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I am thinking it's a sign / that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images / and when we kiss they're perfectly aligned
/ and I have to speculate that God himself did make / us into corresponding shapes / like puzzle pieces from the clay
— THE POSTAL SERVICE
Wonwoo knows what’s coming.
Across the table from him, Seungcheol keeps fidgeting his fingers against the cuff of his left shirt sleeve. It’s been twenty minutes since they’ve sat down for dinner, and neither of them have ordered anything, except for a glass of wine each.
Wonwoo knows what’s coming.
“Wonwoo,” and, to his credit, at least Seungcheol sounds apologetic. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
It’s always the same thing, over and over. The sun sets and rises on an identical set of circumstances. Wonwoo wanders through all of it half-asleep, unable to feel the sting of the disappointment of it all anymore. The sharp knife of loss has gone dull from years of careless use.
“You had a TIMER installed,” Wonwoo answers. Maybe it’s rude to not let Seungcheol deliver the news himself. But Wonwoo’s been through all of this before, he knows this conversation so well it’s like he’s reading it from a teleprompter, and he’d really rather it not go on any longer than it must. “That’s what you want to say, isn’t it?”
Seungcheol picks at a loose thread in his shirt sleeve. He doesn’t meet Wonwoo’s eyes when he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.” He lifts his sleeve, then. It exposes the inside of Seungcheol’s wrist to Wonwoo, and there it is: Seungcheol’s TIMER. It doesn’t look quite the same as Wonwoo’s, a newer model, more sleek in design. It blinks it’s display slowly, like a heartbeat, and it’s only just a simple collection of numbers, and yet it mocks Wonwoo all the same.
000:03:15:13:10:45.
Three months, fifteen days, thirteen hours, ten minutes and forty-five seconds. Forty-four seconds. Forty-three seconds. Forty-two.
Seungcheol watches Wonwoo now, looking at him expectantly, his wrist presented to Wonwoo the way a prey might play-dead for a predator. Something hollow and rotten takes root in Wonwoo’s chest, a familiar ache. Like the tree that might have grown in your backyard when you were a child, but you’re not a child anymore, and the tree has been dead for years by now.
Wonwoo chances a glance at his own wrist, even though he knows what’s waiting for him. He does it because it’s what Seunghcheol wants, what he’s asking of Wonwoo without words. This is the same as usual too: the desperation with which someone seeks absolution from their guilt. From feeling like they’ve ruined something, from things not quite going exactly as they had planned.
But there is no absolution. Not for Seungcheol, and not for Wonwoo, either. Because Wonwoo’s TIMER reads the same thing it’s read for the last ten years; every single digit replaced with a dash. There is no running clock, there is no moment of the horizon, no immediate future, no hope.
There is only the unshakeable, all consuming lack thereof.
Wonwoo looks back to Seungcheol’s TIMER. He’s tired of looking at his own. He’s looked at it enough over the years.
Three months, fifteen days, thirteen hours, nine minutes and six seconds.
“I’m sorry,” Seungcheol says, pulling his shirt-sleeve back over his wrist. “I really thought — I thought that maybe —”
“You don’t have to say sorry,” Wonwoo insists, because Seungcheol doesn’t. “It’s nobody’s fault.”
That’s always the worst part. There’s no one to blame. Maybe Wonwoo could get angry with the universe. Maybe he could lament the nature of predestination, of fate, of the roads meant to be travelled — but it’s useless. The universe does not feel guilty, and it does not have empathy, and it cannot be persuaded. So Wonwoo blames no one, and he tries very, very hard to not feel sorry for himself.
A waiter comes by and asks if Wonwoo and Seungcheol are ready to order. Seungcheol tells him they need a few more minutes.
“I wanted it to be you,” Seungcheol says, resolute, after the waiter has left. He reaches across the table to take Wonwoo’s hand. Wonwoo allows it, and feels Seungcheol’s fingers slip across the face of his TIMER as they circle his wrist. “If that means anything. I thought it would be you. I had hoped it would be you.”
Wonwoo hates the trajectory of this train of conversation. “Three months,” he says, pulling the switch to move it onto a different track. “That’s not long from now.”
Seungcheol flushes. At the reminder that his soulmate is simply out there, looking down at their own TIMER, wondering who Seungcheol might be, where he might come from — at the reminder of all of that, Seungcheol lets go of Wonwoo’s hand. “Yeah,” he responds, hushed. “I had a coworker who got one a few years ago. Hers said fifteen years. I would have never thought — I didn’t think it could be anybody but you, I swear but — but if it wasn’t going to be you, I didn’t think it would be so soon.”
“I’m happy for you,” Wonwoo says, truthful, in spite of his own feelings. What else is he supposed to do? How else is he supposed to feel?He can’t go around being upset with everyone who isn’t his soulmate. Then Wonwoo would be mad at the whole world.
