What have I done? What have I done…

            This was the permeating question going through my brain immediately after. I felt undeniably guilty. Terrible. Ashamed. Not so much of what I’d done, but who I’d done it against.

            What was wrong with me? Why didn’t I want Jonghyun—why wasn’t he enough? I’d never crave a man the way I surprisingly did Key, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I was at a total loss as to why this was happening—and the only thing I could think of to do was to talk, honestly, with the one person who deserved to know what was going on... I had to talk to Jong.

            “Wha… I am speechless,” Jonghyun said after I’d resumed my seat at the table. “Really, babe, what came over you? That was amazing... you totally surprised me.”

            I skirted a noodle across the plate with the prong of my fork. “I—I just wanted to do something for you. All this… is for you.” I hung my head then, ashamed of the very words leaking out of my stained mouth. Could he see the shame on my face? Could he see the guilt hanging on my shoulders? I had never felt uglier than in that moment, never felt so exposed and vulnerable and cruel. “Jong, I—”

            “Raina, I have something to say,” he immediately answered before I could finish.

            “Hm?” This took me off guard. “What is it?”

            “I—I want to tell you—well, about two things, actually—but first, I want to tell you what happened.”

            Was he talking about what had just happened between us? No—he was talking about something else…

            “What happened between Key and I. I think you should know. I… I don’t want to have any secrets…”

            I felt my chest tighten. Even though the last part of his claim made my guilt triple, I couldn’t help but wonder what level of confession I was about to hear. I was both excited as I was nervous. I tried to interrupt him again in order to confess my own secrets, but he insisted he say what he’d been trying to find the words to say for the past few weeks. He was finally going to tell me what happened in high school so many years ago…

* * *

             He’d woken to the sound of his own heart-rate on the EKG monitor, turning over with hazy eyes to a room he did not recognize, to a hand he vaguely remembered.

            “Oh? You’re awake,” said a soft voice.

            Jong tried to speak, but his mouth refused to obey him and would not open. His eyes, however, spoke many frantic things all at once.

            “Relax, you’re fine. You’re in the hospital, Kim Jonghyun. But I’ve been taking care of you. Well, you and your parents—”

            “U-um… ma…?”

            The boy beside him smiled and squeezed his hand. “Yes, I met her. Ajumma’s a nice lady. She’s at home right now; I’ve come to relieve her.”

            “Wh… who…?”

            “Who am I?” he answered for him. “You can call me Key.”

            “K-key?”

            The boy named Key returned his breathy question with a self-satisfied smirk. “ ’Cause I’ll be the ‘key’ to your recovery~ I’m gonna make sure you get out of here soon, ne? Hwaiting~!”

            Jong’s mouth was dry and sticky, but the words were coming faster now. “Do I… do I know you…?”

            “Sure. But maybe you only notice me now. You know, I’m the ‘gay guy’ in your class. Does that help? That’s how most people seem to recognize me.”

            “Oh…” But, truthfully, he didn’t remember at all. He didn’t remember anything. It didn't help that the school term had only just started a few weeks before and he was not only a brand new student, but also still very unfamiliar with faces. “Why am I here, Key?”

            Key took a deep breath. “Because… of me.”

            “Huh?”

            “Because some s overheard me saying you were cute, and—”

            “What?” None of this was making sense.

            “You really don’t remember?”

            “No.”

            “Jonghyun, you were assaulted at school. In the bathroom. Do you remember that?”

            “Vaguely. Not really, no.”

            “Hm… well, your doctor said you had some head trauma, so maybe your memories will come back to you soon?”

            “O-okay…”

            “Do you want to sleep now?”

            He nodded.

            “All right, go ahead. I’ll be here when you wake.”

* * *

             And he was. Key was the first thing Jong saw when he opened his eyes later that night. He’d been doped up on morphine for his bruised ribs, two of which had cracked under the blunt force of a boot heel, and another which had broken completely—not that he remembered any of it still.

            “Good morning, prince charming,” he’d said with a sharp smile. He had a copy of Vogue in his right hand and a cup of bubble tea in the other, which he was slurping through a plastic straw, from which he’d periodically pause and grind between his molars. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Can I get you anything?”

            “Water,” he moaned, and Key immediately fetched some for him. Then, more bashfully, “I—I need to pee.”

            “Oh? Don’t mind me. I’ve seen you pee tons of times.”

            “Bwo?!”

            Key pointed to the bag hanging by his side. “You’re on a catheter, Jong. They just changed it, so it should be okay.”

            His cheeks grew warm. It was weird that this almost perfect stranger had been watching him pee for the past few days against his knowledge. “I—I don’t know if I can do it with you sitting right there…”

            “Oh, please. You think it bothers me? There’s no need to be embarrassed.”

