Fall: The Right Words

“There’s nothing like beer in fall,” Mark said, relishing a deep sip of his drink.

“You say that every season,” Jinyoung quipped.

“And what of it? It’s always true. You agree with me, don’t you?”

Jinyoung lifted his eyebrow stubbornly, and Mark smirked. He knew he couldn’t get Jinyoung to admit to anything he didn’t want to, but if Jinyoung actually disagreed with him, he would have said so.

“I don’t trust fall,” Jinyoung said. “It’s the calm before the storm, but it’s still dragging us up to it. Before we know it, we’re going to be buried in snow again.”

“Yeah, but I still have my snowblower. Even if you end up in a snowbank again-”

“Trust me, I’m not planning on it even if I know I have you to rescue me.” Jinyoung slipped his hands under the slightly too long sleeves of his sweater. “Anyways, all I can see are ominous winds these days. You know, the girls at Eunbae have gotten super hooked on occult stuff recently.”

“Really? That’s definitely not going around at Yongbae. Everyone’s single-minded about mobile games, same as always.”

“Well, at the girls’ school, it’s astrology and tarot cards. I thought with those kinds of things, there was at least a 50/50 split between good predictions and bad predictions. But I swear to god, these girls are foreseeing worser and worser doom every day.”

“Of course. What’s the point of doing it if there’s no drama? Happy predictions are all alike, and all that.”

“Sure, but it’s getting depressing. One of them did a reading on me, and guess what’s coming in my future?”

“Despair unless you freely hand out good grades?”

“Obviously. But she also asked me to consider a problem I’ve been having, and said that card I chose would be connected to the ‘result.’ I pointed to a card at random, and guess what it was? The Fool!”

“What does that mean?” Mark knew next to nothing about tarot, other than the times it factored into pop culture. He could vaguely remember a few of the trump cards from an animated show he’d used to watch, but The Fool didn’t stand out in his mind unlike some of the others, like The World or The Lovers.

“I don’t know a whole lot about it either, but the picture on the card was of a guy about to walk off a cliff. My student said this meant I was walking into the situation I’m in blind and naïve, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to ‘fall off the cliff,’ or in her words, make an *ss of myself.”

Mark couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter. “Well, I mean, it happens. But I didn’t think you were supposed to interpret cards so literally?”

 “She learned everything she knows from a thirty-minute online tutorial.”

“Figures.” Mark considered for a moment. “Maybe there’s someone at the bottom of The Fool’s cliff. If you want to interpret it more optimistically.”

“So, someone to catch me after I’ve made an idiot of myself?”

“Or, someone who’s made the same mistake and is there to let you know the fall won’t kill you.”

 “Huh.” A smile crept onto Jinyoung’s face. “Why are we taking this so seriously, anyways? It’s all hogwash.”

“You’re the one who seemed bothered by it,” Mark pointed out.

“What I’m bothered by is half my class looking at me pityingly as if they’ve just discovered their supposedly smart teacher is a walking fool.”

“They’ll understand when they’re our age. We’re all walking fools in our own way. Even us smart ones. Nothing to pity us over.”

“When you put it like that…”

“And while we’re at it, even if this season is the calm before the storm, you should still take a moment to enjoy it. We’ll have more than enough time to whine about the snow when it’s here.”

“I’ll try. I guess that’s what the students are doing with their occult thing. Having some fun before they have to start seriously tearing their hair out over the College Scholastic Ability Test.”

Mark groaned, as he did every time he heard reference to the CSAT. As the English teacher at Yongbae, he was always in demand this time of year to help with the English comprehension portions of test prep. Never mind the fact that the English comprehension questions on the CSAT were a mess of scientific and sociological jargon even Mark could barely understand. In his opinion, it would serve all of his students much better to be able to navigate their way around a natural sounding conversation, but of course whoever came up with the CSAT wasn’t asking him.

On top of that, it just depressed the hell out of him how many students—and parents—staked everything on the CSAT, and how just one test result could determine so many things about their futures.

“If tarot cards and the stars are giving them strength, then I can’t judge them for it either,” Mark said. “Whatever works.”

Jinyoung nodded. “Maybe I should ‘learn’ a little bit of that stuff myself and forecast a vision of ‘everything is going to be fine’ for their futures.”

“I don’t think you need to study occult stuff to do that. Just tell them on your own that you believe that things will work out for them, no matter what.” Mark smiled. “When a person like you says it, you can’t help but have faith.”

“Hyung, when you say things like that…” Jinyoung pursed his lips, then sighed. “I can’t help but think you have a hidden agenda.”

“Who, me? And what would that agenda be?”

“I’m not going to let you win next time we play gin rummy, OK?”

Mark’s face fell. “Jinyoung, how could you be so cold hearted? Is this how you treat the hyung who so often showers you in praises?”

Jinyoung smiled smugly and took a drink. Yes, Mark thought to himself. There’s nothing like beer in fall. Beer and fall, together with you.

