In summer, in hot, sweltering summer, by the cracking of waves on rocks of the shore, people who found themselves landlocked in an oceanbound land, people who looked to the waterbody like caged animals looked through the glass to freedom.

Like citizens had grown accustomed to polluted air somewhere far else, or to emerald rolling hills in warm tropical lands, the people of Wonwoo's native town had gotten used to the ocean air, and few ever appreciated the carbon sink like foreigners did.

They woke up, swooped their curtains aside with a flourish, and the first thing they'd notice were the seagulls cooing instead of roosters or the cerulean sky. Few awoke to inhale the air devoid of carbon monoxide, smile at the motion of the jaded waves and knew they were where they truly wanted to be.

It was a small town; tourists came and stayed for at most four days - their biggest attraction was the ocean, after all. Natives saw the waterbody as simply a source of income, a way to live through life and while away the timeless days.

But even fewer ever looked toward the sun disappearing behind the horizon and yearned to escape where the star had gone; they wanted something the town couldn't offer, the natives had dismissed and shaped the rules of their little society.

Days had passed in a blur - five, in total. Wonwoo had crossed them out and hoped, abjectly, that like the ink that covered the numbers on the calendar, his depression sank deep with lost time.

He was at crossroads: choosing to believe in what he was going to do next. He felt at loss, because while one voice wavered, the other stuttered. One plan was safe, but too much; the other detrimental, harming both parties.

But if he chose to stay home (the safe plan) and slowly toss to the flames all his ideas for future dates like where to go or what to eat, he'd be struck with a lingering thought that maybe he could have changed something if he went with the other plan.

If he chose to lock the door to his room and ignore his mother's warnings, shredding photographs and threatening himself to forget how it would feel with Mingyu's lips on his, he'd be chased by the dread of a want he didn’t dare to execute.

Plan one was safe; a win-win situation for all. Nobody gets hurt, nothing changes, Wonwoo continues being a shut-in imagining what would've happened if he could get Mingyu to like him back.

Plan two was walking on a tightrope; you could lose, or you could win, too. Wonwoo could come back, heart harder, eyes squinting till they were just slits from trying too hard not to cry.

Or he could come back, smiling, at least with hope b in him again, possibilities of their friendship rekindling floating in his mind. Plan one was easy; success was swimmingly earned. Plan two was difficult; success could come propelling or failure could go tumbling.

Like on a radio, as with the same song playing again and again, Mingyu's lilt echoed throughout the room. Wonwoo murmured Mingyu’s words to himself, hoping to get rid of it, but they bounced off walls and came back at him stronger.

He rummaged through the wooden drawer, the particular one he saved for all Mingyu's gifts. Sixteen gifts for eight years was an insurmountable amount, one Wonwoo was grateful for since he could no longer receive any.

There was the insect encyclopaedia, a funny artwork piece of the two by the bench Mingyu painted, the first cup he melded from clay he claimed was ugly but presented it anyway, the photograph of forget-me-nots he took on a road trip.

Wonwoo recalled calling Mingyu stingy for not buying a souvenir instead, but deep down he was more than happy he received anything at all. Mingyu would scoff and reply haughtily that he wouldn't go out of his way to give Wonwoo anything, but the next occasion he unearthed something special he gave it to Wonwoo again.

Wonwoo joked that he'd throw it away, and Mingyu would be horrified, then he'd laugh as Mingyu tried to snatch it back.

When he reached home, however, it was the only thing he thought about, even before food.

He had attempted, albeit diffidently, dialling Mingyu's number several times, but all went through to voicemail. Given it was three in the morning, Wonwoo told himself Mingyu wasn't awake, but he knew six hours later when Mingyu checked his phone he wouldn't call him back. So he pulled the phone cord out, telling himself to focus, but a few minutes more and he'd plug the cord back in to dial again.

What frangible will, he thought to himself, to want another reality so badly you lose yourself in the current one.

For the nights in which a goal was obscurely seen, his mind was a tangled string, reaching a dead knot that he slowly began to hate. He didn't want a brain. If he didn't have a brain, he didn't have to think so hard.

