Jinki had watched Minho mature into a fine young man, he figured.
When he was sixteen years old, Jinki’s parents had relocated, to a sunny suburb away from the prying eyes of the gated country communities, and closer to the pulsating heart of the city that fed each vein of the country in morsels. They'd relocated for they'd lost interest in the detachment of country life; raising chickens and embarking on arduous commutes for school and work was wonderful if one had the patience, but, as they'd aged, Jinki’s parents had certainly abandoned such a trait. They were curt-tongued and spun yarns a mile long to avoid the judgement of their sparse neighbours, and Jinki himself had become lonely, secluded, hauled in his room all day for he had nobody to meet if he wanted to, and the only buses that ran in the city’s direction went early-morning and late-night, inconvenient and expensive. Life was dreary, life was vapid, life was empty.
These tainted glasses were addressed however as soon as Jinki’s parents mobilised their initiative. They were smart folk, Jinki had believed, with degrees in psychiatry and medicine – where Jinki had inherited his academic abilities from, no doubt. Every drop of grief in their withering bones was assuaged as soon as they decided to sell-up and ship-out and throw the rampant chickens at the neighbours for them to take care of. They'd moved out, and Jinki had been, uncharacteristically, excited.
The transition from country to suburb had been an uncomfortable one, and it was in this transition that Jinki first stumbled across Choi Minho. The countryside was a beautiful place, yes, but oftentimes a barren one, and Jinki saw this no more than in the longevity of his days out of school. Though helping his father around the home, Jinki was too uneducated to lend a hand in his father’s genuine workplace (the city-hospital), and his mother required little assistance as a psychiatric nurse also, and so most holidays would have consisted of Jinki staring plaintively out of his window, willing the trees to move like Tolkein’s fantasies, or the grass to swamp the gravelled yard. His family had moved home in the summer months, and so it had been on vacation that Jinki had been tugged into the pristine little suburb, his surroundings new and unfamiliar.
Though he had little else, the one thing Jinki did have – and subsequently took for granted – was a bountiful expanse of privacy. He could leave his curtains open at night and not one soul would be present to peer in, and he could sing around the house loudly, for nobody but his parents could hear him. However, in the suburbs, he soon found this to be quite the contrary.
One evening – three weeks after he'd moved in – Jinki had left his window open. His parents had been out, at work, and he'd been abandoned to make friends with the neighbours as his mother had so put it, which in Jinki’s eyes meant sleeping or eating or playing his old guitar. He wasn’t making friends with others so much as himself, and had grown so absorbed in his own company that he'd completely forgotten that he'd left the double-glazed window of the living room open. As he'd strummed away at his cheap guitar, fingers already piercing from plucking the tightened strings, he'd hummed a few distant bars to a few distant melodies, and it'd soon turned into a song, for Jinki liked to write them, occasionally. When he'd raised his head, he'd been surprised to see a young boy staring at him from the pavement outside, eyes widened and ears pricked.
Jinki had stopped immediately, and the young teenager had scampered away.
It hadn’t exactly taken Jinki long to find out who the boy was, and nor had he stressed over it either; his embarrassment was an ephemeral thing that dissipated quickly, like the dissonant notes of an out-of-tune guitar, and so in turn his curiosity was limited. Despite this, his mother had a mouth that traded gossip and scandal like most traded small-talk on the weather and politics, and she'd spent no time in divulging everything she knew about her neighbours to Jinki, who was usually the only one around to listen.
“A family a few doors down have a young boy, near your age,” she'd commented briskly one day, whilst efficiently cleaning down the fireplace – for that’s what Jinki’s mother had been, efficient. Amidst a plume of dust, she'd elaborated, “Choi something is the father’s name. He's some football coach for some team somewhere, or something. I heard his son is in the local under-16s football team. That'd do you good, Jinki, football.”