0

Mark left the bar that evening in high spirits. Unlike Jinyoung, he didn’t feel any ominous winds around him. Even if someone did a tarot reading on him and informed him that the cards—The Hierophant or The Hanged Man or whatever they were called—suggested negative energies in his life or something equally bleak, he’d just laugh. His own instinct told him that the world was looking unusually bright these days, and he was sure he wasn’t just being a naïve fool in thinking so.

He couldn’t say for sure why he felt that way. School was the very definition of ‘life as usual’—nothing bad had happened, of course, but nothing too spectacular had happened either. And nothing spectacular or bad had happened outside of it. Jinyoung was still putting a hold on dating, and Mark was pretty much the same. He’d met a nice enough woman while running errands on the weekend, and had enjoyed a nice enough coffee with her, but he still balked at the idea of getting into a relationship. It didn’t feel right yet, and he didn’t want to put time into something he didn’t feel like he really wanted.

So life was nothing out of the ordinary. And yet Mark felt a strange amount of excitement and energy inside of him when he woke up every morning. Maybe he was like The Fool as Jinyoung had described, filled with blind naivety and about to plummet off a cliff. But with all the lightness he felt in his heart, maybe he’d just float. Maybe he’d hitch a ride on a cloud and have it ready to catch Jinyoung on his prophesized fall.

He laughed at the thought. Is really the mind of a grown man?, he wondered. If I’m feeling so giddy when there are bills to pay and my car desperately needs new tires, maybe it’s time to cut back on drinking a little.

When he got home, he neatened up his briefcase and set up the papers he needed to grade on his desk so that he’d remember to do it on Sunday. He poured himself a glass of ice water and was about to head to his bed to check the news before going to sleep when his phone rang.

It was his brother. Mark answered quickly, feeling momentarily tense. Calls late at night were rarely a good thing, but of course it was technically early morning in the US.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Believe it or not, I was feeling unusually organized and wanted to get a head start preparing for the holidays,” his brother said.

“Whoa. You’re sure your big sisters didn’t just subliminally convince you of that?”

“Even if they did, I still wanted to ask you if you’re coming for Christmas or New Years this year.”

Mark, who hadn’t felt unusually organized recently, hadn’t thought about Christmas or New Years at all. “Oof, asking the difficult questions, are we? My plan was to come visit for New Years, but I haven’t actually gotten tickets or anything. I’ll start getting serious about it.”

“Well, I guess that answers my next question.”

“Which was…?”

“If you’d start thinking about whether or not you’re coming home after the school year ends.”

Mark scratched his head. “I don’t see why I would? It’s just a handful of weeks after New Years, so I’ll have just visited recently. I know you guys love me, but you didn’t need to see me that often or you’ll get sick of me.”

“I didn’t mean coming back for a visit, Mark. I meant coming home for good.”

Mark blinked. The words bounced around in his head for a long time before even beginning to make sense. Coming home for good. Going back to the US. Something that had been on the table when he’d moved back to Korea. If it didn’t work out, he’d come back. And ‘working out’ meant…

…that he’d found something that would make him satisfied with his life and path it would take, something that he hadn’t found in his previous life.

Oh, yes, that. The one thing that had preoccupied his mind for years. The thing that just a year ago had made him wonder if he should stay in Korea after all when he didn’t feel any more at peace with himself than he usually did. His answer then had been ‘might as well give it at least one more year.’ And that one more year was almost over.

And he’d forgotten all about it.

When had that happened? He mentally rewound to spring. He definitely hadn’t forgotten about it then. He could vividly recall crying in Jinyoung’s arms about it, and all his feelings of guilt over how things had ended up.

He hadn’t forgotten it in summer, either. He remembered Jaebum’s who’d have thunk it comment about how they’d ended up, and how it had hit so close to home for him. No, he definitely hadn’t forgotten it, then.

So when had he forgotten? When had his mind stopped dwelling on the one defining question of his adulthood as if the answer no longer mattered?

If there was an answer, his mind didn’t seem in a hurry to inform him. If anything, his thoughts strayed towards annoyance. The exact timeline doesn’t even matter here, his mind grumbled. You’re not worried about it anymore. You want to stay. So stay.

“OK,” he muttered. “But why?”

Who the hell cares? Weren’t you just thinking something like ‘the world is looking unusually bright these days?’ Sounds like you’re pretty damn satisfied for once, Mr. Happy-as-a-Clam. What’s there to worry about? Just stay in Korea if you found what you were looking for there!

“But what was it?”

WHO CARES?

“Uh, Mark?” his brother asked tentatively. “What are you saying?”

“Oh…uh…I was just talking to myself probably?” Mark rubbed his head, shutting down the very one-sided conversation he was very childishly pretending was two-sided. “Anyways…no. I hadn’t thought about it, really.”

