Marry me, Sanghyunnie!

It was noon and the sun should have been at its highest point, but it had been hiding all morning behind the clouds that overcast the sky. The few rays that shone through the cloud cover may have provided some light on Naksan Beach, but it barely penetrated the dense spread of bordering pine trees wherein Lee Joon had been standing for the last hour, painstakingly trying to carve a proposal message into one of the trees.

The curves of the heart were the hardest to carve. If he’d had more time to prepare, he would have would have chosen a better knife, something that could more easily break through the tree bark, but he had only just thought of this plan and had to make do with the butter knife he had stolen from the hotel breakfast cart that morning.

He dragged the tip of the blade down through the tree bark to form the other half of the heart until the line he carved met the bottommost point, enclosing his inscription inside: Will you marry me, Sanghyun? Lee Joon stepped back and stared at the message in the pine tree, smiling. The letters were jagged with sharp cuts, but they were legible.

His plan was to convince Thunder to take the shortcut through the pine trees to the beach rather than the pedestrian path and then, once there, to feign the need for a rest, lean against this tree, and watch as Thunder’s eyes lit up when he saw the carved message. It wasn’t as good as his first proposal idea, or his second, but it would have to do.

He was still upset that his first idea had failed, considering how much planning he had done. On Friday, the day before he and Thunder were planning on leaving Seoul to go to Naksan Beach for the weekend, Lee Joon had baked cookies in the shape of letters that spelled out his proposal message, which was a difficult feat for an inexperienced cook like Lee Joon. The first two trays of cookies he had made were burned so badly that he had almost given up on the plan, afraid that he would burn down the apartment. Having once nearly burned down his family’s home when he was younger, this was a real fear of his, but he managed to overcome that fear and make a third batch, which came out perfectly. He had been hoping to display the surprise cookie proposal message at some point during their weekend trip; however, during the long train ride that Saturday morning to Naksan Beach, Thunder had found the bag of cookies in the suitcase while Lee Joon was sleeping and, unaware of their purpose, had eaten some of them. Lee Joon had woken up to catch Thunder in the act and had tried not to go crazy as he watched his plan literally crumble.

Even though he was disappointed by this failure, he was determined to propose sometime that weekend and to do so in a way that was romantic. He had chosen Naksan Beach as their vacation spot for that reason – because it was a romantic setting for what he had hoped would be an equally as romantic proposal. This was especially important to him because Lee Joon was not, by nature, a romantic person, which he knew bothered Thunder somewhat. He wanted to prove to Thunder that he was capable of coming up with romantic ideas.

His second idea had come to him last night, when he and Thunder had been sitting in a café that overlooked Naksan Beach and were about to order a late night dessert. Acting quickly, Lee Joon had told Thunder that he needed to use the restroom and excused himself from the table, but instead, he had secretly gone to talk with the old woman behind the counter, who agreed to hide the wedding ring at the bottom of the ice cream sundae Thunder had planned to order. Later, after the woman had brought their cold treats to the table, Lee Joon had watched every spoonful that Thunder brought to his lips with great anticipation. When Thunder finally spooned that last dollop of ice cream out of the bowl and Lee Joon saw the sparkling edge of that gold band mixed in, he clenched his hands, awaiting Thunder’s surprised face at the sight, but Thunder swallowed that spoonful without even a glance at it. Lee Joon nearly had a heart attack and had wanted to scream about the ten million won gold ring Thunder had just swallowed and try to get him to cough it up immediately, but then he thought about the horrible vomit-filled image they would be stuck with for the rest of their lives whenever they thought about the proposal. Deciding not to say anything, Lee Joon then spent the rest of the night in a panic, feeling the pressure of having to come up with a third romantic proposal idea and to somehow make it happen before they left Naksan Beach the next night to return to Seoul.

In the woods the next day, as he stared at the tree carving, he hoped that everything would finally go as planned. Despite the two previously foiled plans, his only real regret was not having the ring, which was currently somewhere inside Thunder’s stomach. Before he left the hotel room that morning to carve the message into the tree, he had written a short note to Thunder, telling him not to go to the bathroom.

When he returned to the hotel room now, that was the first thing Thunder asked about. He held up the note, looking at Lee Joon curiously as he entered.

“Why can’t I go to the bathroom?” he asked.

“Erm…” Lee Joon had been too preoccupied with trying to plan this third and final proposal idea that he hadn’t even thought about an explanation for why he would write such a thing. “The, erm, plumbing is bad,” he said.