            “I don’t even know you…”

            “Well, you’ll never forget me now.”

            “Key, please,” he tried again, until finally, Key put down his magazine and stood to his feet.

            “All right,” he said. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

            When he came back, he settled back into his original position, went back to the page he’d dog-eared before setting it down, and, without looking at Jong as his eyes scanned the pictures, asked, “Who is Raina?”  

            “Hm?”

            “You talked about her in your sleep. Who is she? A girlfriend?”

            “Just—just a friend.”

            “Oh, so you remember her?”

            He did. He remembered most things. “She doesn’t know I’m here, does she?”

            “How should I know?”

            “I—I don’t want her to know about this.”

            Key shrugged. “Fine by me. I won’t tell her. I don’t even know who she is.”

            He tried to shift his body just then but, finding it extremely painful, refrained.

            “Do you need some help?”

            “No, no; it’s fine.” Jong looked at the clock: 8:47 in the evening. “Where are my parents?”

            “They’ll be here in the morning. I’m the overnight guy,” he said proudly.

            “You… you stay here overnight?”

            “Well, sure. You can’t be alone, right? No one should ever have to be alone.”

* * *

            Over the next few days Jong’s memories started to come back, though Key seemed careful not to tell him any details he couldn’t remember on his own. But when he’d remembered enough to piece it all together, he asked his unexpected and unfailing nurse: “Why did you tell them I was ‘cute’?”

            “What do you mean ‘why’? ’Cause you are.”

            His cheeks fell red. “Er—”

            “Anyway, look at you. What are you, like a hundred pounds at four feet tall? You have fairy written all over you,” he teased. “Pfft. Those boys probably just wanted to tap that, if you ask me.”

            “I’m not—”

            “Hm? Oh, I know that.”

            “You do?”

            “Of course I do.”

            “Oh… how?”

            “ ’Cause I’m not either.”      

            He hadn’t expected this at all. “But I thought—”

            “Please, those s just pick on whoever they think fits their image of what gay should look like—they’re just afraid of their own secrets.”

            “I don’t know what that means…”

            “It means, somewhere in their pea-sized homophobic brains, they probably wanted to you.”

            “And you… I mean, have you had this experience, too?”

            “Well, that’s what I’m saying: my experience with my bullies? They usually come out not long after…”

            “But I thought you weren’t…”

            “I’m not. I just said that, didn’t I? But, I’m sure as hell won’t let anyone define me unless I want them to. It’s much easier ‘being gay’ if that’s what people feel the need to believe.”

            Jong really didn’t understand, but nodded along anyway.

            “Keeps people off my back, any way—and I didn’t mean that in any erted way, Kim Jonghyun,” Key winked, “so you can save the smart- reply.”

            This made him laugh. In fact, everything Key said made him laugh. After the initial abrasive introductions, Key was really a sweet and caring person; funny too. “So, people leave you alone now? Is that what you mean?”

            “Yup. Once you’re written off, people tend to ignore you. Or didn’t you find it interesting that you didn’t even remember me—?”

            “Wae?”

            “I sit three rows behind you.”

            Jong’s face went a little blank. “Er—sorry. My memory’s not so good.”

            “Pfft. Don’t try to blame it on that. You know it wouldn’t matter.”

            “I’m—I’m sorry.”

            Key waved his hand to dismiss his apology.

            “But…”

            “But?”

            “Either way, could you stop telling people that you think I’m cute?” he laughed. “I really don’t want to land in the hospital again if it can be helped…”

            Now it was Key’s turn to laugh. “Well, you know I have a solution to this.”

            “Oh?”

            “Be my boyfriend.”

            “What?!”

            “You know, like for pretend. Then no one will both you, ’cause everything they’re afraid of you for will be true—at least it will seem like it. But you and I can have each other’s backs. We can take of each other, so that this never happens again.”

            Honestly, Jonghyun didn’t really mind either way. He liked Key, felt a natural affinity towards him. Had nothing against homouals whatsoever, nor really minded being mistaken for one because he had no prejudice. But mostly, he just wanted to return the favor that it seemed this surprising friend had showed him. He didn’t have any other friends in school, and his only real friend was Raina—but they went to different schools now and were a part of different social circles. He really didn’t want her to worry about him or know that he’d been put in this state. No, the only person he seemed to really have was the person who was sitting there next to him—who’d been sitting there next to him night after night, faithfully and without one single complaint—and if they had to fake something that really wasn’t insulting anyway, only for mutual benefit and camaraderie, he really didn’t really see the downside.