“I want to say that’s what I expected, but seriously? If you’re coming back, you need to secure a new job and living situation. And you need to inform the school where you’re currently working. This isn’t exactly something you can just throw caution to the wind about.”

“I know. But…” He ran his tongue across his teeth. But I want to stay

That was the simple answer. And he was sure he meant it, and that if he said it out loud, he would be saying the right thing, and even if he gave it extra thought, his desire to stay wouldn’t change.

But behind that simple answer were complexities he didn’t quite understand. Maybe he didn’t need to know the ‘why’ behind it right this second. But still, he felt he owed it to himself and the people who loved him. After all the tumult he’d caused running off and chasing an answer, hitting reset on his life without even knowing if it would make everything function properly again, shouldn’t he at least find the words to explain what satisfaction he’d found and why?

That’s not asking too much, is it?, he asked himself. Nothing in his baffling head protested, so maybe that was fine.

“I think I’m going to stay,” he said finally. “In fact, I’m sure of it. But as for my reasoning and how to explain it to the family…let’s just leave it at ‘more information to come at a later date.’”

“You’re seeing someone romantically over there, is that it?” his brother asked, immediately suspicious.

“Actually, no,” Mark said. “I can see why you’d think so, but-”

“Everyone’s going to think so when I tell them. Can’t you at least give me a hint? I promise I won’t blab.”

“Suuuure, I’ve heard that one before.” Mark sighed. “Can I just say that last year, I decided to stay very ambivalently. But this year, I knew. This is what I want to do. I know I haven’t been the most reliable person ever. But can you at least trust me on this?”

“Hey. At the end of the day, I just want you to be happy. So if you are, you are. I’ll trust you on that. Just let me know when you want to talk about it a little more. I’m here for you. Don’t forget it.”

After he ended the call, Mark sank down on the couch. He thought it would be easier to collect his thoughts without his brother to answer to, but his thoughts were still resisting being collected. His brain, without permission from the rest of him, seemed to be fully convinced that an explanation was a waste of time, as if it hadn’t been the very thing agonizing over an answer to his predicament in the first place.

What good would a dry evaluation of the situation do you? Don’t you just want a nice little serotonin burst? If you stay, you can keep going drinking with Jinyoung and won’t be too far away from Jaebum and, yes, there will be bratty students and even brattier parents, but for the most part they will be good, and every once in a while you’ll do fun things like put on their graduation party or raise them up to be more decent than the world requires them to be, more decent than you ever were. Is that ‘why’ enough for you?

And sure enough, his body flooded with good feelings.

Maybe, after all, it really was ‘why’ enough for him.

0

He wanted to talk to Jinyoung about it, but at the same time, he didn’t.

He wanted to tell Jinyoung because he truly felt like he could talk to Jinyoung about anything now, and talking to him always made things make sense. In fact, it was such second nature now to tell Jinyoung what was on his mind that it felt like it was going against his better judgement not to say something. It made him feel like a bottle with its lid screwed on too tight.

But it made him nervous that he still didn’t really have the words. His decision to stay felt important, the kind of thing he couldn’t risk stumbling his way through explaining. He didn’t want to fall back on his old “I don’t knows” after all this time.

But what made him even more nervous was the thought of his inner dam bursting like it had after the infertility issue, and him spewing words he’d never planned on saying to Jinyoung. What words would they be? Of course, he knew Jinyoung would listen to whatever he had to say, but…

Mark rubbed his hands against his temples. He really shouldn’t be saying anything with his head like this. A little more time wouldn’t hurt.

In any case, Jinyoung wasn’t coming to the bar that evening, since he was busy with student council stuff. Mark didn’t have much else to do, so he had volunteered to go on after-hours hall patrol to make sure the students who were staying late for club activities didn’t wreck the place.

Hall patrol was a pretty mindless task, so Mark had hoped to get some thinking in, but his mind remained stubbornly blank on all the things he was wrestling with. He just wound up wandering aimlessly, thinking of nothing.

He moved his patrol from the corridor by the science lab to the library. The quiet section was all filled with students diligently studying for the CSAT, and there were a handful students in line for the copier with stacks of papers in their hands. Mark was just about to wrap up his library patrol and move on when he smelled the distinctive scent of acetone nearby. Following his nose led him to the physics section of the school bookshelves. A student was slumped against one of the shelves, an open bottle of polish on the ground next to him. He was…painting his nails?

Mark crouched down, recognizing the student as Roh Sungsoo, the student council vice president and one of the top honor students of his grade. Huh, well this is one of the last things I’d thought I’d catch him doing during CSAT season, Mark mused.

Sungsoo looked up, then attempted to curl his fingers to hide his nails when he saw the person who had approached him was a teacher.

“Don’t, you’ll smear them,” Mark said quickly.

Sungsoo drew back in surprise, then slowly straightened out his fingers. Mark took a look at the designs on his nails, almost gasping in shock when he registered how well done they were. Sungsoo had painstakingly painted on what looked like comic book panels, in the style of horror artists like Junji Ito. Each nails depicted a different creepy face in near perfect detail.

