“You’re exaggerating.”

Kunpimook flips open his wallet as he passes the security guard in the foyer, the access card Jackson had given him glinting just obviously enough for the man to let him pass without so much as a second glance. He scowls at nothing in particular as he presses the silvery button to go up, the metal surface cool under his fingers.

Yugyeom had, to Kunpimook’s annoyance and relief, been right- that night together had been far from their last. After that night, they’d met for dinners, crossed the business district to have lunch together, and with every meeting it seemed that they had more and more to speak about. It manages to both scare and excite Kunpimook, finally meeting an intellectual on the same wavelength, saying something and having someone understand immediately exactly what he’s talking about.

They’d spoken about the usual things at first, joking about harmlessly embarrassing secrets their respective bosses would honestly rather not have the world know, complaining about colleagues and superiors, but then things had escalated, of sorts- Kunpimook finds themselves talking about questions that’d been nagging at him since he’d been too young to remember, conflicts that other people would otherwise just leave alone and let be. He leaves every meeting drowning in thought, a little more relaxed and a little happier, though he’d never admit it.

There’s an attraction he undeniably feels at the thought of Yugyeom, a sort of anticipation and hope that’s laced with fear, that grows stronger exponentially with every time they meet, and though he passes it off as the side effects of finally meeting someone who understands him, it’s increasingly hard to ignore the way he feels around the younger man.

But these are things he chooses not to think about, things he’s beaten down so far in himself he wonders if he can even recognise them anymore, because with people like them one slip-up, one blind spot, could send him tumbling down into an abyss. So he zips his heart shut and purses his lips, focusing on the much more important matter at hand.

“I think you’re being too liberal,” he decides to argue back, his words followed by the tinny sound of Yugyeom’s laughter over the phone. “And I’m the foreigner here. Who even likes tripe anyway?”

“Uh, I don’t know, maybe about eighty percent of the local population,” it’s amazing, how much sarcasm a phone line can convey (or maybe that’s just Yugyeom). Kunpimook glares at the ridiculously extravagant chandelier hanging from the foyer ceiling, casting annoyingly brilliant rays of light everywhere like a girl tossing flowers as she skips down a street. “Face it, you’re just weird.”

“I’d like to see you come to Thailand,” the older man threatens. “I’ll force feed you tom yum and phat ki mao noodles.”

“Scary,” Yugyeom says drily, and Kunpimook scoffs as he gets in the lift, tapping his wallet against the smooth black scanning panel above the buttons, before the lights beside the buttons to the top levels light up as he gains clearance. He presses the top one, barely having to look at it with the number of times he’s done so. “I suppose I should be afraid.”

“You should be,” Kunpimook shoots back. “Very afraid.”

“We’re talking about the idea of you feeding me, right?”

Kunpimook swears in Thai. It bounces around the sides of the empty elevator, and Yugyeom laughs again, longer this time.

“I get to choose where we go next time,” the Thai native grumbles, as the lift ascends silently, numbers blinking by on the LED display at an impressive speed, albeit one he’s already used to. “I’ve had my fair share of weird food here.”

“Alright, whatever you say,” he can almost see the younger man raising his hands in mock surrender, the beginnings of a snide grin on his face. “Let the foreigner choose the food.”

“Well the foreigner obviously has to do so when the local keeps bringing him to eat cow stomachs.”

“That was one time, and I’ll have you know makchang is a delicacy here.”

“It’s a cow stomach.”

“You eat flower buds.”

“Kaeng dok salae is a-…” Kunpimook begins indignantly, but Yugyeom cuts him off with a low cuss and a muttered call you back, before promptly hanging up. The older man swells a little, preparing his crushing comeback when Yugyeom does call back, and heads out the elevator the moment the doors open.

He’s painfully reminded of the fact that light nearly blinds him every single time he steps out of this elevator (probably on purpose). The top floor of Wang Corporation’s HQ building simply reeks of grandeur, not in a particularly bad way (especially when you know part of this grandeur might just go to you) but it’s enough to make Kunpimook want to stare every time he comes over. His shoes are silent against the deep carpet as he walks through the corridor, sunlight pouring in through the glass pane walls illuminating the place with a concise and calculated beauty.

