Butterflies / part 1

Jongin wasn’t sure when it began, when he first felt something moving inside of him, butterflies or worms or other insects crawling up and down his intestines. It felt odd, almost as if they were eating away at his flesh. At times, the sensation made way for emptiness, a hole where something should have been solid, carved out in his stomach and chest. As if, something indeed was taken away from him, but no matter how much he tried to list what possibly could have been stolen from him, Jongin never had a definite conclusion.

Every time Taemin grabbed his hand. Every time Jongin felt the heat of his skin, close enough to observe the color of his eyes shifting with the light, enough to admire the curve of his lips. Every time Taemin simply existed around him, the space inside of him filled up. Shy at first, occupying space the size of a small ball that bounced up and down in a constant rhythm. It increased the more Taemin was around him, making Jongin uncomfortable, the mass extending beyond and almost bursting through his chest.

Then, when Taemin did a little thing – touched Jongin’s cheek, laughed at one of his stupid jokes or simply stood too close to him again – the mass imploded and, again, he felt that gap form inside of him, with hundreds of butterflies flapping their wings and knocking against his ribcage and back and stomach and the inside of his throat.

And Taemin wouldn’t know.

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Jongin recalled the first time he felt different about Taemin.

The other had always been his best friend, no questions asked. Ever since they were kids with nothing but fantasy in their heads, Jongin could not think of a day not spent with Taemin. They had too many sleepovers to count on his fingers and their parents had to plan all of their trips and such around the boys’ needs, because if Jongin left for too long, Taemin would end up facing the floor and complaining all day long that Nini left him. Jongin too, if he was stuck for more than a week at the countryside, in the mountains or seaside (even though Jongin loved the seaside as much as he loved dinosaurs), he would whine about Taemin this, Taemin that. Sometimes, Soojung slammed him over the head, his mother yelled to stop arguing and their father calmly pulled over the car, turned around and gave them the look.

The twins were terrified of the look.

When Jongin was 13 years old, the hole inside of him began with a crack.

He blamed hormones. His voice had been deepening and he had been growing taller, after years in which Taemin towered above him. He became stronger, his body more defined and the urges that washed him at night or morning or randomly throughout the day were hungrier, gods that demanded a sacrifice to let him live.

Taemin was late that day. They were supposed to go to the arcade after school. Jongin had been saving up, so he could catch one of the Pokemon plushies that you could only get at that specific arcade, and Taemin promised to help him win some games, so they could earn enough tokens for the toy.

But Taemin hadn’t arrived at their spot.

Jongin first thought that he got in trouble since they had a tendency to take their jokes too far. He landed several times alone with the homeroom teacher for a disciplinary session, but quietly writing and studying for two hours in his notebook hadn’t really worked.

Instead of running back into the school building, Jongin searched the yard first. He knew Taemin often stopped and joined a match of football.

He might seem timid, but Jongin knew that Taemin made friends easier than he could. Like Taemin had some kind of magic wand instead of his little finger, wiggling it and creating relationships in the blink of an eye. Jongin had always wanted to be just as social, with just as few words as Taemin, but he sometimes thought he was too cold for anyone to want to know him better, too blunt other times.

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