chapter four

"We've had multiple demos recorded on this disc," Taehak said, sliding the encased CD across the table in front of Hyesung. He then took out a flash drive from his pocket, placing it on top of the disc. "This has the sheet music to all the songs on it for you to follow along. Choose a few of them and bring them back soon."

"Okay," Hyesung replied simplistically, taking the objects into his hands. "When is 'soon', exactly?"

Taehak shrugged. "I'll call you when the deadline is coming up, but there probably isn't that much rush yet." He gave a knowing glare. "So that means that while I wouldn't try to speed through it, I also wouldn't leave all of it until last minute like you did that one time."

Hyesung gulped and stood up. "Right," he said. "I'll go and get on it, then."

He bolted from the room - and, more importantly, from Taehak's calculatingly forceful eyes - and headed for the elevator, pressing the down button. As soon as the doors closed him into the confining metal box, he let out a relieved breath. Taehak was usually one of the more carefree of many of the company's managers, but when it came down to straight business, he always transformed into a monstrous Spartan.

His stomach shifted as the elevator came to a stop. The doors split to either side and Hyesung prepared to step out.

"Oho, is this what they call fate?"

Hyesung raised an eyebrow as he glanced upward, spotting Junjin with a massively smug grin on his face. As if infectious, it tainted Hyesung's lips into a smile, too. 

"I highly doubt that two employees meeting in the company elevator can be considered 'fate'," Hyesung replied evenly.

Junjin shrugged. "Hey, you never know." He angled his head to the side slightly. "Heard from Taehak that you were getting your song samples today."

Hyesung groaned, holding up the CD and flash drive. "Yep. I'll probably have to miss out on sleep to get through all of them even if I work on them all day for the rest of the week."

"Sounds rough." The elevator door started to close and Junjin put his hand against the side of one of the doors to prevent it from shutting.

"I'd rather get panda eyes from lack of sleep than from being punched by Taehak," Hyesung admitted, walking out and sidling through the space between Junjin and the side of the elevator.

"Hey, why don't we can go through them together?"

"Really?" Junjin nodded once and Hyesung instantly lightened up. The painstaking process of finding the perfect songs would certainly be much more bearable with company. "Cool!" He glanced at his watch before meeting Junjin's gaze again. "I'll be back in maybe fifteen minutes, and then we can start."

"Nice," Junjin said, hopping into the elevator. "It's a date!"

Hyesung leaned his head back and laughed, waving as Junjin pressed the button for his floor and was enclosed by the metal doors. His laugh remaining as a lift of the corners of his lips, he turned toward the exit of the building and strode out into the cold.

He stuffed his hand hurriedly into his pockets as the chill gathered around his body. It was quite sufficient in keeping him alert, causing jolts of shivering to scramble across his muscles. The wind snatched the remnants of the smile from his face. He trudged along the sidewalk, the soles of his shoes making dull scraping noises against the snow-dusted cement. He stared at his feet as he walked, knowing where he was going but unable to determine why he was going there.

Minutes later, he found himself standing in front of the fountain.

Hyesung lifted his eyes in silence, his pupils tracing the features of the fountain again. It was humorously lacking in hilarity, the way that his body seemed drawn to the spot as if he didn't have anywhere else to go. He wanted a breather from work before he would have to suffer through hours of song-choosing, but instead he was in the spot that brought back too many poignant memories to count, let alone to deal with.

He huffed in the form of a curt exhale before swiveling on his heel and intending to head right back to his work. Halfway through his turn, he spotted a familiarly tall figure sitting on the edge of the fountain.

"Eric?"

The man turned his head, a bit of surprise scribbled across his face before it immediately transformed into a happiness not unlike that of a dog's when it sees its owner. "Hyesung! Hi!"

Hyesung scurried over in short and small steps, sitting down next to Eric, leaving a few inches between them for courtesy's sake. "I didn't think I'd find you here again."

Eric grinned, showing off a brown bag that was identical to the one he brought the last time they encountered each other at the same spot. "Out for lunch again." He reached into the bag and pulled out a wrapped piece of bread, the steam forming a layer of condensed fog on the inside of the plastic wrap. "Want one?"

Hyesung politely shook his head and Eric cheerfully retracted the bag back into his lap, replacing the bread. "So, what's up with you?" Eric asked. "Working?"

"Yeah. I'm going over song demos over the next week so I can choose what I want on my album."

"Sounds fun!" Hyesung couldn't prevent the emotional lift he felt in his chest upon hearing the sincerity in Eric's voice. Something about having conversations with Eric just had that effect; his feelings were revealed ly across his voice and that itself was, for some reason, very comforting. "Need any help?"

