Jin stood at the crossroads between the cemetery on the north side of campus and the path to the lake on the south. It was early evening and the construction workers had gone home. Light sifted down through the branches of the oaks behind the gym, casting dappled shadows on the lawn that led to the lake. Tempting Jin toward it. He wasn’t sure which way to go. He held two letters in his hands.

The first, from Jungkook, was the apology he had expected, and a plea for him to meet him after school to talk it out. The second, from Taehyung, said nothing other than “Meet me at the lake.” He couldn’t wait to. His lips still tingled from their kiss last night. He couldn’t get the thought of his fingers in his hair, or his lips on his neck, out of his mind.

Other parts of the night were hazier, like what had happened after he sat down next to Taehyung on the beach. Compared to the way his hands had ravished his body not ten minutes earlier, Taehyung had seemed almost terrified to touch him.

Nothing could shake him from his daze. He kept murmuring the same thing over and over—“Something must have happened. Something changed”—and staring at him with pain in his eyes, as if he held the answer, as if he had any idea what his words meant. At last, he’d fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder, looking out at the ethereal sea.

When he woke up hours later, he was carrying him up the stairs back to his dorm room. He was startled to realize he’d slept through the whole ride back to school—and even more startled by the strange glow in the hallway. It was back. Taehyung's light. Which Jin didn’t even know if Taehyung could see.

Everything around them was bathed in that soft violet light. The white bumper-stickered doorways of the other students had taken on a neon hue. The dull linoleum tiles seemed to glow. The windowpane looking out on the cemetery cast a violet shine on the first hint of dull yellow morning light outside. All of it directly under the gaze of the reds.

“We’re so busted,” he whispered, nervous and still half asleep.

“I’m not worried about the reds,” Taehyung said calmly, following his eyes to the cameras. At first his words were soothing, but then he started to wonder about something uneasy in his tone: If Taehyung wasn’t worried about the reds, he was worried about something else.

When he laid him down in his bed, he kissed him lightly on the forehead, then took a deep breath. “Don’t disappear on me,” he said.

“No chance of that.”

“I’m serious.” He closed his eyes for a long time. “Get some rest now—but find me in the morning before class. I want to talk to you. Promise?”

He squeezed his hand to pull him to him for one last kiss. Held his face between his palms and melted into him. Every time his eyes flickered open, his were watching him. And he loved it.

At last, he backed away, and stood in the doorway gazing at him, his eyes still doing as much to make his heart race as his lips had done a moment before. When he slinked back into the hallway and closed the door behind him, Jin drifted off into the deepest sleep.

He’d slept through his morning classes and had awoken in the early afternoon feeling reborn and alive. Not caring at all that he had no excuse for missing school. Only worried that he’d slept through meeting Taehyung. He would find him as soon as he could, and he would understand.

Around two o’clock, when it finally occurred to him to eat something or maybe pop in on Mr. Bogum’s religion class, he grudgingly crawled out of bed. That was when he saw the two envelopes that had been slipped underneath his door, which set him back severely in his goal of leaving his room.

Had to tell Jungkook off first. If he went to the lake before the cemetery, he knew he’d never be able to make himself leave Taehyung. If he went first to the cemetery, his desire to see Taehyung again would make him bold enough to say to Jungkook the things he’d been too nervous to say before. Before everything had gotten so scary and out of control last night.

Pushing through his fears about seeing him, Jin started across the commons toward the cemetery. The early evening was warm, and the air was sticky with humidity. It was going to be one of those sweltering nights when the breeze from the distant sea never got strong enough to cool things down. There was no one out on campus, and the leaves on all the trees were still. Jincould have been the only thing at Sword & Cross that was actually on the move. Everyone else would be released from class, herded into the dining hall for dinner, and Ken—and possibly others—would be wondering about Jin by now.

Jungkook was leaning up against the lichen-speckled gates of the cemetery when he got there. His elbows rested on the carved vine-shaped iron posts, his shoulders hunched forward. He was kicking up a dandelion with the steel tip of his thick black boot. Jin couldn’t remember seeing him look so internally consumed—most of the time Jungkook  seemedto have a keen interest in the world around him.

But this time, he didn’t even look up at him until he was directly in front of him. And when he did, his face was ashen. His hair was flat against his head and Jin was surprised to notice that he could have used a shave. His eyes rolled over Jin's face, as if focusing on each of his features required effort. He looked wrecked, not beaten up from the fight, but simply as if he hadn’t slept in a few days.