Jinki had just nodded, an ignorant adolescent only angered by his mother’s snide remarks. Jinki was perfectly content in reading his plethora of graphic novels and scratching the basis of a new song into his many, many ring-bound notebooks. The mud and angst and competitiveness of sport appealed to him little, for he believed sportsmen were often convoluted or arrogant or over-confident and keen. They weren’t his type of people, not at all.
Though he'd seen Minho around occasionally – around meaning as a shadowed face peeking through the window of a car or the tall, lanky figure helping out elderly neighbours with their lawn-mowing and dog-walking - Jinki hadn't had any interaction with the footballer, not for upwards of a year. The footballer had become of little interest to him and Jinki’s fascination with the suburbs was spent on how green the grass was and how blue the sky was and how the white picket fences aligning each house were reminiscent of the vulnerable, yet picturesque, houses in horror films. He didn’t care for the footballer, didn't need to.
Didn't need to until the night of his father's fiftieth birthday.
Jinki's father had always been a polite man, but beneath the manner and grace that was befitting of a royal, there was a temper that raged fiercer than anyone's will to contradict it. He wasn't a bad man, Jinki assumed, just an over-wrought one, his long shifts snipping the string of patience that wound around his every action in public. Though he'd never raised a fist and never exacted physical pain, the mental anguish he handed Jinki was enough, and it was on this night that Jinki had most certainly been given enough. Birthdays in Jinki's house had always been a quiet affair - cake and presents and dinner with only the three of them present - and memories were fleeting, caught in photo frames and abandoned outside. Now that Jinki himself was eighteen, his age did not pine for parties or celebration, rather seclusion and disassociation. Despite this, he made a show for his father's birthday, to only be talked down upon amidst the fray of mood lighting and charred steak.
"You got yourself a job yet, Jinki?"
"No, dad."
"Huh, when I was your age I'd already had my third job by now, not that it affected my school grades, oh no. I worked hard."
"That's great, dad."
"That young boy down the street - what's his name, Choi Minho? Yes - I saw him out with a job. According to his mother, he's also got good grades and he's the school's athletic star. Something to keep in mind, Jinki."
"Right."
"You don't get anywhere in this world by playing your guitar all day, Jinki. Work. You have to work. This whole music thing - it's just a hobby, really. Focus on the bigger picture, son."
"Spare me the lecture."
"Spare me the attitude."
And on the conversation curtailed, until Jinki really was quite embittered by his father's remarks. Before the cakes and candles, he'd stormed out, brushing past his fretful mother in a fit of anger no imperatives could dampen. He'd slammed the front door behind him, descended the short path and then left the garden gate open, for, really, there was no need to close it.
Then he'd been alone.
It had been a beautiful night. The stars were cast between the over-bearing beard of the sky - the wispy clouds that held in the warmth of the land below it. It wasn't pitch dark yet, rather a subtle navy, that was cut through by the light emanating from the houses of the content, the families tucking into their routine dinner or drifting asleep on the couch as the television played their lullaby. Most buildings were shapes that morphed into houses upon his approach, and he wasn't cold, he was comfortable, his hoodie a soft reminder that he still had a home to return to, and would have to go there eventually. He walked a few minutes, before he was stopped by an unfamiliar voice.
"Hey, Lee Jinki, the doctor's son, right?"
That's how it had all started.
Minho was an optimistic guy if Jinki had ever met one. He built his life on the prospect that everything would be fine in the end, and that nothing bad could last forever, in contravention to the idea that it was nothing good. His eyes glinted as he spoke and he held a smile so endearing one couldn't help but be uplifted by it. He was tall, wiry, and with curls of long hair that seemed to breathe in the breeze whenever he so wished, and his uniform was of a training kit or a track-suit, never far from the roots of what inspired him: his sport. He'd been so very different from Jinki.