Hyesung opened his mouth, prepared to accept, when something made him pause. He shuffled his feet slightly when he remembered that he had already agreed to go over everything with Junjin, and it would not be fair to the choreographer if Hyesung decided of his own volition to bring someone else along. "Um...I'm kind of already working with someone on it. Together. Later." His voice sounded forced, awkward.

"Oh." Hyesung didn't miss the tad of disappointment decorating Eric's tone in that single syllable, and it made him feel immensely guilty...for what reason? He didn't have any obligation to have to do every single thing together with this one man, this one person.

He didn't have the opportunity to think it further when Eric said, "That's okay!" He was immediately bouncing back to his regular self, unperturbed by the rejection he had been delivered. He gave Hyesung a reassuring smile. "I get it. But if you still need help later, you can always contact me." He winked. "Or, you know, just show up on my doorstep. I wouldn't mind that."

Hyesung chuckled in response, unable to imagine himself appearing so nonchalantly at someone's house. "Maybe," he replied anyway. "Maybe I will."

--

Hyesung laid his head back against the wall, letting his eyelids shut as the docile melody of the music entered his ears. He tapped his finger on his knee with the calm tempo of the song, the lyrics processing thoroughly in his mind.

"How do you usually choose songs?"

Hyesung lifted his head at the question, posed by Junjin, who was comparatively more hyperactive in the activity of going through songs. He shifted his weight back and forth on each leg as he sat on the chair next to Hyesung's, unable to focus whenever it was a peaceful ballad playing from the speakers.

"The simplest way is just by what you like the most the first time you hear it," Hyesung replied, hitting the pause button on the laptop. The ballad abruptly cut itself short. "If it can catch your attention and keep it, then the chances are higher that it'll do the same with the listeners."

Junjin nodded hesitantly, almost as if he was unsure whether or not he agreed with Hyesung's statements. "So if you like the way it sounds, then it's enough?"

"Sometimes," Hyesung said. He didn't speak for a moment before blurting out, "But usually it's better for me personally when I find songs with lyrics and moods that I can relate to. It's a lot easier to sing to songs with messages that you understand."

"Is that how you chose your more recent songs?"

Hyesung froze. He was suddenly reminded of the last time when Taehak tried to integrate upbeat songs into his music style, and how those abruptly became out of question. "Yeah," he managed to say.

"But they're mostly sad," Junjin pointed out. When Hyesung didn't answer, Junjin grew puzzled and thought that perhaps Hyesung hadn't entirely heard his comment. He pressed further, "If you can relate to them, doesn't that mean...sad things have been happening to you?"

Thoughts rotated around in Hyesung's head in a broken wheel; too many thoughts. He swallowed the sickly uncomfortable feeling that was surfacing on his tongue. "Who knows."

He mentally cursed himself when he heard the silence that followed. 'Who knows'? He knew, all too well. And he had told a stranger all about it, so that stranger, Eric, knew, too. So why did his mouth grow mute when Junjin asked about it? He felt as if he were being unfair toward his choreographer, who was only expressing curiousness as to his life. It wasn't as if he was trying to pry into Hyesung's life.

Hyesung could feel that Junjin wanted to ask more due to the confusion in Junjin's expression, but was surprised when Junjin merely said, "I see. Let's get back to work then."

Hyesung glanced over, not bothering to hide the relief and appreciation that he was feeling. Junjin nonchalantly reached over to the laptop and hit the play button, letting the music replace the awkwardness in the room.

Hours later, the two slumped over in their seats. Having long forgotten about the conversation that didn't have a concrete conclusion, both men's brains were muddled with the songs' melodies that, at this point, all seemed to flow into one another. "This is so tiring," Junjin groaned. He dropped his head on the table, a dull thud reverberating across the surface. "How did you do this for all of your albums?"

"I have no idea," Hyesung agreed. He supposed that as his age increased, his capacity for tedious tasks plunged. When should I retire?

His phone sounded, and he flipped it over on the table to find the screen blinking with the notification of a new text message. He unlocked his phone and checked his messages. Eric?

The first thing Hyesung noticed when he opened up the message was a picture. It was of a long table, covered from end to end with plates and plates of food. Hyesung brought the phone closer to his face and recognized the table as the coffee table he had sat at and drank tea from when he first met Eric. The caption to the picture read: LOOK AT ALL THIS FOOD NYAM NYAM

Hyesung snorted in laughter. Upon receiving a confused glance from Junjin, he turned the snort into a sniff, pretending he was about to sneeze and feeling embarrassed that he was showing such mirth so openly in front of a clueless acquaintance.

"We should get going for today," Hyesung said, standing up. "Thanks for helping me out. Even though it took so long."

"No problem," Junjin answered, although he was all too eager to gather his coat and gloves. Even for someone who seemed as if he had a biological battery supplying him with endless energy, listening and analyzing to a certain level of music had been too much. "Tell me if you need any help again." With that and a hurried salute of the hand, Junjin was out the door.

