1943
Incheon, Korea
Japanese Empire, WWII

~

Baekhyun whimpered as Chanyeol pulled himself off of him, then set himself aside the smaller on the makeshift bed on the concrete floor. Both men were overlayed in a minuscule dusting of sweat, their breaths filling the darkness and intertwining with the vague street noise and calloused voices in the distance. A heavy smog of defeat hung mockingly above them, haunting the lovers and forcefully wedging them apart. The scent of smoke lingered in the atmosphere like a faded romance burned too long and too full of angst into memory, burning their nostrils, and it caused Chanyeol to cough beside Baekhyun. He hacked profusely before settling back down. 

Despite the layer of depression suppressing them Baekhyun couldn't help but smile. He chuckled and stared at the water-stained ceiling. "That was great, Channie." 

Chanyeol glanced at him out of the corner of his eye warily, something like crystal sadness sparkling in his lunar-washed orbs. But before he could conjure a reply the smaller hiked himself onto his elbows and crawled over Chanyeol's body, hovering over him with a rascally grin on his face. "But I like the idea of me topping next time."

Chanyeol scoffed and allowed his beautiful eye-smile to grace his features as he gazed up at his one and only infatuation. "I'd rather be annexed by the Japanese. Or the Germans. Or the Soviets, than let you top me."

"But that won't happen Chan." Baekhyun said quickly, his voice tainted with an acidic hue of panic. "The war will end. The Japanese will leave us alone. We'll fly our own flag again," He nuzzled his nose into the crook between Chanyeols nose and cheek, "and you and I can love again."

Chanyeol didn't actually know what the Korean flag looked like; it was as foreign as Antarctica...if the South Pole even had a flag. It'd been outlawed for something like thirty years, replaced by that patronizing, red circle on white. It had in fact become increasingly more difficult to hold onto their Korean culture roots; Baekhyun and Chanyeol had never had the opportunity to learn about their culture unless it was in traded whispers and minimalistic hand gestures.

"You do realize that if we make it through this war we can't go to America, right?" said Chanyeol.

Baekhyun didn't reply. Before the war, before Pearl Harbor, they'd had naïve imagines of fleeing to America: land of the free, home of the brave. Surely they'd be allowed to love openly there, right? No more hiding and looking over their shoulders and sharing torturously chaste kisses in the dark...

But Americans no longer loved and welcomed the general Asian race, their flag of red, white, and blue waving patronizingly at them from afar, the Koreans already forgotten and on a long list of vendettas to avenge. They'd be alienated by their dark hair and shape of their eyes, and no one ever said that 'boys loving boys' was necessarily accepted in the United States. 

It didn't matter anymore. That dream was dead.

There was a deep bang! sort of sound just beyond the thin walls and both men froze in the dissipating echo, holding their breaths; if they were caught they'd be executed. Such intimacy between two males, an intimacy of the richest and most futile romance embellished in the beauty of two helplessly lovelust souls, was illegal. Sinful. Shameful. Wrong. Men do not love men, not like two children swamped up in their boyhood can hold hands as they skirt down the street into town, as if the two things are separate somehow. As if holding hands with your best friend as nine-year-olds and saying "I love you", was so much different than holding hands with the same person, only eleven years later saying "I love you", which would ticket you to beating, jailing, or execution.

Boys love boys.

Men do not love men.

After a steady minute of stifled heartbeats and the threat apparently passed, they both heaved a sigh and Baekhyun lowered himself to rest on half of Chanyeols long body, head using his strong, hot chest as a pillow. He traced circles on the taller's torso whilst the latter massaged Baekhyuns scalp and toyed with his hair absently. 

"Remember last summer?" The smaller muttered against Chanyeols salty, dirt-stained skin. The said man hummed. 

"What about it?"

Baekhyun went silent for a minute before he replied softly, and that moment allowed them both to reminisce blissfully in the engagements of the summer of 1942. A summer of wild apples picked and shared between the two hungry stomachs. A summer of sneaking away on hot afternoons in the rice fields, running and frolicking and playing under a golden sun. A summer of rural home cooking even in the midst of a war-torn world. Of ignoring the shotguns and pistols tucked away in the cabinets. Of waiting in anticipation to hear the motor-like beat of partridge wings during mating season. Of hiding in the tall grasses giggling like children as they shared passionate, elated, summertime kisses.

Baekhyun sighed. "My favorite day that summer- no, ever- was with you then. That one Sunday when Mr. Chang was sick and couldn't oversee, and all the other workers went to town to collect the rations and see the soldiers coming in. And you and I snuck out and ran to the farthest rice field. Remember it?"