“I keep thinking about how if I hadn’t met you — Wonwoo, if I hadn’t met you, I don’t know when I would have gotten one. And then, who knows? Maybe I would have just let my soulmate pass me right by.”
Wonwoo allows himself to smile. It is a small smile, and maybe it’s a little sad, but it’s a smile all the time. Wonwoo’s mouth upturns slightly at just the corners.
That’s a nice thought from Seungcheol, at the very least.
*
There was a time in Wonwoo’s life, when he was much younger, that he thought, once he got his TIMER installed for his sixteenth birthday, that maybe Soonyoung would be the one who’d end up being his soulmate.
Obviously, that’s not what happened. Instead, Soonyoung’s TIMER started counting down as soon as it was installed, on his birthday, which was a month before Wonwoo’s. All Soonyoung had was two weeks on his TIMER, just fourteen whole days and some change, and then when Wen Junhui moved in across the street from Soonyoung — and they caught each other on the lawns of their respective homes, making eye contact for the first time — it went off, and that was that. The rest is history. They’ve been together for ten years, and once Junhui’s done with graduate school they’re going to get married. It was just that easy for them.
That’s why TIMERs exist. That’s what they’re made for. That’s what they do when they work properly.
It was the first time Wonwoo ever felt disappointment in relation to his blank TIMER. It was easier to swallow back then; it was only the first time it had happened, and everyone knows that people who get TIMERs at sixteen usually have blank ones for a few months, or maybe a couple years. And Wonwoo and Soonyoung had only ever been friends, and nothing more, so it was easy for Wonwoo to let go of that version of Soonyoung he had created in his head, the version of Soonyoung where he and Wonwoo were soulmates.
It’s a good thing, too, because it means that Wonwoo and Soonyoung can still be friends.It means that Soonyoung still invites Wonwoo to his birthday party — because they are actually best friends, for the record.
This year, Wonwoo’s showing up freshly single, so it’s nice to have a night to get sort of lost in. It’s nice to have an excuse to drink.
Wonwoo’s on his second beer when Soonyoung finds him amongst the other party guests. Soonyoung isn’t quite as sloppy drunk as he can get, and, oh, does he get like that fairly often, but he’s getting there. He’s wearing a bright pink party hat, the elastic tucked behind his ears, and a ribbon, pinned to his chest, that reads I’M THE BIRTHDAY BOY.
“I thought we were bringing the boyfriend tonight,” Soonyoung proclaims jauntily, blissfully unaware, throwing his arm over Wonwoo’s shoulder. He smells like his sweet-note cologne, and a little bit like the olives he must be collecting from any martini Junhui orders.
Wonwoo shakes his head. “Not my boyfriend anymore.”
“Oh?” Soonyoung raises an eyebrow, lips a little bit puckered into a pout. “Something happened?”
“He got a TIMER,” Wonwoo sighs. “We’re not soulmates. Obviously.”
This used to happen much more often. Soonyoung and Wonwoo have had this conversation more times than Wonwoo could even hope to count, but a few years ago it would happen much more frequently. There was a time in Wonwoo’s life where he’d pursue anyone without a TIMER he ever met, and somewhere along the way convince them to get one, and — well, that never really worked out for him did it? Which is partially why he’s abandoned the practice. That, and the fact that he doesn’t date much at all anymore.
What’s the point? At twenty-six, most people have already met their soulmates. And the people who haven’t? Well, almost all of them already have TIMERs, anyway. TIMERs with countdowns running.
Wonwoo thinks it’s kind of depressing, sometimes; the inescapable slow march of time, strapped to your wrist. He thinks it’s kind of depressing, and yet he yearns for it all the same.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. You sounded like you really liked him,” Soonyoung lays his head onto Wonwoo’s shoulder, squeezing with the arm he has thrown over Wonwoo’s shoulders. The tip of his party hat jabs Wonwoo in the ear.
“You can like someone plenty, Soonie, but that won’t make them your soulmate.” Wonwoo takes a long pull of his beer. “Three months. That’s all he had left. Imagine having a number so low?”
But Soonyoung doesn’t have to imagine. He knows exactly what that’s like. On his wrist, Soonyoung’s TIMER reads nothing but zeros, a countdown finished over a decade ago.
“Wonwoo,” Soonyoung lifts his head, poking a bony finger into Wonwoo’s sternum as he speaks, a physical form of punctuation. “How many times do I have to tell you? You can meet your soulmate just fine without a TIMER. It happens all the time.”
Wonwoo nods, like he does every time Soonyoung says this exact same thing to him. Like he does every time his mother says it to him too. He nods, because he doesn’t feel like arguing, but Seungcheol’s words repeat through Wonwoo’s head, a scratched up CD that keeps skipping.
Maybe I would have just let my soulmate pass me right by.
Wonwoo pinches the bridge of his nose, briefly, allowing himself to stew in how he feels for just a second. Then he locks it all back up. “Go have fun, Soonie,” he finally replies. “I’m fine. And it’s your birthday.” Wonwoo stands up a little straighter, attempts to look more apathetic than he really is. “I’m going to have at least two more beers, and then maybe I’ll be more fun to be around.”