Mark whistled. “These are something. I didn’t know you could draw like that!”

Sungsoo looked at him cautiously. “You’re not weirded out?”

“Well, I’m not going to lie, that one face with the cockroach is kind of gross.”

“I meant…painting my nails in the first place.”

“Oh. Not at all. I’ve had my share of nail art done. Definitely more abstract styles than what you’re doing, but with a similar kind of monochrome color scheme.” When Sungsoo gave him a confused look, Mark explained, “I used to model when I was younger.”

“I didn’t know that,” Sungsoo said, looking caught off guard. “How did you become an English teacher?”

“Well, when I gave up modeling, I had to do something. I worked at a talent agency for a while, in between. And then I decided I wanted to give teaching a try. You know, a pretty standard career path.”

“Sure…” Sungsoo was still looking at him warily. Mark got the impression he wanted to say something, but was holding back for whatever reason.

As a teacher, Mark felt compelled to get him to open up. “So,” he tried. “Burned out from studying?”

“Teacher, I’m probably going to do well on the CSAT whether I study or not.”

“I respect the confidence. Honestly, you probably will. Is that why you’re not studying?”

Sungsoo shrugged. “I’ve been thinking. What if I don’t want to go college after all?”

“Oh.” Mark moved from his crouch—which was ridiculously painful on his body if he held it for more than a minute, at his age—so he could sit down beside Sungsoo against the bookcase. Mark encountered this kind of conversation about once or twice every year, and it was never a short, easy one. “Are you thinking about going into art? Or becoming a nail tech?”

“Make-up artist,” Sungsoo muttered under his breath, as if it was a curse word. At an all-boys’ school, it could very well be. “I want to do horror makeup for movies.”

“That’s a pretty amazing goal. I’ve worked with plenty of really talented MUAs, and I have a lot of respect for them.” Mark paused. “And your parents, I assume they want you to go to school and study…?”

“Engineering,” Sungsoo supplied. “That’s what my father does.”

“And how do you feel about it?”

“I don’t really feel anything about engineering.”

“Yeah, me either.” Mark rubbed his chin. “So…what do you think you’re going to do?”

Sungsoo’s expression seemed to suggest that this was his least favorite question in the world. Mark couldn’t blame him for that one.

“Was being a model your big dream?” Sungsoo asked Mark, redirecting the question.

“Oh yeah. Absolutely.”

“Then why did you stop?”

“I was tired of having doors close on me, I guess. Back then, there wasn’t a lot of space in fashion editorials for someone like me. And when I started working at the talent agency, it felt like everyone was just a golden spoon kid of someone in the industry. I swear to god, it got to the point where if I met another kid of a rockstar/model pairing who walked like they were holding back a fart, I would literally cry.”

Sungsoo laughed, but his expression quicky turned back to serious. “But it was still your dream, wasn’t it? Didn’t it to let it go?”

“Yeah. It did. It really did. Apologies to my ex-wife, but that may have been the worst breakup of my life, me and that dream.” Mark closed his eyes for a moment, then slowly opened them again. “But while I was living that life, I lost sight of myself. I couldn’t see who I was through my visions of who I should have been. I just felt bitter and discontent all the time. Every day, I’d ask myself, ‘what can I do to be happy? Why can’t I just be happy?’ Those thoughts consumed my life. But now…” Mark smiled. “The other day, I realized I’d entirely stopped thinking like that. Because I’ve now found a life where I don’t have to constantly think of how to be happy. I just am. It may not be a huge and all-defining dream, but it’s this lovely little life built on the foundation of this school and all you students and this city with all of its seasons and a friend I care about so much that everything around him just feels warm and like home.”

Mark sat up straight as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and he snapped his fingers. “Jesus Christ,” he said in awe. “That’s it. Those were the words I was looking for. Way to ing hold out on me until now, brain!” He glanced at Sungsoo, who was staring at him in shock. “Apologies for swearing.”

“Uh…” Sungsoo still looked a bit baffled. “So that career-advice here is…the entertainment industry , and I should go into engineering?”

“No! Sorry, I didn’t mean to have an epiphany in the middle of all that. What I want to say, though, is that most people would frame your decision as ‘be practical and go into engineering vs chase your dreams and become a makeup artist.’ But ‘being practical’ for you doesn’t have to do with engineering. Sometimes being practical means following what you want to do and what you think will make you happy, but also checking in with yourself and allowing room for your dream to grow or shrink or change when it needs to. And if things don’t perfectly match what you envision they will be, please don’t use the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of your dreams to measure your worth as a person. You and your classmates are so much more than the sum of your dreams. And I just hope whether you amount to an icon or an everyday person, you wake up every morning in a place and with people that give you so much happiness.”

Mark was getting a little misty-eyed. “Sorry about that,” he said quickly. “That was a whole lot of word vomit and not very helpful.”

