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It reads a little trite, Junhui’s professor said. The airport confession scene is too stereotypical, no? There are some good lines, but the buildup is too weak to sustain the drama of the ending you’ve written. Does it have to be a love story, or was that simply the convenient choice? It feels like it’s actually about something else. Think harder about what you’re trying to say, all right?
It’s true Junhui hadn’t thought about it all that much. He’d only started the assignment the night before, hopped up on coffee after getting in from the airport. The webnovel he’d been reading on the plane had just reached a dramatic confession scene, and though he hadn’t plagiarized he had definitely been more than a little inspired. And he’d kept thinking back to his mother and Yangyang at the airport gate, too, smiling and waving goodbye as he boarded his flight for Seoul. He’d been bundled up in two coats because he hadn’t allocated his luggage space correctly. Sweating through the Shenzhen airport on his way back to a Korean winter.
The first time he’d flown from Shenzhen to Seoul he had felt like he was stepping out into thin air, leaving behind a vital organ called home. It was strange now to realize he would miss this too, the ritual of the flight, the place he was going.
–
Junhui was paired with Wonwoo again for peer review in the senior seminar. “I still think it’s beautiful,” Wonwoo said, after Junhui showed him their professor’s feedback on his short story. “You don’t get much detail about the characters, that’s true, but that’s kind of what I like about it. That it’s implied.”
Wonwoo was a generous reader, and it was nice to listen to him talk even though he had always overpraised Junhui’s writing. Junhui loved to watch his concentrating face when he was reading or thinking or talking about reading or thinking, his eyes focused downward and his mouth a little pursed.
They had met their first semester in the Korean language and literature program. Wonwoo had already declared a focus in creative nonfiction—he talked to people, listened carefully to their stories, and his writing glowed with an articulate warmth. Junhui at the time still hadn’t decided what he was going to do. He missed his mother and Yangyang every day like a physical ache, and he felt stupid and clumsy with his three years of high school Korean. He moved through a thawing and unfamiliar world with a hollow smile most days, feeling extra guilty that he wasn’t even enjoying the privilege of his overseas education. Even with the scholarship, a creative writing degree felt indulgent beyond what he deserved. “A second language is employable enough,” his mother told him over the phone. “Just focus on being happy.” It was easier said than done.
Junhui’s Korean was so abysmal that first year that nobody had wanted to swap papers with him except Wonwoo, who read carefully and never corrected the same word more than once, a kind of trust. “I like how you see things,” Wonwoo said. “You make connections I’d never think of.”
The first time Junhui invited Wonwoo back to his dorm he’d fed him one of his precious bowls of instant luosifen, not knowing yet that Wonwoo didn’t like seafood. But Wonwoo had finished the bowl gamely with no complaints. He was much more enthusiastic about the mini hot dog cooker. Wonwoo kept sending photos of it to his friends, until they became Junhui’s friends and started coming over for hot dogs too.
“Wow,” Wonwoo said, after a few months had passed and the post-class dinners had become a regular thing. Seoul was gloriously in bloom and Junhui wasn’t so lonely anymore. “You’re not quiet at all.”
–
Jihoon had invited them to watch one of his favorite anime movies, so they crowded into his studio in the practical music building as he queued up the stream on the big monitor.
Afterwards, as Soonyoung finished blowing his nose, Junhui looked over at Wonwoo and wondered about the different lives they had lived. He imagined locking eyes with a shy bookworm through the windows of a Changwon subway train. Junhui had starred in a commercial for the Shenzhen Metro, actually, when he was just a kid. His mother later told him that one of the men he’d worked with then had been a scout for some Korean talent agency. It hadn’t panned out for whatever reason—funny that he still ended up here, she said. In an alternate timeline, maybe he and Wonwoo would have grown up together.
I liked the second person point of view, said his professor this time. It was a bold choice but it worked. I think the message is stronger, too. Ambiguity that’s intentional rather than accidental. But be careful of taking it too far, or else it’s hard to tell which timeline you’re talking about.
Jihoon read his story too. And then he composed a song about it, because Jihoon could do anything. “I thought you and Myungho could use it for this semester’s dance showcase,” he said when he sent them the demo.
Wonwoo sat in the corner of the practice room in a soft looking hoodie with his laptop out, writing as Minghao and Junhui practiced their choreography and Soonyoung looked on. Junhui kept peeking at what Wonwoo was working on through the mirror. At first he had genuinely been working, but as the hours dragged on he began to get distracted too. Soonyoung tried to demonstrate a move for them and fell flat on his ass, and Wonwoo burst out laughing. The first time Wonwoo had laughed like that—nose scrunched up, almost crying—it had taken Junhui by surprise. Junhui adored that laugh.
By the end of practice Wonwoo had fully given up on his homework. He sang along to the chorus in his deep voice, a little off key, and as they cleaned up the practice room and tried their best to untangle the ribbon he clapped a hand around Junhui’s shoulders. Junhui found himself leaning back into him. Wonwoo was more solid than he looked. Warmer, too.
Wonwoo walked back to Junhui’s dorm with him as Minghao and Soonyoung peeled off to their respective corners of campus. They had done their fair share of crashing in each other’s rooms over the years, but it had mostly been Wonwoo coming over ever since Mingyu got a girlfriend. Junhui offered Wonwoo a QQ jelly from his minifridge and made himself a bowl of luosifen. You have to come to Shenzhen someday, Junhui had told him years ago, watching Wonwoo slurp the noodles down for the first and last time. We’ll take a day trip to Guangxi. You can meet my little brother, he loves video games too.
He had always assumed that his friends would come home with him over one of their breaks. But now graduation loomed just a few months away and the trip had never panned out. For some reason Junhui had trouble imagining anything that came after. He wanted to ask Wonwoo what his plans were—they hadn’t talked about them at all—but he didn’t want to stress him out either. Right?
“What are you going to do for your final project?” asked Wonwoo later, half whispering as they lay side by side on Junhui’s mattress on their phones in the dark. “Why don’t you come with me?”
–
“You’re inseparable from Wonwoo hyung these days,” said Minghao after another late night practice. It was just them this time. “What are you guys going to do when you graduate?”
“What do you mean?” said Jun, scrubbing through the choreo footage. “I’m going home. Wonwoo is applying to jobs and stuff.” When Wonwoo wasn’t writing he was always updating his resume.
Minghao paused in the middle of folding up the white ribbon so it wouldn’t crease. He took a long look at Junhui. “For a writer you sure are bad at reading between the lines.”
–
Wonwoo picked him up in his family’s car early in the morning. I’m planning to interview an elderly peasant activist for my final essay, was what he’d told Junhui a few weeks before. It’s a little too far for a day trip, do you want to split the cost of the yeogwan? Junhui spent the drive peppering him with questions, and in return Wonwoo distilled world politics for him in his steady baritone: Agricultural policy and the long shadow of American occupation, free trade and unfree labor. The hand that wasn’t on the wheel kept fidgeting with his bangs.
“It’s just a school paper,” said Junhui, looking over at Wonwoo’s furrowed brow.
Wonwoo was quiet for a moment. “But it’s her entire life.”
Junhui had the privilege of fiction. He chased what felt good, what felt beautiful or meaningful, carving his stories out by intuition. What if it was all in his head? What if there was nothing behind the pretty words? He wished he could take some of the burden off of Wonwoo’s shoulders. Write about something real or serious for once.
“Thanks for coming with me,” Wonwoo said after a while, as Junhui stared out of the window at farmland flying by, thinking and thinking.
“Of course,” said Junhui. “Where else would I be?”
The halmeoni was waiting outside for them when they arrived. Wonwoo had brought her a box of Jeju tangerines courtesy of Seungkwan, and she served them with tea and melon in her living room. Junhui had offered to stay in the car and wait, but Wonwoo had insisted. And she didn’t seem surprised to see two young men instead of one. So Junhui watched as Wonwoo shuffled his notes and clicked his tape recorder on for the interview, speaking low and methodical. She was downplaying her contributions, thought Junhui, from what Wonwoo had told him in the car. He listened to Wonwoo coax the memories out of her, leaning forward, paying attention. Junhui knew that in the final writeup her story would glow burnished, even heroic.
In the evening, they doubled up on the thin mattress like they always did in Junhui’s dorm: Wonwoo on his back, because he needed his glasses on to see his phone, Junhui on his side until one ear began to hurt, at which point he would roll over. At one point Wonwoo got up to go to the bathroom. When he returned to bed he didn’t get in, but motioned for Junhui to get up.
“Why?” whined Junhui, but of course he got up, and let Wonwoo guide him to the open door.
There stood a cat, illuminated in moonlight, coming out of a languid stretch to sniff Junhui’s outstretched hand. It looked skinny, but well enough groomed. Junhui crouched down to beckon it closer. He scratched behind its ears, then under its chin. He could feel it purring in its throat.
He looked back up at Wonwoo, leaning against the doorframe in his pajamas. Half lit by moonlight and half by the dim fluorescent light of the bathroom. He was smiling slightly, looking at Junhui. From that angle Wonwoo looked like a manhua love interest come to life.
He’ll miss him, Junhui realized. He’ll miss Wonwoo so much.
Junhui picked up the cat. It was sweet-tempered with a pink nose and a soft swirl of tabby. “Hold out your arms,” he called, before he turned back around.
“What?” said Wonwoo, a smile in his voice.
Junhui deposited the cat into his waiting arms, watched as Wonwoo’s face broke out in an irrepressible toothy grin, his hands gentle. “We can take it home,” Junhui said, and he couldn’t help smiling too to match. “It loves us already. We’ll coparent.”
Wonwoo cradled the cat for a long time, looking intently at it. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“It has a home already,” he finally said, and when it started to squirm he let it go.
–
Oh, a cat, said his professor when he showed her his outline. That’s very trendy these days. A double-edged sword in that respect. You’ll have to distinguish yourself, but it’s fun too, right? You don’t have to think in terms of human relationships. You can do something completely different.
Junhui didn’t usually get stuck, but this one was proving difficult. He sat next to Wonwoo in the practice room during a break as Soonyoung moved on to torture some of the younger dancers instead. Wonwoo was combing through his interview transcript on his own laptop while Junhui fiddled with his story: There’s a cat. The cat has a home already. The cat has a family to provide for. The cat’s home is destroyed by neoliberal economic policy. The cat can leave or stay. Each one has a price. What’s a cat to do about that?
–
The dance showcase was scheduled for the end of the academic year, right before graduation. Junhui’s piece with Minghao was a blur of adrenaline and applause, Wonwoo’s face bright in the front row. Then it was time for dinner and drinks, and after a very drunk and emotional Soonyoung had been entrusted to Jihoon’s custody, Junhui found himself back at his own dorm with Wonwoo.
“This is the end, isn’t it?” Junhui tried to keep his voice light. There was something strange in the air tonight. Something off-kilter, the world humming at an odd frequency. Maybe he’d had too much to drink too.
Wonwoo looked down at his hands, as they sat at what passed for Junhui’s dining table. They were both having QQ jellies. Jun scrolled on his phone with one hand and pressed the cool jelly packet to his flushed cheek with the other; it felt good. He was still in his costume and makeup from the show.
“You always said you wanted us to come back to Shenzhen with you, right?” Wonwoo said suddenly, not looking up.
Junhui startled a bit but tried not to let it show. “Yeah. That was a long time ago. I’m surprised you remember.” He cast around for something else to say.
“I’ve been—” Wonwoo was nervous. “I’ve been looking at jobs overseas.”
Junhui stopped scrolling. Where was this going? “What do you mean?”
“In China. Specifically Shenzhen.”
“You don’t know Chinese though?” was the first thing he could think to blurt out.
Wonwoo’s hand reached out and pushed Junhui’s phone down gently to the table, covering the screen. Junhui looked up and met Wonwoo’s eyes, possessing; he found himself pinned. “I’ve been studying a little,” said Wonwoo. “Obviously not enough, but I could learn, right? And the Chosun Ilbo, they have a China correspondent there—I emailed him—”
“But you’re good at what you do here. Why would you—” Junhui may have been spacey but he wasn’t stupid. He looked at Wonwoo, forced himself to focus. Wonwoo was serious. “Surely you have something lined up here, right?”
Junhui’s heart was beating too fast now. This was all going wrong. Wonwoo’s face was asking a question but Junhui couldn’t get the answer right. There was a theme or a message here but he hadn’t done the reading carefully enough to grasp it.
“Wonwoo, you’ve been applying to jobs all year. You’re the top of our class. You won a literal award for your journalism.” These were all facts that pointed to a logical conclusion. Junhui wasn’t insane. Was he?
“But Jun-ah,” said Wonwoo, his voice ragged. “Don’t you see that I love you?”
Junhui shook his head like he could shake off the weight of the words. Wonwoo looked up at him still. His face anguished, his eyes too bright to simply be reflecting the room’s dim light. But he looked resigned, too, like he already knew where this was going. “Don’t you know I would follow you anywhere?”
–
Wonwoo comes to see him off at the airport—goes all the way through security with him, too. Soonyoung and Jihoon had dropped them off at Incheon, but Wonwoo had been the only one to insist on coming in. Junhui doesn’t think they know. Wonwoo had avoided him for two weeks after graduation. Then texted him to ask if he could come say goodbye, as if Junhui would have said no. The last message in their texts before that had been a Chinese cat meme Junhui had sent months ago, to which Wonwoo had only replied hahahaha.
That easiness is gone now. Junhui wished he’d known the moment it slipped through his fingers so he could have mourned it properly, but maybe he’d also been imagining it all along.
It’s early in the morning. The sky gray and golden overhead, the world hazy. Wonwoo looks soft around the edges too as he yawns wide. He starts his internship at the Korea Times in two weeks. Junhui inferred this from the conversation on the car ride here.
Wonwoo yawns again, covers his mouth with a sweater paw. He’s wearing his glasses and a hoodie Junhui knows by touch. There’s a pimple patch on his cheek and dark circles under his eyes. Junhui looks and looks in the pale light of dawn. Drinks him in, tries to commit him to memory: His best friend, heartbroken and exhausted and kind. Junhui loves him so much. He’ll miss him, this him, for the rest of his life.
“Sorry, Wonwoo,” he says again. He’s lost track at this point.
“Don’t be sorry, Junnie,” says Wonwoo. “We’ll see each other again before you know it.”
The boarding announcement sounds. First in Korean, then in Chinese. They’re both facing the same direction now, looking through the bay windows as planes circle overhead like carrion birds. Wonwoo takes Junhui’s hand in his, interlaces their fingers.
“I still love that first story you wrote,” he says, “the airport confession.” A low, quiet laugh, but Junhui can't bear to turn to see his smile for the last time. “I could tell you’d been reading your webnovels,” Wonwoo says, “but all the things that were you still shone through. Your heart. Your imagination. How you had already chosen to leave.”
It’s a love story, Junhui knows now, but not a romance. The timelines intersect but don’t converge. The cat makes its choice and pays the price.
It feels like it’s actually about something else. Think harder about what you’re trying to say, all right?
His mother and Yangyang are waiting for him in Shenzhen, in a home that doesn’t feel like home anymore. His future self is waiting for him on the other side, too, the ticket booked, the jet bridge down.
Junhui lets go of Wonwoo’s hand and steps out into the rest of his life.