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Yeosang doesn’t think that his assignment makes much sense for a guy like him.
He’s always loved watching testimonials or even reading them, but he’s on the shyer side, comfortable capturing still life or idyllic nature instead of real people. It’s why he’s got his film camera with him as he roams the streets of Tokyo as the sun sets behind him, the streetlights coming alive with incandescent yellows and muted whites. He thinks he can smell a takoyaki stand not far off, and he sort of regrets being too taken with the city to have sat down for a proper meal earlier. The opportune spring breeze carries the aroma over to him, the rustle of leaves on the trees by him waltzing to the rush of it. Yeosang snaps a picture, marking down how many shots he’s got left on his current roll of film. He’s saving the editing for when he’s back in Seoul, something magical about a city he’s always wanted to visit but only given the opportunity to capture now.
His professor had told him to keep himself alert for anything interesting. The world opens up to those who have the eyes to observe it, Yeosang-ssi, people even more so. Yeosang’s trying his hardest to stay true to the words, now that he’s going to be entering his final semester at university. Professor Kim’s always had the most meaningful little pieces of providence, and he thinks his classes are the ones Yeosang will miss the most, once he graduates. He assumes that’s also why this final portfolio is stumping him, why he’s got this pressure as to how badly he wants to do well and impress the man who’s inspired him in leagues the last four years.
Yeosang’s supposed to be speaking to strangers who look interesting to him, engaging in the humanness of initiating an awkward conversation as price for the hopes of something special— learning about somebody you wouldn’t have thought twice about if this specific project hadn’t been assigned. He sees the point of it, the intersection between intentionality and community, how putting yourself out there can earn you something you wouldn’t otherwise have.
In the few successful attempts he’s had, he’s understood it as a thing of magic. A woman in her 30’s freshly divorced, a man in his fifties newly widowed, a teenage couple who’ve been together since middle school. The times Yeosang’s gotten the courage to speak to these people, as they lit a cigarette or stood by a corner to enjoy their banana milk, he’s learnt so much— the kindnesses that’ll return to you once you give somebody your time, where genuine curiosity can get you, and the stories you earn. It’s come with a consent form and a few portraits for his project, after, but the initial moment of it, where the captivating thrill of Yeosang being part of somebody else’s life for no other reason than a conduit of conversation and interest, that’s been one of the best life experiences he’s had so far.
Still, he finds it so hard. The initial energy needed to approach somebody he notices as a prospective subject is like a near constant thrum under his skin, pins and needles that eat at him until he walks away or finds the courage to approach them. He’s been trying to be more casual about it on his trip, surrender to the joy of being in a new place that’s been on his bucket list. Even so, he’s seen so much beauty here and then these last few days that he’s almost even more overwhelmed by it. People, places and things— every little part as a sum to its whole, making the world go ‘round in its candid beauty at a slightly different tilt because the street signs are unfamiliar and the corner shops are new to him. Regardless, Yeosang’s still sort of afraid of the language barrier or an inherent rejection, despite all of his interactions being perfectly fine and warm so far. It’s one of his weaknesses, he’s aware, not knowing how to point focus to the project and muse instead of the pressure that comes from being the artist of that undertaking.
Yeosang takes a deep breath. The air is fresh and smells like the Sakura he’s been wanting to see all day. The park he’s had his eyes on is fast approaching as he crosses the street now, straying groups of people going the opposite direction and further into the city as dinner time rolls around.
He’s not really got a plan.
From what he’s read, the park is well-lit and the crowds thin the later it gets. Yeosang just wants some quiet to enjoy the cherry blossoms.
He strolls down the path to the area with the benches alongside the Sakura trees that come into view. Everything is hushed shades of pink and white as the winds rain petals onto the paved paths, greenery shrouded in more of the season.
It’s mostly empty, and Yeosang’s close to taking a seat under one of the aged trees when he hears hangungmal being spoken a few paces from him. He would have missed it if he were wearing his headphones like he usually does, but they’re out of charge after a long day of exploring and the lack of it makes Yeosang pay closer attention. It feels somewhat like fate then, the ease with which a man’s voice carries from a few benches away and the vowels on his tongue that are close to home. Yeosang realises that he’s on the tail end of a phone call, gearing up for his goodbyes. Perhaps all of these things together are what makes Yeosang brave.
He still has a distance to venture to get to the man, and he realises that he’s pretty elderly— in his late seventies maybe. His hair is salt and pepper but he’s clean shaven, a navy-blue suede jacket over a button up meant to combat the weather. His trousers match his jacket, and his belt matches his brown shoes. His look is clean and refreshing, an emblem of time and grace retained to present day. Yeosang doesn’t think he could pull off looking even remotely close to as dapper as this gentleman looks. The man is sweet and assertive with the words on his call, matched to his body language, going from a coo to fond direction, as if he's speaking to a child and then an adult. His last words are repetitions of unapologetic I love you’s until the call ends, and it throws Yeosang off only a little bit. He could probably count the number of times his dad has told him that he loves him, but this man makes it seem like the words fall of his lips as easily and as regularly as breathing. That alone gets Yeosang curious to know more, the thrum of a potential subject prodding for opportunity.
Yeosang, in his spaciness, loses focus for a moment, only for the man to address him first.
“Hi,” the man greets in Japanese, “may I help you with something, omago-san? Are you okay?”
It’s unexpected, how fluent the man is. Yeosang half-wonders whether he’d imagined him speaking Korean just seconds ago. The man is patient with Yeosang though, waits with an inquisitive smile.
“Hi sir,” Yeosang says, using his Korean and giving him a polite bow on instinct, “I— uh— heard you speaking on the phone—”
The man beams, interrupting him with a seamless switch back, “I was speaking to my kids back home— I thought you were Japanese for a moment, my apologies.”
Yeosang’s been getting that a lot, here. There’s been more than one street vendor rattling off their specials in Japanese only to be confused by Yeosang’s look of confusion. His Japanese is broken at best and incoherent at worst. It makes Yeosang’s gut solidify in its resolve, this man is a subject.
“No—” Yeosang shakes his head, “easy mistake. I— I’m here as a tourist and heard you speak and it was familiar, so I stopped. I’m a film student? I have this project about talking to strangers about their life— testimonials of sorts. I came here to see the cherry blossoms, but I was wondering if I could sit with you a bit and maybe take a few pictures if you’re comfortable? I can show you some of my other portraits too, if you’d like to see them.”
The man looks him up and down, but Yeosang doesn’t feel like he’s under a microscope. There’s something kind about his gaze, roving over Yeosang’s features with curiosity rather than judgement. His eyes get caught on Yeosang’s bag and then back to him.
“I don’t know how interesting an old lad like me can be,” the man grins, “but I’d love for you to join me, of course. I’m Jeong Yunho.”
Yeosang shakes Yunho’s outstretched arm in greeting, another bow out of habit, “Kang Yeosang, thank you.”
“Aish,” Yunho admonishes good-naturedly, “sit down Yeosang-ssi, there’s no need for all this.”
Yeosang can’t help but laugh along as he takes a seat beside him, already heartened.
“So, tell me more about this project then,” Yunho asks, “what do you want to know?”
Yeosang’s always worked best with sharing something of himself so that he can ease into a conversation with his interviewee. He follows the same beats.