They'd both bonded over their opposite opinions. When Jinki said up, Minho said down, and when both men were parallel their courses normally diverged - not inwards, but outwards, so the possibility of ever meeting head-on in agreement was diminished entirely. Minho was two years Jinki's younger, and this annoyed the footballer a lot, for Jinki would often speak to him as if he were the inferior of the pair - much to the footballer's distaste. However, amidst this feinted arrogance and idiocy, Jinki had grown to appreciate the younger, to almost consider him a friend, until, one day, he'd returned home from school to find his mother in the kitchen, alone, with her head in her hands, enveloped by tear stains.
"He's dead, Jinki. Your father's dead."
Funerals were lonesome affairs. Those who speculated held faces marbled with grief, and though the graveyard was serendipitous, a stretch of vivid green grass that plateaued downwards towards the quietest of rivers, the serendipity went unseen. Jinki's eyes had been cast on how black the apparel of each guest was, because to wear black is to mourn (a concept he never understood, for black was a soulless colour if ever one existed) and it contrasted to their ashen skin like slate to a snowfield. People cried, occasionally, and flowers were laid on the coffin - roses, tulips, azaleas, posies - from hands that forgot how to care as soon as they'd bequeathed the gift. Though the sun kissed the headstone, there was no light in this death.
Jinki had seen Minho that day. Not at the funeral, for their families weren't close enough and it seemed to the Chois the thicker-than-blood gossip of the doctor's timely demise surpassed their door, and only visited on the day before the funeral service. No, Jinki had seen Minho at his house in the follow-up, where his broken family were obliged to serve tea and coffee and little traybakes on silver platters, as they had done the days preceding the funeral in the wake. Though most didn't expect Jinki to offer tea and coffee and little traybakes on silver platters, he did, for he was old enough to understand that death was a mistress none could escape, and that it had to enter his life eventually. With this realization came silence, however, and anger when he saw strangers in his home, his quaint suburban hideaway, discussing their father as if they knew him like Jinki had. To take respite from the scent of perfume that clogged his house's modern corridors and to disguise his dysphoria between the mid-winter chill outside, Jinki had exited his house, to the garden, hands in the pockets of his new suit. He didn't feel the nip in the air, nor did he pay attention to the army of cars that sat along the pavement as if soldiers to command. He just stood, stoic, and blinked hesitantly at the sight of the house opposite his.
In that moment, he'd felt a hand on his shoulder, a gentle hand that massaged cautiously and said no words. The strong hand remained there for a while as if providing the force that kept Jinki upright, and then it fell, and Jinki turned, and blinked up as Choi Minho stood before him, somewhat taller than he remembered. In likewise circumstance, the skiffles of snowflakes would have spiraled from the sky, but this was by no means the likewise. This was simple, this was life, this was the uneventful throes of Jinki's neighborhood. Minho nodded.
"So," was how he started it, eyes wide and posture statuesque as a car pulled away from Jinki's home, exhausted. "I got team captain."
Jinki had smiled then - smiled - and had allowed Minho to continue his ramblings about captaincy and the league play-off and how his father wasn't half-proud enough of him, and nor were his friends, for his friends were too busy battling each other for the attention of some fair-skinned girl with wrists that Minho found overtly small, smaller than a young child's. Jinki had nodded, and Jinki had listened, as the younger's velvety voice was all that resonated in the suburb. Minho's eyes had glossed over all he had addressed as he'd spoken, and the lilt in his tone told Jinki that, although Minho knew of the situations the elder faced, he didn't care, for the man he was talking to was still Lee Jinki, and, as such, he would treat him like Lee Jinki.
"You think I could make it big in football someday?" Minho had asked, lips twitching upwards at the very idea. Though the mid-afternoon light was weak and receding, it still framed Minho's features angelically, like the crescent of a moon would boast from the night sky. Jinki had nodded at the younger, and the younger had smiled, and it hadn't taken much more for Jinki to realize he'd accidentally fallen in love.
