frozen.

The Vega Highway lay where it always had, pointing in the direction of elsewhere, a border to the monotonous stew of small town life. Even the prairie, in the distance, appeared to have halted its swaying, as though each stem of grass and flower erected itself in memoriam to a wordless cause. The only thing moving was the sweat beading at Kyungsoo’s temple.

He dabbed at it with the back of his hand, and slumped against the scolding drum that held the town’s water supply. The weather had returned to stifling in a matter of days.

“Sorry,” Jongin said from his left, “I know this ain’t how you wanted it to go.”

It was an understated gesture, especially when Jongin’s own hopes were considered. Even so, only Kyungsoo’s actions were to blame for the displeasure of the people. He hadn’t expected them to band together in the days following his examination of the bodies and demand Jongdae reinstate his legal confidentiality, which was an oversight entirely his own. He should have known he’d be booted from the inner circle. Jongdae had at least been apologetic earlier that day, when he’d told him the news.

In the end, it wasn’t at all the end. And that thought had Kyungsoo ultimately ambivalent.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he said. The rough textile of his pants dragged along the skin of his palms as he rubbed them along his thighs, hands drying as they went. “I’m still going to figure it out.”

When he looked over to Jongin, he had his stained handkerchief in his hands again. The blue hurt to look at amidst the sandy yellows and dull greens of the farm plains beneath them, a single panel of the sky wrapped around the tan fingers of a man.

“Jongdae asked me to go with him to Wattlesburg. He’s gonna make a claim for backup tomorrow.”

As Jongin mentioned it, he traced over the russet stain from Kyungsoo’s blood left behind on the cloth. It was faded now, and Kyungsoo wondered how he’d gotten it out.

“You can’t go.”

“‘Cause I’m the only one you trust?”

Windows of red oak held his attention as Jongin stared and stared. Pinched fingers turned pages of script and Kyungsoo relented to it. They were only eyes, it was only a shared look, but it had erased passages reappearing. He must have been paranoid, but it felt like Jongin was reading him with keen fluency.

“Y’know, I never got around to sayin’ sorry.” Jongin looked back down to his lap, where his fingers were getting lost in the folds he was making amidst cornflower blue. “For the accusations… before Mr Zhang…”

It wasn’t the olive branch Kyungsoo was expecting, mainly because he hadn’t been expecting any. Still, to reach out was pointless if no one reached back, so Kyungsoo wrapped his hand around the searing metal of the water tower railing, indulging in the hot sting.

“And I never let you properly look through your childhood home.”

Caramel fingers probed through his mind, leaving trails of sugar in their tracks. Jongin was again looking at him as though just now realizing Kyungsoo could be something other than horribly disagreeable.

“I’m sorry for callin’ you a murderer.”

The apology was whisked, an aerated flick of Jongin’s excitement. In contrast, Kyungsoo took his time looking back over to the stretch of road he knew led to Wattlesburg. Jongdae could be there as early as tomorrow morning. Who knew what would change once more policemen were involved.

A warm pressure on his thigh again delivered him back to the present moment, reminding him of how sweltering the heat was becoming. He noticed Jongin had swept his fringe to the side, exposing the glittering sweat that gave his forehead a glow. In fact, all his skin was particularly radiant, and Kyungsoo guessed his own was the same.

Jongin smiled at him, one eye squinting in the sun, and said, "This mean you'll take me home now?"

Kyungsoo's button-up turned suffocating, and he could admit the idea of shelter and lemonade appealed to him more than burning mere inches from gallons of water.

It was on the journey back to his house from the water tower, further down the homebound path, that the pair spotted Junmyeon and Sehun talking. They seemed pleasant, amicable even. Jongin gave them a hollar, and while Junmyeon returned the gesture, Sehun did not. He seemed in a hurry to depart from their engrossed discussion moments after clocking Kyungsoo’s approaching presence, and none of the four indulged in the farce of surprise.

“Jongin, Kyungsoo,” Junmyeon greeted, leaning on the wooden post of a fence. By now, Oh Sehun was two paddocks away, and growing smaller each moment. “Say, Jongin. You lookin’ for land?”

“Why, you sellin’?”

“Yessiree. Whole thing, too.” Junmyeon’s eyes were pinched, despite being protected from the sun by his hat brim. When he looked to Kyungsoo, he nodded his head, and the minute quirk to his cracked lips told of no misgivings. Jongin must have done wonders smoothing things over on his behalf. “I’m uprootin’. Takin’ Minseok up north. All this murder business, no place for the squirt.”

Kyungsoo fussed about the fly that had taken an interest in him while Jongin kicked up the dirt beneath his boot. He seemed to hesitate, as if genuinely considering it.

“All four hundred acres could be yours,” Junmyeon continued, “my land goes all the way to the highway.”

“Mm, I helped Minseok with the poultry, couple times.”