Jackson had had Parisian and English architects come over to redesign the place a little after taking over most of the reins from his father, and now the place looks stylish, the cream of the crop when it comes to modern interior design, everything both prettily tasteful and purposefully minimalistic. Even the people.

(Especially the people.)

He rounds the corner, running through Jackson’s text in his mind to meet outside his office to run through one of the showrooms before they’re launched, before halting dead in his tracks.

His phone buzzes, and he picks up, deflating a little in weary annoyance.

“Sorry, Jaebum-hyung was calling, wanted me to-…why? Hey, is something up?”

Kunpimook casts a distasteful glance at the noticeably empty seat at the table in front of Jackson’s office, placard embossed with Choi Youngjae, Secretary neatly set out in front of the computer, currently switched off, and glances at his watch impatiently. He looks reluctantly in the direction of the office, wincing when it’s proven just how useless these apparently soundproof doors are.

“No, Jackson just told me to see him, and now he’s-…” he rolls his eyes. “Busy.”

“Busy?” Yugyeom echoes. “But if he told you to see him it should be alright then, right?”

“Busy,” Kunpimook stresses, doing an about turn and decisively walking away from potentially permanent eye damage. He’s had enough of it to last him a lifetime, if he’s to be honest.

“Ah,” Yugyeom understands surprisingly fast. But then again, considering Jaebum’s relationship with Jinyoung, it shouldn’t be very surprising at all.

“, and I just wasted half my lunch hour, too,” Kunpimook mutters, reminding himself to fire off a text to Jackson as soon as possible (which will probably go ignored, at least for the next twenty minutes or so). “I wish he’d stop getting at such inconvenient times, he’s got the whole day, why when I’m supposed to see him-…”

“You should just go in,” Yugyeom remarks. “Show him he can’t be so irresponsible.”

“Please,” Kunpimook says shortly. “I have, many times, let me assure you. And I bet Jaebum doesn’t tell Jinyoung to keep blowing him under the desk when you’re right there.”

“Ooh,” Yugyeom inhales a sharp intake of breath. “I guess it’s a foreigner thing.”

“Stop playing that card,” Kunpimook snaps irritably as he gets into the elevator, thinking about the extensive range of cafeterias in the complex and which ones he might be able to grab a quick bite from. “You’re just pissy about the cow stomachs.”

“Are you ever going to let that go.”

“No,” the older man grumbles. “You’d better have some really great meat barbeque buffet planned for tonight, because it doesn’t look like I’m going to get any lunch.”

Yugyeom laughs, breathy and amused. “I have a couple of places in mind.”

Kunpimook punches the button to go to the ground floor moodily, stomach growling, and slumps against the walls of the elevator, rubbing his eyes wearily.

“Could you choose the one furthest from the business district?” he mutters. “I need to get out of this place.”

The younger man’s voice is gentler when he replies, not in the way that suggests pity, but rather, a kindred spirit. “Sure. There’s a family diner about twenty minutes by cab from here. They have cute puppies that run around your feet when you eat.”

“Puppies sound good,” Kunpimook says weakly, as he exits the elevator, before walking out of the building towards the café, for a cup of coffee, at least. “Seven-thirty?”

“On,” Yugyeom replies, and for a moment there, Kunpimook wishes he could see the smile on the other man’s face as well as he could hear it then.

*

“We should do something normal,” Yugyeom’s voice is tinny over the phone but by no means any less exciting. Kunpimook leans back in the office swivel chair, twirling a pen in contemplation. Yugyeom doesn’t often call during office hours, but he’d assured him that his supervisor wouldn’t complain when Kunpimook had expressed his concerns. Being Jaebum’s close cousin gave him a lot of benefits around the company, apparently.

“Define normal.”

“You know,” Yugyeom sounds like he’s shrugging, though Kunpimook knows he’s being anything but complacent. “Normal stuff. Go watch a movie. Walk in a park. Not dress like we’re going to a funeral.”