After his life had began its attempt to float back into routine - school, homework, music - Jinki noticed various cataclysmic changes in the structure of his world. His grades fell (this never would occur in tranquility, for Jinki was studious and intelligent) and he'd forgotten how to play his guitar and how to sing without creating but a mere rasp. His fingers would clumsily slip up the bridge of the instrument and would bow at the wrong strings, and he'd find his schoolwork to be littered in red marks and critical observations. It was his last year of school, his last year of examinations, but he'd fallen at the final hurdle, and this was aggravating Jinki, badly.
His mother also began to work more. She was widowed and state benefits allowed her some minor relief, but her toil was exacted just as brutally as a slave's, and it seemed no income could grace her doorstep past what substantiated for their over-priced mortgage. Jinki had began to look for work, but was dismissed wherever he looked for he was a student, inflexible with hours, and more qualified people would always apply. Though he tried to busk during the weekends in thriving shopping centres, few spared a penny, too absorbed in their own cosmopolitan enigma to console the bereavement of others. That in consideration, Jinki's mother had decided it would be for the best to move home. Each corner was a reminder, she believed, of their father's ever-brisk presence, and it saddened her, deeply.
Jinki wouldn't have minded the move were it not for Minho. The house wasn't what reminded him of his father, rather the sentimentality of their possessions, the old red armchair his father used to recline on and the family photographs of haphazard holidays and cosy Christmases, and so to abandon the dainty building would have caused him little distress. What was causing Jinki distress was leaving his befriended neighbour.
Jinki was young, and Minho was younger, and so he knew that it would have been unwise to believe the feelings that consumed him, that he would never find another as easily lovable as Choi Minho, but there was something about the younger he couldn't deny, couldn't mask behind his sorrow. He'd watched Minho in passing and had been struck in a daze of adoration, and when he spoke to Minho, the footballer seemed to be the only one who treated him as if he were human - not just a burnt-out shell in the aftermath of his father's passing. So long as Minho was around, Jinki forgot who he was, forgot what he was facing, and could simply live as if his life hadn't been split apart at the seams.
But when he moved, Minho was no longer around.
Jinki tried to forget about the younger in earnest. His new home - a squat, city flat only a few minutes from his mother's workplace - was cramped and claustrophobic. He hadn't understood before the peaceful freedom the suburbs had allowed him, but with his entire living premises the space of four squashed rooms and only one circumstantial window, Jinki knew the suburbs had been a much needed lifeline of joviaity and the ability to do what he pleased, when he pleased, with no other to concern him than the kind-hearted footballer. Disregarding his father's demise, it had been a good life. He didn't have it anymore.
As he grew up, he eventually moved out. Though Jinki's thoughts weakened painfully at the idea of leaving his mother alone, he knew he couldn't limit his own future to protect her. He had to study, get a job, earn a living - and, if he did all of that, maybe then he could return to his mother, with fortune enough to keep them afloat. So Jinki left for university, to study accountancy (because it seemed he had an inherent intelligence with numbers) and avoid the party lifestyle as much he could, for Jinki wasn't a party-person, he was a secluded person. Though his accommodation had been mundane, even more-so than the flat he'd lived in briefly with his widowed mother, Jinki had found things to be going well. His job as a cashier was tiring, of course, and it was a struggle to so much as hand in an assignment without even contemplating a high grade, but he'd found independence, and made several friends, such as Kim Kibum - the odd, artistic kid who couldn't keep his nose out of scandal and certainly didn't take long in finding out everything he could on the maths-freak Lee Jinki. Through this alliance Jinki also met a girl, the type of girl guys liked, with small wrists and a wide-smile, and he was considering on asking her out for a drink, because that's what people did when they liked someone, they asked them out for drinks. But Jinki's newfound life was rudely shattered.