“You came.” His voice was hoarse, but his words ended with a small smile.

Jin cracked his knuckles, thinking he wouldn’t be smiling much longer. Jin nodded and held up his letter.

Jungkook reached for his hand, but he pulled his arm away, pretending he needed the hand to brush the hair from his eyes.

“I figured you’d be mad about last night,” he said, pushing himself away from the gate. He took a few steps into the cemetery, then sat cross-legged on a short gray marble bench among the first row of graves. He wiped the dirt and brittle leaves away, then patted the empty spot next to him.

“Mad?” Jin said.

“That’s generally why people storm out of bars.”

Jin sat down facing him, cross-legged too. From up here, he could see the top branches of the enormous old oak down in the center of the graveyard, where he and Jungkook had had their afternoon picnic what seemed like a very long time ago.

“I don’t know,” Jin said. “More like baffled. Confused, maybe. Disappointed.” He shuddered at the memory of that seedy guy’s eyes when he grabbed him, the sick flurry of Jungkook’s fists, the deep black roof of shadow … “Why did you take me there? You know what happened when Jules and Phillip snuck out.”

“Jules and Phillip were morons whose every move was monitored by tracking wristbands. Of course they were going to get busted.” Jungkook smiled darkly, but not at him. “We’re nothing like them, Jin. Believe me. And besides, I wasn’t trying to get in another fight.” He rubbed his temples, and the skin around them bunched up, looking leathery and too thin. “I just couldn’t stand the way that guy talked to you, touched you. You deserve to be handled with the utmost care.” His brown eyes widened. “I want to be the one to do it. The only one.”

Jin took a deep breath. “Jungkook, you seem like a really great guy—”

“Oh no.” He covered his face with his hand. “Not the let-him-down-easy speech. I hope you’re not going to say we should be friends.”

“You don’t want to be my friend?”

“You know I want to be much more than your friend,” he said, spitting out “friend” as if it were a dirty word. “It’s Taehyung, isn’t it?”

Jin felt his stomach constrict. He guessed it wasn’t too hard to figure it out, but he’d been so wrapped up in his own feelings, he’d barely had time to consider what Jungkook thought about the two of them.

“You don’t really know either of us,” Jungkook said, standing and stepping away, “but you’re prepared to choose right now, huh?”

It was presumptuous of him to assume he was even still in the running. Especially after last night. That he could think there was some contest between him and Taehyung.

Then Jungkook crouched before him on the bench. His face was different—pleading, earnest—as he cupped Jin's hands in his.

Jin was surprised to see him so wound up. “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling back. “It just happened.”

“Exactly! It just happened. What was it, let me guess—last night he looked at you some new romantic way. Jin, you’re rushing into a decision before you even know what’s at stake. There could be … a lot at stake.” He sighed at the confused look on his face. “I could make you happy.”

“Taehyung makes me happy.”

“How can you say that? He won’t even touch you.”

Jin closed his eyes, remembering the tangle of their lips last night on the beach. Taehyung’s arms encircling him. The whole world had felt so right, so harmonious, so safe. But when he opened his eyes now, Taehyung was nowhere to be seen.

It was only Jungkook.

Jin cleared his throat. “Yes, he will. He does.”

His cheeks felt warm. Jin pressed a cool hand to them, but Jungkookdidn’t notice. His hands curled into fists.

“Elaborate.”

“The way Taehyung kisses me is none of your business.” He bit his lip, furious. He was mocking him.

Jungkook chuckled. “Oh? I can do just as good as Taehyung,” he said, picking up his hand and kissing the back of it before abruptly letting it drop back at his side.

“It was nothing like that,” Jin said, turning away.

“How about this, then?” His lips grazed Jin's cheek before he could shrug him off.

“Wrong.”

Jungkook his lips. “You’re saying Kim Taehyung actually kissed you the way you deserve to be kissed?” Something in his charcoal eyes was beginning to look baleful.

“Yes,” he said, “the best kiss I’ve ever had.” And even though it had been his  onlyreal kiss, Jin knew that if you asked him again in sixty years, a hundred years, he would say the same thing.

“And yet here you are,” Jungkook said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Jin didn’t like what he was insinuating. “I’m only here to tell you the truth about me and Taehyung. To let you know that you and I—”

Jungkook burst out laughing, a loud, hollow cackle that echoed across the empty cemetery. He laughed so long and hard, he gripped his sides and wiped a tear away from his eyes.

