I miss the sound of your voice.

Seunghyun winces, partly from the neediness of the words and partly from the way his phone burns into his eyes, too bright and too invasive in the pitch black darkness of his bedroom. With the corner of his thumb, he presses the backspace button on his phone, watching the letters disappear one after the other, going back on themselves until the textbox is once again empty.

Above his blinking cursor, the metaphorical biting of his tongue, he scrolls through Jiyong’s previous text messages. They’d come quickly over the past few hours, a rapid-fire assault of train-of-thought communication that spoke of Jiyong’s obvious nerves, but also his excitement. Though Seunghyun and Jiyong had been nearly inseparable for the past decade, and had developed so closely to each other that their emotions became more or less interchangeable, Jiyong’s unconstrained glee had had an adverse effect on Seunghyun. It had drained him, left him feeling empty and distant, already abandoned on the other side of a fence that Jiyong had jumped over without him, his sneakers landing easily in greener grass while Seunghyun looked on, immobile.

Hey, did I leave my blue sweatshirt over there? The one with the band logo on it?

And then, a few minutes later, Actually, wait, maybe it’s in my car. I’ll check.

God, I forgot to go through my car before. I just found, like, five pairs of shoes in here that I’m going to have to shove into my suitcase somehow.

I probably shouldn’t pack deodorant and stuff, right? I should just buy it once I get there to save room and make my bag lighter?

That matters, right? The weight of your bag?

Why don’t they teach you this stuff in school????

, I have to be at the airport in three hours and I haven’t even slept. Guess I’m pulling an all-nighter.

Hey, remember when we stayed up all night sophomore year to study for that test and then Mrs. Cho canceled it because her parakeet died? Haha, classic.

It’s sort of obvious what Jiyong’s doing. He’s always been energetic, flitting from place to place and passion to passion, and Seunghyun has always been his grounding force, collecting all of that manic energy and pulling it back down to earth. He allows Jiyong to float and plants himself in the ground, acting as Jiyong’s tether, never letting him drift too far off into the unknown. The frantic, nonsensical texts that Jiyong sends him now, are a last ditch attempt to grab on to his lifeline, even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But Jiyong doesn’t realize what Seunghyun does, that the line has already been cut and he’s already spinning out, nearly so far gone that Seunghyun can’t see him.

Seunghyun’s phone buzzes against his pillow. He scrambles in the dark for it and reads the text at the top of his screen, face scrunching up against the assault of light.

Hey, we’re cool, right?

Seunghyun can’t text Jiyong that he misses the sound of his voice because it’s stupid. Jiyong hasn’t even left yet. If Seunghyun stood up and went to his bedroom window, he would see the light on across the yard in Jiyong’s. Jiyong was here, in his bedroom, less than two hours ago. His laugh is still rattling around the walls, like it has for years. It’s just that all of a sudden, Seunghyun feels like he needs to bottle the sound, like it’s become a precious, finite commodity that he needs to conserve for the future when resources are scarce. Because who knows when he’ll hear it again? He thinks back on Jiyong’s laughter like someone living in a drought thinks back on the overflowing baths they used to take. The carelessness, the waste. If only they had known.

Seunghyun can’t text Jiyong that he misses the sound of his voice because it would go back on the unspoken agreement they have that they’re both cool with this. Not just Jiyong leaving, but the way they chose to spend their last summer, in the stuffy, still air of either one of their bedrooms, their bodies hot and slick, pressed against each other while the late afternoon sun spilled in through crooked blinds. Lazy, sloppy kisses and breathy moans huffed across each other’s lips. Giggling like school kids beneath sticky covers as they touched each other for the first time in this way, hands finally more purposeful, more tender than boyish shoves and back slaps. They had been wild and nearly delirious with it, unapologetic in what they had fiercely, sweetly claimed for themselves.

When Seunghyun had pressed his lips against Jiyong’s that first time, tasting the sweet, artificial tang of diet soda, Jiyong had kissed him and then pulled back quickly.

“I’m leaving at the end of the summer,” he’d given Seunghyun a heavy, serious look, his eyes flicking back and forth between Seunghyun’s.

“I know,” Seunghyun had replied. He was breathless, like he’d run a mile, already staring back down at Jiyong’s lips because that wasn’t a no. It wasn’t a look of disgust or a I don’t want to ruin our friendship. And back then, the summer had seemed infinite, the end of it so far off as to not even exist at all. Definitely not here in this moment, on a hot summer night on Seunghyun’s rooftop where they’d been chastised by their parents for sitting and never once considered not sitting. And who cared, really, about what would happen at the end of September when it was barely June and Jiyong was beautiful and here? Seunghyun felt like his entire world was shifting beneath him when the distance closed between them again. He’d closed his eyes, leaned into Jiyong, and hadn’t thought once about the so very far off future.

His phone buzzes again.

You’re probably sleeping. I’ll text you tomorrow whenever I land, send you pics of my new apartment!!!

Bye, Seunghyun. Love you, dude!

Seunghyun stares back at his screen. His throat is tight, aching, and his eyes feel hot. It was always going to be this way. Jiyong wasn’t made to be constrained to any one place or any one person. Seunghyun had known that when he fell in love with him.

I miss the sound of your voice.

He rubs the back of his hand roughly across his eyes and clears his throat, once, twice. He presses his thumbs to the screen and types

I’ll wait to hear from you!! Have a safe flight. Love you, too.