But Sungsoo at least looked like he was processing it little by little. “No…” he said slowly. “I think I get it. Thinking about being an engineer for the rest of my life gives me heartburn. But it always gave me heartburn thinking of what would happen to me if I couldn’t make it as a MUA, too, especially if I gave up college and wound up failing spectacularly. The pressure of failing is scarier than being an engineer, honestly.”

“Don’t I know it. You could turn pressure into nail art, and it would be even more terrifying than the roaches.”

“I think if I can’t be an MUA,” Sungsoo said slowly, “I wouldn’t mind doing regular horror art, or even nails. And even if I ended up as a high school art teacher or something, I think that would be fine, as long as I’m not around people who give me about my nails anymore. Apologies for swearing.”

Mark smiled. “See, isn’t this a much more enjoyable way of being practical?”

“So when I have my career guidance counseling, can I have my parents come to you discuss why I don’t want to be an engineer?”

Mark clutched his heart. “I give you advice, kid, and this is the thanks I get?”

“What, isn’t that your job? Didn’t you say liked being a teacher?”

“Sungsoo. Listen. Even in a world where 90% of your life is good, that 10% of potholes, taxes, diarrhea, ingrown hairs, and nasty politics still exists. I like 90% of teaching, but I’m still going to get heartburn when students tell me to talk to their parents. You get me?”

“Oh yeah. I feel the same about talking to my parents.” Sungsoo rose to his feet, tucking his nail polish into his pocket. “Oh, Teacher?”

“Yes?”

“America made a mistake if it wouldn’t give you a top modeling career. We found your old yearbook at the beginning of the school year. All of us were so surprised. You used to be really hot back then.” When a waggle of his horror nails, Sungsoo headed back to the study carrels.

“God, they should teach these punks how to deliver a proper compliment on the CSAT,” Mark muttered. “All of us were so surprised? Way to make me feel like I have a cockroach on my face.”

But Mark smiled as he got to his feet. He’d meant everything he’d said. And now he had the words, there was someone else left that he needed to tell.

0

Jinyoung called him the next afternoon. “Guess what I found at the thrift store today?”

“New penny loafers?”

“Leave my penny loafers alone. No, I found a copy of American Scrabble. I’m thinking of using it as a fun study tool for the student council. The girls are getting really burned out studying English vocabulary for their entrance exams, so I thought they could use a refreshing way of looking at it that doesn’t involve leaving their success up to the position of the moon and Mercury. What do you think?”

“Yeah, that could make it fun for them. Can’t guarantee that they’ll learn about words that will actually be on the test, but it’s definitely useful for considering suffixes and prefixes and all that.”

“I thought so, too.” Jinyoung paused. “Um, I don’t really know the rules, though, and the instructions are in English…”

“Ah. You have need of my interpretation skills?”

“I thought if you and I played a trial game, I could learn through experience. You know the rules, right?”

“Most of them. My family had some of our own rules, though—like no using words that you’d never actually use in writing or conversation.”

“That’s fine! I’m sure you know more than me.” Jinyoung’s voice got smug. “Plus, this is finally your chance to beat me in a game since I’ve won the last five gin rummy nights.”

“We don’t talk about that,” Mark said sourly. “Fine, fine. Prepare to be blown away by my stunning English vocabulary. Would you like me to bring some wine?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

Twenty minutes later, Mark was snug on Jinyoung’s couch with his wineglass, the Scrabble board laid out between them. They’d both drawn their first seven letters; Mark was fine with his, although they were all letters worth only a single point, but Jinyoung was staring at his with almost comical agony.

“Hyung, I drew five vowels,” he said grimly. “I can’t make words like this.”

“I have quite a few consonants, so I can make the first word if you want,” Mark said. “Just be aware that if I go first, I get an automatic double word score. The good news is all my letters are low scoring.”

“That’s fine,” Jinyoung said. “I’m not here to win. But what am I supposed to do with all these vowels?”

“Learn how to use them wisely,” Mark advised. “Half of Scrabble is figuring out what to do with strange letters. Have confidence in your ability to figure something out, to set a good example for your students when it’s their turn.”

Mark laid down his first word, ‘ERRANT.’ “Seven points, times two for the double word score. Fourteen points in total.”

Jinyoung studied the word. “Errant? I don’t know that one.”

Which was why Mark had chosen it—Jinyoung, dutiful instructor that he was, had pulled out his mini-notebook to take notes on words to share with his students, and Mark wanted to give him plenty to take back to them. “There are two definitions. One means to stray off the correct path, either literally or figuratively. ‘Errant behavior’ would be misbehaving. The other definition is old-fashioned—traveling in search of adventure. Like a ‘knight errant.’”

Jinyoung noted all of this carefully. “OK. So now you put this on the board, I can use your consonants. Like the Rs or the N or T?”

“Absolutely. Have at them.”

Mark waited for a moment as Jinyoung debated his move. Then, a moment later, Jinyoung laid down the word “JOINED” using Mark’s letter N and landing right on a double word score square.