Kim Kibum was most certainly an enigma of a person. Every thought he had was a candid one that transcended Jinki's ability to think rationally, and this profound attitude of his friend's was what led him to re-discovering something he'd lost and something he'd missed missing. Due to his easy-go personality and his happiness as infectious as a rash, it seemed Kibum was friends with just about everyone on campus; he charmed easily with a flick of his wavy black hair and his lips held the most dazzling of smiles, but, when one knew him, the intimidating aura he'd created with his sharp, model-esque features was dampened by the crazed lack of awareness he had over himself. He laughed loudly and joked with careless abandon and would on occasion flirt with unintentional glee, and this warmed the students of Jinki's university to him a lot. It had most certainly warmed Jinki. Therefore, on a bright, mid-spring afternoon, after Kibum's latest lecture - something to do with textiles and fashion and designers that Jinki was clueless about - the accountant-to-be should have foreseen who would be tagging alongside his best friend, should have known, for life was a coincidental thing, with mistresses more than death.
Jinki hadn't realised Choi Minho had attended the same university as he did. They studied opposing courses and Minho was a year below and the shear amount of students meant to find one was like tracking a wild animal in an endless savannah. Maybe he should have picked up on the recent success of their university's football squad, should have tuned-in to the stories of the endlessly talented new captain of the team, but Jinki had been too busy counting numbers and solving equations and availing of the quiet side to university life. The raucous of sport never had truly appealed to him, after all. However, as soon as he saw the all-too-familiar face, Jinki made a mental note to attend every match he could, to hold up banners and cheer as if infatuated with success, because he'd found Choi Minho again, and this meant more to Jinki than anything he'd ever studied. He forgot about the girl with small wrists, forgot about drinks and about losing himself in his subject. All Jinki could remember was a footballer with an endearing grin and eyes as wide as unblinking moons. All he could remember was Choi Minho.
Of course, Minho had a girlfriend. After they'd shared a memorable lunch together - Jinki and Minho awkwardly exchanging the past as Kibum sipped his cup of coffee cluelessly - Minho had departed, for he had a lecture to attend and would run late if he stayed any longer. Understanding that there was an inexplicable bond between the to-be-accountant and the footballer, Kibum had divulged everything he knew about the campus' most sought-after man. Jinki had nodded, chewing emptily on the edge of a mellifluous pastry, eyes never leaving the same spot on the rectangular table. He liked this cafe, it was a cosmopolitan one where the customers talked freely and the scent of coffee was wry in the air. Clean, polished, sparkling - a hive of happiness if one so had the concentration to hold it. As Jinki had swallowed the soft pastry, Kibum's voice had melded subtly with the humdrum of the cafe so that it was near-indistinguishable from it. Jinki was having a hard time trying to listen, for all that could breach him was the past.
"Hey, Jinki, are you okay there?" was Kibum's amiable attempt at dragging Jinki to the present, but when the elder simply nodded in response, Kibum understood. The past was a treacherous sea, a yawing boat atop the apotheosis of all things sentimental and valued, and to lose those things, those memories, and be confronted with them all as suddenly as Jinki had been with Minho was a hard reality to stomach. It was nausea when one needed it least, a shock that would take a while to rewire, and Jinki hadn't been ready for it, hadn't been ready at all. Jinki had always wondered if it was then that Kibum figured he loved the popular footballer, or if that epiphany had sprouted wings later in its development.
Minho had grown into a fine young man, JInki figured. They met occasionally and Jinki would pick up on the little things. Minho was mannerly, polite, apologized and thanked in an excess to the norm with a sincerity so kind most couldn't resist his caring approach. He understood how to talk to people and treated most as if close friends, so that the line became blurred of who he truly valued and who he didn't. Jinki had hoped Minho valued him strongly, but also knew if it weren't for the past their ties would have been weak. Minho was a busy man - football and history and his girlfriend enveloping his time - and as was Jinki - consumed by mathematics and his lethargic employment and trying to stop Kibum from prying into his secrets. Their paths crossed rarely, and this upset Jinki. Watching Minho with his girlfriend also upset Jinki, for she was beautiful and he was handsome and when they would walk by holding hands the bond between them was almost tangible. They were the envy of most, their relationship so perfect it was verging on fairytale, and Jinki found himself having to look away when Minho would plant a small kiss on her lips or a quick peck on her cheek, never far from showing her his affection. This embittered Jinki, this angered Jinki, but, most prominently, this saddened Jinki. Choi Minho would never be his, and he knew it.