“I’m studying towards an audiovisual technology major back home in Seoul, and my favourite class has this final portfolio we have to produce for them,” Yeosang explains. “Basically, portraits with the life stories of the strangers you captured— I take a few pictures and record a candid conversation if I’m allowed to,” he adds. “I’m not very good with people, but I love the lecturer who’s teaching the class, so I’ve been trying to put myself outside my comfort zone a bit, push to get it done the best I can.”
Yunho nods, shoulder to shoulder with him. Yeosang finds speaking easier like this, where their eyeline is on the cherry blossoms as they sway and fall to the wind’s call.
“You can say anything you want really,” Yeosang continues, “maybe start by telling me why you’re in Japan or how long you’ve lived here if you’re not visiting— anything that you wanna share.”
Yunho hums. “Well, I think that this sort of conversation requires an accompaniment, don’t you?”
Yeosang’s confused for a second. He turns a bit then, watches as Yunho digs around the bag rested next to him, searching for something. He goes aha! when he unearths a flask.
“I made some yuja-cha to keep me by,” Yunho fills in, “would you want some Yeosang-ssi? It’s freshly brewed and still warm.”
Yeosang thinks it would be impolite to decline, so he nods. Yunho digs around for some paper cups that’s reminiscent of those he drinks eomukguk from at the corner of his dorm’s street from the halmeoni who knows Yeosang by name.
“You may record me, then,” Yunho says, as he pours the tea in Yeosang’s cup first and then his own, “I’ll let you know when to stop.”
Yeosang pulls out his phone and starts a voice memo. He keeps it between them so that the mic will do its job to catch both their voices. He takes a sip from his little cup after, and he’s taken back to winter mornings at his grandparents’ home where there was so much snowfall and even more presents under a too big tree. The tea is thawing and tangy, just the way it should be.
“I’m in Japan because it’s where my wife, Hana, grew up,” Yunho begins, “she passed away a few years ago now, but I come by every year during spring to honour her memory. We met just before my birthday actually, and this season, no matter how popular, was always her favourite.”
Yeosang doesn’t really expect that. Yunho looks like a deeply joyful person, and loss is not the first thing that he would pin to the man.
“She moved away for me, because my life was in Seoul and we met through our families being friends,” he says, fond and longing in equal parts, “she made a life for herself with me, and then we got to build a family together.”
Yeosang is immediately endeared. There’s something special about a man who so very clearly loves his wife. It’s perhaps more honourable when it’s retained to once she’s passed, he thinks, when she can offer nothing else but the solace of her memory.
Yunho’s tone is mango ripe with gentleness and mirth with respect to her character. It’s hard to think of Yunho as a man who didn’t put an earnest effort to adore her while she was alive, like he’s doing in her death.
Another sip. “How long were you married?”
Yunho smiles, “Close to forty years, but we should have gotten more, I think— she deserved to have more of her grandkids’ lives in hers, more of her children’s. Her heart was too young.”
Yeosang won’t ask what took her from Yunho if he’s not willing to offer up the story. It’s not important, all things considered. Yunho is in some way a grieving man, and Yeosang lets that take focus.
“She’s the heart of our family, even now,” Yunho continues, eyes a bit sad. “There are days where I forget she’s gone, days when I open my eyes and for a few seconds I expect her to be sleeping next to me when I turn around in our bed. It’s like reliving her loss all over again, I— this is better.”
Yeosang can’t imagine it. He doesn’t understand.
It’s what makes these conversations worth it, he’s found. There’s so much meaning plaguing Yunho’s voice, grim and pale. Yeosang feels it in his fingers, the way they go numb with a need to console a man he’s just met. He manages the impulse, but his heart unsettles in his chest as the price.
A lifetime of moments and the loss of it all in a few words. Yeosang can’t understand because a string of sentences will never be enough to explain it.
“We have two kids, Minjun, our boy, and Haneul, our girl,” Yunho adds. “It was Haneul I was speaking to just a bit ago. I’ve been to Japan more times than she can count— taught her how to navigate this city even, and she’s worried I’ll somehow get lost.”
Yunho heaves a fond sigh, and it’s a copy of how he’d addressed Haneul at the end of the line he was on earlier. “She has three kids now. I’m a very lucky grandpa to two boys who knew Hana, and little Nari, the baby girl. Minjunnie is expecting to have his first in the summer.”
Yeosang smiles. He’s got a niece and nephew too, tells Yunho as much. They exchange pictures and stories for a while. Yeosang finds it assuring that all babies are cute and all toddlers are as chaotic as his experiences relay. Yunho warns him that the next stage is one of endless questions. Yeosang keeps that in mind.
Yunho is incredibly easy to talk to and so giving with his time. Where Yeosang offers something of himself, Yunho shares in twofold. The man has had a lustrous life so far, a business major who went on to work for various international banks in Seoul. It allowed him a handsome allowance to travel throughout his life, and it doesn’t surprise Yeosang to find out that Yunho had been a family man through and through, having used that offered time and opportunity to share the business trips with his wife and kids so that they were also able to see more of the world.
“Hana loved collecting rocks or flower petals from wherever we visited,” Yunho recollects, “she actually had a scrapbook for especially the cherry blossoms, drying out the petals for each year to remind her of all the times she’d gotten to see them. We didn’t get to come every year, especially when the kids were littles, but I think she did a wonderful job.”
Yunho takes out a little A5 journal from his bag and it’s clearly very well loved— leatherbound and an earth green with fraying edges. Yunho holds it like it’s the most priceless thing in the whole world. He flits through some of the pages then, and Yeosang gets to see a plethora of petals encased in cling film with washy tape securing the edges, so that each page is a little exhibition. They’re dated from the sixties.
Yeosang realises that this book precedes Yunho’s presence in Hana’s life in the same ways it proceeds her death. He watches it happen as the entries get more recent, the handwriting changing into somebody else’s.
“My lettering isn’t as good as her’s,” Yunho softens, “but I’m keeping the tradition alive— haven’t missed a single year since she’s been gone so far, and someday I’ll pass it on to Haneul so that she can continue it, perhaps once I’m too frail to travel like this.”
Yeosang is enamoured by the entire thing. “Can I take a picture of this?”
Yunho nods in kind, “That would be perfect, thank you.”
He refills their cups with tea while Yeosang gets the right frame for the picture. The wind seems especially insistent on saying hello, and Yunho conveys that he assumes it’s Hana visiting.
“It might just be my wearing brain now,” Yunho murmurs, “but I swear the wind always gets a little stronger when I take out the journal— helps me know she’s with me.”
Yeosang doesn’t think too much about the afterlife. He doesn’t even know what he thinks of life, to be honest. He does believe in magic you can feel though, a significance in humanness and connection. He believes in Yunho, so it’s easy to believe in Hana.
“I hope she doesn’t mind that you have a friend this year,” Yeosang says, getting the shot he needs.
The camera shutter clicks as Yunho laughs. The wind whistles with him in harmony. “She would have loved something like this— you. She was always the explorer of the two of us even if I’ve been fairly outgoing my entire life, I wasn’t ever able to hold a candle to her.”
Yeosang is so undoubtably taken with Yunho’s earnestness.
“Thank you anyways, Yunho-nim,” Yeosang conveys sincerely, “this is wonderful.”
Yunho hums, waving him off.