For the nights in which his best friend’s voice was scathing rather than soothing, his mind was a two part machine, the left side agonising while the right persevering.

He heard it everywhere in the room - in the mechanical ticking of the clock, or the thumping from upstairs, or in the neighbouring dog's howling. Little, cursory objects became significant, how they played a part in he and Mingyu's relationship. How stationery on Wonwoo's cluttered desk was lent to Mingyu because his best friend was dense and forgetful, often leaving what was most important for school at home.

How Mingyu had teased Wonwoo about the polka dotted socks he owned and later led to a playful fight on the bed. How the colour of his walls was Mingyu's favourite colour, and it soon became Wonwoo's as well.

How he had realised that every paltry bric-a-brac in the room was somehow involved with Mingyu and they raced through like slides on a projector.

When the room was finally quiet in the night, Wonwoo cursed at summer, which derided him with its contrasting effulgence and sun. He wanted more than anything for rain, or snow, or a pitch black world to accompany him on his ride gyrating down to somewhere in abyss.

Then he pulled the duvet covers over his head, even though he had switched off the air-conditioning long ago and it was beginning to be as warm as outdoors.

He laughed at himself under the blankets. He was just a youth with overspilling affection for someone of the same gender, but he'd become such an abstract thing that even his childhood friend no longer saw him the same. He felt like one of those artists with complex paintings nobody, even expert critiques, understood, and was consequently frowned upon.

Wonwoo reckoned some things were simply too beautiful to be put in words.

Like last summer, when he and Mingyu sat at his porch, listening to the cicadas croak and droplets off of melting popsicles. They watched the neighbour's dogs play aggressively but lovingly in tense silence. Wonwoo often rooted for Red, the labrador with a long tongue that improved its appearance on a whole, while Mingyu rooted for Black, the other with long ears he found hilarious to knead.

The heat was otherwise the only thing they thought of, and their conversations that day only consisted of how they wished for powerful air-conditioning, an ice bath or frozen watermelon. As Mingyu had fanned himself with the woven fan shaped like a clam, Wonwoo stared from the side of his eye whilst pretending to be looking at the dogs.

He saw then why he had fallen for Mingyu in the first place - how at peace Wonwoo felt simply through the image of Mingyu sitting beside him, in a house that segregated them from the rest of the town, for hours on end with the one topic of a broiling temperature.

The air stilling, molecules slowing, heat settling on shoulders, and only the both of them, wasting time egging fighting dogs on, spotting boats in the ocean and spilling melting popsicle drops onto the wooden boards of the porch.

And in that, Wonwoo perceived, was the ineffable emotion of placidity he wanted to always feel.

When he started to perspire, above the wool sheets and below the covers, he'd start to feel his eyes swell a little from his excessive rubbing; then he'd rub them again, and eventually from perpetual exhaustion or stiff muscles, he'd fall asleep in the late hours of dawn.

When he finally awoke at lunch, he decided to proceed with plan two: cul-de-sac was his expertise, and testing the waters was so much better than standing by the shore, dry.

He stood by the house, painted a fading yellow, and he never knew it would come to the day where he would hesitate to knock the door.

Mingyu's family had a colossal garden, in comparison to the rest of the town's, which his father requested when they first moved in because of his mother's green thumb and love for all kinds of flora. When Wonwoo visited in their early years of friendship, he would always find her crouched near the soil, where she murmured intently about the hopeful extinction of pests and weeds. Mingyu often had to help with watering, or t, so Wonwoo was strung in many times as well, aiding the son in trivial jobs.

Due to his mother's obsession with foliage, Mingyu had developed a deeper understanding of all sorts of flowers, and this was extensively used in charming girls back in the day. Wonwoo chuckled softly at the memories of Mingyu's awkward comparison of the girl he was chasing with a plant his mother was growing. He stood at their front door, surrounded by the grass he knew Mingyu had taken care of, considering his mother often tossed him the job of caretaker of the common species.

Wonwoo's fist landed on the door timidly. It was do or die again, a ninety-eight percent die and a two percent do. Even he himself didn't quite understand his resilience, or his determination to execute something gods knew would never succeed.

Plan two was so flawed, so unsure that Wonwoo had already begun