            “Okay,” he eventually answered, with a slow nod of his head.

            Key didn’t seem like he expected him to reply this way; his eyes were globular and sparkling. “Chinchaa?”           

            The tone of his voice led Jong to believe that Key needed this arrangement. Needed a protector, a friend—though he couldn’t outright say it. “Yeah, let’s be ‘boyfriends.’ Why not?”

            His bedside companion breathed a deep sigh of what seemed like relief. “Thank you,” he said in earnest now. He then took Jong's hand in his and lightly squeezed it. “I promise," Key added in a soft, slow tone, "they won’t mess with us anymore...”   

* * *

          “So… that’s it?” I ask after his story had come to a kind of intermission. We were still sitting at the table, eating slow bites here and there between the interim—the food undeniably tasty—so that we barely even noticed that it had gone cold as the conversation continued; we’d been sitting there for nearly two hours now, and I was completely engrossed in my fiancé’s strangely sad but sweet story. I could tell by the dodgy shift in his facial expression that there was more, so I waited patiently for him to continue. 

            Jong cleared his throat. He took a sip of room-temperature wine and swallowed it quickly. By his reaction, I imagined an explosive secret was about to erupt from his lips. So much so that when he said, at long last, “He and I… messed around…” I didn’t even blink.

            “Messed around? You—had with… Key?” I gulped, though my voice stayed calm. Was my initial fantasy not too far off?

            “No. Not exactly.”

            Not exactly… what does that mean?

            “We—we got curious, I guess, after ‘dating’ so long and all… we got curious what it would be like to really… to really—”

            I was waiting on pins and needles. “To really…?”

            “We made out, Raina. Like… tongues and stuff.”

            I couldn’t help but make a face. “Huh? Is that all?”

            “You almost seem disappointed…”

            “I just expected so much worse than that.”

            “What do you mean—this whole time I told you I’d never been with another person before. Doesn’t it even bother you that I’ve… been that way with a guy?”

            I shook my head. “Um, no.” 

            “Really? Wow, you keep surprising me tonight.”

            “But Rex, I really need to tell you something too—”

            “Okay, but Raina—wait… one more thing.”

            A-ha, I think. This is it…

            “I mean—er—this is weird to say, but we’ve, you know… done stuff to each other, too. Like... hands and... er. Yeah. But not because we’re gay or anything…”

            “No? ’Cause it seems pretty gay to me…” It’s only then that I allow those words to connected with the very same words he’d said in his retelling of the story— “What do you mean Key’s not gay?” I said all at once. “You told me he was—did you turn him, or something?”

            This reality hadn’t dawned on him—the reality that he had very clearly introduced him to me as his gay friend. “Oh! I guess I’m just used to thinking of him that way,” he laughed nervously. “But… as far I know he’s at least biual. You should ask him.”

            “I’m not going to ask him that!”

            Jong shrugged. “So, you’re really okay with this? I know that was a lot to take in… I have been struggling with a way to tell you. I didn’t want you to think less of me, but I've been feeling like such a liar all this time...”

            “How could I ever think less of you, Jong? No, I’m glad you told me—it’s good to not have secrets…” I mumbled this last part in my napkin; truthfully, I felt like I was suffocating under the weight of all this new information.

            Key's not gay... Key's not gay… 

            “Yeah…” he sighed. “Raina, to be honest I’ve been a little jealous of the time you’ve been spending with him. But I know it’s totally unfair, and thinking about how close we’ve been over the years really reminds me of how lucky I am to have a friend take care of you when I’m not around.”

            The words caught awkwardly in my ears. “Er… right.”

            “I’m actually surprised at how well you to get along! Key’s always had a hard time with girls, you know, but he seems to really love you~!”

            Key's not gay... Key's not gay…!          

            Guilt and shame rampant. My face was sheet-white. The very last 'excuse' I'd been holding onto was slipped from underneath me. I felt like I had crossed so many lines all at once. “Jonghyun, I—”

            “Because honestly, Raina, I’ve been having a hard time at work… I've been having a hard time with a few things...”

            “I know, but Jong, I need—”

            “Which is why tonight really just... it's just been so great to connect with you again. Thank you. You didn't have to... do all this."

            Why wasn’t he listening to me? “Really, there’s something I have to—”

            “I just want to remember this night, okay?" he insisted. In fact, I found his insistence rather suspicious. Either there was something else he had to say, or he was afraid of what I was going to say. He did say he had two things to confess, after all, but somehwere along the way, I'd already lost count. Either way, Jong clearly wanted the discussion to end. "It's been perfect," he finally said, "and I don't want anything to change it just yet.”

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