“I spelled that correctly, right?” Jinyoung asked anxiously.

“Yeah…” Mark winced as he tallied the 8-point letter J. “Jinyoung…you do realize that just scored you 28 points.”

“Oh, did it?” Jinyoung asked. “J and D were the only consonants I had, so I just did what I had to.”

“Yeah…and you have double my score after the first turn.”

When this registered, Jinyoung grinned broadly. “HA! I’m winning against a native English speaker? Wow, hyung, is there any game out there where you can win against me?”

“I thought you weren’t here to win!”

“Now I am. I’m obviously a prodigy at this.”

“There’s no such thing as a forty-four-year-old prodigy!” Mark huffed.

“Don’t be mad,” Jinyoung said placatingly. “I just got lucky by drawing the J. You should still go easy on me since I’m still learning and don’t know as many words as you do. There’s no way I’ll get lucky a second time.”

“Fine,” Mark said, choosing to be gracious. Jinyoung’s reaction was so cute, that he decided he didn’t mind seeing it again. “See these orange squares around the board? They are triple word scores, the number one place you want to land on. With my next word, I’ll open up the path to a triple word score. See if you can get something there.” Mark laid down the word “DITTO” leading up to the triple word score to the right.

“Ditto?” Jinyoung asked. “Is that not a Pokémon?”

“It’s also an informal way of saying ‘same.’ Like if you said ‘I like wine,’ I could say ‘ditto,’ because I also like wine.”

“Got it.” Jinyoung made a note. “So, I need to try to get letters up to the triple word score?” He studied his letters for a long while. “I can’t think of any words that can reach there with the letters I have.”

“Then save it for another turn.”

“But if I do that, you’ll use it on your turn.”

“I promise I won’t.”

Jinyoung studied him critically, then grabbed three letters from his tray. He used them to spell ‘LONG’ off the letter O in “DITTO.” It didn’t reach high enough to touch the triple word score box above the letter L.

“Why’d you do that?” Mark asked.

“Now you can’t use the triple word score,” Jinyoung said triumphantly.

“W-What? I said I wasn’t going to.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Aren’t we friends?”

“All is fair in love and war. This is war.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m trying to be helpful to you!”

“Just because you’re foolish doesn’t mean I have to be,” Jinyoung said loftily.

Mark tsked. “Seriously. As soon as things get competitive, you’re like this one second, and then the next second you’re like ‘hyung, help me, I don’t know what I’m doing.’ You’re such a fox, Jinyoung.”

“And you’re the one who falls for the fox’s tricks,” Jinyoung laughed.

“You do realize I can add ‘A’ or ‘BE’ to that ‘LONG’,” Mark reminded him.

“Then do it.”

Mark didn’t have the right letters. He sighed and instead built off “ERRANT” to make “MINCE.” Jinyoung whipped out his notebook, back to pretending to be a dutiful student.

“Mince means to cut into very small pieces.” Mark mimed mincing an onion. “Or walking in very small and delicate steps.”

“Thanks, I’m learning so much!” Jinyoung said brightly.

This guy likes gap moe, huh?, Mark thought. He’s overflowing with it himself.

Jinyoung added “EXAM” off of “MINCE.” Mark was about to remind him that he could use the letter A to get the triple word score on “LONG,” but “EXAM” alone earned Jinyoung 26 points, so Mark decided to keep his mouth shut.

His own letters for the next turn weren’t all that great, but once he saw he had the letters to build “MOAN,” he couldn’t stop himself from playing it off of “JOINED.”

Jinyoung’s brow furrowed. “Wait, doesn’t that mean…?”

“Yes?” Mark asked innocently.

“Isn’t that the sound when you, you know… that?” Jinyoung looked so flustered that Mark couldn’t help but grin. If a is bothering you, he thought to himself, hit him where it hurts.

“ for pleasure isn’t the only kind of , Jinyoung. Want me to demonstrate?”

Jinyoung wrinkled his nose. “You should be ashamed, hyung, that your gap moe is speaking like a devil out of your innocent mouth.”

“I don’t think anyone in the world would call my mouth innocent. But if you’re calling it gap moe, that must mean you think it’s cute?”

Jinyoung didn’t dignify this with a response. Mark laughed and went ahead and drew his next tiles: the letters I-N-G. Perfect. There was nothing like adding an easy “i-n-g” to a word already on the board to score points.

Meanwhile, Jinyoung was triumphantly adding letters to the board to form “Y” off of “EXAM.”

“If you’re going to be vulgar, how about that,” he said.

Mark rolled his eyes. “Ooooh, ‘y.’ The scandalous, forbidden word. I’d better cover my ears so I don’t have to hear such a dirty thing.” Still, he felt aggrieved as he tallied the score. His “MOAN” had earned him a measly 12 points, while Jinyoung’s “Y” was worth 28. He, a native English speaker, was seriously losing against a foreigner who’d never played American Scrabble before.