“The plumbing is…  bad? What does that even mean?” He laughed and shook his head, but then he noticed the knife in Lee Joon’s hand. “What are you doing with that knife, Joonie?”

Lee Joon wanted to crawl into a hole and die. His heart had never encountered so much stress before. First, Thunder ate his cookie message. Then, Thunder ate his ring. Lee Joon had made sure, when he devised this last proposal plan, to not involve food in any way lest it again end up in Thunder’s belly, but now he had to explain why he was holding a knife. He hated lying. “Just, erm, borrowing it.” Thinking quickly now, he added, “Yeah, I was going to try to fix the plumbing.”

Thunder squinted his eyes, staring blankly at Lee Joon. “Erm, did you suddenly switch brains with Seungho-yah?”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Seungho is the fixer-upper guy, not you,” Thunder said. “No offense, but you kind of at that stuff.” He started laughing now. “I mean, why did you ask for a knife and not, say, a screwdriver? What were you planning on doing? Stabbing the toilet?”

“Aish, I’m going crazy,” Lee Joon said, as he plopped down on the bed.

Thunder smiled and sat beside him. “Aw, I’m just kidding, Joonie,” he said, putting his arm around him. “I love you even if you can’t fix anything.”

Lee Joon blushed and looked up at Thunder’s sweet face. “Give me a kiss,” he said.

“Oh? You’re just demanding kisses now?”

Lee Joon smiled. Teasing him, he said, “Park Sanghyun, my dearest lover, would you do me the honor of a kiss?”

“Since when do you talk like a prince?”

“Since I fell in love with one,” Lee Joon said, leaning in to steal Thunder’s lips. They held each other for a while, kissing sweetly and playfully tickling each other, but Lee Joon was too nervous about his proposal to let things go any further. “Come on,” he said. “The weather’s not great. If we want to get any time at the beach, we better go now.”

Thunder bit his lip and leaned back in the bed. “You sure you don’t want to just… stay in bed today?” He winked at Lee Joon and his lips.

“Ai, you’re the one acting like Seungho now with the lip- thing! Come on, out of bed, boy.” He dragged Thunder off the bed and then rummaged through one of the open suitcases on the dresser for swimming trunks.

After they were dressed and had gathered everything they needed for the beach into a backpack, they left the hotel, both immediately noticing how dark the skies had become. Lee Joon had been worried about the weather when he was outside earlier and had hoped that it would have cleared up by now, but it looked like it had only gotten worse, as if it would rain any minute.

The pine tree forest stretched for miles down the shoreline between the street and the beach beyond. Just down the street from where they were standing, there was a clearing through the trees where the pedestrian path to the beach was. Thunder had just begun walking that way, but Lee Joon quickly grabbed his arm. “Yah, why don’t we just cut straight across through the woods instead of walking all the way up the street to that path? The beach is right on the other side.”

Thunder shrugged. “I guess so,” he said.

They walked across the street and entered the dark greenery, the pine needles lightly crunching beneath their sandaled feet as they made their way deeper inside. Lee Joon pulled the straps of the backpack higher on his shoulders and breathed in deeply, trying to look calm while his gaze darted around in his search for the tree that he had carved his message into.

“How much farther is it?” Thunder asked.

“Shouldn’t be too much longer,” Lee Joon said, even though he wasn’t quite sure himself. It was much darker than it had been just an hour earlier. He could see the shapes of the trees, but nothing as clear as a carving into the trunk. Thinking about this now and realizing that he could have easily passed his tree already, he suddenly stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Thunder asked.

Lee Joon couldn’t explain himself, not truthfully anyway, and so he quickly forced a smile and continued walking alongside Thunder, holding his hand and lifting the occasional heavy branch in their way so that they could walk past. All that time, he continued studying the trees, trying to peer as hard as he could at each trunk but losing hope with every step they took. Because he had been so focused on the trees around him, he didn’t see what Thunder just had – traces of light and sand straight ahead.

Thunder nudged him and smiled. “This was much faster than walking all the way up to the path,” he said, pointing ahead to the beach.

Lee Joon panicked when he saw the beach ahead. He stopped and turned to look back at the trees, knowing that the one he had carved his message onto wasn’t this far out but just hoping that it would somehow magically appear anyway. His mind raced with confusion, which soon turned to anger at himself for not thinking to mark the way somehow.

“Come on,” Thunder said, urging Lee Joon toward the edge of the woods where the beach began.

“I can’t,” Lee Joon said in his desperation. “I… I think I dropped my cell phone back there somewhere.”

“Aish,” Thunder said. “Well, let’s just call it and follow the sound.”