“For the dressing part, that’s really just you, okay, I happen to have this thing called style,” Kunpimook preens, turning for a moment to check his reflection in the little mirror he props on top of his logbooks.

“You could give me lessons, then,” Kunpimook can hear the grin in Yugyeom’s voice. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Normal stuff,” Kunpimook echoes, tapping in a couple of experimental numbers into his spreadsheet and making a face when they don’t tally. “I don’t mind.”

“Saturday afternoon, movie?”

Kunpimook squints a little at the computer screen. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Annoying,” Kunpimook grins. “And you’re on. Need any help picking what to wear, you big baby?”

*

Movie ends up, ironically, being the most ridiculous romcom Kunpimook’s ever seen, which he’s sure had probably brought his IQ down a few digits, but they both enjoy it, nevertheless. It’s nice, seeing such stupid people for once, after months of being on their toes around fatally capable men and women.

Kunpimook meets Yugyeom near the entrance of the cinema and vividly remembers thinking he looks like an elaborately crafted piece of background. A very attractive, elaborately crafted piece of background. His dark hair had fallen, loose and soft, into his eyes as he observed the movie timings, and Kunpimook had resisted the urge to reach up (for Yugyeom stood almost half a head taller than him, especially now that Kunpimook had ditched the insoles) and run a hand through it to determine just how nice it might feel.

Yugyeom blends in perfectly with the movie crowd, not an accessory or a word out of place, and Kunpimook feels a little awkward next to him, though he’d taken the time to think over his outfit carefully that morning, a soft fitted turtleneck in a light wooden brown and dark jeans. But then-…

“They say bronze suits a really specific number of complexions and skin tones,” Yugyeom says out of nowhere as he’s ordering the tickets, not bothering to listen when Kunpimook insists that he’ll pay this time, merely saying he’ll have loads of future opportunities to foot the bill.

(And Kunpimook learns much later, through countless bouts of trial and error, that in the mess of riddles Yugyeom somehow manages to pass off as his vocabulary, Yugyeom had just said he looked nice.)

So here they are now, shoulder to shoulder on a freezing park bench, idly eating ice creams (don’t question the logic, accept it), watching the world fly by in a whirl that’s both a little sad and a little funny.

“How well do you think that movie will be received?” Yugyeom prods at the peppermint chocolate chip ice cream thoughtlessly, and Kunpimook watches him dab away a viscous drop that hangs over the edge of the plastic cup, previously threatening to fall.

“Don’t know. People love the whole idea of cathartic romance, but if you ask me, that was a little too explicit,” Kunpimook shrugs. “No one likes an ending as closed as that.”

“No room for imagination,” Yugyeom supplies helpfully, and Kunpimook nods, ever on the same wavelength. “But it might surprise you that people nowadays don’t have a lot of that.”

“True,” Kunpimook acknowledges thoughtfully. Then, “maybe it’ll be a box office hit after all.”

Yugyeom makes a face. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.”

“You were the one who said-…” Kunpimook starts to laugh, elbowing Yugyeom in the ribs, and their ice creams wobble dangerously.

“It’s starting to get cold,” Yugyeom says suddenly. “What time is it?”

“Almost six,” Kunpimook wrinkles his nose, pushing his sleeve aside to check his watch. “That movie took long.”

Yugyeom cranes his neck to look over their shoulders. “You know, I don’t live too far from here,” he says, turning back with a boyish smile. “I don’t suppose you’d like to come back for dinner?”

And Kunpimook lowers his ice cream, regarding Yugyeom with a Very Suspicious look. “Just how much of this did you plan exactly?”

Yugyeom blinks innocently. “I think I happen to have just enough at my apartment to make something substantial for two- by coincidence, of course. I hear you like Thai cuisine.”

Kunpimook’s smile is a little annoyed, but mostly flattered.

*

Yugyeom’s studio apartment isn’t quite what Kunpimook had expected, in the nice sort of way. It’s contemporary, for sure, polished and neat, but there’s something about the airiness of the place, the windows that open into a gorgeous view and bright, white walls, that make him feel calmer.