-//-

They keep in touch regularly for the first year or so. Truthfully, for the first few months, their relationship changes very little. The sudden singularity in which they’ve found themselves---Jiyong and Seunghyun, rather than JiyongandSeunghyun, said like one word their entire life---is such a large adjustment that for a while, they simply don’t do it. They keep up such a constant stream of texts between them, documenting via words and picture messages the little inane moments of their days, that they might as well still be together.

When Jiyong, as promised, sends Seunghyun a virtual tour of his new apartment, including close-ups on a strange stain on the wall, coupled with a should I be worried about this???? text, Seunghyun feels as though he’s there, like he’s actually standing beside Jiyong, with his arms crossed and his head cocked in thought, actually voicing the words that he’s typed. I don’t think so. It’s probably just a stain, not like, mold or something. Your apartment has health codes, right? It’s physically jarring when he looks away from his screen and finds himself back in his unchanged bedroom.

He counters Jiyong’s efforts with messages and pictures of his own. A quick snapshot taken of his father’s office from where he sits in the parking lot, trying to psyche himself up for his first day of work and trying to reassure himself that everyone in the building isn’t going to hate him for being the boss’ son. It’s a pointless picture to send; Jiyong knows the building. He and Seunghyun had played there when they were kids, waiting for his father to finish paperwork before he would take them to get pizza, all three of them singing along loudly to classic rock songs in the car. It’s nothing new, more like a repeated joke, or a song that you’re a little bit sick of, but it’s all Seunghyun has to offer.

He gets pictures of Jiyong’s audition sets, backrooms with white walls and other acting hopefuls. (I’m not supposed to have my phone back here, something about privacy. Ooops! And then, seconds later, another picture of his water bottle, the label peeling off).

Seunghyun sends him a picture of his lunch, uninspiring as it may be. A limp sandwich and a small, mostly air, bag of chips from the office building’s vending machine.

No drink?? Is the response he gets, after he’s already eaten nearly everything and has only a few bites of sandwich left.

The machine’s out of diet soda, he types.

Oh, no, not diet soda!!! Be a man, Seunghyun. Go for the regular. Own your calories.

I guess I can afford to. Not all of us are big movie stars who need to keep a trim figure.

Jiyong sends him a blurry picture of his own face, his cheeks in and his lips pushed out in an obnoxious pout, like a movie star from the 1950s.

Seunghyun grins and, after a moment’s hesitation, like he’s doing something he knows he shouldn’t, he saves the picture to his phone.

-//-

It works for a while, or at least, it works well enough for Seunghyun to convince himself that it’s working. For the most part, he remains firmly convinced that nothing’s really going to change, a hope that he protects in the back of his mind, nestled right alongside the Jiyong will get bored, eventually, and come home hope.

But then he has moments where it’s as though a veil is lifted and he remembers, abruptly and shockingly, that Jiyong is an actual, living breathing person on the other side of his phone. There are moments where he’s texting Jiyong, some random banter exactly like the kind they used to exchange, and all of a sudden, he feels out of place and odd, like he’s texting a stranger whom he, for some reason, has inside jokes with. And as much as he reminds himself of their shared past, it doesn’t lessen the feeling, just makes it all the more discombobulating. Who the hell even is this person? he thinks. It hits him that there are 24 hours in a day and Jiyong exists for all of them, not just the twenty or so minutes worth of text messages that Seunghyun is given access to.

Suddenly, all the little things that Seunghyun imagines himself missing out on seem huge. Like Jiyong going to the grocery store because he ran out of toilet paper and he really doesn’t want to go, but he can’t afford not to, or Jiyong scribbling down notes on whatever script he’s working on late at night---he’d kept Seunghyun painstakingly informed of all of his auditions in the beginning, but the updates have lessened---only to find his pen has run dry, causing him to let out a quiet, or perhaps a loud, depending on how his day went, “.”

So many things that Seunghyun is missing out on. And not just Seunghyun. Seunghyun got a flat tire on the way to work last week and didn’t text Jiyong about it because it didn’t seem relevant.

So who really knows what point in time marks The Beginning of The End. Seunghyun doesn’t know when their text messages started lessening, from nearly constant, to a few times a day, to a conversation once every couple of days, to a check-in every few weeks, to Oh, I haven’t texted Jiyong in a while. I really need to do that, to not even having the thought at all.

-//-

He only finds out about Jiyong’s successful audition for a mouthwash commercial from his mother, when they both happen to be outside at the same time. Seunghyun’s walking from his car to his parent’s front door---though he still lives here, he’s working on saving up for an apartment, already begun looking at places a few towns over in one of the developing neighborhoods---and she waters the plants bracketing her front walk, calling his naming and beckoning him with a wave.

He listens to her updates. This is the first he’s heard of Jiyong in a while, the first he’s heard of Jiyong ever having success in acting, and though he smiles politely, he feels awkward and strange standing in front of her. Truthfully, he avoids her when he can, has gotten into the habit of casting a quick look through the window every time he leaves the house, just to make sure she or Jiyong’s father aren’t outside. He feels guilty, not only for fading out of Jiyong’s life, but theirs, as well. A few years ago, the woman standing in front of him was like a second mother and now he’s ashamed to notice her slightly different haircut, the way she’s