Jinki seemed to graduate all-too-quickly. When university ended, he found his experiences to hang lowly over him as he fell nervously into the world of work. On retrospect, one would have thought Jinki to be a conservative student, though he was quite the opposite. In the final year, he'd grown accustomed to having a drink, or two, or three, and a one-night stand was never far from the playing field if he felt lonely enough. He'd severed his friendships (a one night stand having destroyed any dignity between himself and Kibum, for they'd 'accidentally' ed each other senseless and forgot until they woke up the next morning) and had become something akin to a lonely recluse. This attitude towards life was easily shaken, and he got a normal job, and returned to his mother and lived with her to help provide her income, and it was life and it passed.
He liked to watch life pass. It went by so quickly. In the midst of an event, one finds it quite long, quite arduous, quite stressful. The day of his father's death had seemed a year at the time, but on perspective now seemed just a second. This inconsistency with time scared Jinki, for he knew that it was fleeting. He barely remembered his past enough to account it sufficiently, and the only thoughts that spoke to him were those he couldn't shake, long-drawn scars in a timeline of bruises and cuts. The years preceding university had flashed with regrets by the dozen, and Jinki found himself merely racking up the count of all he should have done and didn't. He should have cherished his father when he lived and should have made the trees move like Tolkien's fantasies in the countryside. He should have graduated higher and pushed harder for a decent employment, but, most of all, he should have told Choi Minho he loved him.
Mid-thirties and Jinki was exhausted. He was unmarried, and his mother was dead, and he still lived in their dingy flat for he couldn't bare to leave it. The firm he'd worked for had gone bust and he'd found himself scratching the bottom of the barrel for any menial labour, anything to live off, anything to help. His back hurt and his lips were chapped and he had a strange ache in his right leg that he'd never suffered from before, and his skin was beginning to become crinkled, like parchment, and he wondered too if his hair would begin to grey early, like his father's had. Weekly he would visit his parent's gravestones and lower his head in shame, describe his fear at being the last of their family-line (for he was old now, and most women his age were already married with family-lines of their own to continue) and whimper pathetically over how lonely he was, how soulless. He sometimes drove by the countryside, to view their old family home, and, if feeling truly brave, he would venture into the suburbs and stand outside the now-empty house that had been his father's last stop. He remembered his childhood, did Jinki. It had been a secluded one.
One afternoon, Jinki had been driving home, and he flicked on the radio. He didn't know why he did it - normally, the static hiss of the car's radio drove him to insanity - but he supposed the silence was becoming too common, too over-bearing. As he'd listened to an ancient pop classic, he'd steered the car down winding roads, towards the city, the engine a low grumble of protest as he did so. The news had come on, and Jinki had listened, and Jinki had thanked God for the mistress of coincidence.
Choi Minho had become a professional footballer, and so people cared when he bust a ligament and was sent in earnest to hospital. Jinki hadn't kept up with sport, or indeed with Choi Minho, and had therefore been confused at hearing the distant name on the radio, about how the experienced footballer had become badly injured in a crash just a few miles east of the city. It wasn't threatening, however it was one torn tendon and three broken ribs too many for the career of a footballer, and so Choi Minho's future as a footballer hung in the balance. Not that Jinki was thinking of that at the time.
Jinki was driving to the hospital.