But Jinyoung’s victory was short-lived. A moment later, his expression darkened. “Hyung,” he said. “I just pulled the letter Q. What am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t ‘hyung’ me in that pitiful voice like you’re not too old for this nonsense. I’m not giving into your fox tricks anymore.”

“But, hyung, I don’t think many words use this letter.”

“That’s not true. There’s quiet, acquire, quit, equal, quilt, quark, quick-”

“Hyung, I don’t have a U right now, and all of those words have a U.”

As it so happened, Mark had a U on his tray, but he’d had enough of losing to Jinyoung. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “For now…” He added the I-N-G to the end of “LONG” to form “LONGING.” It didn’t hit the triple word score above the letter L, of course, but it did hit the one at the bottom corner of the board.

“Longing,” Mark said with relish. “33 points.”

Jinyoung frowned. “That’s not a word.”

“Yes, it is.”

“How can it be? Things like tall-ing and wide-ing aren’t words, so why would long-ing be a word?”

“It’s not that definition of long. It’s to…long for something. Used as a verb, not an adjective.”

“Long for?”

“Yes. It’s like, to want something. But more than that. You wouldn’t really say ‘I’m longing for dinner’ unless you’re really, truly hungry. It’s more like a strong desire that’s so powerful that it aches at your heart. When we say ‘I long for you’ in English…” He looked at Jinyoung, trying to phrase it just right in Korean so he’d understand. “It’s like I ache for you. I yearn for you. I burn, I thirst, I hunger for you, even if in the moment you’re so unreachable that you’re like a faint light across miles and miles of ocean. That kind of feeling.”

He wanted to finish by asking Jinyoung if he understood, but Jinyoung wasn’t even writing this down like he had the other words. He just stared at Mark, his cheeks flushed and his gaze drowned and hazy. Mark knew this look. He’d had too much to drink. But when Mark shot a glance at Jinyoung’s wineglass, it wasn’t anywhere near as empty as Mark’s own.

“Jinyoung?” he asked uncertainly.

Jinyoung slowly lifted his hand, digging it into the fabric of his shirt over his chest as if there was suddenly an oppressive heat he was trying to escape from. “You,” he said softly. Mark almost didn’t hear. “You and those words of yours. How can you…?”

“Pardon?”

“How can you just say these things and expect the world to be normal after?”

Mark didn’t understand. “I’m sorry, what?”

And then it was like Jinyoung had been snapped out of a spell. He lowered his hand, and his gaze flitted away, down at the game board at the word Mark had just played. LONGING. A whole 33 points, but for some reason, Mark no longer felt like gloating.

“Sorry,” Jinyoung said. “I don’t know. It’s my turn?” Barely even looking at his tiles, he threw down a word, “BRAID” using the second R in “ERRANT”. It was like he’d forgotten all about the Q, like it didn’t matter anymore.

Something in the room had shifted. They’d been having fun just a moment ago, but now Jinyoung looked quite serious. Which was fine, but Mark didn’t really understand how it had happened. How can you just say these things and expect the world to be normal after? What was that supposed to mean? Knowing how his Korean could get in regards to more formal, flowery language, it was very likely he’d translated words like ‘hunger’ or ‘thirst’ too suggestively in a way that had crossed the line of Jinyoung’s comfort level with and uality related things.

Should I apologize?, Mark wondered. But even though the mood was a bit stranger now, he didn’t get the sense that Jinyoung was mad at him. Jinyoung still looked more wine-drunk than anything, flushed and lost in his own  thoughts.

Mark decided that the kindest thing he could do was give Jinyoung a letter U to use with his Q. He looked for a place on the board, but couldn’t find a good place to leave the U open for easy word-building. The closest he could come was building “FEUD” off of the letter D in “BRAID,” but that would leave the U too close to the letters in “BRAID” to work with.

With a small pang of guilt, he decided to cheat. If it worked, it worked, and if it failed, maybe he and Jinyoung could go back to teasing each other again. Mark put down the misspelling “FUED” to leave the U open, and waited to see if Jinyoung would notice.

Jinyoung, who still seemed vaguely distracted, did not notice. He didn’t even remark on the exciting availability of the letter U. He simply stared at his letters a long while, then put down “QUA_K”, placing a blank tile between the A and K.

“Hey, if I’d known you had a blank tile, I wouldn’t have given you the U,” Mark protested.

Jinyoung smiled faintly. “That sounds like a ‘U’ problem.”

Mark burst out laughing. “What an awful joke!”

“Your laughter suggests otherwise.”

“I mean it, even my father wouldn’t come up with something that bad. Well, maybe he would, but…”

“I don’t know how many points this is since I used the blank tile, but I feel like I deserve humor points for this one, hyung.”

“Don’t press your luck. You’re still crushing me. No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

Jinyoung smirked with a hint of playful disdain, and Mark sighed in relief. It felt like everything was back to normal.