"Yeah," Chanyeol breathed, "it was super hot that day."

Baekhyun nodded. "So we took off our clothes and jumped in the pond. Then we kissed. And we went around just playing in the grass and the woods the whole afternoon until sundown. And we kissed again and again..."

"And you pushed me out of a tree." Chanyeol interjected with a grin.

"Yeah, and I don't regret it." Baekhyun poked the other's chest before settling beside him once again. The taller closed his eyes and sighed, mumbling the other's name.

"Baekhyun...Baekhyun...Baekhyun..."

The said male didn't or try to stop him. Nowadays the name Byun Baekhyun was banned, outlawed. It was a Korean name, one the Japanese wretched out of his hands and dumped in a bag along with his Korean studies and Korean pride and Korean everything. Three years ago everyone had been forced to take Japanese names; it was illegal to address anyone by their Korean name or even speak Korean in public. Chanyeol didn't have the chance to call him by his real name anymore and now he savored the title on his tongue, filled his mouth with the word and let the syllables bloom in his vocal chords. 

Otani. That was Baekhyuns name now. Shimuzuki Otani.

Chanyeol was Taki in public. Thinking about it resurfaced a sickening memory in Baekhyun that had happened about a year ago, one that churned his stomach and tied his dark eyebrows together in angst. Chanyeol had allowed old habits to live on and had addressed Baekhyun by his Korean name in the open; unluckily directly in front of military police patrolling the street. The smaller recollected the image of the man he had secret love for being beaten by the Japanese soldiers. He remembered how he turned his back to Chanyeol and hid behind his Kanji books as the other's cries resounded following the hearty smack of beater-to-body, how he watched out of the corner of his eye with the other plethora of unfortunate bystanders as the most favored boy in town took a beating so heavy that he couldn't move from his bed for days. 

Strange how Chan would be forced to fight alongside those Japanese soldiers in the ensuing weeks.

The taller turned his head to observe the other lovingly, brow creased with uncertainty. 

"When are they sending you to Japan?" He whispered.

"Within the next few days," Baekhyun replied, hand moving to Chanyeols to grip it hautily, "hopefully I'll get a job like fishing. I don't think I mind that."

Chanyeol grunted. It seemed lately more and more Koreans were being ripped forcefully from their home country and sent to work in Japan, and it twisted his stomach knowing Baekhyun would have to leave his home too.

"But you're good in the fields." He tried to lighten the mood teasingly, knowing Baekhyun lived his whole life on a rice plantation.

Baekhyun shook his head. "Even if its wartime excess forced man labor I still want to try something new."

Chanyeol sighed and lidded his eyes, allowing Baekhyun to play with his fingers. "If Japan is going to instigate a war they can at least fight it with their own men, and take care of themselves."

"We are part of Japan now."

"No. I'm not Japanese, and now look, I'm now going to be fighting their battles..."

His words faded into the sound of a pack of heavy boots jogging in two/four time somewhere nearby as both of their eyes landed on Chanyeols military uniform in a heap beside them, the particles discarded in a hurry earlier that night. Baekhyun snuggled in closer to the other, wrapping his leg around him and saying, "What about you? When are you being deported?"

"Two weeks. The others in my regimen suppose we'll be going to fight the Soviets."

"Then you've packed your winter clothes?" Baekhyun said jokingly. Neither of them laughed. The silence was sharp, too harsh to swallow, so he continued, "Jongdae and I met the other day; I saw him in town."

Chanyeols brows creased in confusion. "In town? I thought he already went into the Imperial Army. He's old enough."

"No. They didn't force him into the army because of his cleft leg. His limp is too severe..." He awaited the acknowledgement from Chanyeol before proceeding, "Anyway, his sister was taken away to Japan. Min-Il, remember her? They said she was going to go to work but Jongdae got word that the Japanese lied and she was forced into ion. For the Imperial Soldiers...as comfort..." Baekhyun squirmed, his skin crawling. "...Chanyeol, you don't think they're going to do that to me, too, do you? Turn me into a slave?"

Chanyeols arms around Baekhyun visibly tightened. His cocooning embrace warmed the smaller and the latter nestled even closer with worry that the warmth may just disappear if he wasn't close enough to it.

"I doubt it, Baek. That's not something men really do. You'd be more valuable to them in the work force." His voice was hopeful, but vaguely unsure. It frightened the smaller, the imposing thought of sleeping with forty men a day. 

"Maybe it would be better if I was forced to sleep with a bunch of Japanese soldiers. Then I wouldn't be worked to death. The world is going to the dogs anyway- I've already lost my dignity. I have no honor. People always tell me that; I'm too loud, too immature, too reckless, too energetic. I'm a disgrace because I like men. If I die in bed with a stranger it would be one last smite to my own honor. One last blow to say, 'Yeah eomma, oppa, you were right. I am a disgrace'."

"Baek," Chanyeol shifted so he could watch his significant other and brought his broad hand to the other's face. "Don't think like that. What happened to my positive Baekhyun?"

"What happened to my optimistic Chanyeol?" Baekhyun retorted. When he was met with confused silence from Chanyeol he sighed. "Don't think I don't catch all of your 'when I die's and 'when I'm gone's and all that. You don't think you're going to finish out the war, do you?"

Chanyeol looked away. "You know what's been going on. The Japanese have been ordering suicide missions for their pilots, suicide charges for their soldiers, suicide bombers- "

"Stop saying that word." Baekhyun scolded. Chanyeol continued,

"...There won't be much of anything left afterwards."

"What about me?" 

There was no reply from the taller. Baekhyun's brow crinkled and his expression soured, he laid back with a puff of frustrated air and said,  "Whatever. Maybe you're right. Maybe we're all damned to hell and there's no point in loving."

"Baek- "

"What was that silence for huh, Chan? What about me?"

This was something Chanyeol had wanted to avoid; Baekhyun was sensitive and pugnacious because he was scared, and wouldn't back down if they got into an argument.

But Chanyeol was a realist: optimism was something that had been shot down along with every soldier that fell into the bloody dirt. Four years of world war was harrowing, and he knew that it was unfair to meddle and barter with his and Baekhyuns relationship and lives. He slowly sat up and brought his fingers to his temples. "I'm sorry Baekhyun. Maybe we shouldn't have done this."

His words were more painful than any atom bomb that could have rocked the smaller's soul; the suddenness of the situation felt nuclear and shattering. Baekhyun followed suit and sat up too.

"What's that supposed to mean? What is this, friends with benefits? What am I to you?"

Chanyeol turned to look at the other with eyes threatening to spoil tears. "You are the one and only love of my life Baek...but...I don't love you."

Baekhyun keeled backwards and scoffed, but inside his heart had just been smashed to pieces. He felt the shards sinking into his muscles and punctuating his intestines as they brought a sickly burn to his body. "What do you mean you don't love me?"

"I mean I can't say that I love you!" Chanyeol explained, exasperated as he faced Baekhyun and grabbed his white shoulders. "I can't say that I love you because if I do I'll never leave! If I say that I love you right now, at this moment, I would never be able to fight."

"Then say it!" Baekhyun screeched, slightly hushed. "Say it and never leave! We'll elope, hide away in...in..."

"They'd find us." Chanyeol breathed as he lowered his head, refusing to allow the other to see him cry. He was supposed to be the strong one, the one who tucked away his own emotions because they were just too complicated while he dealt with the withering happiness of his lover. They both knew Baekhyun was stronger. Chanyeol was too sensitive. But crying was something Baekhyun did more; his frustrations came out in tears. That's right...he only cried when he was angry or frustrated. Perhaps it was what made him stronger. "They'd kill us."

"I don't care. I'd rather die with you than see you leave and sleep with a woman I don't know about just for the sake of children. I'd rather die."

Baekhyun felt salty tears accumulate in his own eyes, and he didn't wipe them away. He grasped the other's arms, trying to see into his eyes. The glint of a tear on Chanyeol's face persuaded his own to fall, but he braced himself and forced them to stay.

"What we have here...is it nothing to you? Am I nothing to you?" In a pent-up moment of frustration he pushed Chanyeol's hands off of his shoulders, desperate rage building in his chest.

"You're everything to me!" Retorted Chanyeol, turning away. "That's why I can't say I love you; if I die, or you die, or either of us get married and have kids then I would have lost you. I want to grow old with you, Baek. I want to wake up every morning with you and kiss you on the lips. I want to be the one to make you smile and laugh. I want to be the one to make you happiest. I want to hold you on nights like this one when it's too cold for you, Baekhyun, and I want to pull you into my arms and warm you so you'd sleep fine. I want to pull down the moon and hand it to you as a little marble so you'd always have light, even in darkness. I want to start a hundred wars and then end them all so I could be your hero a hundred times over. I want to replant every iris in the world around our feet so you'd always be surrounded by the beauty you so much love. I want to sing to you a never-ending requiem so that your ears would never have any time to hear the bad things you so much dislike. I want to string all the stars in the universe together and give you one end of that precious string and keep one end myself so that no matter how many worlds apart we are we could always use the stars to guide us back together. I want to drain every ocean and then refill them all, one drop at a time, to give you a count of how much you are to me, my everything. Baekhyun, if I lose you I would have lost my everything."

Stunned silence precipitated down among the two. The sheer enormity of Chanyeols words sculpted a treasurable shield enclosed around Baekhyuns heart. A shield that would forever fortify his love.

The barrier...it wasn't to keep out bad wishes.

It was meant to keep in Baekhyuns love.

Perhaps the most selfish thing Chanyeol had ever done in his entire life he had done unintentionally just then. For words like his were scarce to come by and they emitted purity and sureness partnered in a weeping waltz of heartbreak.

His words would prevent Baekhyun from being capable of loving anyone else in the world.

Baekhyun stuttered and cleared his throat, clearly having a difficult time kindling his emotions and words correctly. Somehow, eventually, he whispered,

"Would you not fight for me?"

It felt as if the temperature in the room plummeted by the hundreds and chills rocketed up both men's bodies. It was a cruel question, cruel and torturous and they both knew it. That question could have been enough to tear Chanyeols spirit into two, that man whose spirit was benevolent and shy, vulnerable and all-too-lovely. Inside, Baekhyun scolded himself.

How dare you say something as wretched as that?

But he had to ask it. He didn't really want an answer, he couldn't imagine actually making Chanyeol answer that. He just felt the need to put the words out there. He opened his mouth to speak once again,

"You talk as if you've already lost me. Live now, Chanyeol, love me now." The tall giant was slow to offer any sort of reply. It was then that realization seeped into Baekhyun's bones and chilled his poor soul. He sat back on his legs in his kneeling position, tears beading up again. He whispered, "Unless you've already planned to be married."

Chanyeol scooted to the edge of the mass of blankets on the cold floor and reached for his uniform whilst hastily swiping away tears. "This was a mistake. I'm sorry."

He began tugging on his trousers sewn slightly too short for his long legs, and Baekhyun paused a moment to realize that this was really happening before grabbing one of the sheets and pulling it toward him frustratedly. "Sorry?" He hissed. "You say sorry and then you leave?"

"Don't make me feel worse about this Baek!" Chanyeol cried, still refusing to face his lover. "I still have expectations and dignities to uphold. I still have my honor."

"What, I dishonor you? Am I that bad?" Baekhyun's words dripped with heartbroken venom and his fists tightened on the blanket now covering his midsection.

"No! No, no, no! That's not what I meant. I'll fight. I'll fight and uphold my family honor, then pass it down through children. And you can't..." his voice hiccuped with a sob. "You can't give that to me."

"I thought you didn't want children."

"I don't, not now."

"Then damnit, Chanyeol!" He reached out to Chanyeols now clothed shoulder and forced him to meet gazes. The man's picturesque almond eyes were welted and shaded with a despairing, glittering set of tears, something Baekhyun had never seen before. "Th-This is your life. Don't waste it on someone that doesn't fulfill you. You know I love you, Chan. More than any war or act of honor could prove. I love you."

"Don't say that, please."

"I love you?"

"It's too dangerous. And I can't say it back."

"We're talking in circles now."

"Then let's not talk at all." Chanyeol snapped and he stood up, fixing his buttons as he faced away from Baekhyun so the smaller wouldn't witness his violently trembling hands and quivering chest. He then turned around and looked down from his tall stance unto his love; Baekhyun kneeling dejectedly, shivering in the cold, in tears, staring up at him with wide eyes. He couldn't have looked more pitiful in that moment, like a kicked puppy shoved to the side.

Baekhyun couldn't help but think, however, as he gazed up at Chanyeol that his goofy, playful, tender man was gone, suffocated, drowned out of existence and replaced by this cold silhouette of a soldier. Effable images of a bashful, worrisome, but confident boy who reigned the sun down from its position in the heavens just so he could weave a crown of light and warmth and grace it upon Baekhyuns head to show him how bright he was sifted through Baekhyuns imagination. Looking up at him from his submissive seat on the ground Baekhyun knew he'd never seen the other in such an imposing state: straight-backed, enshrouded in shadows, adorned in a dark army uniform and looking upon the smaller with burning regret and pity.

Chanyeol turned away and stalked towards the door as he ran a hand over his recently short-cut hair, grabbing the uniform gun that lay on the ground. Baekhyun gathered the blanket in his fists and stood as well, then hurried to catch the other at the door. He grabbed Chanyeols shoulders and spun him around again, and the tall man's eyes flitted abroad Baekhyuns frame. 