He was intelligent, Jinki, and figured the hospital Choi Minho would be at would be the one the accountant's father had worked at up until his death, for it was closest to the crash-site. Getting to the hospital was pain-staking, the stretches of traffic miles long, grid-locked in a vice so tight not even the rampant horn-blaring of angry drivers could subdue it. However, with patience, Jinki arrived, and Jinki entered the building sullenly, a man past caring about the vicissitudes thrown at him.
"Mr. Choi isn't taking any visitors at the moment," had been what Jinki was fed. The receptionist had regarded him with a look of detest, as if he were a fly her evening glass of wine. Her pointed nose stuck upwards in protest at his half-smile, as he tried his best to form a manner that would enable him to see Choi Minho, to see the man he'd never stopped loving.
"Tell him who I am, and he'll want to see me," was Jinki's determined response. He was fearful, for with Minho he knew what he would find; the footballer would undoubtedly be married to one of the most beautiful women, and would have a string of rosy-cheeked, appreciative children, giggling at his dad-jokes and clawing at him for the attention he so easily deserved. Jinki would be an intruder, and he was the type of man society frowned upon. Unemployed, unmarried, penniless, alone... Yes, the kind of man society frowned upon.
But not the kind of man Minho frowned upon.
The hospital held the scent of bleach that Jinki had long since forgotten about. His mother had died in hospital, crying in needless pain from her dim ward, which had been tightly packed with different forms of equipment to aid her deterioration into death, and with Jinki's silent crying. His mother had been given a vision before she died- by hallucinogen or God, Jinki had little idea - of her husband sitting by her bedside, her greasy strands of hair and whispering to her that It had been okay in the suburbs, it really had. At the time, this had stunned Jinki. Why the visage of his father would say such words about the house he'd died in was beyond Jinki, but he supposed it was his father's (or, his mother's) way of consoling her that everything wasn't as bad as she expected - that, even in death, one found clarity. As Jinki was allowed admittance to Minho's ward, he walked in absolute quiet, scared, confused and unprepared. It had been almost ten years since he'd seen the footballer, and a man changed extraordinarily in such time. He could have gained weight or lost it, could have changed his hair or kept it in those same brunette curls, could have grown up or allowed his immaturity to define him. Minho could have been an entirely different man, different from the fine young man Jinki had figured him to grow up to be, and this very thought was terrifying.
In the restraints of the cold, soulless hospital, Jinki took a deep breath and entered Minho's ward.
The first thing that struck him was the ethereal strands of light that filtered through the window, glancing off the white interior, that shone brighter in here than it had in the corridor. The minimalism of Minho's accommodation was a stark contrast to how Jinki's mother's had been. Her deathbed was littered in buzzing machines that measured heart-rate and blood-pressure and other pointless things that could never help to halt the inevitable. Minho's was almost empty but for the routinely features, and a table by his side, where an untouched meal sat. Jinki closed the door and stared at his friend from long-ago.
Minho had aged, but it was less noticeable than one would predict. His complexion was still youthful and his features still handsome and his hair was still curled in that brunette fashion, his taste having remained the same. Though his eyes still glittered, they were weary now, and Jinki supposed that maybe everyone lost the twinkle beset in their eye with age. Minho blinked at Jinki as if an irretrievable thought he couldn't quite place.
And then he placed it.
"Lee Jinki? The doctor's son? I thought they had meant another when they said you were coming."
Jinki shot a wary smile towards the footballer, nervousness already pulsing through him. Here, with Minho, he was young again. He wasn't in a dimly-lit hospital ward dressed in clothes that were years old, he was outside a quaint house in the suburbs, in a brand-new suit (a deep black, juxtaposing finely to his skin with the pallor of bone) and a strong hand was resting on his shoulder, asking about football and captaincies. As Minho waited for Jinki to say anything - for he was most certainly shocked by the elder's unscripted appearance so late in his life - Jinki was busy allowing his mind the freedom to explore what he thought he'd forgotten, to remember the man who hadn't featured for long in his over-drawn life, but had certainly devised an unexplainable impact.