Time and conversation moves through the two of them, laughter too. Yeosang gets to hear all the things Yunho loved doing with Hana (hiking and cooking, both of which Hana was better at), the music they loved playing together (Elvis Presley and Etta James to start, Whitney Housten, Bryan Adams and Celine Dion as the times changed), and what the most fun parts of their lives together were (watching the kids grow up, and failing to garden yellow watermelon five summers in a row, among many, many other things). Their lives were full and intentional, a constant show of support given and then returned in two-fold. They were happy— gentle.
Yeosang idealises it just from how Yunho recounts it all. It’s as if Yunho sees it on Yeosang’s face.
“We had our issues,” Yunho sterns, “like all imperfect people who come together do, but we made a life for ourselves that ended up being so joyous and full of so much love, Yeosang-ssi, and for that alone I’m more than grateful. Thank you for letting me talk about it.”
Yeosang shakes his head. “I promise you the pleasure is mine alone,” he reassures, “this has been so nice.”
He means it. Yeosang’s cup had been running on low and empty as it came to meaningful interactions this entire trip. It’s been a nice change of pace from the still life and nature he’s enjoyed capturing just as much, both good but individual in what they offer.
Yunho smiles, “I’m glad it’s of use, Yeosang-ssi.”
He’s thoughtful as he picks the empty cup from Yeosang’s hand as silence comes to sit in between them. It’s peaceful, and Yeosang watches the lightening breeze slow the fall of the blossoms, beautiful and soft. His phone buzzes with a notification from a video game he’s not done his daily rounds for then, and his lock screen lights up with the voice memo still going.
Yunho’s said much of what he’s wanted, so he makes a point to stop the recording and gears up to ask Yunho for the portraits.
He's stopped with a question, though, before he can. “Do you have somebody special in your life, Yeosang-ssi?” Yunho asks, inquisitive and genuine, “Somebody you love?”
Yeosang’s mind flits to his Sannie back home. It’s all fairly recent, two semesters of pining that amounted to a sweet kiss a few weeks before spring had come. San’s studying to become a doctor and they met at the gym. Where it counts, there aren’t a lot of students who fancy five AM sessions like the two of them, it seems.
Yeosang thinks of that very first kiss, the way it had warmed him up from his lips all the way down to his toes, how wonderful San had been in preparing a dinner for them, how kind he is. It’s new, but there’s something so right about it, a little voice in Yeosang’s head telling him that his Sannie is meant to be his for a long time. Yeosang wants that too, so much.
He thinks this is another wonderful aspect of being able to exchange stories with a stranger, how weightless even the scariest of admissions seem.
Yeosang nods, then.
If it were anybody back home, he wouldn’t be able to admit that this stir in his chest is taking the vague shape of love as it sharpens the more time goes by. Here though, it’s easy enough to admit.
“They’re somebody I care very much about,” Yeosang says, nodding, “it’s new— but I don’t know, I think it’s something really special.”
Yunho turns to face him, a look on his face that’s both hopeful and sincere. “I’ve found that your instincts, if you’re really listening, always shows you where your path is, don’t you worry.”
It gives Yeosang confidence where there’s already a flourish of promise. San had texted him this morning, told him to bundle up when exploring and sent him a cute cat emoji to reiterate his point. When Yeosang had told him not to worry so much, he’d been sent a selfie of San pouting, cheeks blush warmed from sleep and a fresh bedhead. (The extra scarf Yeosang took on San’s account is wrapped around his neck at the moment, and Yeosang’s grateful for how it’s keeping him from the cold, regardless). Here, he has an inkling that Yunho’s right.
Yunho’s a specific type of thoughtful when he speaks next— a reservation Yeosang’s not encountered in the man within the short time he’s been in Yunho’s company.
“Can I tell you about my great love, Yeosang-ssi?” He asks. “I’d really like to, if you have some more time, but it would have to stay just between us.”
The question throws Yeosang off guard.
He thought that that’s the story he’d been listening to, so far— of a lovely marriage with a fruitful family line, something Yunho has in spades to leave behind as his legacy. That’s how Yunho had shaped it, how he’d so far made a point to communicate this part of his life to Yeosang.
Yunho offers Yeosang a smile. It’s the first time it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“My wife is my longest love,” he says as some form of explanation, “my greatest is somebody I don’t get to speak very much about at all.”
Yeosang doesn’t think there’s any way Yunho could possibly top what the last hour or so of their conversation has been. Still, he understands how liberating it can be to confide in somebody where there’s no stakes. He’d just done as much, and he thinks Yunho’s seen it for what it is. Share in one, get in two-fold.
“I’d love to know, Yunho-nim,” Yeosang accepts, “if you’re sure.”
There’s already a gravity to it that Yeosang can sense. He doesn’t know what this is going to be or where this conversation will waver, but he’s here to listen. The most sceptical part of him just hopes it’s not an affair or some weird, fucked up fetish. They are strangers after all.
Yeosang shakes off the thought. He knows Yunho just a bit now, has a hunch for his character in some sense and considers him genuine. He hopes that he’s right about the inkling he has.
“I wanted to be a dancer actually,” Yunho confesses as a start, an edge of ridicule in his tone, “when I was younger— I— that’s what I always wanted.”
It surprises Yeosang. Yunho doesn’t seem like the type. Kind, sure. Pursuer of the arts? Unexpected. He fits the mould of retired businessman almost a bit too well. But really, what does Yeosang know?
“My best friend and I, we met through our dance classes.”
It’s— there’s a way Yunho says it. Yeosang doesn’t want to assume, doesn’t want to see something where there isn’t anything to see.
“We were young. Seven? Eight, maybe? My parents put me in the classes because they wanted me to get into a physical activity and the pastor’s brother was running a few co-ed dance classes after Church on Sunday’s,” Yunho continues, “the convenience outweighed the implication of it being a girl’s sport to my dad at the time— I was young enough, too, and it was a suggestion from the church.”
Something sits uneasy in Yeosang’s stomach. He forgets how different the world must have been, decades ago, how it was all steeped in fixed lenses and bare of much colour and flexibility.
Yunho smiles, tender, “I wasn’t a shy kid but I hadn’t ever danced before, and I remember being so nervous at the beginning of the class. I was twiddling my thumbs in a corner when this boy came up to me and introduced himself.”
Yeosang still doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. For all he knows, this boy introduces Yunho to his great love, the best friend— the lifelong companion. Except Yeosang has a feeling, an intuition. Yunho spoke about his family and his friends when he was recording, casual stories and meaningful anecdotes. There wasn’t ever a mention of this best friend.
“He said his name was Song Mingi— that he had been to the class about four times now. He had the kindest smile I’d ever encountered and an uneven row of teeth that he told me not to mind because he still had baby teeth left to fall out,” Yunho recalls, laughing.
“I followed him around like a puppy for the entirety of that hour, and then for about two decades after that.”
There’s a certain fondness that Yeosang finds is special to Yunho when he talks about Mingi. It’s not the same as with Hana, no more or less, just different. Special. Yunho’s eyes are filled with a mirth that makes him look years younger than he is, as if Mingi is his fountain of youth just by talking about him. It’s unsteadying to be a casual bystander to this part of Yunho— one that is so innocent and blithe. There is no part of Yeosang that wants to jump the gun on this.
He smiles at Yunho, encouraging him, “How was it, Yunho-nim? Growing up with him?”