“What’s so funny?” Jin said.

“You have no idea,” he said, still laughing.

Jungkook’s you-wouldn’t-get-it tone wasn’t far off from the one Taehyung had used last night when, almost inconsolable, he kept repeating, “It’s impossible.” But Jin’s reaction to Jungkook was entirely different. When Taehyung walled him out, he felt even more of a pull toward him. Even when they argued, he yearned to be with Taehyung more than he ever wanted to be with Jungkook. But when Jungkook made him feel like an outsider, he was relieved. He didn’t want to be any closer to him.

In fact, right now he felt too close.

He’d had enough. Gritting his, teeth he rose and stalked toward the gates, angry at himself for wasting even this much time.

But Jungkook caught up to him, swinging around in front of him  andblocking his exit. He was still laughing at him, biting his lip, trying not to. “Don’t go,” he chuckled.

“Leave me alone.”

“Not yet.”

Before he could stop him, Jungkook caught him up in his arms and bent him backward into a sweeping dip so thatLuc feet came off the ground. Jin cried out, struggling for a moment, but he smiled.

“Let go of me!”

“Taehyung and I have fought a pretty fair fight so far, don’t you think?”

Jin glared at him, his hands pushing against his chest. “Go to Hell.”

“You’re misunderstanding,” he said, drawing Jin's face closer to his. His brown eyes bored down at him and he hated that a part of him still felt swept away in his gaze.

“Look, I know things have gotten crazy the past couple of days,” he said in a hushed voice, “but I care for you, Jin. Deeply. Don’t pick him before you let me have one kiss.”

Jin felt his arms tighten around him, and suddenly, he was scared. They were out of sight of the school, and no one knew where he was.

“It won’t change anything,” he told him, trying to sound calm.

“Humor me? Pretend I’m a soldier and you’re granting my dying wish. I promise, just one kiss.”

Jin’s mind went to Taehyung. He pictured him waiting at the lake, keeping his hands busy skipping stones over the water, when he should have had him in his arms. Hdidn’t want to kiss Jungkook, but what if he really wouldn’t let him go? The kiss could be the smallest, most insignificant thing. The easiest way to break loose. And then he’d be free to get back to Taehyung. Jungkook had promised.

“Just one kiss—” he started, but then Jungkook's lips were on his.

Jin's second kiss in as many days. Where Taehyung’s kiss had been hungry and almost desperate, Jungkook’s kiss was gentle and too perfect, as if he had been practicing on a hundred guys before him.

And yet he felt something in his rise up, wanting him to respond, taking hold of the anger he’d felt only seconds before and blowing it away into nothing. Jungkook still had him tilted back in his arms, balancing all his weight on his knee. He felt safe in his strong, capable hands. And he needed to feel safe. It was such a change from, well, every moment when he wasn’t kissing Jungkook. He knew that he was forgetting something, someone—who? he couldn’t remember. There was only the kiss, and his lips, and—

Suddenly, Jin felt himself falling. He slammed into the ground so hard the wind was knocked out of him. Raising himself up on his arms, he watched as, a few inches away, Jungkook’s face came into contact with the ground. He winced despite himself.

The early-evening sun cast a dusty light on two figures in the graveyard.

“How many times must you ruin this guy?” Jin heard the sad southern drawl.

Hoseok? He looked up, blinking into the setting sun.

Hoseok & Taehyung.

Hoseok rushed over to help Jin to hisnfeet, but Taehyung wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

Jin cursed himself under his breath. He couldn’t figure out what was worse—that Taehyung had just seen him kissing Jungkook, or that—he was sure—Taehyung was going to fight Jungkook again.

Jungkook stood up and faced them, ignoring Jin completely. “All right, which one of you is it going to be this time?” he snarled.

This time?

“Me,” Hoseok said, stepping forward with his hands on his hips. “That first little love tap was all me, Jungkook honey. What you going to do about it?”

Jin shook his head. Hoseok had to be kidding. Surely this was some kind of game. But Jungkook didn’t seem to think anything was funny. He bared his teeth and rolled up his sleeves, raising his fists and moving forward.

“Again, Jungkook?” Jin scolded him. “You haven’t gotten in enough fights already this week?”