"Not to be rude, Jinki," Minho started, propping himself up on the bed and clearing his throat, "but... Why are you actually here? I don't really get many visitors." He gave an abrupt laugh.
Minho's arms were still strong beneath his pastel-blue hospital gown, the body of an athlete ever-essential to his daily life. He scratched the back of his head, suddenly feeling quite out-of-place, and glanced at Jinki for any answer, scanning the depressed, depleted form of his past-friend as he did so.
"I just... Heard you were injured," Jinki mumbled, voice grated, palms clammy. He hadn't moved from the doorway. "I thought it could be a good opportunity to catch up."
"Hah, yeah, great opportunity," Minho joked sarcastically, "but I'm afraid from here I can't down a shot, if it's that kind of catch-up you're after." He grinned slightly, arms succumbing to the room's candid chill. Breaking his eyes from Jinki's, Minho cast his gaze towards the small window, the only insight to another world, detached from harrowed patients and empty care.
"No, I-I just wanted to see how you've been," Jinki tried, tilting his head slightly. He wondered how different he appeared to Minho, how withered.
"Well, I've been great," Minho answered, "no wife, no kids, three broken ribs and nothing to show for the fact I've spent the last ten years busting my off to gain, well, anything." Minho chuckled sadly, but seemed to catch onto himself as he noticed Jinki's wide-eyed gaze, struck into silence by the heaviness of what Minho had provided as a timeline. "Sorry," the footballer murmured, "I shouldn't be like that. Life has been fine, Jinki, really. How about you? I'm guessing you're a family-man by now, then?"
Jinki shook his head, regretful.
"It's just me," he muttered lowly, "and hey, at least you have a job." His joke was terse and neither man laughed, for they both knew that their lives hadn't gone according to how they'd wanted, and this saddened them greatly. From growing up together and drifting apart, their aspirations had seemed infallible. However, now, on the broken back of all the synthetic ideals and wasted dreams, the footballer and the once-accountant knew they didn't have many years left to make things right, not many to settle down and create a life worth dying in.
"Minho," Jinki spoke, quite suddenly (for he was a spontaneous man, and figured if he had the chance he may as well use it, for the consequences with trying couldn't be as bad as those without), "I love you."
Minho nodded.
At times, Jinki was a convoluted man; he spoke more than his mind was able and that could land him in the worst of situations, but Choi Minho somehow managed to strike him near-speechless no-matter how many times they met. Their words didn't have to be long, fabricated in emotion or dampened with flamboyancy. Their words just had to be. Neither man had to hide, and neither man had to care, and most circumstances allowed for this to pave an intricate relationship not even severed by ten years of distance and three broken ribs.
"Can you start loving me now?"
Minho his lower lip and rubbed an eye. He was tired - not of Jinki, not of the game, not of the hospital, but of life. He'd seen many spectacles and witnessed many hardships and lost what he should have held on to, should have held on to tightly. Minho believed himself to have grown up into a fine young man, but a fine young man who time-and-time again made senseless choices, such as not following Jinki from the suburbs and walking past him everyday without addressing what he truly felt. He regretted not showing Jinki the friendship Jinki had shown him, and he regretted dismissing the elder for a pretty girl with thin wrists and a wide smile and soft kiss.
Fine young men still had regrets, Minho supposed.
He nodded.
"Yes, Jinki. I can love you now."
•••
A/N OH MY GOD THIS IS e.e this is the most convoluted thing e.e it is so e.e i am kind of lowkey embarrassed but I spent time on it and someone really enjoys fluffy Onho, not that this is fluffy, really, but, like, idek e.e so, to that special (makes it sound like we're married or something omg) someone, I am sorry this is bad but I actually tried so hard like you can see the effort I swear TvT I tried x.x please enjoy otherwise *shoots self* (inspiration (or, not really, but song that links and has the same title bc yes)): The Suburbs ~ Arcade Fire :3
Comments