Two squirrels come by them then. They squabble for a few berries by the bushels nearby. Both of them are momentarily distracted by it.
Yunho sighs, sure and intoned. “It was the most incredible time in my life, Yeosang-ssi, to be that carefree and understood.”
Yeosang wants to know everything. Mingi is not here, and it's evident that he is no longer a part of Yunho’s story anymore, but Yeosang wants to know.
“We both clicked immediately,” Yunho grins, “we spent all our days after school together, mucking about or dancing— just being. There’s nobody on this earth who knows me better than him, not even now.”
Yeosang doesn’t understand how that can be true.
“It’s not an explainable thing,” Yunho reiterates. “He was so kind— from that very first day to the parts of him I still have with me, he is kind. I just never had to be anything other than myself with him, and nothing ever felt heavy or complicated when we were together.”
Yunho draws a long-winded breath, looks at the trees that stare down at the two of them. “It’s rare to have that, I think— rare for it to hold you over for as many years as it did us.”
The squirrels have long since stopped fighting. They’ve divvied up their berries and stare at each other as they gather them to take to their hides.
Yeosang feels that with San, he realises— where he’s able to lay everything down and be taken care of, where he can just be, no pretence or expectations. In some strange way, he finds that this feeling, he understands.
“You know how these things go, Yeosang-ssi,” Yunho murmurs then, careful but certain, “when somebody holds so much of your heart for so long, the lines tend to blur so very easily.”
And there it is. Yeosang knew it was coming in the hand Yunho had implied. Still, it stutters him completely, to know this for a fact.
Yeosang is very lucky to be living in the time he’s in, with the circle of friends he has. He takes very good care of them, and them him. It’s not easy or any less scary, but there’s hope for him, more than there’s been for a lot of people before him. He’s never met anybody like him as old as Yunho, and he doesn’t know what to do, now that he has.
Yunho looks at him, gracious in this regard. His gaze is telling and affectionate, “You didn’t specify that you had a girlfriend, Yeosang-ssi, and the pin on your bag— I didn’t need much. I knew this part of me would be safe with you.”
There’s so much that trudges through Yeosang.
It’s one thing to sit down with a prospective subject and another entirely to feel like your heart is being torn apart and sown together all in the same liminal breaths. To know, for certain, that loving a man has always existed before he’s done it, that there’s so much of the community that have lived whole lives, felt everything Yeosang feels and will feel about his sexuality and identity years before Yeosang does. It is so spectacular— so strange. These are trite realisations perhaps, rudimentary observations that don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. The most cynical part of Yeosang thinks of it as immature and childish, that he’s so enamoured with meeting an elderly queer man— that it’s moving him to the point of being entirely speechless.
Even so, he realises, this is real and true. This love is and always has been real. This generation and the generation before it, in the hands of his ancestors and their ancestors all the same.
Yeosang wonders how much of his bloodline experienced this, how much had to be hidden away, how much got to flourish. Stories he'd love to hear that he would never get, stories that are lost to secrets, silence and time.
His eyes move to where Yunho points to his camera bag, to where the tiny pride flag from Wooyoung had made him a few semesters ago is pinned. He’d been making clay pins for his fine pottery class and got all their friends one. There’s another one beside it too, a small little flower Smiski like figurine Yeosang designed a while ago that Jongho had turned into a pin for him, Hehetmon, as Yeosang has so fondly named him. They’re small enough that Yeosang hadn’t bothered to remove them from his bag, mostly negligible upon first look. Yunho has a keen eye.
“It is safe with me,” Yeosang assures, nodding profusely, “Yunho-nim, this is— thank you, for telling me. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.”
“You’re doing well, Yeosang-ssi,” Yunho comforts, “to love so fully, as you do, is both a thing of courage and such a thing of joy. Hold him close and love him with all you can give.”
Yeosang could be moved to tears, if he lets it.
“His name is Choi San,” Yeosang returns, something given for so much more gained. “I call him Sannie, and he has the kindest eyes, just like your Mingi’s smile. He’s so lovely.”
“Sannie,” Yunho smiles, testing the name on his tongue, “Mingi-yah used to call me Yuyu when he wanted something. He’s the only person in the world who called me that.”
Yeosang’s heart expands larger than his ribcage can handle. It threatens to clog up his throat and tear at his breathing. Even as Yunho tries to be faux annoyed at the nickname, Yeosang has a feeling that he’d give anything to be called it again.
“He sounds like he really loved you.”
Yunho can’t look at him.
“He was my best friend in the whole world, Yeosang-ssi,” Yunho says, “the person I trust most in the world, and I love him all the same— I just wanted to be near him all the time.”
Yunho heaves a breath, stilted and aching. “A part of me still does.”
Yeosang realises that the love between them is still a real, living thing. It breathes as Yunho breathes and reminisces as he does. It lives.
“We grew up together in every sense of the word, and it didn’t really make sense for what I felt for him to be wrong,” Yunho ponders, “not in my head at least.”
Yeosang nods. He just wants to listen, here. He wants Yunho to share all that he wants to share.
“We stuck up for each other through everything,” Yunho firms, “even when things got hard, it was him and I against the world, and that made the world seem smaller than it is— easier to handle.”
Yunho settles his gaze onto Yeosang, the crease of his eyes suddenly that much more apparent even if his certain gentleness persists.
“It was a different time then, Yeosang-ssi,” he firms. “My parents started hounding me about my dancing when I got to high school— telling me how childish it was that I was prancing around for hours at a time during the week, how I only had Mingi-yah as a close friend and no interest in any of the girls at church.”
There’s barely anybody in the park, now. Even the stragglers in the walk path have gone far past Yunho and Yeosang. The two of them watch the cherry blossoms, still. Yeosang fiddles with the toggles of his camera by way of something to do.
“It put the fear of God in me,” he quiets, “I thought they saw it too— how smitten I was with Mingi-yah, how in love I was back then— I— I didn’t realise how far beyond the realm of possibility it was for them to even gauge that, how impossible to them it was that their child— a child raised in the faith— could be such a thing of sin.”
Yeosang feels winded. His voice doesn’t work the way he wants it to, when he speaks. “I’m sorry, Yunho-nim.”
“It was a different time,” Yunho reiterates. “In a way, it helped. They died having a son who has a wife and kids— who all went to church every Sunday. I had a good job— it was all they wanted for me.”
Yunho tries for a smile. Yeosang can’t tell whether it’s an etch of regret or remorse that stops it from reaching his eyes.
“I— Mingi-yah had a harder time than me, when we were young,” Yunho says instead. “His father wasn’t a very good man, and at the time, a wife who couldn’t submit to her husband— the man who provided for her especially, it was looked down on— it still is, I think.”
All of the enthusiasm Yunho had started their conversation with is near gone now. Yunho looks his age, as if he’s seen too much and lived too long. His hands shake as he goes to draw in his jacket to zip it up. Yeosang realises that they always have.
“They were forced to leave the church— once his mom took a stand. She ran away from her son of a bitch abusive husband and then everyone in our community ostracised her for it,” Yunho continues. “That bastard convinced everyone that she was cheating because he was one of the reverend’s apprentices and everybody thought he could do no wrong.”
Yeosang can’t even conceive the idea of it. He’s grown up with so much softness, in what it means for love to be commitment and kindness. It would kill him, if somebody he loved had to go through something like that, let alone his Sannie.