“No, it’s okay,” Lee Joon said, knowing that his excuse would fall apart the moment his phone would begin ringing inside his pocket from Thunder’s call. He reached into his pocket now. “I got it. I just didn’t feel it before and thought I dropped it.”

Thunder looked at him suspiciously for a moment but then shrugged and gestured again toward the beach.

“Okay,” Lee Joon said. “Let’s go.” He tried to tell himself that carving his proposal message into the tree was a stupid plan anyway and was no big loss, but that didn’t make him feel much better.

When they emerged from the woods, their feet sinking in the sand that bordered the waves of the East Sea, they saw that the beach was empty, likely due to the bad weather. The sky looked more like late evening than early afternoon with how dark it was. It would surely rain, perhaps torrentially from the looks of it.

Despite the lack of sun, Thunder seemed happy. As they walked through that soft sand and stared at the ocean ahead, listening as those heavy waves lapped ashore, Lee Joon tried to be happy, too. But then, just when they found a spot to sit, Thunder nudged him and gestured toward the public toilet down the way a bit by the treeline. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

“No!” Lee Joon yelled, grabbing his arm.

Thunder was startled by what seemed to be a completely insane reaction from Lee Joon. “What’s going on with you today?” he asked.

Lee Joon let go of his arm, completely clueless as to how he could explain the ring situation to Thunder without actually telling him about the ring. He had hoped to propose to Thunder in time to explain about the ring so that Thunder wouldn’t just flush it away the next time he used the toilet, but he had missed the opportunity to do so. For a second, he considered asking Thunder to marry him right then, but he was still clinging to the fantasy of a romantic proposal and quickly dismissed the idea.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” Thunder said, “but I really have to pee. I can’t hold it anymore.”

Lee Joon’s face relaxed. “You’re just going to pee?” he asked.

Thunder stared at Lee Joon and then shook his head. “Seriously, what’s with you today? You’re acting so weird. Since when are you interested in my pee?”

Lee Joon chuckled and shooed him away. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll lay out the beach blanket and get things set up. You go pee.”

“Okay, thanks for your permission,” he said, smiling. But just then, the sky cracked with thunder and they both looked up at the thick dark clouds, from which a few droplets of rain began to fall. “Aish,” Thunder said. “Looks like no beach today after all.” No more than a second after those words left his mouth, that light drizzle transformed into a heavy downpour, the noise of the torrent like millions of nails crashing against the earth.  

“Let’s get out of here!” Lee Joon yelled, grabbing the backpack with one hand and Thunder with the other. They ran across the now wet sand, heading for the cover of the trees and then continuing deeper inside until they could no longer feel the rain pelting their backs, the sound of that storm soon muffled by the thick pine tree canopy.

Lee Joon rested against one of the trees, out of breath and now laughing at the situation.

Thunder began laughing too and started sweeping the rain off Lee Joon’s shoulders, but then he noticed a strange carving in the tree just above Lee Joon’s head. It was a heart. He couldn’t make out the message inside, but the last word seemed to resemble his name. “Joonie, look at that,” he said, pointing to the carving. “Is that my name?”

Lee Joon’s mouth fell open when he turned around and saw the proposal message he had carved, shocked by the serendipitous turn of events.

“What does it say, Joonie?”

Lee Joon turned back around and smiled as he looked at Thunder’s sweet baby face. “It says… Will you marry me, Sanghyun?”

Thunder seemed confused for a moment. He glanced between the carving and Lee Joon’s face, trying to make sense of things, but then he saw Lee Joon bend a knee before him.

Lee Joon looked up at him from bended knee, his wet hair dripping down his face. “I love you, Sanghyunnie. I always have, I always will.”

Thunder fluttered his hands in front of his face, trying to stop the tears from surging out.

“Marry me, Sanghyunnie,” Lee Joon said as he rose to his feet and held Thunder’s shaky hands.

Thunder threw himself into Lee Joon’s arms, crying deeply against his chest. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said, stuttering out his reply between his sobs. “Of course I’ll marry you,” he said, kissing Lee Joon frantically.

The two men gazed at each other for a moment, both thinking about all the possibilities the future seemed to hold for them. Lee Joon ran his hand down Thunder’s wet face, letting it drift underneath his chin. But Thunder’s expression changed at that moment. “Wait,” he said, holding up his left hand to show Lee Joon his bare fingers. “Where’s my ring?” He stared at Lee Joon, smiling.

Lee Joon, meanwhile, cringed a bit and then leaned forward, letting his cheek rub up against Thunder’s as he whispered into his ear. “Yeah, erm, about that…”