He shot him a sideways smile. “Third time’s the charm,” he said, his voice dripping malice. He turned back just as Hoseok came at him with a high kick to the jaw.

Jin scurried backward as Jungkook fell. His eyes were pinched shut and he was clutching his face. Standing over him, Hoseok looked as unfazed as if he’d just pulled a perfectly baked peach cobbler from the oven. 

He was kicking Jungkook repeatedly in the stomach, relishing each kick like a kid winning at an arcade game.

He staggered up into a crouch. Jin couldn’t see his face anymore—it was buried between his knees—but he was in pain and choking on his own breath.

Jin stood and looked from Hoseok to Jungkook and back again, unable to make sense of what he was seeing. Jungkook was twice the size of him, but Hoseok seemed to have the upper hand. Just yesterday, Jin had seen Jungkook beat up that huge guy at the bar. And the other night, outside the library, Taehyung and Jungkook had seemed evenly matched. Now Hoseok had Jungkook pinned to the ground and was twisting his arm back. “Uncle?” he taunted. “Just say the magic word, sugar. I’ll let you go.”

“Never,” Jungkook spat into the ground.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he said, and shoved his head down into the dirt, hard.

Taehyung put his hand on Jin’s neck. Jin relaxed against him and looked back, terrified to see his expression. He must hate him right now.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Jungkook, he—”

“Why would you come here to meet him?” Taehyung sounded hurt and incensed at the same time. He grabbed Jin's chin to make him look at him. His fingers were freezing against his skin. His eyes were all violet, no gray.

Jin’s lip quivered. “I thought I could take care of it. Be up-front with Jungkook so that you and I could just be together and not have to worry about anything else.”

Taehyung snorted, and Jin realized how stupid he sounded.

“That kiss …,” Jin said, wringing his hands. He wanted to spit it from his mouth. “It was such a huge mistake.”

Taehyung closed his eyes and turned away. Twice he opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it. He gripped his hair in his hands and swayed. Watching him, Jin feared he might cry. Finally, he took him in his arms.

“Are you mad at me?” Jin buried his face in his chest and breathed in the sweet smell of his skin.

“I’m just glad we got here in time.”

The sound of Jungkook’s whimpers made both of them glance over. Then grimace. Taehyung took Jin’s hand and tried to pull him away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Hoseok, who had Jungkook in a headlock and wasn’t even winded. Jungkook looked battered and pathetic. It just didn’t make any sense.

“What’s going on, Taehyung?”. Jin whispered "how Hoseok can kick the crap out of Jungkook? Why is he letting him?”

Taehyung half sighed, half chuckled. “He’s not letting him. What you’re seeing is only a sample of what that guy can do.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. How—”

Taehyung his cheek. “Will you take a walk with me?” he asked. “I’m going to try to explain things, but I think you should probably sit down.”

Jin had a few things of his own to come clean about to Taehyung. Or, if not to come clean about, at least to throw out into the conversation, to see if he showed signs of thinking he was completely, verifiably deranged. That violet light, for one thing. And the dreams he couldn’t—didn’t want to—stop.

Taehyung led him toward a part of the cemetery Jin had never seen before, a clear, flat space where two peach trees had grown together. Their trunks bowed toward each other, forming the outline of a heart in the air below them.

He led him under the strange, gnarled coupling of the branches and took his hands, tracing his fingers with his.

The evening was quiet except for the song of crickets. Jin imagined all the other students in the dining hall. Spooning mashed potatoes onto their trays, slurping thick room-temperature milk through a straw. It was as if, all of a sudden, he and Taehyung were on a different plane of being from the rest of the school. Everything but his hand around his, his hair shining in the light of the setting sun, his warm gray eyes—everything else felt so far away.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said, pressing harder as he massaged his fingers, like he could rub the answer out. “There’s so much to tell you, and I have to get it right.”

As much as he wanted Taehyung’s words to be a simple confession of love, Jin knew better. Taehyung had something difficult to say, something that might explain a lot about him, but might also be hard for Jin to hear.

“Maybe do one of those I-have-good-news-and-bad-news kind of things?” he suggested.

“Good idea. Which do you want first?”

“Most people want the good news first.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “But you are worlds away from most people.”

“Okay, I’ll take the bad news first.”

He bit his lip. “Then promise me you won’t leave before I get to the good news?”

He had no plans to leave. Not now, now that he was no longer pushing him away. Not when he might be about to offer up some answers to the long list of questions he’d been obsessing over for the past few weeks.