The sun had already set by the time Hyesung stepped out into the streets. It was only about seven o'clock, but with winter's short days, the darkness was always much too early in enveloping the city in its cold embrace. 

Hyesung walked along on his own, knowing that he probably should have called Taehak to pick him up and send him home instead of roaming around by himself. There were still people on the streets, mostly all rushing home to their families. Young groups of teenagers were trudging past him with their friends as they giggled over an inappropriate joke one of them made. A sadly familiar sense of loneliness linked arms with Hyesung as he silently moved toward his apartment, loathing the emptiness that was inevitably waiting for him there.

He led himself out of the livelier surroundings of the city and to the apartment area, where the activity was more subdued after dark. His eyes floated across the evenly spaced buildings beside him. This was where Eric lived with his sister. He sighed to himself, hating how gloomy he felt, and was just pondering whether he should run home instead to save him the dreading of returning to his apartment when -

"Yah!"

His head snapped up toward the voice. It was coming from one of the higher windows in the apartment building right next to him, where a content golden light was filtering through the window. That was...

"Don't 'yah' me, you dumb!" Eric's voice, indignant, reached Hyesung's ears. "That was in my bowl and you know it!"

"Oh, please!" Yurin replied, equally as loud and stubborn. Hyesung wondered which parent they could have gotten that attitude from. "It was only in your bowl because you took it from mine, which - what a surprise - had it first!"

"Shut up!" It was an old lady's voice this time, and Hyesung watched as a grandmother stepped out onto the balcony from the floor above Eric's apartment. She leaned over the railing and made some angry hand motions, a dangerous-looking fan in her palm. "Do you two have to make it a habit to get everyone in this damned neighborhood involved in your stupid sibling banters?"

Eric marched out onto his balcony and glared right back up at the old lady. The tension between the two of them was almost unbelieveable; Hyesung had to think that perhaps this kind of clash was frequent in such close quarters. "Don't blame us for that! This apartment building should be soundproof! It's the building's fault if you hear us!"

Hyesung laughed to himself, a sense of amusement enveloping his nerves. What an intriguing man Eric was. Hyesung thought briefly about visiting Eric for a little while, but instantly decided that it would be a bother if he entered their home without warning. He was about to continue on his way again when he heard Eric call, "Hyesung!"

Hyesung lifted his chin back upward and spotted Eric waving excitedly from his balcony. Hyesung removed his hand from his pocket and timidly waved back, unable to match the enthusiasm in Eric's movements.

"It's cold out!" Eric yelled. "Do you want to come in?"

Hyesung shook his head. "That's okay. I'm already on my way home. Thanks, though."

Eric, it seemed, either didn't hear or completely disregarded Hyesung's words. He replied, "I'll be right out!"

He vanished from his perch and Hyesung was left standing alone, planted in one spot. After a couple of minutes with no return of Eric, he thought that maybe he should continue on his way. He kicked his foot around on the pavement, and Eric suddenly appeared from the entrance to the building with a paper plate in hand.

"Here!" Eric said, holding out the plate as he jogged over to where Hyesung was. Hyesung let his eyes fall to the plate. It was piled high with all sorts of food, bulging against the sheet of plastic wrap that had been draped over it. The only word Hyesung could use to describe it was 'unstable.'

"Sorry to be giving you leftovers," Eric said, scratching the back of his neck in embarrassment. "But I thought maybe you were working all of today so you might not've had time to eat."  

Hyesung hesitated. That was true. He and Junjin had sustained themselves on nothing but coffee and energy bars throughout the day. He bowed his head in a show of manners before receiving the plate. "Thanks."

Eric grinned widely, clearly proud of himself for being able to push Hyesung into accepting food. "Get rid of that skinniness of yours, eh? You need to fatten up for the winter."

Hyesung smiled back, wondering what to do with the awkward plate in his hands. "Thanks," he repeated, unsure of what else to say. He cleared his throat, an unnecessary action. "I should get going."

"Sure," Eric replied. "Stay safe on the way back."

Hyesung nodded and turned to the direction he was originally headed toward. Eric's eyes trailed after his silhouette as it began to blend in with the dim surroundings. While Hyesung walked off, there was a tiny increase in energy that lifted his heels more off the ground as he strolled. At some point along the path, he stopped in his tracks and looked down at the food in his hands before abruptly turning around to give Eric a hearty wave.

He then rotated to the other direction, buzzing with contentment yet completely oblivious to the bashful smile spreading on Eric's face behind him.

-------author's notes

Hi lovelies!! Long time no see. It's weird writing after such a long time; feels like I still have to get back into the groove of things.

Hopefully my updates will return to being frequent. It's summer now so I should have lots of time. I've missed all of you! <3