“Mingi-yah used to sneak into my room covered in bruises,” Yunho recalls. “It started getting so bad I kept a First Aid kit under my bed, but my parents didn’t want me being friends with him anymore, once the rumours started,” he scoffs. “His dad couldn’t do anything to them once they moved back in with Mingi’s grandparents. They were better for it, but it took a while.”
Yeosang can almost imagine it, two boys in the suburban outskirts of Gwangju easy to envision. Yeosang thinks of his grandparents who had much the same upbringing in Seoul. Community from church, close-knit ties that made every opinion seem big and important— freedom in finding the people who can be in your corner.
Yeosang thinks about Mingi, how frightened he must have been to keep risking his and Yunho’s days over and over again to gain some reprieve, how brave that was, how much it must have taken from somebody who’s as independent and headstrong as Yunho says he is. Yunho tells him as much, talks about how it was leagues more than bruised knees or marred skin— how Mingi was difficult to look at, some days, how they both cried when Yunho cleaned him up. He recalls the better parts of it too, of being under Yunho’s favourite blanket where they could feel each other’s heartbeats match up to each other, where it bled from one to the other as if they were the same person in the darkness of Yunho’s childhood bedroom. Mingi had always smiled at Yunho, first thing in the morning, made a joke of jumping out of his bedroom window before his parents found them. Yunho tells Yeosang that that’s the most unforgettable bit— how larger than life Mingi was, even when his circumstances tried to make him small.
It’s easy to notice how beautiful Yunho found him when then were young, how beautiful he finds him still.
“I was so angry, Yeosang-ssi,” Yunho murmurs, shaking his head. “He was better at handling it than me, had seen and been through so much evil that the shallowness of it was a bit easier for him to swallow than it was for me.”
Yeosang hears the sharp intake of breath Yunho pushes himself to take, almost as if it still bothers him. “The hypocrisy of it all— the unfairness, I— I couldn’t really handle it.”
“We got into fights because of it,” he says, “dumb, childish little arguments because we cared so much about each other in the same ways and we just— we kept getting carried away. I was so frustrated that nothing was moving fast enough so that Mingi-yah would be okay, and he was so afraid that I would do something stupid trying to protect him, and it was just this back and forth, push and pull until we just—” Yunho pauses.
There’s something meaningful about his gaze, something deeply reminiscent. “He kissed me about it.”
Yeosang’s heart soars. It’s hard for it not to. It must show on his face, because Yunho laughs.
“He kissed me until I was breathless in an empty dance studio after everybody had left and made me promise that I wouldn’t do anything that would get myself in trouble, because, well— it was the same for him as it had been for me.”
It’s a clear picture in Yeosang’s head. The composition is defined and in focus as he imagines it; a couple of small, warm overhead lights that cast a dim glow on two teenage boys with hearts bigger than their bodies can handle. All they can hear is each other’s quiet breathing and the electricity of having had each other’s lips on theirs for the first time, the newness of it— the exhilaration. Hands on waists and haloed around shoulders, gentle grazes of fingertips and teeth, noses touching and eyelashes on each other’s cheeks, the softness of it all, the fear.
Yeosang understands. He might not be accurate to the moment, but he understands.
Yunho seems to know that he does. “It had always been the same.”
There’s an unasked question that’s answered, then. Mingi as Yunho’s first kiss, his most meaningful kiss. Nothing will come close to it, not even a full lifetime’s worth of a different kind of love and companionship. Yeosang understands.
“Were you scared?”
Yeosang has many questions. He wonders whether the little crevice of worry he carries around with him everywhere is more than general caution— wonders whether it binds him to everyone before him, like Yunho, like every other person similar to them who are fundamentally just a bit worried, all the time. He feels like he already knows the answer.
Yunho nods, assured. “Everyday. All the time, even.”
“It was like I was holding my breath until we made it to university,” he admits. “He chose to go into music and I followed my set path— chose business because it’s what I had been pushed to do and what I’d been good at in school.”
“Those were some of the best years of my life still,” Yunho recalls, “where it was just Mingi-yah and I properly in a city that was all too big for us. Seoul was kind, in most senses.”
Yeosang can’t help but reflect on how much he’s grown in the last four years himself. He’d been sure, since he was pretty young, that he wanted to be in the arts. Hell, he’d even considered auditioning to become an idol at one point. He’d trusted his intuition and picked a happy middle when everything got really tough— where he’d still do creative work but get a degree for it. It was the compromise he had chosen with his parents, and he’s grateful for it now that he's at its tail end.
He doesn’t know who he would be if he wasn’t behind a camera, now. It’s where Yeosang feels his most confident and comfortable, despite all the initial challenges, where he knows he’s making something worthwhile by capturing the lens through which he sees the shape of his world, and how that can mean so much when put in the right places and paired to the right stories. He wouldn’t have that without college and without Seoul.
There are his friends, too. Jongho and Wooyoung, who much like Mingi and Yunho, had made a pact to follow through on school with him, the three of them together. Yeosang doesn’t ever want to think about how he’d be coping without them— the innumerable seconds that they have shaped to make his good better and his great greater, how he’s been shielded with so much love and safety by having them by his side.
Then, his Sannie.
Yeosang's never had the chance to be with anybody the way he’s gotten to be with San. He’d always been a shy kid, and aside from a few near misses and almosts here and there, Yeosang didn’t think he would ever have the courage to do anything about his interest in men until it stared at him right in the face. He’s grateful, all in all.
“We never put a name to what we were to each other,” Yunho says. “Some of our friends knew, most didn’t. There was a freedom though— something about how big everything seemed in Seoul, and how we were just faces in a crowd for a couple of years without anyone judging or watching out for every one of our moves.”
Yeosang is so moved by all these pieces of a lifetime Yunho shares with him. Yunho tells Yeosang that Mingi had taken him to a closed off garden by Han River at the start of their degrees, that it’s still there, as far as he can remember. Yunho had always been fascinated with the stars, and Mingi had made sure they would have the chance to see them, even if they were further from home.
“We sat out on a picnic blanket for hours that night,” Yunho smiles, small and tender. “He took care of me the way he’s always done— did so until we had to find our separate ways. We kept going back whenever we had the chance to. The time would be pass us by like a friend there, and it always felt we had everything we needed.”
There’s more that he tells Yeosang, just like this. Yunho had continued to take dance as an elective, and Mingi had sunk his teeth into learning music. Their paths started forming into set stones, where they wanted to be in a few years and how they could get there— what they wanted to do. Still, still, they were the parts of each of their lives that were inexorable. They were dormmates and then shared an apartment, cooked and studied together, lived together. It didn’t need to have a label for what it was— a quiet, sacred life that they were building for themselves and each other, something that they had always wanted and worked toward.
It’s also clear then, that they didn’t get to live it through for long. It’s strange, for Yeosang to already know how the story ends, even if the pieces aren’t all the way there.
Yeosang needs to know. “What happened, Yunho-nim?”
Yunho spares him a glance. He shudders, and Yeosang doesn’t know whether it’s the weather or the memories with an all too heavy weight.
“We were okay, great, even, until our last year in school,” he relents, as if it’s a long since scarred acceptance he’s had to face. “Life started catching up, Yeosang-ssi. My parents began putting pressure on me to get serious about college and my grandma wanted to see me have kids before she died, and it felt like the entire world was telling me to get myself off the ground and become an adult— as if all of these things would make me one.”
Yunho’s thoughtful, as if Yeosang’s a bystander to his musings rather than part of the conversation. “Mingi-yah was the last part of my childhood, and I think that more so now than when it all happened. He was the part of my heart that dreamt big and fought hard, the part of me that was reckless with everything I wanted my life to be— who I would’ve been, in a perfect world. He’s my light.”
Yeosang knows people in his life like Yunho’s Mingi. He’s been very lucky, with Jongho and Wooyoung, even San. There are parts of him that have been birthed, grown and nurtured because the people who love him have been there to flourish him when he hasn’t been able to do so for himself. Again, he’s too young to fathom the concept of ever losing such a privilege, basks in the feeling of having it, so real and presently.
Yunho heaves a sigh that moves his entire chest. “It wasn’t so much a falling out as it was me giving in. Life got that much realer, and as the circumstances arose and the choices came, I just— I never said no. My parents found a friend of a friend’s daughter who seemed nice, and I got this job offer to work at a desk nine to five—"
He shrugs, the blue suede material of his jacket rising with his shoulders. “Mingi-yah was defiance where I gave in. Then somehow, I got it into my head that maybe his boldness wasn’t a barometer for how he’d always let his heart lead him, but more of a sign that he was immature,” Yunho explains.
“Life was changing and waiting for neither of us, and I thought getting serious was leaving what we had behind or finding a new way to be us, while still staying true to the commitments we had to our families.”
Yunho looks so far away. There are unignorable parts of a live lived, Yeosang supposes. There will always be decisions that get away from us and things we wish we did differently. Mingi is Yunho’s biggest differential.
Yeosang watches Yunho shake his head, jolting away the feelings all the same. “He loved me enough to accept it— he chose me when I chose something else so that there could still be an us.”
Yeosang would be able to parse out the remorse if he looked closer. He chooses not to, takes Yunho where he offers this story over to Yeosang. He appreciates the vulnerability for what it is.
Yunho moves the yuja-cha flask between his hands. It’s repetitive and exact. “I guess it’s the most devastating way I told myself to grow up,” he says, “that somehow Mingi-yah was the last piece of me I had to leave behind to fully realise myself.”
It’s the most distraught Yeosang’s heard Yunho in the time they’ve known each other. There’s no way to go around it for Yunho, he can tell. There’s only the memory of everything that’s happened and having found a way to live with it all, after.
“It was stupid of me to think so, Yeosang-ssi,” Yunho concedes, sure, “I know that now.”
Yeosang’s had moments in his life where he’s given in— from the arguments he had with his parents when he wanted to pursue entertainment where they wanted what they thought was better for him, to the constant, aching thrum of his anxiety telling him that he’s no different from anybody else, that he isn’t gay or questioning, that everybody had times in their life where they weren’t sure about anything. The kindest thing he’d done for himself was to give in. He was right on some fronts, wrong on others. Time had been kind to smooth out the roughened and harsh edges of guilt or shame that had taken up so much space in Yeosang’s head. He’s grateful for it.
He can’t even fathom what having such a divergence in somebody’s life would do to how they lived in their own day to day, how much Mingi means to Yunho that he hasn’t been able to let it go, even if it’s been decades. It’s even more baffling that Yunho seems, in most parts, almost grateful that he has this, too, if not Mingi himself.
Yeosang thinks there’s something awfully beautiful about it, for love to be something so definitively cruel and kind.
“He made everything so easy for me,” Yunho hums, “the words I couldn’t say, the worries I couldn’t parse out into separate thoughts.”
He pauses. Yeosang waits. Yunho points at the camera Yeosang’s got around his neck, then.
“He was my lens,” Yunho murmurs, “everything was so blurry when it was just me— he’s the one who always put things into perspective— into focus. God, one conversation with him and I usually left wondering why I was worrying in the first place.”
“I’m sorry you had to leave him,” Yeosang softens, “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“I wish I chose him more,” Yunho says, almost wistful, “I don’t think that he ever doubted that he was the first in my heart— he was— is, but I’d like to have said it more, and I’d like to have said it loudly, to him especially.”
Yeosang can’t even begin to understand this aspect of it all. There’s some merit, he thinks, to be such an antithesis to a life lived like Yunho’s. He had so far to go, so many years that he hasn’t yet traversed. Still, he’s compelled to soothe.
“Well, you’re doing it now.”
A quirk of a grin pulls at the side of Yunho’s mouth. “I don’t know if it counts,” Yunho whispers.
Yeosang supposes that’s fair. After all, Yunho and Mingi had gone their separate ways, and Yunho had chosen a life that was in fact very conventional. The wife, the kids.
Even so, there’s a glint in his eyes that Yeosang recognises, one that he’s seen a few times in the last few weeks. There’s a halcyon that the conversation has taken Yunho back to, nostalgia even if a little sad, joy even if it’s regret tinged. It was so happy when it was happy, that Yeosang can very clearly infer.
“Perhaps I am,” Yunho looks to him, still so ever kind.
“If there’s any advice I can impart, Yeosang-ssi, I’d like to tell my younger self that life’s for your own living,” Yunho ponders. “I did everything right— married a smart, personable woman, loved her well and kindly, had children I adore. My babies have had babies, and I’ve got my wonderful grandkids. None of it is anything I would change, not now.”
He pauses then, as if this is the bit that’s difficult to admit. “It’s a life well lived, but it’s not the life I necessarily wanted to live.”
Yeosang nods. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to bare the weight of it, had he made the decisions Yunho has. He figures that he certainly wouldn’t be able to manage it with the grace that Yunho shares so honestly.
“I would have been just as happy, if not more, being by Mingi-yah’s side,” he says, finally. “I’d steal kisses from him in the dead of night under the trees here just like I did all those years ago, or even behind the church I used to go to with my grandparents back home, because there was a time that he would be waiting for me, right after Sunday service. A life full of that— oh, Yeosang-ssi, I have to admit I do think about it more than I’d like to.”
Yunho paints a vivid picture. He tells Yeosang of a summer before they graduated where they had scrounged enough money from their part-time jobs during their school year and come to Japan together. Yunho tells him the other half of why Japan is so special to him— that both his big love stories have roots in cornerstones and quiet evenings that tread over the very soil Yeosang’s stood on the past few days.
Yunho and Mingi had flown to Tokyo for ten days. They’d taken trains down to Kamakura and further away to Kobe and Osaka, also in that time. They’d chosen to leave behind their slowly impending goodbyes and sweltering cracks in Seoul, had exchanged the writings on the wall for something that they’d have forever.
He tells Yeosang that they had watched the stars and visited Mt. Fuji, that they had played in the mid-year rains both on the Shibuya crossing and in the countryside, bought popsicles after all their meals to stave off the heat and gifted each other books, filled rolls of film that Yunho still has in his home somewhere. They had gone to too many onsens to count, had gotten on the wrong buses that much more. It had been an adventure after adventure, nothing more important and grounding than doing it all together.