He brought his hands to his chest and held them against his heart. “I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said. “You won’t believe me, but you deserve to know. Even if it kills you.”

“Okay.” A raw knot of pain took hold of Jin’s in-sides, and he could feel his knees start to shake. He was glad when Taehyung made him sit down.

He paced back and forth, then took a deep breath. “In the Bible …”

Jin groaned. Hcouldn’t help it; he had a knee-jerk reaction to Sunday school talk. Besides, he wanted to discuss the two of them, not some moralistic parable. The Bible wasn’t going to hold the answers to any of the questions he had about Taehyung.

“Just listen,” he said, shooting him a look. “In the Bible, you know how God makes a big deal about how everyone should love him with all their soul? How it has to be unconditional, and unrivaled?”

Jin shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Well—” Taehyung seemed to be searching for the right words. “That request doesn’t only apply to people.”

“What do you mean? Who else? Animals?”

“Sometimes, sure,” Taehyung said. “Like the serpent. He was damned after he tempted Eve. Cursed to slither on the ground forever.”

Jin shivered, thinking back to Jungkook. The snake. Their picnic. That necklace. He rubbed at hid clean, bare neck, glad to be rid of it.

He ran his fingers through Jin's hair, then along his jawline, and into the hollow of his neck. He sighed, in a state of bliss.

“I’m trying to say … I guess you could say I’m damned, too, Jin. I’ve been damned for a long, long time.” He spoke as if the words tasted bitter. “I made a choice once, a choice that I believed in—that I still believe in, even though—”

“I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head.

“Of course you don’t,” he said, dropping down onto the ground next to him. “And I don’t have the best track record at explaining it to you.” He scratched his head and lowered his voice, like he was speaking to himself. “But all I can do is try. Here goes nothing.”

“Okay,” he said. He was confusing him, and he’d barely even said anything yet. But he tried to act less lost than he felt.

“I fall in love,” he explained, taking his hands and holding them tightly. “Over and over again. And each time, it ends catastrophically.”

“Over and over again.” The words made Jin ill. He closed his eyes and withdrew his hands. He’d already told him this. That day at the lake. He’d had breakups. He’d been burned. Why bring up those other guys now? It had hurt then and it hurt even more now, like a sharp pain in his ribs. He squeezed his fingers.

“Look at me,” he pleaded. “Here’s where it gets hard.”

Jin opened his eyes.

“The person I fall in love with each time is you.”

Jin’d been holding his breath, and meant to exhale, but it came out as a sharp, cutting laugh.

“Right, Taehyung,” he said, starting to stand up. “Wow, you really are damned. That sounds horrible.”

“Listen.” He pulled him back down with a force that made his shoulder throb. His eyes flashed violet and he could tell he was getting angry. Well, so was he.

Taehyung looked up into the peach tree canopy, as if for help. “I’m begging you, let me explain.” His voice quaked. “The problem isn’t loving you.”

He took a deep breath. “What is it?” He willed himself to listen, to be stronger and not to feel hurt. Taehyungnlooked like he was broken up enough for both of them.

“I get to live forever,” he said.

The trees rustled around them, and Jin noticed the faintest trickle of a shadow out of the corner of his eye. Not the sick, all-consuming swirl of blackness from the bar last night, but a warning. The shadow was keeping its distance, seething coldly around the corner, but it was waiting. For him. Jin felt a deep chill, down in his bones. He couldn’t shake the sensation that something colossal, black as night, something final was on its way.

“I’m sorry,” he said, dragging his eyes back to Taehyung. “Could you, um, say that again?”

“I get to live forever,” he repeated. Jin was still lost, but he kept talking, a stream of words pouring out of his mouth. “I get to live, and to watch babies being born, and grow up, and fall in love. I watch them have babies of their own and grow old. I watch them die. I am condemned, Jin, to watch it all over again and again. Everyone but you.” His eyes were glassy. His voice dropped to a whisper. “You don’t get to fall in love—”

“But …,” he whispered back. “I’ve … fallen in love.”

“You don’t get to have a family and grow old, Jin.”

“Why not?”

“You come along every seventeen years.”

“Please—”

“We meet. We always meet, somehow we’re always thrown together, no matter where I go, no matter how I try to distance myself from you. It never matters. You always find me.”

He was staring down at his clenched fists now, looking like he wanted to hit something, unable to raise his eyes.