Junmyeon’s pitches flowed like the efforts of waves to break a dam, and Jongin seemed shriveled in his caution. The fly buzzing around the group made a dive for Kyungsoo’s mouth and he spat to the side after shooing it away yet again.

“He’ll need to think about it,” he said. That seemed to conclude any talk of business for the moment, and Junmyeon mentioned getting back to his crops.

“Don’t think too long,” the farmer warned as he left, “someone else ‘round here’ll take the offer.”

Jongin was quiet most of the walk back to town, not that Kyungsoo could fault him for it without choking on his own hypocrisy. In addition, it wasn’t particularly unusual for the pair to maintain silence along their joined routes of transport. Still, Kyungsoo found most of the town’s dreary outline was colored-in by idle tales told by Jongin, when he divulged them.

He’d once mentioned that children held wheelbarrow races along the worn tracks further from town, despite Kyungsoo never witnessing it. It had also come out that he had hidden stolen eggs in the prairie for Jongdae to crush underfoot and slip on the yolk of, when they'd been young.

It added depth to the town, forced Kyungsoo to picture Jongin and Jongdae as boys, running around in ratty shirts and dirty shorts. To think there had once been such innocence in a town now religiously devoted to its fear was extraordinary. And yet, entirely obvious.

It only added to the thought that squinted eyes from between gate posts couldn’t make out clear features. Objectivity, whilst definitely a strength, was also its own obstacle.

Jongin was watching his feet as he walked, dense thoughts clouding together around his head. Their pace was languid, undisturbed by buzzing or chirping. The nature surrounding them took a step back, fading to the backdrop as they idled.

Kyungsoo nudged Jongin’s side, “Tell me more about growing up in Greyvil.”

 

⁞⁝⁞⁝⁞

 

Home wasn't an abstract concept, certainly not for someone as traveled as Jongin. His eyes, once gazing over familiar walls, softened into a look content in its comfort. Kyungsoo’s house—once Jongin’s own—was still terribly bare in furnishings. The only thing that had changed since Jongin’s last visit on the night of Mr Zhang’s death had been the stocks in the kitchen.

“More food than when the four of us lived here,” Jongin had said while Kyungsoo juiced lemons. He’d seemed surprised at the discovery that Kyungsoo was fully adept at, and daresay even enjoyed, cooking for himself. “Not one for cuisine, myself.”

“I’ll have to educate you on what good food is, then.”

Kyungsoo hadn’t managed to quell the dry giddiness that propped up the corner of his smile, and Jongin’s expression had widened to accommodate further astonishment.

“That a joke? Or a promise?”

It was an hour—and a fair few teaspoons of sugar added to Jongin’s lemonade—after then that Kyungsoo lugged down a lonely cardboard box from the attic and presented it to his guest. It had stayed untouched since Kyungsoo moved in, though with each day he fell closer to snooping.

“Your father left it,” he explained, “you should have it.”

The cardboard was cracked along it’s creases, brittle in its age. It snapped like a hollow spine with each flap pulled back, and Kyungsoo, leashed by his curiosity, didn’t notice the cloud of dust floating within his desolate living room beyond its clinical existence. He stood behind Jongin as he kneeled on the hardwood floor.

Jongin himself seemed warped, as if the dust had absorbed itself into his pores and drawn him back in time. He leant over the contents with worship engraved into the arch of his back, disbelieving greed enchanting his fingers.

When he finally pulled back, he clutched at a photograph album, whirling through its memories. He flipped the pages with such speed that Kyungsoo couldn’t make anything exact out, but once he reached the end, Jongin went through them again, this time slower.

“That’s my ma,” he introduced, and Kyungsoo took that as permission to get closer. He knelt next to Jongin, tilting his head to make out the image.

A woman, conventionally attractive though not particularly eye-catching, standing in a summer dress. The photo was vague with its purpose. She stood, mid-laugh, in front of a field. More specifically, the prairie. Her untied hair was caught in a windswept movement, a flag signaling her freedom. She looked happy, young, and not at all like a plain farmer’s daughter.

“She wasn’t from Greyvil,” Jongin continued, “met my pops when he lived in the city, getting his training.”

Kyungsoo was at least cognizant of the pulled thread at his center, the slight sting of shame. It was odd that he had never once considered that Jongin’s father had been a man of any academics, even if the field of study was in low-level law enforcement.

Fingers traced figures, and Jongin explained the backstories of the ones he remembered. The day his father won the Greyvil marathon (something Kyungsoo hadn’t known ever existed, and doubted still did), the first chair Jongin ever built, the day Jongdae graduated school. Somewhere between the pages and nostalgic whispers lay the exact moment his mother disappeared: in one memory, gone the next.

Once he reached the end of the album again, it was Jongin who raised her from the silence.

“Ma passed when we were still kids.”

He sniffed and rubbed at