Kunpimook wanders while Yugyeom putters around the compact kitchenette, observing the mantelpiece above the glossy LED television and its many tiny figures and mementos, like a teaser to Yugyeom’s life beyond what he knows of the man now.

To his disappointment, there aren’t any pictures of his youth, no junior trophies and certificates though, like all evidence pointing to the fact that Yugyeom existed before he turned twenty-one had been systematically eradicated from this household. He wonders if Yugyeom had done it on purpose, before deciding that it isn’t his place to ask.

(A while ago, he wouldn’t have cared. He wonders too, what’s happened in the short span of time to make him change his mind.)

The smell of something familiar (in a nostalgic sort of way) wafts out the kitchen, just as Kunpimook rounds the edge of the coffee table, and he’s about to go in and ask if he can help in any way when he spots a book, hard backed and a little worn, tucked under one of the cushions on the plush leather sofa.

It’s The Great Gatsby, and it surprises Kunpimook that this version hasn’t been translated into Korean. Sure, that one experience at the restaurant had enlightened him to the fact that Yugyeom could, in fact, speak English, but confirming a reservation was one thing, and appreciating classic literature was another entirely.

“You know, I think this dish would be a lot more credible if you helped,” Yugyeom appears at the doorway to the kitchenette, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and notes the book in Kunpimook’s hands in partial surprise. “Oh, I didn’t realise…” he takes a rather puzzled look into the bedroom. “Hadn’t realised I left this out here.”

“I’m sure you’re doing fine,” Kunpimook replies absently, sinking into the couch to flip through the book leisurely. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yugyeom make as if to walk over (to protest, perhaps?) but he eventually decides against it, heading back into the kitchen with that same indifferent air he always carries about him.

Kunpimook’s not big on reading, per se, but The Great Gatsby had been a classic, of sorts, even back in Thailand. Personally, it’d been one of the literary challenges he’d undertaken as a boy, when he’d been hell bent on getting out of the country in search of a better life if it killed him. Looking back now, it’s like a quiet notch in his belt, and in that sense the book holds a bitter sort of satisfaction for him.

He stops flipping when he gets back to the start of the book, and notes, for the first time, highlighting, that had been done in fading, but nevertheless rather neat, indigo. He frowns, reading through the line in question briefly.

In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

Something makes him smile- he’d liked that line too. But then he reads on, and bit by bit, something seems to open up to him, something hidden between the lines, like they’re written in invisible ink, in the careful script of a man with eyes that could see through the world and out the other side.

-and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men-

-for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions-

He flips on, scanning briefly through other quotes of roughly the same meaning, until he stops, because the highlighting’s changed. It’s in lilac, now, and the ink is fresh, like the lines had just been marked out recently.

Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

It’s an observation, he remembers, that Carraway had made about Baker, Daisy’s friend, in explanation of his out of the ordinary first impression of the woman. And the more Kunpimook flips on, the more lines in lilac he sees, scattered amongst those older ones in blue, almost reverently done, even, so as not to smudge it. First in faded pink:

At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others-

Then in lilac:

-then it was something more. I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something—most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning—

There’s a blot at the end of the highlighting, here, like the pen had lingered on the surface of the paper for too long as the reader contemplated if he should highlight the next line. Instead, he’d bracketed it in pencil, soft against the worn pages of the book.

(and one day I found what it was.)

“If I kill us both later, you’re taking responsibility,” Yugyeom calls out, and Kunpimook reluctantly puts down the book, walking into the kitchen grumpily.

“Alright, step aside,” he nudges Yugyeom away from the saucepan, and the man moves aside obligingly. It’s a testament to how good he is at their job that he fades into the background so quickly Kunpimook almost doesn’t notice him leaving kitchen later, under the pretence of setting the table.

So, as expected, when he exits the kitchen again after the food’s done, the book is gone, and all traces it had ever existed on the sofa erased.

(The food hadn’t even been in trouble when he’d come in.)