“And every time we meet, you fall for me—”

“Taehyung—”

“I can resist you or flee from you or try my hardest not to respond to you, but it makes no difference. You fall in love with me, and I with you.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“And it kills you.”

“Stop it!” Jin cried. “What are you trying to do? Scare me away?”

“No.” He snorted. “It wouldn’t work, anyway.”

“If you don’t want to be with me …,” he said, hoping that it was all an elaborate joke, a breakup speech to end all breakup speeches, and not the truth. It could not be the truth. “… there’s probably a more believable story to tell.”

“I know you can’t believe me. This is why I couldn’t tell you until now, when I have to tell you. Because I thought I understood the rules and … we kissed, and now I don’t understand anything.”

His words from the night before came back to him: I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know what to do.

“Because you kissed me.”

He nodded.

“You kissed me and when we were done, you were surprised.”

He nodded again, having the grace to look a little sheepish.

“You kissed me,” Jin continued, searching for a way to put it all together, “and you thought I wasn’t going to survive it?”

“Based on previous experience,” he said hoarsely. “Yes.”

“That’s just crazy,” he said.

“It’s not about the kiss this time, it’s about what it means. In some lives we can kiss, but in most we can’t.” He his cheek, and Jin wrestled with how good it felt. “I must say, I prefer the lives where we can kiss.” He looked down. “Though it does make losing you that much harder.”

Jin wanted to be mad at him. For making up such a bizarre story when they should have been locked in an embrace. But something was there, like an itch at the back of his mind, telling him not to run from Taehyung now, but to stick around and listen as long as he could.

“When you lose me,” Jin said, feeling out the shape of the word in his mouth. “How does it happen? Why?”

“It depends on you, on how much you can see about our past, on how well you’ve come to know me, who I am.” He tossed his hands up in a shrug. “I know this sounds incredibly—”

“Crazy?”

He smiled. “I was going to say vague. But I’m trying not to hide anything from you. It’s just a very, very delicate subject. Sometimes, in the past, just talking like this has …”

Jin watched for the shape of the words on his lips, but he wouldn’t say anything.

“Killed me?”

“I was going to say ‘broken my heart.’”

He was in obvious pain, and Jin wanted to comfort him. He could feel himself drawn, something in his chest tugging him forward. But he couldn’t. That was when he felt certain that Taehyung knew about the glowing violet light. That he had everything to do with it.

“What are you?” he asked. “Some kind of—”

“I wander the earth always knowing at the back of my mind that you’re coming. I used to look for you. But then, when I started hiding from you—from the heartbreak I knew was inevitable—you started seeking me out. It didn’t take long to realize that you came around every seventeen years.”

Jin’s seventeenth birthday had been in late August, two weeks before he enrolled at Sword & Cross. It had been a sad celebration, just Jin, his parents, and a store-bought cake. There were no candles, just in case. And what about his family? Did they come back every seventeen years, too?

“It’s not long enough for me to ever have gotten over the last time,” he said. “Just long enough that I would let my guard down again.”

“So you knew I was coming?” he asked dubiously. He looked serious, but Jin still couldn’t believe him. He didn’t want to.

Taehyung shook his head. “Not the day you showed up. It’s not like that. Don’t you remember my reaction when I saw you?” He looked up, like he was thinking back on it himself. “For the first few seconds every time, I’m always so elated. I forget myself. Then I remember.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “You smiled, and then … is that why you flipped me off?”

He frowned.

“But if this happens every seventeen years like you say,” he said, “you still knew I was coming. In some sense, you knew.”

“It’s complicated, Jin.”

“I saw you that day, before you saw me. You were laughing with Seo-joon outside Augustine. You were laughing so hard I was jealous. If you know all this, Taehyung, if you’re so smart that you can predict when I’m going to come, and when I’m going to die, and how hard all of that is going to be for you, how could you laugh like that? I don’t believe you,” he said, feeling his voice tremble. “I don’t believe any of this.”

Taehyung gently pressed his thumb to Jin's eye to wipe away a tear. “It’s such a beautiful question, Jin. I adore you for asking it, and I wish I could explain it better. All I can tell you is this: The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment. That’s all I was doing.”