The sheet draped down his figure flatteringly, complimenting his light skin and slightly malnourished body even in the saturated post-midnight darkness...the elegant folds in the fabric mimicked the tears now painting his cheeks, emphasizing swollen, rosy skin atop his cheekbones. It was the first time Chanyeol had seen him cry out of sheer, gut-wrenching sadness. 

And it was his fault.

He was the one that made Baekhyun cry.

Any evident upset in Chanyeol's eyes had been paved over; his tears gone, face strictly composed and unwavering even in the face of his suffering lover.

Even in the agony that germinated deep under his skin.

And oh, how they suffered in that moment.

How their hearts both writhed behind their sacred, painful cages of ribs in agony.

"R-Really. Just think about this, about what you're doing. Please, Chanyeol." Baek choked out, his melodic and slightly raspy vocals skittering under the immense pressure of his unhappiness- cracking in the midst of Chanyeols name. 

"There's no reason to. If I think about it I'll want to stay; and I want to. Oh, dear god, I want to stay. I won't though, Baek. I won't. I need to move on. Baekhyun, even if you don't, I can't live in the summer of 1942 forever."

Baekhyun squeezed his eyes shut as his stomach did its own somersaults, swallowing sobs as tears escaped his weak barrier. "I don't want you to move on! I want you to remember me, and pity me, and long for me, and cry over me at night, and call my name when you're lonely, and never kiss another set of lips. And I don't care if that makes me an ugly, selfish person. If I have to wait till I'm an old man I will, because you have to come back no matter what."

Breathing, suddenly, became an unbearable feat. His intestines clenched and he could practically picture his body folding in on itself, imploding in that moment. He didn't have to check his left then to know that his heart pounded a million miles a minute, the back of his skull poising with desperate hopelessness. Baekhyuns throat swelled and he felt an urge to scream, but all that his lungs could manage were hoarse, short breaths. Tears fell quicker and his body quaked like poplar leaves shuttering in a fierce breeze.

Chanyeol gasped and his eyes exploded in a colorful array of emotion in the face of Baekhyun experiencing his first ever panic attack. He quickly leaned forward and pulled the other close, wrapping his hand around the back of Baekhyuns head and pushing Baekhyun into his chest, his other arm enfolding around his back.

They stood still there, Chanyeol shell-shocked with fear and guilt every time he sensed the smaller tensing for another wave of trepidation. Eventually Baekhyuns tremors halted and he spent several minutes burying his nose deeper into Chanyeols clothes, inhaling as much of him and his euphoric, otherworldly scent as he could. The tall man simply had an aura that could calm others without him needing to so much as lift a finger. That was his magic.

As Chanyeol pet Baekhyuns head he whispered, voice low in an attempt to conceal his own distress,

"You'll never be ugly or selfish. Not to me. For I am yours. And you won't have to wait till you're old; I'll come find you when the war is over."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

"You promise you'll survive?"

Silence was the only, deadly reply.

Chanyeol blinked a few times, then gently released Baekhyun from his arms reluctantly before he tucked his hand into the pocket inside his coat and fished out a silver watch. He placed the little trinket gleaming with unrealized propriety in Baekhyuns long fingers and said full of morose, "You can use it to keep track of how much time will have passed. Hopefully you won't have to count too long. I don't think I could forgive myself if you had to wait until you were an old man."

"Chanyeol..."

"I'll come back for you." He took a step closer to Baekhyun, their bodies practically touching; the only thing between them was a haughty shudder of a breath quaking under the sheer force of the love ignited and dancing and vibrating between the two. "When the war is over I'll come find you. I will."

"Chanyeol..."

"Baekhyun."

The smaller looked up into those beautiful, fiery eyes, a stray tear slipping out of the corner of his own. "Saranghe."

Chanyeol's eyes were wide with despair, taking a long and utmost precious moment to examine every illuminated morsel of skin and crystalline piece of the man he had fallen into completely, and he suddenly attacked the older's mouth fiercely, passionately, desperately, as if lost and unable to find peace. He collected Baekhyuns thin body toward his own, pressing them together and holding him so tightly as they shared that final kiss, as if he could make the world around them collapse if he fused them into one.

Chanyeol separated first, Baekhyuns eyes still closed as the fervent feeling of Chanyeols silky, moist, salty lips pressed madly but artistically against his own still lingered in the soft touches of the air they'd just breathed. He wanted to kiss him again.

His eyes opened though when he heard the click! of the pocket watch: Chanyeol had started the mechanized timer, the numbers flying as the thing began counting the seconds.

One silenced moment: their foreheads touching, one of Chanyeols hands in Baekhyuns and the other cupping the back of his neck, the last time the two bodies ever touched. 

And then he was gone.

And Baekhyun was left

to count the seconds

in silence

alone.

~

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