“Oh! Wait! Let me buy you a shot. One for me, one for you. You have to do it with me, Wonwoo. It’s my birthday.”
*
Wonwoo does the shot with Soonyoung, because he’s a good friend, of course, and he’s also not one to turn down alcohol that somebody else has bought for him. And then he has another beer, and then he starts to feel a little better than he did when the night began.
It’s at this point that Soonyoung emerges from — well, wherever he was. He’s calling Wonwoo’s name as the crowd parts around him, saying “Wonwoo, Wonwoo, Wonwoo,” like he’s trying to summon a ghost in a mirror. “Wonwoo, show Jihoon your TIMER.”
Following just behind Soonyoung, is someone Wonwoo has never met before. He assumes, pretty confidently, that this is Jihoon.
Jihoon is — well, he’s good looking. Cute. Shorter than Wonwoo, by a fair bit, with soft, round features. There’s a crease to his brow that tells Wonwoo he’s maybe a little annoyed with Soonyoung, and yet he’s indulging Soonyoung anyway.
Yeah. Soonyoung has that effect on people.
“Soonyoung, I don’t think a stranger has any care to see my TIMER,” Wonwoo admonishes. He tilts his head toward Jihoon, in acknowledgement and also in silent apology. Jihoon inclines his head towards Wonwoo in return.
“Jihoon is not a stranger,” Soonyoung pouts. “He’s my coworker. You know, at the school? I’m friends with Jihoon. Friends talk to each about their TIMERs. I’d tell you all about mine but — well, y’know. It went off forever ago. I got the best soulmate in the whole world.”
Oh. Soonyoung has managed to drink a fair bit more since he left Wonwoo earlier, it seems. “Jihoon and I are not friends, though, Soonie.” Wonwoo is gentle with the way he corrects him.
Soonyoung pouts even more. “Well, I think you should be. Actually, that’s what I want for my birthday. Okay? The two of you,” Soonyoung puts a hand on Wonwoo’s lower back, and then Jihoon's, and then he pushes the two of them closer together. “The two of you should talk, and then become friends. And then, Jihoon, you have to ask Wonwoo about his TIMER, okay?”
And then, just as fast he arrived, Soonyoung is gone again. Leaving what might as well be a puff of smoke behind him, and Jihoon and Wonwoo standing way too close.
Wonwoo clears his throat, and he takes a single step backwards. “I hope you’ll forgive him for all of that,” he says, a little awkward. “It’s his birthday, after all.”
Jihoon hums. “Don’t worry. I’ve forgiven him for much worse than trying to get me to make a friend.”
They lapse, briefly, into silence after that. Wonwoo picks at the label on his beer bottle, considers ordering another one.
“I won’t ask about your TIMER, by the way,” Jihoon says, breaking the pause between them. “We can be friends, I guess, if that’s what Soonyoung wants. But I won’t ask. I don’t think it’s any —”
“It’s blank,” Wonwoo cuts Jihoon off. What’s the point in hiding it? “That’s what he wanted me to show you. That my TIMER is blank.”
“Oh,” Jihoon grimaces, before he continues. “Well, I — I, uh, don’t have one.”
“You don’t have a TIMER?” Wonwoo asks. Rather than repeat himself, Jihoon simply shows him. He tugs his shirt sleeve down to his elbow and lifts his wrist into Wonwoo’s line of sight. Sure enough, there is no TIMER. Just skin; soft-looking, unmarred and tinged gold from the yellow mood lighting of the bar. “Yeah. That would explain why Soonyoung dragged you over here.”
“What do you mean?”
“He thinks anyone and everyone I meet without a TIMER is a possible soulmate.”
Jihoon tilts his head. He seems to consider what he says next, for just a moment longer than he considered everything else he’s said. “Do you think that way?”
“I used to,” Wonwoo confesses. “But not anymore. I mean,” he takes another sip of beer, wets his dry mouth and throat before continuing to speak. “Statistically speaking? Like, from a purely mathematical stand-point? The probability that anyone I meet — whether they are timerless or not — is my soulmate is, like, incredibly low. Because, y’know, how we all only have one, and there’s a billion people on this planet. And all that.”
Jihoon scoffs. “You do all that math in your head?” He sounds fairly deadpan, but there is a lilt of teasing to his voice. And he’s smiling at Wonwoo, just a little.
“I majored in Mathematics. When I was in University.”
“Really?”
“Well, Mathematical Economics, technically. Which Soonyoung always tells me sounds even more boring than just plain old Mathematics, so if I’m trying to make friends I usually don’t mention it.”
“Oops,” Jihoon nudges Wonwoo’s shoulder, still playful. “Maybe you should take it back then.”
“Maybe I should,” Wonwoo agrees, but he doesn’t. Jihoon huffs out a laugh.