“Eternity,” Jin repeated. “Yet another thing I wouldn’t understand.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t laugh like that anymore. As soon as you show up, I’m overtaken.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Jin said, wanting to leave before it got too dark. But Taehyung’s story was so much more than nonsensical. The whole time he’d been at Sword & Cross, he’d half believed he was crazy. His madness paled in comparison to Taehyung’s.

“There’s no manual for how to explain this … thing to the guy you love,” he pleaded, brushing his hair with his fingers. “I’m doing the best I can. I want you to believe me, Jin. What do I need to do?”

“Tell a different story,” he said bitterly. “Make up a saner excuse.”

“You said yourself you felt as if you knew me. I tried to deny it as long as I could because I knew this would happen.”

“I felt I knew you from somewhere, sure,” he said. Now his voice was clotted with fear. “Like the mall or summer camp or something. Not some former life.” Jin shook his head. “No … I can’t.”

He covered his ears. Taehyung uncovered them.

“And yet you know in your heart it’s true.” He clasped his knees and looked him deeply in the eye. “You knew it when I followed you to the top of Corcovado in Rio, when you wanted to see the statue up close. You knew it when I carried you two sweaty miles to the River Jordan after you got sick outside Jerusalem. I told you not to eat all those dates. You knew it when you were my nurse in that Italian hospital during the first World War, and before that when I hid in your cellar during the tsar’s purge of St. Petersburg. When I scaled the turret of your castle in Scotland during the Reformation, and danced you around and around at the king’s coronation ball at Versailles. You were the only man dressed in black. There was that artists’ colony in Quintana Roo, and the protest march in Cape Town where we both spent the night in the pen. The opening of the Globe Theatre in London. We had the best seats in the house. And when my ship wrecked in Tahiti, you were there, as you were when I was a convict in Melbourne, and a pickpocket in eighteenth-century Nîmes, and a monk in Tibet. You turn up everywhere, always, and sooner or later you sense all the things I’ve just told you. But you won’t let yourself accept what you feel might be the truth.”

Taehyung stopped to catch his breath and looked past him, unseeing. Then he reached over, pressing his hand to his knee and sending that fire through him again.

Jin closed his eyes, and when he’d opened them, Taehyung was holding the most perfect white peony. It practically glowed. He turned to see where he had plucked it from, how he hadn’t noticed it before. There were only weeds and the rotting flesh of fallen fruit. They held the flower together.

“You knew it when you picked white peonies every day for a month that summer in Helston. Remember that?” he stared at him, like he was trying to see inside him. “No,” he sighed after a moment. “Of course you don’t. I envy you for that.”

But even as he said it, Jin’s skin began to feel warm, as if it were responding to the words his brain didn’t know what to make of. Part of him wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“I do all of these things,” Taehyung said, leaning into him so that their foreheads touched, “because you’re my love, Seokjin. For me, you’re all there is.”

Jin’s lower lip was trembling. His hands went slack in his. The flower’s petals sifted through their fingers to the ground.

“Then why do you look so sad?”

It was all too much to even begin to think about. He leaned away from Taehyung and stood up, wiping the leaves and grass from hks jeans. His head was spinning. He had lived … before?

“Jin.”

He waved him off. “I think I need to go somewhere, by myself, to lie down.” He leaned his weight on the peach tree. He felt weak.

“You’re not okay,” he said, standing up and taking his hand.

“No.”

“I’m so sorry.” Taehyung sighed. “I don’t know what I expected to happen, telling you. I shouldn’t have …”

He would never have thought a moment could come when he’d need a break from Taehyung, but he had to get away. The way Taehyung was looking at him, he could tell he wanted him to say he would find him later, that they would talk about things more, but he was no longer sure that was a good idea. The more he said, the more he felt something waking up inside him—something he wasn’t sure he was ready for. He didn’t feel crazy anymore—and he wasn’t sure Taehyung was, either. To anyone else, his explanation would have made less and less sense as it went along. To Jin … he wasn’t sure yet, but what if Taehyung’s words were answers that could make sense out of his whole life? He didn’t know. He felt more afraid than he ever had before.

He shook his hand loose and started toward his dorm. A few strides away, he stopped and slowly turned.

Taehyung hadn’t moved. “What is it?” he asked, lifting his chin.

He stood where Jin was, at a distance from him. “I promised you I’d stick around long enough to hear the good news.”

Taehyung’s face relaxed into an almost-smile. But there was something vexed about his expression. “The good news is”—he paused, carefully choosing his words—“I kissed you, and you’re still here.”