Yunho pulls out his wallet then. In the clear pocket, there’s a picture of him with his family that he’d shown Yeosang earlier— of him and Hana each carrying a young Haneul and Minjun. They look wonderful and happy, like they were, like they are. Yunho takes the photo out of its place, and Yeosang sees that there’s a second one, just underneath. He’s breathless with the realisation then, that it’s a rather young Yunho, a few years preceding the family photo. He was handsome when he was younger, windswept and unkempt in the most charming sense. He looks carefree here, in a different sort of way, head casually leant on a young man next to him, shorts and t-shirts matching. They’re both mid-laugh as Mt. Fuji sits as a landscape behind them, superseded by the waves that Yeosang can almost hear crash onto the rocks Mingi and Yunho are standing on. It seemed to be a wonderfully bright day even if the shot is a bit underexposed, and Yunho’s hair is wavy and long, falling onto his eyes as he’s half-way scrunched into Mingi’s side. Yunho looks young, like there’s nothing weighing him down by the shoulders, as if he’s relented responsibility in the face of just being, and knows Mingi’s there to catch him where he’d fall. It looks true too, because Mingi stands tall next to him, eyes crinkled up into crescents and glasses lopsided as his hand rests over Yunho’s shoulder easy, easy, easy.
“I’ve never smiled as much as I did that summer— to just be with Mingi-yah, it’s all I ever wanted,” Yunho affirms, the side of his mouth easing into a redolent grin. “I wish I could remember what we were laughing at. I know it was something stupid because a dad had taken it for us— I remember how he handed us the camera and lifted his daughter onto his arm again, but I can’t remember what he told us to make us laugh this hard.”
Yeosang feels his eyes lose focus, despite his best efforts. There’s something so radiating and permanent about how candid it all is, how the edges of the picture have been crinkled and worn to time. Still, their happiness is palpable to Yeosang, even if he’s separated from the moment in both spades of space and decade. It’s an unexplainable yearning he feels, something of Yunho’s regret and anguish given to Yeosang as they’ve shared the evening together. Yunho and Mingi. Mingi and Yunho. They look so complete even through the still he can’t help but stare at, something so right and perfect.
Yunho lets Yeosang observe, is gracious about the tear or two Yeosang sheds. He seems to do the same, as if he’s not looked at them in a while, too.
“Neither of us had the heart to say goodbye,” Yunho admits at last, still thumbing the edge of the photo. “He was the best man at my wedding two years later and I was the first person to listen to the record he produced that went platinum— it was weird, that these things happened within weeks of each other. Life’s strange like that.”
Yunho stares at it a bit longer, before he returns the photo back to its place, underneath the photo of his family. Yeosang thinks that it’s awfully poetic. Yunho packs away his flask at last, too. It’s then that Yeosang distantly realises he’s been completely remiss to the time gone by.
“Slowly, we had to start admitting to ourselves that we weren’t the centres of each other’s lives anymore,” Yunho continues. “The most important part, maybe, the most loved, certainly— just not the centre. I had my family, and he had his music and then he left for the States when we got too close to crossing lines we both knew we’d regret crossing.”
It shakes Yeosang to the core, that the most meaningful relationship in Yunho’s life had such a casually ordinary end. There’s so much weight behind the words, days of contemplation and a sure life change that altered the trajectory of two lives forever. Still, it’s a quiet thing. Yunho seems to have long since come to terms with it.
“The last time I saw him was about thirty-five years ago now, and it was at the airport,” Yunho tells him. “It was the crack of dawn, and we’d not really spoken about it happening until it was happening. I slipped out of bed before the sun rose that morning and rushed my drive— Hana didn’t even know where I was until I got back. I didn’t even know whether I’d catch him in time, honestly.”
Yunho bites at his lips, and his ears and cheeks are flushed red from the cold. “I just had to see him,” he says, “I needed him to know that everything that we were mattered to me, that there would be no place for anybody else where he’d always be in my life, who he is to me.”
Yunho huffs a breath, a pathetic little wisp of air. “I ran through the terminals of Gimpo like an idiot. He was wearing the jacket I’d bought him for his birthday the year before when I found him— I— he didn’t need to say much then, for me to know.”
“It was the same,” Yeosang finishes, the words far from foreign.
“It was the same,” Yunho agrees, quiet. “He left, in part, for me too. Everything we did— I would never be me without him. I’m not me, without him.”
Heavy is not a word that cuts it. Yeosang aches for something he doesn’t even have ownership over. The intensity of it crawls into the back of his eyes and the base of his spine and he’s helpless to a story that’s already been told— one that’s already played out.
“Is there something you would do differently, Yunho-nim?” Yeosang asks, helpless. “If you could go back?”
Yunho hauls a little laugh. It’s half winded and half incredulous. Yeosang understands that it’s a rather unfair question.
“I can’t change anything, Yeosang-ssi. These were the choices I made.”
Time and love. Cruel and kind. Yeosang’s dizzy with it.
He amends himself, nevertheless, “Then something you’d go back to, if you could.”
Yunho smiles, attentive. He takes a second, thinks it through.
“I’d like to fall asleep next to him, maybe, one more time,” Yunho admits. “We used to do that a lot when we were kids, even when we were in university together. He always smelled the same— it’s one of the things I still remember so vividly about him.”
He stares at his hands, twiddles with the thin gold band on his ring finger. “I’d be able to single him out by that alone, if it were to come down to it. I don’t even know how to describe it really, only that it smelled so much like him, and that there was something earthy and windswept about it. I’d been around it so much growing up that I didn’t realise how much of it truly felt like home to me, not until years after we stopped talking.”
There’s something indescribable about an entwining so strong that the remnant of it is to reminisce the sweet and inobtrusive aspects. Yeosang’s never thought about the little details like this, perhaps in his art, but never in his life. He’s always had his ambitions on being better and beside himself— in loudness, in boldness. Yunho reminds him to stop, to look elsewhere and perhaps even inward.
“It hit me almost two decades ago now, when I was walking down some street in London when I was there for work,” Yunho recalls. “It wasn’t exactly Mingi-yah, but it was something close— I remember forgetting where I was that night, and I probably stood in that one spot for far too long for it to be acceptable. He felt so close, and I only left once a guy from the pub nearby came to me and asked me if I needed anything. I’d bottle it up if I could. I’ve never slept easier than when I was surrounded by it, and for a few years I got it.”
Yeosang can see it, especially now that he has a frame of reference for the person Yunho was remembering. He envisions a younger version of Yunho on a cobble stone street in the back alleys of central London. Yeosang had a semester abroad there two years ago now, and the blanks fill themselves in the form of evening lamp lights placed too far apart and the lingering, ever present threat of rain, fried food or cheap beer.
Yunho, still, is wonderful about introspection. “It’s the simple things I think, Yeosang-ssi. He was my youth— is my youth. He always will be. I hope I was able to be that for him. All the best parts of me have something to do with him, and it’ll be that till the day I die,” he reminisces, “I couldn’t ask for anything else, not with how precious I’ve come to realise it is.”
Yeosang realises a few things all at once. There’s certainty in the peace Yunho’s made with the life he’s come to live, even if Yeosang knows it’s been a more than difficult journey to get there. Yeosang thinks Yunho would make a different set of decisions, if he knew back then what he knows now. Even more though, the wind whips a bit more insistently, and Yeosang has to come to terms with their conversation reaching natural closure. He finds that there is grief in this, too.
There’s another rather adamant push of a breeze that settles them, then. Yunho’s the first to get up, once Yeosang moves through getting the pictures he needs for his project, and it feels strange to be at the weird end of walking away from an interaction as special as this one.
Yeosang feels heavy and unbalanced when he follows suit in standing up, his own life in some ways forever altered. Yunho gives him a hand, steadies him with a nonsensical joke that makes them both laugh.
“Y’know Yeosang-ssi, I hadn’t looked at that picture of us in over a decade,” he says. Terribly, Yeosang registers that Yunho’s voice is trembling with emotion. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to.”
Yeosang laughs, shaking Yunho’s hand. He makes Yunho promise not to cry so that he won’t. Yunho agrees with less authority than either of them would like. He gives Yunho his e-mail, asks him to write if he ever needs any company. Yunho gives him his phone number in return, asks Yeosang to call if he ever needs a warm flask of yuja-cha. Yeosang promises that he’ll take Yunho up on the offer.
Yunho is the one who encourages a hug, in the end. Yeosang can’t help but bask in it when he accepts— a new friend and paternal figure all in one. They both helplessly exchange another round of thank you’s before they head in their opposite directions. Yeosang tries to focus on putting one foot in front of the other so that he can get to the train station without a full breakdown. The entire journey is a blur, a mirage of too many thoughts and musings cluttering Yeosang into a quiet mess.
Once Yeosang’s back at his B&B and freshly showered, he takes a deep breath and gives into his whirring curiosity. He looks up who Song Mingi is.
Yeosang doesn’t have to search very much at all— the page littering with results of a young, ambitious producer who’d fought long and hard to become a veteran in the industry, a silent figurehead who produces for big and small names all over the world, still. His work spans genres and decades, writing and producing credits on even songs Yeosang’s listened to.
A little more digging, and Yeosang finds out that Mingi has only a single record of his own; an EP that he’d released about a decade into his career. It’s called the Desire Project, and it’s under a monicker called FIXOFF that he’s used just that once, a direct apposition to the production tag FIXON he’s been using since the beginning of his career. Interest gets the better of Yeosang again then, but the five-song record isn’t on any streaming platform or available to buy from what he looks up. He only finds it uploaded by somebody over fifteen years ago to an inconspicuous corner of YouTube, the entire thing in one video as a converted audio file with what he assumes is the cover art for it as both the thumbnail and video.
He decides to download it onto his phone as he gets a late dinner at a restaurant nearby. The songs flit between English and Korean, sometimes both in the same track, and Yeosang has to play a game of matching the title of the songs on Wikipedia to the lyrics that play on his headphones as he chews on his katsu curry. There’s a particular title that he’s looking to identify, and when the notes of an RnB-esque ballad starts playing as the final song and conclusion to the entire project, Yeosang knows that he’s listening to Youth. While the four preceding songs leaned into heavy guitars and a rough vocal timbre that regarded a grit of life or persevering past naysayers and apologetics, this one is immediately different.
Yeosang’s never necessarily been a romantic, but there’s something about the conversation with Yunho that leaves him almost begging for more— too many missing puzzle pieces from only one side to a relationship that’s inhabited at least an entire lifetime. He knows it’s two lifetimes then, once he sinks his teeth into the lyrics of Youth. The soft melody lulls him into a sense of serene still until he realises the actual words. Yeosang moves through the lines with Mingi, the struggle of being young and bold, the difficulty in choosing to keep wading through everything you don’t know and can’t necessarily understand. It paints a startingly different picture to the one of Mingi Yunho had described. It’s an entire juxtaposition to the man that the internet had told him about as well. To Yeosang, Song Mingi’s voice characterises himself as a young man who struggles deeply, an unsureness that pervades his every thought and step. There’s none of that confidence that everybody else paints, and even as his discography pointed to it in some corners, there’s something almost glass-like about it where it’s approached, present but breakable in the context of everything else he shares. He is a man of resilience, that much Yeosang is sure, but the point of time the record is dated to illustrates a guy stressed through a supposed end to his youth, how heavy and unyielding it is even if he can’t bear the weight of it all.
Yeosang wishes there was more to follow, a second piece of work he could dissect to learn more of Mingi’s story or an autobiography he could read. It feels unfinished, just like Yunho’s recollection had been. Still, there’s no record of a continuation or plan to follow-up, no matter how hard he looks. There is only this one aspect of Mingi immortalised to time, and Yeosang gets no more.
He settles for listening through the project again instead, then. There’s something particularly contemplative about it when he gets to Youth on the following run-through.
While looking up at the starry night,
I want to lean on you,
Smile brightly when you look my way.
In the end, Yeosang knows the song is about Yunho. It’s hard to ignore, once he’s heard it. Through the entire twenty-two-minute run of the EP, there’s only an inward voice, Mingi as himself against the whole world or navigating through it. This is this one song, the goodbye, where another person is addressed, somebody next to him, somebody who’s always been by his side. Yeosang thinks of what Yunho had said, of the fields and the stars and the insular silence of just the two of them in their little universe. The bridge of this song is an ode to that moment, he thinks.
Yunho and Mingi. Mingi and Yunho.
Yeosang understands a little more of it now, even if he has to exist in the reality that he won’t get more of their story. Perhaps that’s the point of these testimonials, that you only get the partial narrative in glimpses of time and points of interest, that Yeosang will never be privy to another’s life lived, in the beautiful and in the ugly. He thinks he’ll need a day or two to get over it.
Even so, his mind flits back to Yunho, and he’s stuck on the kindness of his eyes and the proper, neat comb over of his thinning hair. Yeosang looks at the portrait that he took, at Yunho’s sharp nose and breeze-reddened cheeks. He thinks he can see it if he tries hard enough, a fresh-faced twenty-something in love with his best friend— the eagerness there would be, the hope. Perhaps it’s something that doesn’t leave the essence of a man who’s trying so hard to preserve it long enough to see it through to his death. Yeosang doubts it will falter, in any case.
Their story is lightening in Yeosang’s hands, something unfailing— something inimitable.
Selfishly, a part of Yeosang wants to write to Yunho, to tell him about Mingi’s mixtape and ask him for what he thinks of it or if he’s heard it on a night where he got too curious about where and what Mingi had been up to, if that’s happened at all. There’s a rarity in garnering for a reaction, for the opportunity to see an unravelling of more of their story even if it would be an apparition, a mirage of what they once were but not them true to who they are now.
Yeosang decides against it in the end, realises that Yunho and Mingi have found closure where Yeosang hasn’t. It’s a closed tale, a finished story, even if Yeosang wants more.
He listens to Youth as he edits Yunho’s portrait, and also when he trims his recorded transcript into their useful and most relevant parts. Even if Mingi and Yunho’s story is just for Yeosang’s ears, the more he listens to Youth, the realer Mingi’s Yunho seems to get to Yeosang in the photos he’s taken. He thinks he can see Yunho the way Mingi sees him— saw him— somebody who preserved the good parts of Mingi’s youth, somebody who was by Mingi’s side and watched the stars with him. It doesn’t matter that they haven’t spoken in thirty-five years or that their story is isolated to a single era in time. It’s pure magic where it counts, where Yeosang gets to see it.
He gets into bed with barely an hour to sunrise that night. It’s a different thrum now, the anxiety to find a subject replaced by a strange openness to acquire more stories, even if unfinished. Yeosang’s hasn’t felt this sad in a long time. He’s never felt this heartened. He might not be able to include all of Yunho’s story for his final, but he finds sleep certain that in the end, that’s the least important part of it all.
He falls asleep to Youth playing on repeat.