“I know I said I wouldn’t ask,” Jihoon nibbles on his bottom lip. “But I — how long have you had your TIMER?”
“Since I was sixteen,” Wonwoo replies. That’s standard practice these days anyway. “It was a birthday gift from my parents.”
Jihoon nods. “And it’s always been blank?”
“Yeah,” Wonwoo half-shrugs. Wonwoo is used to the questions. He’s twenty-six years old and his TIMER is still blank. That raises a lot of eyebrows. People don’t usually ask the questions Jihoon is asking, though. “If when I got it it, uh — if it had a countdown, for a bit, but it stopped, that would mean that my soulmate had a TIMER and got it removed, at some point. Or they died, I guess.”
“Oh. I never think about stuff like that.”
Wonwoo wishes he could stop thinking about stuff like that. He’s not sure if that might have been better; to have had a countdown, however brief, and to have lost it. Maybe he could have kept track of it himself, if that had been the case. At least the years, and maybe the months and day. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t have wasted so much time on people who were never meant to be anything to him. Maybe he could have lived his life more thoroughly, not always with the thought in the back of his head, the hope that, one day, he’d wake up one morning and find his TIMER counting down.
“I try not to think about it either,” Wonwoo lies.
He’s not sure if he’s convincing. But Jihoon takes a step towards Wonwoo, closing a previously erected distance, and so Wonwoo thinks that maybe it doesn’t matter.
*
It turns out Jihoon is a good conversationalist, and he and Wonwoo drink the same kind of beer. They have a great many other things in common, too, and even the things they don’t have in common, Wonwoo likes to hear Jihoon talk about.
They drink more. Wonwoo isn’t drunk — and neither is Jihoon, probably — but Wonwoo is pleasantly buzzed. He can feel his blood thrum through him like a hive of bees, carrying warmth and calm and ease. The more Jihoon drinks, he starts to get this splash of red on his pale cheeks, thin at the edges like watercolour. Wonwoo can’t help but to reach out and touch it, gently running the pad of his thumb along the highpoint of Ji hoon's cheekbone. Jihoon lets him.
Outside, it smells like a summer night before a full day of rain, and it’s still warm despite the fact that the sun is long gone. In the washed out glow of a half-gone-out streetlamp, Wonwoo tucks a strand of Jihoon's hair behind his ear and kisses him.
He does it, mostly, just because he likes Jihoon. He does it for good reasons, and maybe he does it for a few bad reasons, too. Like he’s sad, and freshly broken up with, and he understands just how persuasive the warmth of somebody else in your bed can be towards forgetting. Wonwoo is slow in his approach; he allows the time for Jihoon to process what is happening, he gives Jihoon enough to move away, if that’s what Jihoon wants.
But that’s not what Jihoon wants. Evidently, Jihoon would like to be kissed, and then he would like to kiss Wonwoo in return.
Jihoon’s mouth is soft, and the hairs at the back of neck tickle the palm of Wonwoo’s hand when he rests it there. “My apartment isn’t far from here,” Wonwoo tells Jihoon, having pulled far enough away from his lips to speak, but remained close enough so their foreheads touch.
“I want to go home with you,” Jihoon replies simply, unafraid and unashamed of his own desires. He wraps both of his arms around Wonwoo’s neck. “But you have to promise me something.”
“Promise you what?” Wonwoo asks, prepared to promise Jihoon the very moon that’s hung in the sky tonight.
“You have to promise me you’re not just taking me home because you think I could be your soulmate.”
For a split second, Wonwoo’s left wrist feels consumed by flame. Then, the feeling is gone. “I promise,” he agrees.
“Okay,” Jihoon nods. “Then take me home.”
*
Wonwoo has come to expect a very specific image upon his waking every morning: the first thing he does is check his TIMER. Always. It’s a habit that’s stitched itself into him, an affliction for which Wonwoo has no cure.
This morning, it is Jihoon who wakes him, digging his toes into Wonwoo’s calf and wondering aloud — in a way that is obviously meant to be coy, but Wonwoo is also obviously meant to hear — if someone might be gracious enough of a host to offer Jihoon some coffee, and maybe some breakfast. If someone — Jihoon drags the syllables out when he says it, as if he has no idea who that someone might be — is feeling generous.
Lucky for them both, Wonwoo has just done his grocery shopping. He has a fresh bag of coffee beans in his pantry, and a full carton of eggs in his fridge. Jihoon stays for coffee, and breakfast, and at some point they spend an hour kissing against the cushions of Wonwoo’s couch.
It’s just past lunchtime when Jihoon leaves, his number programmed into Wonwoo’s phone. Before he goes, he kisses Wonwoo one last time, and it feels sort of like a promise.
It’s only after Jihoon is gone that Wonwoo remembers to check his TIMER. It’s blank, like it is every other day, but — but today, Wonwoo doesn’t feel quite so broken up about it.
*
Things progress naturally after that.
Wonwoo feels like he barely has to try and keep in touch with Jihoon. It’s not as if he makes no effort — no, it’s simply that the effort is so natural, so easy, that it hardly feels like effort at all.
Their relationship is romantic from the start. Wonwoo supposes that’s an advantage of hooking up someone the first night you meet them. He and Jihoon have dinner, and they show up to their friends' parties together, and they spend the night at each other’s houses.
Wonwoo thinks less and less about the lack of numbers on his wrist.
And the thing is — the thing is that Wonwoo’s been here before. He’s made the easy transition from obviously interested in someone to actively seeing them before. It comes with age. Dating becomes a lot less complicated when you hit your mid-twenties, when people start understanding what they want. But that’s not the thing Wonwoo is talking about. The thing Wonwoo is talking about, the point he is trying to get across here, is this: it has never, ever felt quite like this.
In other relationships, when Wonwoo was dating people who didn’t have TIMERs before he ever even met Jihoon, the whole situation felt like a loaded gun between them. It was always a means to an end; how long did Wonwoo feel like he could date someone before he could mention it to them? How long did he have to wait until they could sit down and have a conversation about, maybe, thinking about getting a TIMER installed, seeing if maybe this was something that was meant to last forever.
Wonwoo does not feel this way about Jihoon. And it’s not like when he was tempering those feelings, either — with people like Seungcheol, when Wonwoo had been burned one too many times, and he was afraid to ask for things, but he always sort of wondered.
These days, Wonwoo finds himself worried. Worried he might one day wake up and find a countdown on his wrist. Wouldn’t that be so unfair? He had never expected to reach this point. And now he can’t imagine a version of himself that feels any different.
It’s as simple as this: Wonwoo does not think about his TIMER when he is with Jihoon, and he also does not think about Jihoon’s lack of one.
Maybe, one day, Wonwoo and Jihoon can talk about Jihoon getting a TIMER. But not today, and probably not tomorrow, either.
*
It’s not late, not quite, but it is steadily creeping towards a late hour. Jihoon and Wonwoo both have work in the morning and yet, still, they lay side by side in Wonwoo’s bed, uncaring to fall asleep any time soon. Jihoon’s hair fans out around him on the pillow like a halo, his bare shoulder sticky with sweat against Wonwoo’s.
Jihoon holds Wonwoo’s left wrist delicately in one hand, and with the other, he runs a finger back and forth along Wonwoo’s TIMER.
“Does it hurt?” Jihoon asks. He applies pressure with his thumb, like you might press against a bruise and gauge a reaction. But Wonwoo feels nothing except the pressure, no pain, so all he does is blink.
“It doesn’t hurt once you have it,” Wonwoo explains. “It — it hurts, a little bit, when you get it installed. Like a bee sting. Or stepping on a nail, maybe, I don’t really remember. I’ve had it for so long now.”
“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it?” Jihoon says, now, not really a question. He traces the skin around Wonwoo’s TIMER, the veins underneath a sharp blue-green against Wonwoo’s skin. “That your parents would get you one of these as soon as you were old enough to have one?”
“Soonyoung’s parents did the same,” Wonwoo shrugs. “It worked out well for him.”
“But what does it matter? At that age, I mean. Why should anyone care so much about soulmates when they’re only sixteen?”
“Because — because what if your soulmate is someone you meet when you’re sixteen? And you wait to get a TIMER, and then you just — you miss them. Because you waited too long.”
In truth, what Jihoon is saying makes perfect sense. But Wonwoo can’t look at his TIMER, he can’t think about how excited his mother had been the day he got it, how disappointed she is, year after year, when it remains unchanged, and convince himself it wasn’t worth it. That he can’t at least summon some hope for it.
“But that’s the point of a soulmate, isn’t it?” Jihoon asks. He runs his thumb across the face of Wonwoo’s TIMER, back and forth, like he might erase something if he does it enough. “You wouldn’t miss them. If they’re real, and you’re meant to be with them, then you wouldn’t miss them. No matter what.”
Wonwoo does not answer. Jihoon continues.
“I mean, if you think about it, a TIMER doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t make you fall in love with someone. You can’t love a complete stranger the moment you meet them. You have to find those feelings on your own. It just takes away all the guesswork. It gives you the confidence to tell that stranger your name. It — it neuters the whole idea of what it means to find someone you love.” Jihoon drops Wonwoo’s wrist, then, turning over until he’s lying on his stomach, balanced up on his elbows so that he can look Wonwoo in the face. “Think of all the people you could have loved. Maybe you wouldn’t have loved them the way you would love your soulmate but — but think of all the people you could have loved, if you just hadn’t known that they weren’t the single most exact person who was meant for you.”
Wonwoo feels like he’s swallowed the hot coal from a still lit fire. “So you’d never get one. A TIMER, you wouldn’t ever want one?”
“I don’t know, Wonwoo,” Jihoon replies, voice a little more thin. “I think certainty about anything doesn’t allow for creativity. Which is probably why I don’t have one in the first place.”
“What does that even mean, Jihoon?” Now Wonwoo sits up in bed, jostling the blanket previously draped across his chest.
“I think my line of thinking makes perfect sense,” Jihoon insists. His face is folded in annoyance now.
“You wouldn’t want to know? You wouldn’t want to just make sure you were making the right decision?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Do you think I’m stupid for having one?” Wonwoo asks the questions the second it flits across his brain, not a moment of pause to consider how it might make Jihoon feel.
Jihoon’s face immediately hardens, something beyond annoyance. “No, Wonwoo, I don’t think that. But I do think I’m going to go home now.”
Wonwoo does not stop him.
*
Wonwoo wakes up the next morning with a sinking feeling in his gut.
Panicked, he looks down at his wrist.
His TIMER is still blank.
*
It does not take long for Wonwoo and Jihoon to apologize to each other.
“I should have thought about what I was saying before I said,” Wonwoo says.
“And I should have taken into account that — that what I was saying about TIMERs might have upset you,” Jihoon says in return.
The whole situation resolves itself so easily. Like the universe itself intervened, and wouldn’t let this whole thing go on for a moment longer than it needed to.
For a brief moment, Wonwoo allows himself to entertain a very, very dangerous thought.
For a brief moment, Wonwoo lets himself think that maybe, just maybe —
*
December arrives faster than Wonwoo can anticipate it.
December means he and Jihoon have been dating for almost six months. December means Wonwoo’s mother calls him from the suburbs to be nosy about his life.
“Soonyoung and Junhui were around just the other day,” she says, because of course Soonyoung, Junhui and Wonwoo’s parents all still live in the same neighbourhood the three of them grew up in. “And I spoke to his mother and — would you believe it? Apparently he let it slip that you are seeing someone, Wonwoo.”
Wonwoo blinks. He looks over at his couch, where Jihoon is napping, his glasses folded and balanced precariously on his chest, wearing Wonwoo’s The Smiths t-shirt. “Oh. Well. Yes.”
“Yah!” Wonwoo has to pull the phone away from his ear, his mother yells so loud. “And when was my son planning on telling me about this? I had to hear it secondhand.”
“Eomma,” Wonwoo whines. “I was going to tell you soon, okay? I just thought I’d give it some time.”
Wonwoo’s mother sighs, then. But it is not exasperated, it sounds more like careful understanding, despite her own disappointment. “Well, then, it’s going well?”
Wonwoo feels heat creep into his cheeks, imagining that they must be turning red. He thinks about the way Jihoon looks sitting across from when they go out for dinner; the incredulous look he’ll get when Wonwoo says something Jihoon wants to tease him about, the soft way his expression will open up when he knows Wonwoo really needs him to listen. He thinks about the easy way he and Jihoon orbit each other, amongst their friends, amongst strangers, at that semi-awkward work banquet-type-thing Wonwoo invited Jihoon too. He thinks about Jihoon’s skin in the glow of the morning sun coming through the window, about the way moonlight coming through the same window at night will catch itself in his eyelashes. He thinks about six months of hand-holding, of soft and rough kisses, of hands and hearts and heat.
Wonwoo thinks of all of those things, and he says, “yes, Eomma. It’s going well.”
And when Wonwoo’s mother replies with, “does he have a TIMER, Wonwoo,” he really wishes she would take it back.
*
They are in Wonwoo’s car, parked outside of his parents house. There are coloured lights strung up around the railing of the stairs that lead to the front door.
Wonwoo grabs hold of Jihoon’s hand. “I’m just warning you,” he says, and he tries not to sound too frantic. “My mom is — I love her, and she’s nice but — but she’s really into the whole TIMER thing. And she’ll probably ask about — she’ll want to talk about why you don’t have one.”
“I’ve met the parents before, Wonwoo,” Jihoon smiles, pushing Wonwoo’s glasses back up his nose. Wonwoo wonders, not for the first time and certainly not the last, how he seemingly stumbled into something so tender and fond. “I’m sure I’ll be alright.”
And it is alright. At first. At first it’s alright.
Wonwoo’s mother hugs Wonwoo, and then Jihoon, when they come through the front door. The house feels warm, and it smells sweet and savoury all at once, and Wonwoo knows immediately his mother has probably cooked entirely too much food. But she likes cooking — that’s her love language, acts of service, and it always has been — and she likes watching people eat her cooking, and Wonwoo and Jihoon will probably get a huge container full of leftovers to bring home with them.
Wonwoo’s father is quiet, because he has always been a man who has never relied on words, but he is nice. Jihoon takes everything in stride, and he is polite and courteous and appropriately funny. But Wonwoo isn’t worried about Jihoon. Jihoon makes good first impressions; he and Wonwoo’s entire relationship is evidence of that.
In fact, this first part has always been easy. Wonwoo has brought people home before. They’ve all done this before. They all have their roles and they know how to play them.
They make it all the way into dinner before it gets brought up.
“So, Jihoon,” Wonwoo’s mother begins, tucking her napkin underneath her empty plate. “Wonwoo says you don’t have a TIMER?”
“Eomma . . .” Wonwoo chastises. Under the table, he rests his hand on Jihoon's leg. Jihoon squeezes his hand, briefly, in reassurance.
Wonwoo’s mother waves him off. “It’s just a question, sweetheart.”
“It’s fine,” Jihoon nods, smiling gently. “No. I don’t have TIMER.”
“And you’ve never had one? Never ever?” It seems like a simple question, but Wonwoo understands the motivation. If Jihoon ever had a TIMER previously, he could not have a new one installed.
“Never,” Jihoon shakes his head. “My parents are timerless. They didn’t want me to have one installed for my sixteenth birthday. They left the decision up to me for when I was eighteen. And I just — I never wanted one bad enough to go out and get one.”
Wonwoo’s mother hums. There is a lump in Wonwoo’s throat and he watches her, anticipates what she might say next, as she folds her hands together and rests her chin on them.
“You know,” she begins, “when I met Wonwoo’s father we were both timerless. We were married for years before we got TIMERS, actually. But then, for our anniversary one year, we thought — why not? We were so sure we’d be meant for each other.” Wonwoo’s heard this story before, and many of Wonwoo’s partners have heard this story before too. It’s heartwarming, and Wonwoo loves his mother and the look she gets in her eyes when she tells this story. But it is not without ulterior motives. “And we were! Of course we were. We were certain of it, but it was nice to find out for sure. To know we hadn’t wasted each other’s time.”
Wonwoo braces himself for what comes next. Under the table, he grips Jihoon's thigh a little tighter, a warning.
“Would you ever consider having a TIMER installed, Jihoon?”
And the question would be bad enough on it’s own, but then Jihoon responds, and when he responds with a simple, firm and final, “no, I wouldn’t,” it sounds like something shatters inside Wonwoo’s ears.
The times they’ve talked about it, Wonwoo’s always said he would never give Jihoon the ultimatum. That getting a TIMER would always be Jihoon's choice, and Wonwoo would never force it on him. But — but Jihoon had always seemed unsure about his own view of TIMERs, in general. Every time they talked about it, Jihoon would always insist that he was unsure if we would get one. And maybe Wonwoo should have asked more, should have posed the question more directly, but it had always seemed like something Jihoon might consider it, under the right circumstances, after enough time. It had seemed like Jihoon might have done it, maybe one day, for Wonwoo.
He had never said no. Not like this.
There’s a knot in Wonwoo’s stomach like after you dry swallow a pill. His hand falls from Jihoon's thigh. Jihoon does not acknowledge it. He looks ahead, to Wonwoo’s mother, resolute in his words.
“Alright, Jihoon,” Wonwoo’s mother says eventually. “Thank you for being honest.”
*
The ride home is long and it is quiet. Wonwoo keeps his eyes ahead of him, on the road, and sometimes he catches Jihoon looking at him in his peripheral.
When Wonwoo pulls into the parking lot outside of Jihoon's apartment building, that’s when it starts.
Wonwoo cuts the engine on his car, and then Jihoon says, “you’re upset with me.”
“You never told me you’d never get a TIMER installed.”
Jihoon sighs. “I never told you I had any plans to get one, Wonwoo.”
“Yes,” Wonwoo grits. He tears his eyes away from ahead of them, turning to face Jihoon. “But you never told me that you would never get one.”
Jihoon looks taken aback at Wonwoo’s tone. Wonwoo would feel more sorry for him, if the taste in his mouth wasn’t so close to betrayal. “I’m sorry you misunderstood me,” Jihoon says, and it makes Wonwoo curl fists into the fabric of his pants. “I have no plans to ever get one, Wonwoo. I don’t want one. Whenever we talked about it I — I only ever meant that I had a right to one day change my mind. I didn’t think it’d be very productive to tell that to your mom, and have her expect something that will probably never happen.”
“Probably never happen,” Wonwoo repeats to himself in a hush. The world narrows to the pain in Wonwoo’s chest. Apparently, Jihoon's been sharpening that sharp knife of hurt the whole time he’s been around. “So you’ll never get one. Not even for me.”
Something about what Wonwoo says makes Jihoon's expression shift. Shifts it from quiet apologeticness, without regrets, to something closer to — well, something closer to the way Jihoon looks when he’s upset. “This isn’t about you, Wonwoo. My decision to get a TIMER or to not get a TIMER is entirely my own.”
“We’re together, Jihoon. I’m in love with you.”
Jihoon stiffens. It’s the first time Wonwoo has ever said it. There’s a part, deep inside of him, passed all the hurt and frustration, that wishes he had found a way to say it earlier.
It takes Jihoon a moment to respond. “Wonwoo. Do you know why I won’t get a TIMER? Even for you?” He does not wait for Wonwoo to respond before he continues. “Because I don’t need a TIMER to tell me how I feel about you. I don’t need a TIMER to tell me that I care about you, and I care about us. Even if I got a TIMER — even if I got a TIMER and it wasn’t you, those feelings wouldn’t just go away. Because the same way that a TIMER can’t make you love someone, a TIMER can’t make you fall out of love with someone.”
Wonwoo sucks in a breath. He’s not sure if Jihoon notices, but Jihoon keeps talking.
“So what’s the point? What does it matter? Why do I need a TIMER to tell me what I already know? Will you always doubt my feelings if I don’t have one, Wonwoo? My feelings, that only I can really understand, and that I’ll tell you freely? Is that what it is?”
“Jihoon . . . “ Regret creeps it’s needle-like limbs up Wonwoo’s spine.
“I know how I feel, Wonwoo. Do you know how you feel?”
“I —”
“I think you should wait to talk to me until you figure that out, Wonwoo,” Jihoon unbuckles his seatbelt, opens Wonwoo’s car door. “Have a nice night.”
And then Wonwoo is alone.
*
Dreams come to Wonwoo in glimpses that night.
In the first, he and Jihoon both have TIMERs. When Wonwoo meets Jihoon that first night at Soonyoung’s party, they go off. Wonwoo watches it all from outside his own body, and thinks it looks perfect.
Next comes the dream where Wonwoo meets Jihoon, and he has his own TIMER, and it’s counting down. Wonwoo’s TIMER is still blank and he loves Jihoon, still, and every time he thinks about how they exist on borrowed time, he feels like the world is impossibly big. How could he ever meet someone and feel for them the way he feels for Jihoon.
More dreams come and go; Wonwoo’s TIMER begins counting down, and he forgets Jihoon, and his soulmate is someone without a face Wonwoo can see, and Jihoon leaves a hole in Wonwoo’s heart so big he could never hope to fill it. Wonwoo’s TIMER is set to go off in fifty years. Wonwoo’s TIMER begins counting down, and it lasts for a few minutes, and then it blanks out again. Wonwoo keeps waking, and falling back asleep, and dreaming new dreams.
In the last one, before he gives up on sleep entirely, he has no TIMER. He’s not sure if they exist, but his wrist is untouched by the piece of technology. Jihoon does not have a TIMER either. And they are in love, and they are happy, and nothing matters beyond how they feel, and how they express those feelings to each other.
When he wakes up, Wonwoo has to countdown from thirty before he can force himself to look at his TIMER. There is a fear, sticking to his skin like sweat, that he can’t escape. He doesn’t want to look but he knows he has to.
Relief embraces him like a warm blanket when he finds it blank still.
Wonwoo wonders when his feelings about his blank TIMER shifted so wholly.
*
It takes another two days before Wonwoo is showing up at the door to Jihoon's apartment. He leads with, “I’m sorry, can I come in,” said all in one breath, afraid that if he takes too long he might lose his own nerve, or Jihoon might turn him away.
Mercilessly, Jihoon lets him come in.
Afraid to mince words, Wonwoo does the most obvious thing he can think of. He pulls up the sleeve of his sweater, and presents Jihoon with his wrist.
In the spot where Wonwoo’s TIMER once sat, there is nothing but a small bandage. It is almost the colour of his skin, but not quite. Tomorrow, he’ll be allowed to take the bandage off.
Jihoon stares at Wonwoo’s wrist for a few minutes. Wonwoo would do anything to know what he’s thinking.
In the end, the first thing Jihoon says is, “you had your TIMER removed.”
Wonwoo nods. “I did.”
Jihoon looks up at Wonwoo, then, meeting his eyes. He does not look as if he might cry, but there is an openness, a vulnerability, to his expression that grips tightly at Wonwoo’s heart. Then, he says, “I hope you didn’t just do that for me.”
Because of course Jihoon would say that. That’s all he’s thought the entire time; that having, or not having, a TIMER is an entirely personal choice. That it does not need to be influenced by outside factors.
“No,” Wonwoo shakes his head. He is surprised by how truthful he can feel his words are. “No. I did it for me.”
Wonwoo can see something snap inside Jihoon. Someone cuts the string holding Jihoon back from Wonwoo, and Jihoon is crossing the space between them in an instant, holding Wonwoo’s face in both his hands and kissing him. I love you, it says without words, and Wonwoo uses just as many words to reply, kissing Jihoon back, I love you too.
Jihoon wraps his arms around Wonwoo’s neck. It feels, incomprehensibly, like the warmth of a home you’ve lived in for years. Or, maybe, a home that’s lived in you, kept in your heart, safe and close.
“But what if you miss them?” Jihoon asks, pulling away from Wonwoo just a little, pressing their foreheads together. It reminds Wonwoo of the first night they met.
“Jihoon,” he breathes, pressing his hand against Jihoon's chest, the spot on his ribs that contain his heart. “I don’t want to miss you.”