Which wasn’t something he wanted to ruin by running his big mouth. He absolutely didn’t want to ruin it. So he didn’t understand why, only just a moment later, he opened his mouth and blurted out: “I’ve decided I’m going to stay in Korea, Jinyoung.”

Jinyoung blinked at him. “Huh?”

Mark was also thinking the same thing. HUH? Brain, didn’t we plan this out? Weren’t we going to say it all beautifully and eloquently at a good moment? No???? We’re just going to say it randomly, out of the blue, and screw all the work I put into it?

Mark swallowed, trying to get back on track. “Well…” He trailed off, then tried again. “Well. I’ve decided. That I’m going to stay in Korea permanently. Given my age, perhaps that means for the rest of my life. Yes. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Seriously, brain?!? Where’s that part about having a lovely little life and no longer questioning why I can’t be happy? I liked that part!

Jinyoung stared at him with wide eyes for what felt like a painfully long moment. Then his face broke into a smile. He didn’t say anything immediately. He didn’t ask anything. He just reached his hand out and placed it over Mark’s, squeezing it so very lightly.

“I’m so glad,” he said finally. His voice was tremulous, but—indeed—so happy. He shook his head and said it again. “I’m so glad.”

“Are you?” Mark asked dazedly. Which was a stupid thing to ask. It wasn’t like he’d expected Jinyoung to be anything else but glad. But somehow, hearing it felt so much more powerful than assuming it. Or maybe it was because nothing else but sincere gladness was attached to Jinyoung’s words. Jinyoung didn’t ask him any of the ‘whys’ Mark had expected. He didn’t ask him if he was sure, or if he knew what he was doing, or if he had really found enough to give his life satisfaction, or if he was only fooling himself.

“Am I? Hyung, I don’t think you understand,” Jinyoung said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that.” Mark laughed nervously. “I guess I was a little anxious about your reaction.”

“How could I be anything else but glad? You really don’t get it.” He laughed in spite of his words. “Maybe this is something you had a hard time understanding in the past, when you left for America so easily even though you had friends like Jaebum and a girlfriend like Heeyeon. But by now you should understand. You can’t become so much a part of someone’s world then leave it without changing everything.” He took a breath. “So I’m glad you’re not leaving.”

Mark swallowed. “Yeah,” he said in a weaker voice than he was expecting. Tears were beginning to mist over his eyes, and his heart…well, what could he even say about his heart at this point? “Ditto. Oh, and Jinyoung?”

“Yes?”

“You’re one of the reasons,” Mark said. “You’re one of the reasons why I’m choosing to stay. I can’t imagine a world where I’m not drinking with you almost every night anymore. I don’t remember my exact words, but I was telling one of my students the other day that one of the most beautiful parts of my life was the friendship of someone I care about so much that…” Mark’s breath caught. It felt so much heavier to say this in person, right to Jinyoung’s face. “That you make everything feel like home.”

That look returned to Jinyoung’s face, that wine-drunk look from earlier. “Like home?” he asked in a soft voice, so soft that it felt like a feather brushing up against Mark’s heart.

“Yeah.” Mark grabbed his wine glass and lifted it. “Drinks for two, here on out? You and me?”

Jinyoung smiled and raised his glass, clinking it against Mark’s. “You and me,” he said.

0

Jinyoung wound up winning by two points, much to Mark’s consternation. Even though he’d helped Jinyoung out at several points during the game, he’d actually wanted—and expected, honestly—to win by virtue of having a far bigger English vocabulary. Still, it was worth it to see the joy on Jinyoung’s face when Mark declared him the winner. Such an endearing sight that was; he would bottle it up if he could.

“We’ll just have to have a rematch,” Jinyoung had said. “That’s another reason you decided to stay, right?”

Yes, Mark had to admit to himself, it is. His mind, which had previously seemed to determined to deny him the words for all his reasons, was now flooding him with them, as if filling up his mental Scrabble board until there were no spaces left. WINE and BEER and EVENINGS and BARSTOOLS and JOKES and CONFIDING and TRUST and CONNECTION and DEEPENING and TRUTH and SMILES and LAUGHS and TOGETHER and…

LONGING

LONGING

LONGING.

Longing for it to last forever, to always be a part of his life.

And yet, longing for it to change. To become bigger.

Longing not just for these somethings. But for someone.

He had a feeling now what Jinyoung meant when he’d said How can you just say these things and expect the world to be normal after? Because he was certain the world now would never go back to normal, with all these words building and building in his head.

Mark pressed a hand over his heart, a smile slowly growing on his face.

Aha, he thought to himself. So that’s what this is.

0

A/N: I mentioned this on Twitter, but I actually played through a game of Scrabble as both Mark and Jinyoung in order to write about it as accurately as possible :) Mark was actually supposed to come back and win, but I played a little too competively as Jinyoung, so I kept his accidental victory in the story. Here's their full gameboard: