an impossible thing 不可能的事

Chan remembers the exact look on Hyunjin’s face, the moment they first met. It’s one Hyunjin still gives him all the time, so it’s pretty hard to forget.
陈还记得他们第一次见面时玄真脸上的表情。Hyunjin 现在还经常这样看他，所以很难忘记。

***

A birthday party wasn’t exactly the most natural or casual place at which to first meet the other half of your new-family-in-progress. Chan figured the reasoning was that it was a mostly arbitrary but convenient time, plus Mr. Hwang was paying for it all and would take them all out to dinner afterwards, but honestly, he would rather be just about anywhere else than a cinema full of fourteen-year-olds. No disrespect to fourteen-year-olds under normal circumstances, but there was just something about seeing them in groups. It wasn’t that long ago that Chan himself had been fourteen, but it felt like a lifetime away.
在生日派对上与新家庭的另一半初次见面并不是最自然、最随意的事情。陈认为，理由是这个时间虽然随意，但却很方便，而且黄先生会为这一切买单，之后还会带他们一起出去吃饭，但老实说，他宁愿待在其他任何地方，也不愿意待在满是 14 岁孩子的电影院里。在正常情况下，他不会对十四岁的孩子有任何不敬，但看到他们成群结队的样子，他就有些不舒服。陈自己十四岁的时候也没多久，但感觉就像隔了一辈子。

By then, he’d been hearing for months about this guy his mum was dating. A wealthy widower. Chan had thought she was joking, at first, when she’d told him—how cliché can you get!—but she didn’t laugh and then he just felt guilty. Apparently, he was calm and kind and attentive. Chan tried not to hear a silent “unlike your dad” tacked onto the end of those kinds of pronouncements. The man had a son, “around your age,” and when Chan asked if his mum had met the kid yet, his mum smiled a little and said, “He’s really funny.” Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar, Chan wasn’t sure, and didn’t ask to clarify. She showed him a picture: some fancy European city in the background, and in the foreground, Mr. Hwang, tall, salt-and-pepper hair, expensive puffer coat, with his arm around a mushy-faced skinny kid whose eyes were scrunched against the midwinter sun. Chan’s mum didn’t have any pictures of the dead wife to show Chan. Chan wondered if it was weird for her, to be coming into a situation like that.  Maybe it was even weirder when the ex-spouse was still alive, just halfway across the world. Again, he didn’t ask.
那时，他已经听说了几个月 他妈妈在和一个男人约会一个富有的鳏夫。起初，陈告诉他的时候，他还以为她在开玩笑--这也太老套了吧！但她并没有笑，于是他就觉得很内疚。显然，他是冷静、善良和细心的。陈努力不让自己听到他在说这些话的时候，在最后加上一句无声的 "不像你爸爸"。这个男人有个儿子，"和你差不多大"，当陈问他妈妈有没有见过这个孩子时，他妈妈微微一笑，说："他真的很有趣。"有趣哈哈还是有趣奇特，陈不确定，也没问清楚。她给他看了一张照片：背景是某个豪华的欧洲城市，前景是黄先生，高高的个子，椒盐色的头发，穿着昂贵的羽绒服，搂着一个满脸肉嘟嘟的瘦小孩子，孩子的眼睛被隆冬的阳光晒得皱巴巴的。陈的妈妈没有给陈看死去妻子的照片。陈想，她会不会觉得很奇怪？如果前妻还活着，只是在地球的另一端，也许就更奇怪了。他还是没有问。

The courtship was going well. At Chan’s mum’s age, nobody really dated casually, so Chan wasn’t surprised when she told him that she wanted Chan to meet the Hwangs soon, to see “how we’ll all get along.” Well, Chan figured if he made Chan’s mum happy, he couldn’t be too bad. Maybe they’d get married and they could all live together in the Hwangs’ big house. Not that Chan would be living there too long, anyway, before it came time for him to jet off to college. But it would be nice for his mum.
求爱进展顺利。在陈妈妈这个年纪，没有人会随便约会 所以当陈妈妈告诉他 她想让陈尽快和黄氏夫妇见面 看看 "我们会相处得怎么样 "时 陈并不感到惊讶陈想，如果他能让陈妈妈开心，他也不会太差。也许他们会结婚，然后一起住在黄家的大房子里。反正在他上大学之前，陈也不会在那里住太久。但这对他妈妈来说是件好事。

The first meeting rolled around a bit sooner than Chan had expected, though, and when he heard the setting, he already began to worry. What was he even supposed to get a fourteen-year-old he’d never met before for his birthday? Chan’s mum said Chan didn’t have to get anything, she’d get something, but they ended up going to Target together anyway. Did the boy like reading? Video games? Sports? All Chan’s mum really knew about him was that he was “a little artsy.” Chan spotted a Polaroid camera, said, “That kind of artsy?”, and that’s what they got. Chan’s mum wrapped it, Chan signed his name on the card, it was easy.
不过，第一次见面的时间比陈先生预想的要早一些，当他听到会议的安排时，就已经开始担心了。他该送什么礼物给一个从未谋面的 14 岁孩子呢？陈的妈妈说陈不需要送什么，她会送的，但最后他们还是一起去了塔吉特。这孩子喜欢阅读吗？电子游戏？还是运动？陈妈妈只知道他 "有点艺术细胞"陈看中了一台拍立得相机，说："是那种文艺范儿吗？"他们就买了这个。陈妈妈包装好，陈在卡片上签上自己的名字，很简单。

As they went together into the cinema (a few minutes late, due to traffic) and told the host that they were there for the private event and followed directions to hall 6, Chan could tell that his mum was even more nervous than he was, and was proud of himself for noticing. So he told her it would go great, and he was excited to meet them. She smiled and put her arm around his shoulders. Really, he was just thinking about his upcoming calculus midterm and whether or not Elise Park would text him back. If his mum liked this guy, did it really matter what Chan thought?
当他们一起走进电影院（由于堵车，迟到了几分钟），告诉主持人他们是来参加私人活动的，并按照指示来到 6 号厅时，陈可以看出他妈妈比他还要紧张，并为自己注意到了这一点而感到自豪。于是，他告诉她一切都会很顺利，他很高兴见到他们。她微笑着搂住他的肩膀。其实，他只是在想即将到来的微积分期中考试，以及伊莉斯-帕克会不会给他回短信。如果他妈妈喜欢这个人，陈的想法真的重要吗？

It was already dim in the cinema, but not dark. There was a table with buckets of popcorn and a large basin full of ice, where canned sodas bobbed. Chan had never seen a set-up like this before; was it expensive to rent an entire cinema? Teenagers were milling around, and the man Chan recognised to be Mr. Hwang jumped up to greet Chan and his mum. (He said hi to Chan first with a firm handshake, then gave Chan’s mum a kiss on the cheek. Probably he was trying to make a good impression by treating Chan like an adult, but Chan would have rather he’d acknowledged Chan’s mum first.) “Thank you so much for coming,” Mr. Hwang said with a slightly strained smile. Nervous? Stand-offish? He looked away immediately, though, searching for one teenager among many. “Hyunjin, they’re here, come say hi. Hyunjin? Come here, please.”
电影院里的光线已经很暗了，但并不黑。一张桌子上放着一桶桶爆米花和一个装满冰块的大盆，罐装汽水在盆里晃来晃去。陈从未见过这样的摆设；租下整个电影院很贵吗？十几个年轻人围在一起，陈认出那个人是黄先生，他跳起来向陈和他妈妈打招呼（他先跟陈打招呼，紧紧握手，然后在陈妈妈脸上亲了一下。可能他是想给陈留下一个好印象，把陈当作一个成年人来对待，但陈更希望他先向陈妈妈致意）。"非常感谢你能来，"黄先生略带紧张地笑着说。紧张？紧张？不过，他马上把目光移开，在众多少年中寻找一个。"玄真，他们来了，快过来打招呼。玄真？请过来一下。"

Hyunjin was Chan’s height, which felt a little wrong, considering he was, what, two years younger? He slouched his way over to them. Chan had thought he didn’t particularly want to be there, but Hyunjin had him beat by a mile, so gloomy that Chan could practically see the cartoon stormcloud over his head. Hyunjin did acknowledge Chan’s mum before him, though. She gave him a hug, which Hyunjin visibly didn’t know what to do with, and then just Chan was left. Hyunjin looked at him and his doughy face wrinkled, like someone had pulled a string attached to the backside of his nose. Not necessarily a hostile expression, but one that made Chan feel like he had an entire salad in his teeth. Before he smiled and extended the gift, he ran his tongue over his gums, just to be safe.
玄真和陈的身高差不多，这感觉有点不对，因为他比陈小两岁吧？他懒洋洋地向他们走来。陈本以为他并不特别想去那里，但玄真却把他比下去了，他阴沉着脸，陈几乎可以看到他头上的卡通风云。不过，玄真还是在他面前承认了陈的妈妈。她给了他一个拥抱，玄真显然不知道该怎么做，然后就只剩下陈了。玄真看着他，他那张面团一样的脸皱了起来，就像有人在他的鼻子后面拉了一根绳子。这不一定是一种敌对的表情，但却让陈觉得自己的牙齿里塞满了一整盘沙拉。为了保险起见，在他微笑着伸出礼物之前，他用舌头舔了舔自己的牙龈。

“Happy birthday,” he said, parcel outstretched. “Nice to meet you, I’m Chris.”
"生日快乐，"他说，伸出包裹。"很高兴见到你，我叫克里斯。"

“Yeah, I know,” Hyunjin said in a voice that was neither high nor low. He took the box and seemed disappointed that it wasn’t heavy. His dad must have cleared his throat or given him a bit of a nudge, because Hyunjin then sighed and stuck on a “Thanks,” half-heartedly shaking the present.
"嗯，我知道。"玄真用不高不低的声音说。他接过盒子，似乎对盒子不重感到失望。他爸爸一定是清了清嗓子，或者给了他一点暗示，因为玄真随后叹了口气，坚持说了一句 "谢谢"，半信半疑地摇了摇礼物。

“The movie’s going to start soon, why don’t you go settle in,” Mr. Hwang suggested.
"电影马上就要开始了，你为什么不去安顿一下呢？"黄先生建议道。

“Chan, maybe you can sit with Hyunjin,” added Chan’s mum.
"陈妈妈补充说："陈，也许你可以和玄真坐在一起。

“Yeah, Hyunjin, sit with your brother,” snickered one of Hyunjin’s little friends, peeking over the plush leather top of a seat.
"是啊，贤真，和你哥哥坐一起吧。"贤真的一个小伙伴偷笑着，从座位的毛绒皮顶上探出头来。

Jeez, if looks could kill. The snickering little friend was undeterred, but Hyunjin still looked like he wanted to die or destroy, so Chan took pity on him and said, “Yeah, I don’t mind, let’s go.”
哎呀，如果长相可以杀人的话。冷笑的小伙伴并不气馁，但玄真还是一副想死想毁的样子，于是陈可怜他说："好啊，我不介意，我们走吧。"

Hyunjin put the wrapped gift on the table with the popcorn. Chan wanted to tell him to read the card, but it’s not like that would have helped; it was just a dumb Hallmark card. Chan’s mum and Mr. Hwang both looked so grateful that Chan knew he couldn’t back out now. So Chan stepped forward into the aisle between the rows of seats, and Hyunjin, dragging his feet, moved past to lead the way. This took them past the other attendees, one or two of whom looked very distantly familiar, like Chan had seen them across the cafeteria. Did that mean Hyunjin went to his school, too? He’d never seen him, though. Hyunjin gave no warning before turning to stride down one of the rows, and Chan, belatedly, followed. This was a nice cinema, recliner seats, and Hyunjin was already taking up three of them; Chan, hesitating to move Hyunjin’s jacket and bag of Fruit Roll-Ups, sat a seat away from him while Hyunjin flung himself into the central one of his three and stared dead ahead at the blank screen.
玄真把包装好的礼物和爆米花一起放在桌子上。陈想让他读读贺卡，但那也无济于事，那只是一张愚蠢的贺卡。陈的妈妈和黄先生都一脸感激，陈知道自己现在不能退缩。于是，陈走到一排排座位之间的过道上，玄真拖着脚步，走过去带路。他们走过了其他与会者，其中有一两个人看起来非常眼熟，好像陈在食堂对面见过他们。这是不是意味着玄真也在他的学校上学？不过他从没见过他。玄真没有发出任何警告，转身大步走下其中一排，陈也姗姗来迟，跟了上去。这是个不错的电影院，有躺椅，而玄真已经占了其中的三个；陈犹豫着要不要搬开玄真的外套和一袋水果卷，就坐到了离他较远的一个座位上，而玄真则扑到了他三个座位中的中间一个，死死地盯着前方空白的屏幕。

Chan turned to look at it, too. A few seconds later, it lit up with a projection: Happy 14th Birthday Hyunjin., it said, and Hyunjin slid down so low he probably couldn’t even see it anymore.
陈也转头看了看。几秒钟后，它亮起了投影：上面写着 "Happy 14th Birthday Hyunjin"（14 岁生日快乐），Hyunjin 滑到了很低的地方，可能都看不见了。

Chan, again, took pity, imagining how it would have felt to have some random stranger at his birthday party. He didn’t want to be here, either, so he could relate, and he may as well be nice. “What movie are we watching?” he asked.
陈又一次感到怜悯，想象着自己的生日派对上随便来了一个陌生人会是什么感觉。他也不想来这里，所以他能体会到，他不妨表现得好一点。"我们看什么电影？"他问。

“Grand Budapest Hotel,” Hyunjin mumbled.
"布达佩斯大饭店"，玄真喃喃自语。

“Oh, cool!” Chan said. His mum surprised him by appearing out of nowhere to hand him a popcorn bucket, then vanishing again as soon as he’d thanked her. Chan ate a couple of pieces, then thought to offer some to the birthday boy, but Hyunjin had his own, on the opposite side of Chan. So instead Chan searched valiantly for the dropped threads of conversation, and continued, “I saw the trailer, I’ve been wanting to watch this.”
"哦，酷！"陈说。他的妈妈突然出现，递给他一桶爆米花，让他大吃一惊，然后在他道谢后又消失了。陈吃了几块，然后想给小寿星一点，但玄真也有自己的爆米花，就在陈的对面。于是，陈勇敢地寻找着掉落的话题，继续说道："我看了预告片，我一直想看这部电影。"

“I didn’t pick it,” Hyunjin said shortly.
"不是我选的，"玄真很快说。

“Oh.” Then the lights dimmed in earnest; Chan, embarrassed, realised that he and his mum had probably held up the start of all this, if it really was running on a private schedule. If Hyunjin hadn’t picked the movie, had this party been his idea at all, then? Sitting silently with some friends, all separate, didn’t sound like a good time even to Chan. For his most recent birthday, his “sweet sixteen,” Chan had done a big night of board games at home, followed by pizza and his closest friends sleeping over. A little childish, a little boring, maybe, but so much fun. Was this really how Hyunjin wanted to spend his birthday?
"哦"。这时，灯光渐渐暗了下来；陈尴尬地意识到，如果这一切真的是按照私人日程安排进行的，那么他和他妈妈很可能耽误了这一切的开始。如果电影不是玄真选的，那么这个聚会到底是不是他的主意呢？和几个朋友静静地坐在一起，各自为政，即使在陈看来也不是什么好时光。在他最近的一次生日，也就是他的 "甜蜜十六岁"，陈在家里玩了一晚上的棋盘游戏，然后吃了披萨，他最要好的朋友在家里过了一夜。也许有点幼稚，有点无聊，但却非常有趣。玄真真的想这样过生日吗？

At least the movie was amazing. Behind and around them, Hyunjin’s friends giggled and whispered sometimes, and Chan just watched the screen, rapt. But Hyunjin was perfectly silent and still. Maybe he’d lied about not having picked it; this did seem like the kind of movie an “artsy” person would enjoy. Or maybe he was asleep. Chan snuck a glance. He wasn’t.
至少电影很精彩。在他们身后和周围，贤真的朋友们不时发出咯咯的笑声，窃窃私语，而陈只是目不转睛地看着屏幕。但玄真却一言不发，一动不动。也许他撒谎说他没有选这部电影；这的确是一部 "文艺青年 "会喜欢的电影。或者他睡着了。陈悄悄看了一眼。他没有睡着。

After the conclusion, they all piled into separate cars. On the drive to one of the only Korean restaurants in town, a barbeque place, Chan and his mum talked only about the movie. For some reason, when Chan’s mum had said they’d get dinner afterwards, Chan had thought it would just be them and the Hwangs, but the entire peanut gallery was there, too. Hyunjin sat at one head of the table, with his father at the other and Chan’s mum at his side. Chan was somewhere in the middle, surrounded by children. At least this seemed a bit more birthday-party-like. Hyunjin turned out to be pretty noisy, when not in a silent cinema. They all sang Happy Birthday to him and Chan checked his phone under the table—nothing from Elise.
电影结束后，他们各自上车。在去镇上仅有的一家韩国餐馆（一家烧烤店）的路上，陈和他妈妈只谈论了电影。不知道为什么，当陈妈妈说他们之后会一起吃晚饭时，陈本以为只有他们和黄家人，但整个花生席都在那里。玄真坐在桌子的一头，他的父亲坐在另一头，陈妈妈坐在他的身边。陈则坐在中间，周围都是孩子。至少这看起来更像生日派对了。在无声电影院里，玄真也很吵闹。他们都为他唱生日快乐歌，陈在桌子下面看了看手机--没有伊莉斯的消息。

It was a school night, so the festivities wrapped up fairly early. Evidently Hyunjin was the type who wanted to celebrate his birthday specifically on his birthday, or maybe Chan was reading too far into it. As they all headed to the exit, Chan’s mum fished the car keys out of her bag and extended them to Chan, smiling. Chan felt his chest puff up with pride, and he took the keys, gripped tight in his slightly sweaty palm. Mr. Hwang and Hyunjin were walking with them, and Hyunjin was back to being silent. Mr. Hwang unlocked their car (a sleek BMW) from afar and sent Hyunjin along, telling him he’d be right there, too. Chan politely waved and said good night, happy birthday again, but Hyunjin didn’t really respond beyond an awkward half-shrug of his shoulders.
那天是学校的晚上，所以庆祝活动很早就结束了。很明显，贤人是那种特别想在自己生日当天庆祝生日的人，也许陈对此看得太远了。当他们都走向出口时，陈的妈妈从包里掏出车钥匙，微笑着递给陈。陈感到自己的胸膛骄傲地鼓了起来，他接过钥匙，紧紧地握在微微出汗的掌心。黄先生和玄真和他们走在一起，玄真又恢复了沉默。黄先生远远地打开了他们的车（一辆时髦的宝马）的锁，并让玄真一起走，告诉他自己也马上就到。陈礼貌地挥挥手，说了声晚安，又说了声生日快乐，但玄真除了尴尬地半耸肩外，并没有真正回应。

What a weird kid. Maybe he was just shy and would open up as their parents kept dating, and, eventually, got married. Chan always did want a sibling. When his mum and dad had told him they were getting a divorce, he’d spared a thought for that sibling he’d always wanted. Good thing he never got one; he was the only one who had to deal with it. (Shame he never got one—he was the only one who could deal with it.) He watched as Hyunjin sulked across the parking lot and into the passenger seat of the BMW. Mr. Hwang shook Chan’s hand again and gravely said how nice it was to meet him, and then there was a silence that went on a little too long. Chan sensed he wasn’t wanted and told his mum he’d go start the car.
真是个奇怪的孩子也许他只是害羞，当他们的父母不断约会，最终结婚时，他就会敞开心扉。陈一直想要个弟弟妹妹。当爸爸妈妈告诉他他们要离婚的时候，他还在想他一直想要的弟弟妹妹。好在他从来没有得到过；他是唯一一个必须面对这个问题的人。(他看着玄真闷闷不乐地穿过停车场，坐进宝马车的副驾驶座。黄先生再次和陈握手，严肃地说，很高兴见到他，然后是一阵沉默，沉默的时间有点长。陈感觉到自己不受欢迎，于是告诉妈妈他去发动汽车。

As he got in, he heard Mr. Hwang say to Chan’s mum, “I’m sorry about him, you know he’s not always like that,” and Chan’s mum responded with kind reassurances that she didn’t mind at all. It was the kind of eavesdropping that made Chan a little uncomfortable, so he started the car and adjusted the seat how he liked it. Chan’s mum and Mr. Hwang didn’t kiss goodbye, presumably both conscious of their children in their respective cars who might get grossed out by such a thing, just hugged, and Mr. Hwang squeezed Chan’s mum’s arm before they split up. Chan looked at the BMW, and Hyunjin in the front seat. He’d leaned it back and had his earbuds in, staring blankly at the screen of his iPod Touch. But as Chan looked at him, it was like he had a sixth sense for being stared at, because his eyes slid over and met Chan’s. Then Mr. Hwang’s silhouette blocked him, and Chan’s mum got in by Chan’s side, and Chan drove them home, telling her, “He seems really nice. I’m really happy for you.”
上车时，他听到黄先生对陈妈妈说："他的事我很抱歉，你知道他并不总是这样。"陈妈妈则亲切地安慰他说，她一点也不介意。这样的偷听让陈有点不自在，于是他启动了汽车，调整了一下自己喜欢的座椅。陈妈妈和黄先生没有吻别，大概都意识到各自车里的孩子可能会对这种事感到恶心，只是拥抱了一下，黄先生在他们分开前捏了捏陈妈妈的胳膊。陈看了看宝马车，又看了看前座上的玄真。他把车靠在椅背上，戴着耳机，面无表情地盯着 iPod Touch 的屏幕。但当陈看着他时，他好像有一种被盯着看的第六感，因为他的目光滑了过来，与陈的目光相遇。然后，黄先生的身影挡住了他，陈的妈妈从陈的身边上了车，陈开车送他们回家，并告诉她："他看起来真的很不错。我真的为你感到高兴。"

“Hyunjin goes to your school,” Chan’s mum said. She was holding her purse in her lap very tightly instead of grabbing for the oh-shit handle, which Chan appreciated, and tried to drive even more carefully than usual. “He’s a freshman. Would you say hi, if you see him?”
"玄真在你们学校上学，"陈的妈妈说。她把钱包紧紧地放在腿上，而不是去抓那个该死的把手，陈对此表示赞赏，并试图比平时更小心地开车。"他是新生。如果你看到他，能跟他打个招呼吗？"

Chan hadn’t ever seen him before, but he also never particularly paid much attention to the underclassmen. “From me, or from you?” he said with a cheeky smile.
陈老师以前没见过他，但他也从来没有特别注意过班上的学生。"我送的，还是你送的？"他厚着脸皮笑着说。

It made his mum smile, too, shaking her head. “Whoever you want.”
这让他妈妈也笑了，摇了摇头。"随便你"

“Okay, I will.” For her sake, Chan added, though he didn’t know if he meant it, “He seems nice, too.”
"好的，我会的。"看在她的面子上，陈补充道，虽然他不知道自己是不是真心的，"他看起来也不错。"

And it made her so happy that Chan knew he’d done the right thing. He could keep doing that, then. The right thing.
这让她非常高兴，因为陈知道他做了正确的事。那他可以继续这么做正确的事

***

By the time Elise Park and Chan had amicably decided to go their separate ways so they could both focus on SAT prep, Chan had seen the Hwangs only a handful of times. They both came to Chan’s varsity match, which Chan wished he’d known before he looked the wrong way and let the opposing team’s striker past his (usually very good) defences to score against Chan’s team. Now that Chan knew Hyunjin’s face, he could look for him during passing periods, and he actually saw him sometimes, always surrounded by a gaggle. In such a case, Chan would smile and wave, but Hyunjin only reacted one time out of every five, usually just to huff or hunch his shoulders as he turned away.
当伊莉斯-朴和陈友好地决定分道扬镳，以便都能专注于 SAT 备考时，陈只见过黄氏夫妇几次。他们都来参加陈的校队比赛，陈希望自己在看错方向，让对方的前锋越过自己（通常很好）的防守，在陈的队伍中得分之前就知道这一点。现在，陈知道了贤进的长相，他可以在路过的时候寻找他的身影，而且他有时真的会看到他，他总是被一群人簇拥着。在这种情况下，陈会微笑着向他挥手，但玄真每五次中只有一次有反应，通常只是哼一声或驼着背转过身去。

The most they’d spoken was the one painfully awkward time Mr. Hwang had had a work emergency and had asked Chan’s mum to pick Hyunjin up from school. Hyunjin, piled into the back seat of Chan’s mum’s Prius, started to tell Chan’s mum his address, which—mortifyingly—she already knew, but she cut him off to say he was more than welcome to join them for dinner. She took Hyunjin’s stunned silence as a yes, and what followed was one of the most excruciating hours of Chan’s life (so far). Again, Chan found himself sympathising with Hyunjin: the kid had probably been looking forward to having a few hours to himself, unsupervised, alone, but instead, he had to sit in one of the creaky chairs at Chan’s kitchen table while Chan’s mum reheated leftover Chinese for the three of them, playing a playlist of weird ’80s hits, asking all kinds of inane questions about Chan and Hyunjin’s days. Still, she got more than one sentence out of Hyunjin. Yes, rehearsals for the school musical were going fine, he’d done theatre in middle school. No, he didn’t usually eat the cafeteria lunches, he packed his own in the mornings. When Chan’s mum asked if Hyunjin had a girlfriend, he went a very blotchy shade of red and, for some reason, made eye contact with Chan. Asking for rescue? Chan could totally do that—he was great at protecting his friends from his mum’s dorkiness (or at joining in, when the occasion called for it). So Chan cut in to complain about his mum bringing up girlfriends when his own wounds were so recent. But after that, back into his shell Hyunjin went, and everyone seemed equally relieved when the BMW crunched up the driveway to whisk Hyunjin away a little while later.
他们说得最多的一次，是黄先生因为工作上的急事，让陈妈妈去学校接玄真。玄真挤在陈妈妈的普锐斯后座上，开始告诉陈妈妈他的地址，令人遗憾的是，陈妈妈已经知道了，但她打断了他，说非常欢迎他和他们一起吃晚饭。她把玄真目瞪口呆的沉默当成了同意，接下来就是陈一生中最痛苦的几个小时（迄今为止）。陈发现自己又一次同情起玄真来：这孩子可能一直期待着能有几个小时的独处时间，没有人看管，独来独往，但他却不得不坐在陈家厨房餐桌上的一把吱吱作响的椅子上，陈妈妈一边给他们三个人加热吃剩的中国菜，一边播放着 80 年代的怪异歌曲，问着关于陈和玄真的各种无厘头问题。不过，她还是从玄真嘴里套出了不止一句话。是的，学校音乐剧的排练进行得很顺利，他在中学时学过戏剧。不，他通常不吃食堂的午餐，早上自己打包。当陈妈妈问玄真是否有女朋友时，他的脸涨得通红，不知道为什么，还和陈妈妈有了眼神交流。求救？陈完全可以这么做--他很擅长保护他的朋友们免受他妈妈的呆气（或者在需要的时候加入进来）。因此，陈插了进来，抱怨他妈妈在他自己的伤口刚刚愈合时就提起女朋友。过了一会儿，宝马车嘎吱嘎吱地驶上车道，把玄真接走了，大家似乎都松了一口气。

Hyunjin’s part in the school musical, Grease, was small. Chan and his mum went to see it anyway, and Chan almost didn’t recognise Hyunjin in his costume onstage at first. He was pretty good in the group scenes, though, and Chan didn’t know much about musicals, but he enjoyed the show. The guy playing Danny was in Chan’s calculus class. When Chan tried to tell Hyunjin he’d done a good job as they all stood in the lobby of the school theatre, Hyunjin was too distracted—or something—to really notice. Chan’s mum said they should all celebrate Hyunjin’s star turn and Hyunjin, looking suddenly very childlike beneath his slicked-back greaser hair and thick stage makeup, said, “Um, I have the cast party tonight, though.” The guy playing Danny passed by to grab Hyunjin’s shoulder and give him a little shake, which moved Hyunjin’s scrawny frame a concerning amount, and when Chan said, “Hey, great job,” he turned and looked directly at Chan and said, “Oh, you came? Thanks, man!”
Hyunjin 在学校音乐剧《Grease》中的戏份不多。陈和妈妈还是去看了，一开始陈差点认不出舞台上穿着戏服的玄真。不过，他在群戏中的表现还不错，陈对音乐剧了解不多，但他很喜欢这场演出。丹尼的扮演者是陈的微积分课同学。当他们都站在学校剧院的大厅里时，陈想告诉玄真他演得很好，但玄真却心不在焉，什么也没注意到。陈的妈妈说，他们应该一起庆祝贤人的明星转身，而贤人在他油光光的头发和浓厚的舞台妆下突然显得非常孩子气，他说："嗯，不过我今晚要参加演员派对。丹尼的扮演者路过时抓住了玄真的肩膀，轻轻地摇了摇，这让玄真瘦弱的身躯动了一下，当陈伟霆说 "嘿，干得不错 "时，他转过身直视着陈伟霆说："哦，你来了？谢谢，伙计！"

Chan didn’t know Alex really knew who he was, but evidently so. He looked better in his greaser costume than Hyunjin did, and Chan felt a little like he knew a celebrity. “Yeah,” he replied. “Supporting Hyunjin.”
陈不知道亚历克斯是否真的知道他是谁，但显然是的。他穿着油头粉面的服装比玄真好看多了，陈觉得自己有点像认识了一个名人。"是啊。"他回答道。"支持玄真。"

Alex’s eyes flickered around: Chan, to Hyunjin, to Hyunjin’s dad, to Chan’s mum. “Ohhh,” he said. Then, again to Hyunjin, “We’re about to go to Denny’s, you still coming?”
亚历克斯的目光在四周闪烁：陈，玄真，玄真的爸爸，陈的妈妈。"哦，"他说。然后，又对玄真说，"我们正要去丹尼餐厅，你还来吗？"

“Obviously,” Hyunjin said, and departed with Alex expeditiously.
"显而易见。"玄真说，然后带着亚历克斯迅速离开了。

The three remaining watched them go, and Mr. Hwang sighed apologetically. After telling Chan and his mum multiple times how much it meant that they’d come to see the show, he took them out to dinner. The vibe was very different without Hyunjin there—Chan actually felt like a peer rather than a babysitter. Mr. Hwang asked Chan businesslike, incisive questions about his interests, what he might want to do with his life, and somehow, the conversation ended up very grown-up indeed: Mr. Hwang himself brought up his wife who had passed away, and though Chan glanced quickly at his mum to make sure she was alright with this topic, she looked as though this was all familiar information to her, so Chan carefully asked whatever few questions felt permissible, polite. Hyunjin had never really known her, Mr. Hwang said. She’d died when he was very young. “Maybe that’s why,” Mr. Hwang theorised, “Hyunjin ended up a little—what’s the word…”
剩下的三人目送他们离去，黄先生抱歉地叹了口气。在多次告诉陈和他妈妈他们来看演出是多么重要之后，他带他们出去吃晚饭。没有玄真在，气氛很不一样--陈实际上感觉自己是个同龄人，而不是保姆。黄先生就陈的兴趣爱好、他可能想做的事情等问题，向他提出了商业性的、尖锐的问题：黄先生自己提到了他去世的妻子，虽然陈迅速地瞥了一眼他的妈妈，以确保她对这个话题没有意见，但她看起来似乎对这些都是熟悉的信息，所以陈小心翼翼地问了一些她觉得允许的、礼貌的问题。黄先生说，玄真从未真正了解过她。她在他很小的时候就去世了。"也许这就是为什么，"黄先生推测道，"玄真最后有点--怎么说呢......"

“Wild?” Chan’s mum suggested with a fond smile.
"野外？"陈妈妈深情地笑着建议道。

“I was going to say spoiled. You’re too kind.” Mr. Hwang laughed, then shook his head. “Wild is fine. The point is, I haven’t always been there for him. It was just—hard, you know? To do it alone, parent alone, when I’d expected not to be alone.”
"我本来想说被宠坏了你太客气了。"黄先生笑了笑，然后摇了摇头。"野蛮很好。关键是，我没有一直陪在他身边。这很难，你知道吗？一个人做，一个人当父母，而我本以为不会孤单。"

“Well,” said Chan’s mum, and covered Mr. Hwang’s hand with her own on the tabletop. She didn’t say anything else; she didn’t need to.
"嗯，"陈妈妈说着，用自己放在桌面上的手捂住了黄先生的手。她没有再说什么，她不需要再说什么。

Chan suddenly violently wished Hyunjin were there after all—then this conversation wouldn’t be happening. But soon they were talking about footie instead, and it was nice to see his mum so comfortable. It was nice, too, that Mr. Hwang was nice, if somewhat stiff. Chan didn’t know if Mr. Hwang would be his stepdad, or just “my mum’s husband,” or what, but either way, he didn’t mind. After multiple life-upending moves and parental reshufflings, there was little Chan would have minded. He was already thinking of what he’d need to pack up first, for when they moved. What he’d get rid of, what he’d keep.
陈突然猛地希望玄真也在--那样就不会有这样的对话了。但很快，他们就聊到了足球，看到妈妈如此自在，他也很高兴。黄先生人也很好，虽然有些生硬。陈不知道黄先生是他的继父，还是 "我妈妈的丈夫"，但无论如何，他都不介意。在经历了多次破坏生活的搬家和父母的重新洗牌之后，陈已经没有什么好介意的了。他已经在考虑搬家时需要先收拾什么东西了。他要扔掉什么，保留什么。

***

It came as no surprise. The school year was about to end. The Hwangs’ house was as nice as Chan had been picturing; maybe even nicer. Chan and Hyunjin were on far sides of the same long sofa, with Chan’s mum and Mr. Hwang on the sofa opposite them. (Who needed multiple sofas in the same room?) It was almost textbook-perfect. Well, Christopher, you know how much I love and respect your mother, and we’re just so lucky to have found each other, and Hyunjin, sweetie, it’s been so wonderful getting to know you, and—this practically in breathless unison—how would you boys feel if we all lived together?
这并不奇怪。学年即将结束。黄家的房子和陈的想象一样漂亮，甚至可能更漂亮。Chan 和 Hyunjin 分别坐在同一张长沙发的两边，Chan 的妈妈和黄先生坐在他们对面的沙发上。(谁需要在同一个房间里有多个沙发呢？克里斯托弗，你知道我有多爱你和尊敬你的妈妈，我们能找到彼此真是太幸运了，还有玄真，亲爱的，能认识你真是太好了，如果我们都住在一起，你们会有什么感觉？

Were they supposed to answer? It wasn’t really up to them, was it? Chan glanced at Hyunjin, who’d gone rigid—maybe it came as a surprise to him, then. Seized for a moment by neither protectiveness nor pride, Chan sought to set a good example and nodded, looking at his mum and Mr. Hwang. “Of course,” he said. “No, I’m really happy for you guys.”
他们应该回答吗？这不是他们能决定的，不是吗？陈瞥了一眼玄真，他的表情已经变得僵硬--也许这让他感到很惊讶吧。一时间，他既没有保护欲，也没有自尊心，只想树立一个好榜样，于是他看着妈妈和黄先生，点了点头。"当然。"他说。"不，我真的为你们感到高兴。"

“And if we… got married?” Chan’s mum hedged—in for a penny, etc.
"如果我们......结婚了呢？"陈的妈妈 "对冲 "了一分钱，等等。

“You proposed?” Hyunjin, speaking up for the first time, speaking only to his father.
"你求婚了？"玄真第一次开口，只对父亲说了一句话。

“Not yet,” Mr. Hwang answered, mitigating, tone stern but not cold. Chan’s mum, by his side, badly concealed a smile. “But that’s the eventual plan, yes. How would you feel about that?”
"还没有。"黄先生缓和地回答，语气严厉但不冷淡。陈妈妈在他身边，掩饰不住地笑了。"但这是最终计划，没错。你觉得怎么样？"

They must have looked up scripts together; they kept saying the exact same things, over and over. Chan started to say, mimicking them in repetition, “I’m really happy for—”, but Hyunjin got there first with something very different: “I don’t care.”
他们一定是一起翻看了剧本；他们不停地重复着一模一样的话。陈开始模仿他们重复说："我真的很高兴--"，但玄真先说了一句截然不同的话："我不在乎"。

Needlessly cutting, Chan felt. Not very mature. He could see the impact it had on his mum, and on Mr. Hwang. “Not much will change,” Chan’s mum said gently, concealing hurt. “We already see each other quite a bit, don’t we?”
陈觉得这没有必要。不是很成熟。他看得出这对他妈妈和黄先生的影响。"不会有太大的变化，"陈的妈妈轻轻地说，掩饰着伤痛。"我们已经经常见面了，不是吗？"

“I guess,” Hyunjin said. He was even more sullen than usual today, which was nearly impressive. Hood up, curled in a slouchy ball on the other end of the sofa. His right cheek was breaking out. “When?”
"我想是吧。"玄真说。他今天比平时更加闷闷不乐，这几乎让人印象深刻。他抬起头，懒洋洋地蜷缩成一团，坐在沙发的另一端。他的右脸颊都要裂开了。"什么时候？"

Mr. Hwang and Chan’s mum looked at each other. “We were thinking… when our lease is up,” Chan’s mum said, and Chan momentarily struggled to understand which “we” meant whom, until he figured it out, “in November. As for the wedding, I don’t know, we haven’t really spoken about an exact time. Late spring, maybe, next year.”
黄先生和陈妈妈面面相觑。"我们在想......当我们的租约到期时，"陈妈妈说，陈一时难以理解哪个 "我们 "指的是谁，直到他想明白了，"11 月。至于婚礼，我也不知道，我们还没谈过确切的时间。明年春末吧。

Chan was already thinking about how this would line up with his school schedule, college tours, college applications. Hyunjin unfolded himself from his sulky curl and stood. “Fine,” he said, terse. “I’m going to go enjoy my last few months of freedom.”
陈已经在考虑这将如何与他的学业安排、大学游览、大学申请相吻合。玄真从闷闷不乐的蜷缩中站了起来。"好吧，"他简短地说。"我要去享受我最后几个月的自由了。"

“Hyunjin,” said Mr. Hwang, frowning, but Chan’s mum put her hand on his arm, holding him back from stopping Hyunjin. Chan heard him stomp up the stairs, a door open then slam on the second floor. Maybe if Chan and Hyunjin had both been younger, if all of this had happened years before, the timeline would be longer, the parents would be being more careful with them. As it was, though, Hyunjin was dismissed as melodramatic, and Chan, though he’d been far too polite to agree with Hyunjin aloud, didn’t really care, either. And he didn’t want another awkward Hyunjinless conversation, and he had an essay to write, so he equally politely excused himself to Mr. Hwang’s home office to work on it. So weird, to want to cry but also not really care. He wondered if Hyunjin was crying, but he didn’t really care about that, either.
"玄真，"黄先生皱着眉头说，但陈的妈妈把手放在他的胳膊上，阻止他阻止玄真。陈听到他跺着脚上楼的声音，二楼的门被打开，然后砰地一声关上了。如果陈和玄真都还年轻，如果这一切发生在多年前，时间线会更长，父母会对他们更加小心。但现在的情况是，玄真被认为是夸大其词，而陈虽然一直很有礼貌地不敢大声同意玄真的说法，但也并不在意。他不想再和玄真进行一次尴尬的谈话，而且他还有一篇作文要写，所以他同样礼貌地借口去黄先生家的办公室写文章。好奇怪，想哭却又不太在意。他不知道玄真有没有哭，但他也不是很在意。

***

The plane tickets had been booked months ago, otherwise Chan would maybe have thought twice about leaving the country when his family was clearly in such a formative period. But it wasn’t like he was jealous about the attention he might or might not receive after the merger (as he’d begun thinking of it). He wasn’t Hyunjin, after all.
飞机票几个月前就订好了，否则，当他的家庭显然正处于这样一个成长期时，陈也许会三思而后行离开这个国家。但他并不是嫉妒合并后自己可能或不可能受到的关注（他已经开始这么想了）。他毕竟不是玄真。

***

Chan got back from Australia two days before the start of his senior year of high school, his virginity lost, ready to get into his dream college. Mind, he didn’t know what his dream college was yet; he was having trouble choosing. So he applied everywhere and hoped for a dream to crystallise.
陈在高三开学前两天从澳大利亚回来，他失去了童贞，准备进入他梦想的大学。不过，他还不知道自己的理想大学是什么，他很难选择。于是，他到处申请，希望能有一个梦想的结晶。

Mr. Hwang had popped the question to Chan’s mum in mid-August; they’d FaceTimed Chan immediately to tell him the news. The ring was indecently huge for a woman of her age, he thought. Otherwise, he remained pleasantly unaffected by the proceedings. Despite spending most evenings at the Hwangs’ and, obviously, every day at school, he hardly saw Hyunjin, but not because Hyunjin was avoiding him (probably), because Chan was busy. College apps, footie practice, “study nights” with his friends that sometimes ended in confusing games of gay chicken that Chan wasn’t sure if he was really supposed to find funny, because he didn’t find them funny, he just liked them. His mum let him bleach his hair blond, and said maybe for his birthday he could get his ears pierced. Everything was terrifying, but exciting. Chan was eager to get out of there. He wasn’t looking forward to the move; it would be such a pain. Not to mention that, only a few months after he moved into the Hwangs’ place, he’d have to pack up again to move into his dorm. Maybe he wouldn’t unpack at all, then. Maybe then none of it would be real.
黄先生在八月中旬向陈的母亲求婚；他们立即通过 FaceTime 将这一消息告诉了陈。他觉得，对于她这个年龄的女人来说，戒指实在是太大了。除此之外，他并没有受到任何影响。尽管大多数晚上他都在黄家度过，而且显然每天都在学校，但他几乎见不到玄真，但这并不是因为玄真在躲他（可能），而是因为陈很忙。大学申请、足球训练、和朋友们一起的 "学习之夜"，有时这些活动会以令人困惑的 "同性恋鸡 "游戏结束，陈不确定自己是否真的应该觉得好笑，因为他并不觉得好笑，他只是喜欢这些游戏。他妈妈让他把头发漂成金色，还说也许在他生日的时候可以给他穿耳洞。一切都很可怕，但也很刺激。陈渴望离开那里。他并不期待搬家，搬家太麻烦了。更不用说，搬到黄家才几个月，他又得收拾行李搬进宿舍。也许到时候他根本就不会打开行李。也许到那时，一切都不是真的了。

***

They moved a month earlier than expected. Chan’s room was bigger and he had an en-suite bathroom, which was nice. He did end up unpacking. Hyunjin didn’t help with anything; he locked himself in his own room (which had a hilarious DO NOT ENTER sign on the door—or, rather, it would have been hilarious if Hyunjin could tolerate good-natured ribbing at all, but as it was, he’d just glower and say “it’s not a joke” at the slightest hint of mirth in his direction) and only slunk out when the movers had left, but even then only to slip a slice of celebratory pizza for himself, then retreat to his cave.
他们比预期提前了一个月搬家。陈的房间更大，而且他有一个独立浴室，这很不错。他最终还是打开了行李。玄真什么也没帮忙；他把自己锁在自己的房间里（房间门上贴着 "请勿入内 "的搞笑告示--或者说，如果玄真能忍受别人善意的嘲笑，那才叫搞笑呢，但事实是，只要有人朝他笑，他就会瞪大眼睛说 "这不是玩笑"），只有在搬家工人离开后才溜出来，但即便如此，他也只是给自己塞了一块庆祝用的披萨，然后缩回自己的洞穴里。

Chan’s first night in the new house, he couldn’t sleep. There were so many new sounds to get used to: the heater didn’t rattle, but there was still a faint electric hum from somewhere, and the occasional scrape of tree branches against the window, a ticking clock, far away. He closed his eyes and counted the months he’d live in this house. And he was asleep by the time he made it to July.
陈在新房子里的第一个晚上，他无法入睡。有太多新的声音需要适应：暖气片不再嘎嘎作响，但仍有微弱的电嗡嗡声从某处传来，偶尔还有树枝刮过窗户的声音，以及远处滴答作响的钟表声。他闭上眼睛，数着在这所房子里住了几个月。数到七月时，他已经睡着了。

***

For his birthday, he got his ears pierced, and his mum’s car, because Mr. Hwang was buying her a new one.
生日那天，他打了耳洞，还买了妈妈的车，因为黄先生要给她买一辆新车。

“That’s a shitty gift,” Hyunjin said, when he heard.
"这礼物真烂。"玄真听到后说。

And what did you get me?, Chan thought but didn’t say. Even though now Chan could drive them both to school in the morning, Hyunjin preferred to ride with his friends, who pulled up out front in a flashy red convertible every day, tailgating Chan’s station wagon the entire span of the drive to school.
你给我买了什么？"陈想了想，但没有说出口。虽然现在陈可以在早上开车送他们俩去学校，但玄真更喜欢和他的朋友们一起坐车，他们每天都会开着一辆耀眼的红色敞篷车停在校门口，在去学校的路上一直尾随陈的旅行车。

***

He decided what his dream college was a week before he found out he got in. And his mum and Mr. Hwang set a date: June 15th, right after the start of summer. Or before, depending on your definition of summer.
在得知自己被录取的一周前，他就确定了自己的理想大学。他妈妈和黄先生定下了一个日期：6 月 15 日，就在暑假开始之后。或者在暑假之前，取决于你对暑假的定义。

***

The term, apparently, and according to Chan’s AP Sociology class, was “blended family,” but it felt to Chan about as blended as a bento box. His mum tried hard to keep everyone together, but Mr. Hwang worked a lot, and Hyunjin alternated between extremely antisocial and extremely abrasive. Either he was completely absent—where did he go?—or too present, sitting on a barstool at the counter separating the open-concept kitchen from the living room and sneering at Chan’s footie uniform, asking occasional invasive and blunt questions. He got his feelings hurt very easily—Chan had gotten used to the sound of his bedroom door slamming. Anything, seemingly, could set him off. He had been growing his hair out, but one day after school, Chan saw him with it shorn again, a little rough around the edges like he’d done it himself, or handed one of his friends the scissors. He was mostly in rehearsals for Little Shop of Horrors and he was failing chemistry. He was allowed to eat dinner in his room rather than at the table with everyone else; Chan assumed this was because their parents had grown sick of trying to negotiate with him about phone usage at the table, or simply didn’t want to look at his scowl more than they had to. Still, Chan said hi whenever he happened to see him in the halls at school. Hyunjin never said hi back.
根据陈的社会学 AP 课程，这个词显然是 "混合家庭"，但陈觉得它就像便当盒一样混合。他的妈妈努力让大家在一起，但黄先生工作很忙，而玄真则在极度反社会和极度粗暴之间交替。他要么完全不在--他去哪儿了？要么太在，坐在开放式厨房和起居室隔开的柜台前的吧台上，对陈的足球服嗤之以鼻，偶尔问一些侵犯性的直白问题。他的感情很容易受到伤害--陈已经习惯了他卧室的关门声。任何事情，似乎都能激怒他。他一直留着头发，但有一天放学后，陈看到他又把头发剪了，边缘有点粗糙，像是他自己剪的，或者是交给他的一个朋友剪的。他大部分时间都在排练《恐怖小店》，化学不及格。他被允许在自己的房间里吃晚饭，而不是和其他人一起在餐桌上吃饭；陈猜想这是因为他们的父母已经厌倦了在餐桌上和他讨论使用手机的问题，或者只是不想再看到他的鄙视表情。尽管如此，只要陈在学校大厅里碰巧见到他，他都会打招呼。玄真从来没有回过招呼。

One Saturday morning, when Chan’s mum had been doing laundry and therefore out of earshot, Hyunjin had literally asked, “Who do you like more, my dad or your dad?”
一个周六的早上，陈的妈妈在洗衣服，所以没听到玄真问 "你更喜欢谁，我爸爸还是你爸爸？"

Chan imagined the scandal that would ensue if he asked the same of Hyunjin, but for mums. He even seriously considered doing it. Hyunjin had been very annoying that week. Instead, diplomatically, and again trying to be mature, he said, “Apples and oranges.”
陈想象了一下，如果他向玄真提出同样的要求，但却是针对妈妈们的，那会有多大的丑闻。他甚至认真考虑过这样做。那一周，玄真一直很烦人。不过，他还是以外交辞令的方式，并再次试图表现得成熟一些，他说："苹果和橘子"。

Hyunjin huffed and went back to staring into his phone. And that was the most they talked all weekend.
玄真哼了一声，继续盯着手机。这也是他们整个周末聊得最多的一次。

It wasn’t that Chan wanted to be friends with him. He no longer expected their relationship to be brotherly. (One time, he’d overheard Mr. Hwang and Hyunjin talking in the evening, muted voices that didn’t sound aggressive down the hall from Chan’s room, but Hyunjin’s voice rose suddenly, clear enough for Chan to hear every word: She is not my mom, and he is not my brother.) He was happy with the friends and family he did have. But did Hyunjin really have to be so hostile? Had Chan been this angry when he’d been fourteen? Sometimes Chan’s mum asked him, in a quiet and sad way, if he’d try to help a little more with Hyunjin, but what was Chan supposed to do?
陈并不是想和他做朋友。他不再期望他们之间的关系是兄弟般的。(有一次，他无意中听到黄先生和玄真在傍晚谈话，声音很小，在陈的房间走廊里听起来并不咄咄逼人，但玄真的声音突然高了起来，清晰到陈能听清每一个字：她不是我妈妈，他也不是我哥哥）。他为自己拥有的朋友和家人感到高兴。但玄真真的有必要如此敌视他吗？陈十四岁的时候也这么生气吗？有时，陈的妈妈会悄悄地、伤心地问他，能不能试着多帮帮贤真，但陈又能做什么呢？

Chan, meanwhile, was passing all his classes at a minimum, even acing some of them. Alex, Danny from Hyunjin’s production of Grease, texted Chan in the middle of the night a lot. They didn’t have any classes together this year, but they usually got lunch together at the Panera across the road from their school. Every once in a while, Chan caught Alex staring at his mouth. He’d catch him because he would be doing the same thing, and their eyes would intersect.
与此同时，陈的所有课程都至少及格，甚至有几门课还得了满分。亚历克斯，炫真乐队《油脂》剧组的丹尼，经常在半夜给陈发短信。他们今年没有一起上课，但通常会一起在学校对面的 Panera 吃午饭。陈偶尔会发现亚历克斯盯着自己的嘴看。他发现艾利克斯也在盯着自己的嘴看，因为他也在做同样的事情，他们的目光就会交汇在一起。

The senioritis kicked in along with the spring semester. Chan’s grades did slip, but not too far. He wasn’t invited to Hyunjin’s fifteenth birthday party, though it was held in his—their—house. Either this was an unintentional omission because Hyunjin had probably assumed Chan would be around regardless (due to, well, living there), or a purposeful snub because Chan hadn’t come to the musical. (He’d felt a little bad about that, but that night, he’d been at Alex’s—Alex had boycotted the theatre program for reasons Chan didn’t wholly understand. They’d watched the movie version of Little Shop of Horrors, and something had happened that Chan had wanted so terribly, hadn’t meaningfully expected at all, couldn’t stop thinking about.)
随着春季学期的到来，"高三炎 "也随之而来。陈的成绩确实下滑了，但幅度不大。他没有被邀请参加玄真十五岁的生日派对，尽管派对是在他家举行的。这要么是无意的疏忽，因为贤真可能认为陈无论如何都会在那里（因为，嗯，住在那里），要么是故意的冷落，因为陈没有来参加音乐会。(他对此感到有点难过，但那天晚上他在亚历克斯家--亚历克斯抵制了戏剧节目，原因陈并不完全理解）。他们看了电影版的《恐怖小店》，然后发生了一些陈非常想要的事情，他完全没有想到，也无法停止思考）。

Chan’s big concern this semester, this month, was prom. Would it be okay for Chan to ask Alex, even as a friend? He thought maybe Stephanie, who always sat next to him in AP Stats and had a really cute smile, wanted him to ask her, but should they also just go as friends? He worried so much that he ended up putting it off until the last minute, and finally just decided to go with all his friends in one big group, including both Alex and Stephanie. His mum rented him a tux, last-minute. Chan was running late. The limo was waiting outside; Chan’s phone was buzzing, but he couldn’t get his bowtie right.
本学期，也就是这个月，陈最关心的问题是毕业舞会。陈可以邀请亚历克斯吗，即使是作为朋友？他想，也许斯蒂芬妮（AP Stats 课上总是坐在他旁边、笑起来非常可爱的女孩）希望他邀请她，但他们是否也应该只是以朋友的身份去呢？他担心得不得了，结果一直拖到最后一刻，最后才决定和所有朋友一起去，包括亚历克斯和斯蒂芬妮。他妈妈在最后一刻为他租了一套礼服。陈迟到了。豪华轿车已经在外面等着了；陈的手机嗡嗡作响，但他怎么也打不好领结。

Hyunjin, suddenly, in the doorway of Chan’s room, hovering. “Is prom tonight?” he asked.
玄真，突然出现在陈的房间门口，徘徊着。"舞会是今晚吗？"他问。

Chan didn’t have time for this, whole face furrowed with concentration as he re-looped the fabric. Unexpectedly, he missed his dad, who knew how to tie bowties; Chan had brushed him off over the summer, when he’d tried to teach him. “What? Yes,” he said, glancing over at Hyunjin. “Are you going?”
陈没有时间讨论这个问题，他全神贯注地把布料重新绕了一圈，整张脸都皱了起来。没想到，他竟然想念起了会打领结的爸爸；暑假时，他爸爸想教他打领结，陈却拂袖而去了。"什么？ 是的，"他说，瞥了一眼玄真。"你要去吗？"

It was a stupid question, because: “Underclassmen can’t go,” Hyunjin said, eyes bugged out like Chan was an idiot. “Unless they’re invited,” he added.
这是一个愚蠢的问题，因为"低年级学生不能去，"Hyunjin说，眼睛瞪得大大的，好像陈是个白痴。"除非他们被邀请，"他补充道。

He sounded sour about that, like he’d expected to be invited. Who would ever invite Hyunjin to prom? Chan stuffed one end of the bowtie through the other, tugged, pulled, got it. So buoyant was his mood as a result that, when he turned to Hyunjin and said, “Wanna come with?”, he actually meant it.
他听起来很不高兴，好像他早就料到会被邀请似的。谁会邀请玄真参加毕业舞会呢？陈把领结的一头塞进另一头，拽啊拽，终于拽住了。他的心情也因此变得十分愉悦，当他转过身对玄真说："想一起去吗？"时，他其实是认真的。

“What,” Hyunjin said, squawky.
"什么？"玄真唧唧歪歪地说。

Chan’s group did have an extra ticket, as it turned out. Mia had had an emergency tonsillectomy. Chan’s phone buzzed again. He needed to go, so if Hyunjin was coming, he had to say yes now, while Chan was still in a giving mood. Briefly, Chan explained all this, and Hyunjin stood so still, like a deer about to bolt. “So?” Chan concluded.
结果，陈的团队确实多了一张票。米娅做了紧急扁桃体切除手术。陈的手机又响了。他得走了，所以如果玄真要来，他现在就得答应，趁着陈还在兴头上。陈简单地解释了这一切，玄真站在原地一动不动，像一只即将开溜的小鹿。"所以呢？"陈总结道。

Hyunjin was blinking an abnormal amount. “I have nothing to wear,” he said, as though from a great distance.
玄真不正常地眨着眼睛。"我没有什么可穿的。"他说，仿佛从很远的地方走来。

“Look,” Chan said, generosity fading quickly into irritation, “then never mind. I have to go, excuse me.”
"听着，"陈说，慷慨很快就变成了恼怒，"那算了。我得走了，失陪。"

Spots of colour rose in Hyunjin’s already uneven cheeks as Chan went out past him. To Chan’s back, as Chan headed for the stairs, Hyunjin said, “I wouldn’t want to go with you, anyway.”
陈从玄真身边走过时，玄真原本就不平整的脸颊上又浮现出了几丝血色。当陈走向楼梯时，玄真对着陈的背影说："反正我也不想和你一起走。"

Chan could have said so many things. Good, I was just kidding. Or, Yeah, it would have been weird—you’re, like, my brother, or whatever. Or maybe just, Your loss. But instead, and proud of himself for his diplomacy and emotional maturity, he said nothing, graciously giving Hyunjin the gift of being able to pretend perhaps Chan hadn’t heard him.
陈可以说很多话。很好，我只是开个玩笑或者，是啊，那会很奇怪 - 你，就像，我的兄弟，或什么的。或者干脆说 "你输了"。但他什么也没说，并为自己的外交手腕和情感成熟度感到自豪，他慷慨地送给了玄真一个礼物，那就是可以假装陈没有听到他的话。

Chan didn’t end up kissing either Alex or Stephanie on the dance floor at prom. But he danced with both of them, and felt good about it. Thank God Hyunjin hadn’t taken him up on his random offer—he would have been such a wet blanket, like the handful of underclassmen Chan could see standing wide-eyed at the fringes of the room. Chan just hoped Hyunjin wouldn’t tell Chan’s mum what had happened. When Chan looked back on the interaction, it felt unkind. He just couldn’t decide who’d been unkinder.
在毕业舞会的舞池里，陈最终没有亲吻亚历克斯或斯蒂芬妮。但他和她们两个都跳了舞，感觉很好。谢天谢地，玄真没有接受他的邀请，否则他就会像陈能看到的站在舞池边上瞪大眼睛的少数几个低年级学生一样，成为一个毯子。陈只希望玄真不要把发生的事情告诉陈的妈妈。回想起当时的互动，陈觉得很不近人情。他只是不知道谁更不友善。

***

Graduated. Cap and gown, tassel right to left, screaming hoarse on the football field. Two and a half voices cheering louder than the rest when Christopher Bang was called.
毕业了帽子和长袍，流苏从右到左，在足球场上声嘶力竭地尖叫。克里斯托弗-邦（Christopher Bang）被叫到时，两个半人的欢呼声比其他人都大。

***

And then it was summer. And then it was the wedding. Chan and Hyunjin were both in tuxes, this time, on each respective parent’s side, fumbling through recited lines. Chan’s aunts flew in for it, and some Hwangs came, too. It was really awkward and mostly really boring but also kind of sweet. A nice distraction from Chan’s latest heartbreak—Alex thought they were better off as friends after all, just when Chan had been looking forward to spending the summer with him. Now who was he going to hang out with all summer—Hyunjin? Perish the thought. The cake was apricot-mocha. Hyunjin didn’t have any, so Chan had two slices to make up for it.
然后就是夏天。然后就是婚礼了。这一次，陈和贤人都穿着礼服，站在各自父母的身边，摸索着背诵台词。陈的姑姑们飞来参加婚礼，一些黄氏家族的人也来了。场面很尴尬，大部分时间都很无聊，但也很温馨。亚历克斯觉得他们还是做朋友比较好，毕竟陈正期待着和他共度暑假。现在他该和谁一起度过整个夏天呢--贤真？别想了。蛋糕是杏仁摩卡蛋糕。Hyunjin 没有，所以陈吃了两片来弥补。

***

Chan landed a summer job at Petco. Hyunjin was home all day, apparently, because that was where he always was whenever Chan had a day off. Chan loved the job: he got to see so many cute animals that it made him consider becoming a veterinarian, but thinking about seeing these cute animals sick changed his mind very quickly. Hyunjin didn’t seem to understand that Chan was enjoying himself, though. Each evening Chan came home tired but happy, Hyunjin’s lips curled, as if to say, why are you wasting your time?
陈在 Petco 找到了一份暑期工作。显然，玄真整天都在家，因为每当陈休息的时候，他总是在那里。陈很喜欢这份工作：他可以看到很多可爱的动物，这让他考虑成为一名兽医，但一想到看到这些可爱的动物生病，他很快就改变了主意。不过，玄真似乎并不明白陈很享受这份工作。每天晚上，陈疲惫但快乐地回到家，贤人的嘴角都会微微翘起，好像在说：你为什么要浪费时间呢？

Without school filling up their days, they saw each other more, but still, somehow, barely interacted. Two repellent magnets, circling. For a weekend in late July, they had to share a bathroom because there was a leak in Chan’s shower that needed to be repaired. Hyunjin fumed and raged and protested, but on this, Mr. Hwang held firm: it was more convenient than Chan having to go down a floor to shower in the master suite. Chan tried to say it was fine, he’d be happy to just do that, but somehow, that attempt to defuse tensions only made things worse. After having his iPad and all headphones taken away, finally, Hyunjin acquiesced. It literally was only for three days, anyway. Much ado about nothing. (Chan would have said that to Hyunjin, thinking maybe he’d appreciate the theatre joke, but he didn’t think Hyunjin deserved it.) Hyunjin’s shower was crammed full of tiny pastel-coloured bottles of skin- and haircare products, which, in Chan’s private opinion, didn’t seem to be doing Hyunjin any good. The whole ordeal was so needlessly irksome, but Chan spun it in his brain as basically practice for having a roommate in college, so it was just a valuable learning experience. And Hyunjin was only subjected to Chan for maybe ten seconds at most whenever Chan got out of the shower and, towel-bundled, legged it back to his own room to finish shaving and dressing, so Chan hoped he felt very foolish indeed for his overreaction.
没有了学校的充斥，他们见面的机会多了起来，但不知何故，还是几乎没有交流。两块相互排斥的磁铁，绕着圈子。七月下旬的一个周末，他们不得不共用一间浴室，因为陈的浴室漏水需要修理。玄真怒气冲冲地提出抗议，但黄先生在这件事上态度坚决：这比陈到主卧室洗澡方便多了。陈试图说没关系，他很乐意这样做，但不知何故，这种试图缓和紧张局势的做法只会让事情变得更糟。在他的 iPad 和所有耳机都被收走后，玄真终于默许了。反正也就三天而已。没什么大不了的。(陈本想对玄真说这句话，觉得他也许会欣赏这个戏剧笑话，但他觉得玄真不配）。贤真的淋浴间里塞满了粉色的护肤和护发产品小瓶子，陈私下认为，这些东西似乎对贤真没有任何好处。虽然整个过程让人很不爽，但陈却把它当作是大学里和室友相处的练习，所以这只是一次宝贵的学习经历。每当陈从浴室出来，裹着浴巾腿脚麻利地回到自己的房间刮完胡子、穿好衣服时，玄真最多也就和陈相处十秒钟，所以陈希望他能为自己的过激行为感到非常愚蠢。

Chan’s mum had given up on trying to make any step-brotherly bonding happen, and Mr. Hwang was still at work a lot. Besides, it seemed he’d given up on anything with Hyunjin a long time ago. So on the off-chance they had the house to themselves, they were both perfectly content to occupy completely separate orbits and never intersect. Between work, pre-reading some stuff for his first year college courses, and seeing his friends before they’d all inevitably start to skip town, Chan just wasn’t at home that much, and he didn’t have time to concern himself with whatever Hyunjin was doing. Again: practice for college roommates.
陈的妈妈已经放弃了让继兄之间的感情升温的努力，而黄先生仍然经常在工作。此外，他似乎很久以前就放弃了和 Hyunjin 的任何关系。所以，如果有机会独享这所房子，他们俩完全可以占据完全不同的轨道，永不相交。工作之余，他还要预习大学一年级的课程，还要在朋友们都开始逃课之前见上一面，陈根本没那么多时间待在家里，他也没时间去关心贤真在做什么。还是那句话：大学室友的惯例。

Sometimes Chan could see, though, another world, one where they did get along. It could have been fun to hang out with a younger brother all summer. Sure, Chan didn’t exactly have skills or life lessons or wisdom to pass down to him, but maybe there was something. A vision of that world did exist. But he didn’t look at it often.
不过，有时陈可以看到另一个世界，一个他们确实相处融洽的世界。整个夏天和一个弟弟一起玩耍也会很有趣。当然，陈并没有什么技能、生活经验或智慧可以传授给他，但也许还是有的。那个世界的愿景确实存在。但他并没有经常去看。

At some point in July, it finally dawned on Hyunjin that Chan had his own car and could drive himself around wherever and whenever he wanted. This marked a shift in Hyunjin’s attitude towards Chan, as Hyunjin did primarily seem to view people through a lens of utility. Now, he’d ask to tag along if Chan went out on his days off, and it was possibly the most they’d ever interacted. Chan could sympathise with getting a little stir-crazy and wanting to get out of the house, but, well, that was why Chan had gotten a job. Hyunjin could have gotten a job, too. So Chan said no most of the time. Sometimes he said yes out of overdue pity and always bitterly regretted it within the hour as Hyunjin made a mess in his car and hooked up his phone to the aux cord to play the most atrocious music Chan had ever heard in his life.
七月的某一天，玄真终于知道陈有自己的车，可以随时随地开着自己的车到处跑。这标志着 Hyunjin 对 Chan 的态度发生了转变，因为 Hyunjin 似乎主要是从实用的角度来看待人。现在，如果陈在休息日外出，他就会要求跟着，这可能是他们交往最多的一次。陈可以理解玄真有点疯狂，想要离开家，但这也是陈找工作的原因。玄真也可以找到一份工作。所以陈在大多数时候都拒绝了。有时候，他出于过期的怜悯而答应了，但每次都会在一小时内后悔不已，因为玄真把他的车弄得一团糟，还把他的手机连接到辅助线上，播放陈这辈子听过的最糟糕的音乐。

It was simultaneously harder and easier to say no when Hyunjin had a more specific request. Easier, because if Chan didn’t want to go somewhere, he could just say that. Harder, because Hyunjin was more persistent about those requests. Hyunjin wanted to go to Starbucks, to the mall, to see Kingsman: The Secret Service. And on the off-chance Chan wanted to do whatever it was Hyunjin wanted, too, caving in would set a dangerous precedent that only made Hyunjin more persistent—but if he said no, then he’d miss out on doing something he wanted to do. An impossible dilemma. However, the movie thing was an easy denial, sitting perfectly out of Chan’s control: “I want to see that, too, but it’s rated R, right? You can’t go see it.”
当 Hyunjin 提出更具体的要求时，要拒绝既难又容易。比较容易，因为如果陈不想去某个地方，他可以直接说出来。更难的是，玄真对这些要求更加执着。Hyunjin 想去星巴克，去商场，去看《王牌特工》：The Secret Service》。万一陈也想做贤人想做的事，屈服会开创一个危险的先例，只会让贤人更加执着--但如果他说不，那他就会错过他想做的事。这是一个无法解决的难题。然而，电影这件事却很容易被拒绝，完全不受陈的控制："我也想看，但它是 R 级的吧？你不能去看。"

“I could,” Hyunjin countered, chin raised, “if you took me.”
"我可以，"玄真抬起下巴反驳道，"如果你带我走的话。"

Chan narrowed his eyes. He supposed that was true. But would he get in trouble if their parents found out he’d taken Hyunjin to such a gory movie? Hyunjin absolutely seemed like the type to snitch if it would benefit him in any way. “I don’t know if that’s a good—”
陈眯起了眼睛。他想这是真的。但是，如果他们的父母发现他带玄真去看这么血腥的电影，他会不会惹上麻烦呢？贤真绝对是那种只要对自己有好处就会告密的人。"我不知道这样做好不好..."

“I won’t tell,” Hyunjin assured him. Easy innocence, seemingly so sincere. “I’m really good at keeping secrets.”
"我不会说出去的。"玄真向他保证。轻松天真，看似如此真诚。"我真的很擅长保守秘密"

“Oh, yeah?” Chan said, raising an eyebrow. “Like what?”
"哦，是吗？"陈说，挑了挑眉毛。"像什么？"

Hyunjin smiled, and it might have been the first time Chan ever saw him do that—or, at the very least, the first time it had been directed at him. “Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.”
玄真笑了，这可能是陈第一次看到他笑，至少是第一次对着他笑。"好吧，如果我告诉你，这就不再是秘密了。"

“Fair enough,” Chan said, and found himself smiling back. “Okay, fine. Let me see when it’s showing.”
"很公平，"陈说，并发现自己也回以微笑。"好吧，好吧。让我看看什么时候放映。"

Hyunjin looked shocked that he’d pulled it off. Chan found a showing in an hour, and, though he was hardly ever impulsive, told Hyunjin to go get in the car, they could go. When Hyunjin got what he wanted, it was as though he was muted for a while, just enjoying his triumph, so the drive to the movie theatre was surprisingly tolerable. Chan got a little nervous in the box office line, but the girl working hardly batted an eye, just handed over two tickets after checking Chan’s ID. Hyunjin didn’t want any popcorn, only Twizzlers, and Chan was the opposite. They sat in the second-to-last row, Chan delighted by the movie (and only slightly horrified by the amount of violence he was subjecting Hyunjin’s delicate eyes to), Hyunjin entirely impassive, even during the gory bits. Maybe the novelty had worn off for him, or maybe he would have preferred to see this movie with an actual friend, but for whatever reason, when the lights came up at the end, Hyunjin’s good humour had gone, and he didn’t even want to talk about how awesome it had been while Chan drove them home. A very different silence than the one Chan had enjoyed on the journey to the theatre. Chan’s mum was pulling into the driveway at the same time and was visibly delighted to see Chan and Hyunjin together; Chan told her they’d seen Jurassic World. But not even that, a stupid and simple pre-agreed-upon lie, could get another smile out of Hyunjin. And that was the final time they hung out, just the two of them, all summer—Chan got too busy, and Hyunjin stopped asking.
玄真为自己的成功感到震惊。陈找到了一个小时后上映的电影，虽然他几乎从不冲动，但他还是告诉贤真，上车吧，他们可以走了。当玄真如愿以偿时，他好像暂时缄默了，只是享受着胜利的喜悦，所以开车去电影院的路上出奇地轻松。陈在售票处排队时有点紧张，但售票的女孩几乎没眨眼，只是在检查了陈的身份证后递上了两张票。玄真不想吃爆米花，只想吃扭扭糖，而陈却恰恰相反。他们坐在倒数第二排，陈看得津津有味（只是对他让玄真娇嫩的眼睛看到的暴力场面略感惊恐），玄真则完全无动于衷，即使在血腥场面时也是如此。也许对他来说新奇感已经消失，也许他更愿意和真正的朋友一起看这部电影，但不管出于什么原因，当电影结束时灯光亮起时，贤人的幽默感消失了，他甚至不想在陈开车送他们回家时谈论电影有多棒。与陈在去剧院的路上所享受到的沉默截然不同。陈的妈妈也同时把车开进了车道，看到陈和玄真在一起，她显然很高兴；陈告诉她，他们看了《侏罗纪世界》。陈告诉她，他们看了《侏罗纪世界》。但即使是这样一个愚蠢而简单的事先约定好的谎言，也无法让玄真再露出一个笑容。那是整个夏天他们俩最后一次出去玩--陈太忙了，贤珍也不再问了。

By August, Chan was packing his bags. He was staring at Street View every day to see how the street he was going to be living on looked. He was living in the future. He’d decided that in college, he would go by Chan, not Chris, to the outside world. Not quite a reinvention, but still, something new. A departure within a departure. And then, when he looked back on it, it would be like a human time capsule: anyone who called him Chris would be someone who’d known him before, and vice versa.
到了八月，陈开始收拾行李。他每天都盯着街景图，看看自己将要居住的街道是什么样子。他活在未来。他决定，在大学里，他对外的称呼将是陈，而不是克里斯。这不算是重塑，但也是一种新的尝试。离别中的离别然后，当他回首往事时，这就像一个人类时间胶囊：任何叫他克里斯的人都是以前认识他的人，反之亦然。

He got into the car. Mr. Hwang put in the final box, then closed the hatchback. Chan’s mum was valiantly trying not to cry. It was only a seven-hour drive, and Chan again reassured her that he would be fine, he didn’t need her to come along, he’d see her soon. Hyunjin came down to wave, too. He didn’t tell Chan to drive safe, and he didn’t wish him luck, really. He looked as though he’d just woken up from a nap. Chan waved at all of them. He reversed the car out of the driveway. He rolled down the windows. And he looked back.
他上了车。黄先生把最后一个箱子放了进去，然后关上了后备箱。陈妈妈努力忍住不哭。只有七个小时的车程，陈再次向她保证，他不会有事的，他不需要她一起来，他很快就会见到她。玄真也下来挥手。他没有告诉陈要注意安全，也没有祝他好运，真的。他看起来好像刚从睡梦中醒来。陈向所有人挥了挥手。他把车倒出了车道。他摇下车窗。他回头看了看

***

And then he never saw Hyunjin again.
然后，他就再也没见过玄真了。

***

Not literally, of course. But it felt that way, for a long time. Mostly, in college, Chan forgot he existed. Somehow, whenever he’d drive or fly back to visit, Hyunjin wouldn’t be there; out on a ski trip, or doing a college tour of his own, or visiting other family somewhere else. Politely, Chan asked after him, and heard that he was fine, keeping busy, he’d pulled his grades up and was now very nearly the top of his class, which came as a surprise to Chan, but hey, good for him.
当然，不是字面上的意思。但在很长一段时间里，我都有这种感觉。大多数时候，在大学里，陈忘记了他的存在。不知怎么的，每次他开车或坐飞机回来探望时，玄真都不在那里；他去滑雪了，或者在进行自己的大学之旅，或者去其他地方探望家人。陈礼貌地询问了他的情况，听说他很好，一直很忙，成绩也提高了，现在几乎是班里的第一名，这让陈很吃惊，不过，这对他来说是件好事。

Chan was doing fine and keeping busy, too. College was exhilarating and amazing. Biochem major, psychology minor, but what was Chan going to do with it? He kept playing footie (intramural, though, keeping it casual) and started going to the actual gym. He had quite a few one-night-stands and fell in love. The next year, he fell out, and the breakup happened only a month after Chan’s mum had met his now-ex, which was… unfortunate. He did a semester abroad in Spain. His dad had met someone new, too, but she didn’t have any children of her own, for which Chan was irrationally grateful.
陈也过得很好，一直很忙。大学生活令人兴奋和惊奇。主修生化，辅修心理学，但陈打算怎么做呢？他继续踢足球（不过是校内的，保持休闲），并开始去真正的健身房。他有过几次一夜情，并坠入了爱河。第二年，他失恋了，而分手就发生在陈的妈妈见到他现在的前女友的一个月后，这真是......不幸。他在西班牙留学了一个学期。他的爸爸也认识了一个新朋友，但她没有自己的孩子，陈对此非常感激。

Summer jobs and internships continued to keep Chan busy year-round. He tried a little bit of everything, indecisive. Finally, a class about the impact of exercise on the human brain—both positive and negative, physical and philosophical—sparked something, and Chan’s next job was working as a late-night desk clerk at a gym in the city. Many friends over the years, teammates and otherwise, had told him he was great at pep talks. He liked to stay fit. Could this be the one?
暑期工作和实习让陈一舟一年到头忙个不停。他什么都试过一点，优柔寡断。最后，一堂关于运动对人脑的影响（包括正面和负面影响、身体影响和哲学影响）的课点燃了陈的灵感，他的下一份工作是在市内一家健身房做深夜服务员。多年来，许多朋友，无论是队友还是其他朋友，都告诉他，他很擅长鼓舞人心的演讲。他喜欢健身。会是这个吗？

Yearly, he commented on Hyunjin’s Facebook wall to wish him a happy birthday. Hyunjin never even liked the post. Maybe kids these days weren’t using Facebook, or maybe Hyunjin just hated him after all.
每年，他都会在 Hyunjin 的 Facebook 留言，祝他生日快乐。玄真甚至从来没有点过赞。也许现在的孩子都不使用 Facebook 了，也许 Hyunjin 根本就讨厌他。

When Chan graduated from college, his dad (new wife in tow) flew up for the festivities. Chan was so hungover the morning of, but it was even more nauseating to see his dad and mum at the same table again. Mr. Hwang got Chan a very nice watch. Hyunjin was studying abroad in Portugal and, according to Mr. Hwang, was “bummed he couldn’t be here.” Chan knew Hyunjin had said no such thing. But he didn’t much miss him. 
陈大学毕业时，他爸爸（带着新婚妻子）飞来参加庆祝活动。陈那天早上宿醉未醒，但再次看到爸爸和妈妈同坐一桌，更是令人作呕。黄先生给陈买了一块非常漂亮的手表。玄真在葡萄牙留学，据黄先生说，他 "很遗憾不能来这里"。陈知道玄真没有说过这样的话。但他并不怎么想念他。

Chan stayed in the city. He lived with roommates first. Then he got a promotion at the gym to full-time trainer, so he got his own place. By the next year, he wasn’t just a trainer but a partner, a shareholder, which felt terrifyingly grown-up. But wasn’t he grown up? Hadn’t he worked hard, hadn’t he earned this? He moved into a bigger place, further from the gym but still within running distance. He liked his life. Loved it. He thought about getting a dog. He got a little lonely sometimes. But he talked to his mum lots on the phone, and he and his dad talked more, too, and he even gave Mr. Hwang some workout tips after his slipped disc.
陈留在了城里。他先是和室友住在一起。后来，他在健身房晋升为全职教练，于是有了自己的房子。到了第二年，他不仅是一名教练，还是一名合伙人，一名股东，这让他觉得自己长大了。但他不是已经长大了吗？难道不是他努力工作换来的吗？他搬到了一个更大的地方，离健身房更远，但仍在跑步距离之内。他喜欢他的生活。很喜欢他想养条狗他有时会有点孤独但他经常和妈妈通电话，和爸爸也聊得更多，他甚至在黄先生椎间盘突出后给了他一些锻炼的建议。

Nothing from Hyunjin, though. Ever.
不过，Hyunjin什么也没说。从来没有

Sometimes Chan did remember he existed. He’d heard Hyunjin had finished college, too, and was looking for work. Sometimes Chan wondered what he’d done wrong, why Hyunjin hated him. Because surely he hated him, right? His silence, his absence, wasn’t passive; it felt like a choice Hyunjin was deliberately making, intentionally keeping Chan as far away from his own life as possible. One of Chan’s classes had had readings about attachment theory, and some of it made Chan’s stomach twist with guilt. He summed up the whole situation for his friends, worrying that he hadn’t been there for a young, vulnerable person who’d needed more support. “Why is that your problem? You were a kid, too,” his friends said. “He sounds like a little nightmare, anyway.”
有时候，陈确实记得他的存在。他听说玄真也大学毕业了，正在找工作。有时候，陈想知道自己做错了什么，为什么玄真会恨他。因为他肯定恨他，对吗？他的沉默，他的缺席，并不是被动的；感觉就像是玄真故意做出的选择，故意让陈尽可能远离他自己的生活。陈的一门课有关于依恋理论的内容，其中一些让陈的胃因内疚而扭曲。他为朋友们总结了整个情况，担心自己没有陪伴在一个需要更多支持的年轻、脆弱的人身边。"这为什么是你的问题？你也是个孩子啊，"他的朋友们说。"反正他听起来就像个小噩梦"

Well, yes. He was. But Chan never wished him ill, nonetheless. They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in seven years.
是的他确实是但陈从来没有希望他生病，尽管如此。他们已经七年没有见面或说话了。

***

Still, Chan recognises the voice on the phone immediately.
不过，陈还是一眼就认出了电话里的声音。

***

“Chris?” (He’s crying.) “Is this Chris?”
"克里斯？"("这是克里斯吗？"

Chan thought it would be his grocery delivery (which he felt bad enough about calling for, in weather like this), but it’s not at all, and he sits bolt upright on the couch. The blood rushes from his head. It can’t be, because why would it be? But it is; he recognised his voice immediately. “Hyunjin?” he says in the wet gap that follows Hyunjin’s question, disbelieving but knowing it’s true.
陈本以为会是他的杂货快递（在这样的天气里打电话叫快递，他已经够难受了），但根本不是，他猛地坐直在沙发上。鲜血从他的头上涌出。不可能，为什么会这样？但就是这样，他立刻认出了自己的声音。"玄真？"他在玄真问话后湿漉漉的缝隙中说道，虽然不相信，但知道这是真的。

“Yes,” Hyunjin says, stopped-up, sniffling. “Hi.”
"是的，"Hyunjin说，停了下来，吸了吸鼻子。"你好"

And offers no further explanation.
并没有提供进一步的解释。

Chan pulls his phone away from his ear for a second to check the unidentified number: local area code. Maybe if this were a normal cold-call (is there such a thing?), he’d be making small talk, asking how Hyunjin is, why he chose tonight to reach out after seven years of hostile radio silence, but there’s a more pressing issue. Chan casts his mind back to think if he’d ever seen Hyunjin cry, during the brief period they were in each other’s lives, and can’t remember. “Are you okay?” Chan asks, carefully.
陈把手机从耳边拿开，查看了一下未识别的号码：本地区号。如果这是一个普通的冷电话（有这种事吗？），他也许会闲聊几句，问问玄真怎么样了，为什么在七年的敌对无线电沉默之后选择在今晚联系他，但现在有一个更紧迫的问题。陈回想了一下，在他们短暂的生命中，他是否曾见过玄真哭泣，但他想不起来了。"你还好吗？陈小心翼翼地问。

A muted sob. “I got mugged,” Hyunjin says. “I’m fine, I’m okay, but—he took my wallet and my phone. So I—”
低声抽泣"我被抢劫了，"Hyunjin 说。"我没事，我很好，但他抢走了我的钱包和手机。所以我......"

“Holy shit, Hyunjin—” "天啊，玄真"

“I’m fine,” Hyunjin repeats, even more wetly. “I’m at, um, this diner on Washington and Lake, do you think you could—get me?”
"我很好，"玄真重复道，语气更加湿润。"我在华盛顿湖边的一家餐馆 你能帮我接一下吗？"

Chan blinks hard a few times, and wishes he could blink with his whole brain. But, on automaton, he moves to get up. “Washington and Lake?” he says. Again, under less insane circumstances, he’d be asking what the fuck Hyunjin is talking about—he’s in town? Since when? How did he find Chan’s number if his phone got stolen? But Hyunjin got mugged, and he’s crying, and—Chan puts Hyunjin on speaker so he can check the map as Hyunjin confirms the cross streets—a ten-minute drive away, and Chan can be there. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he tells Hyunjin.
陈用力眨了几下眼睛，他希望自己能用整个大脑眨眼。但是，他还是自动站了起来。"华盛顿和莱克？"他说。同样，在不那么疯狂的情况下，他会问玄真到底在说什么--他在城里？什么时候来的？如果陈的手机被偷了，他是怎么找到他的号码的？但是 Hyunjin 被抢劫了，他在哭，而且陈把 Hyunjin 开到免提，这样他就可以在 Hyunjin 确认十字路口时查看地图--十分钟车程，陈就可以到那里。"我十分钟后到，"他对玄真说。

“Okay,” Hyunjin says. There’s a deep, shuddering breath, like a relieving of tension.
"好的，"玄真说。他深深地吸了一口气，像是在缓解紧张。

Chan gets his keys and his shoes and some cash. Should he call Hyunjin’s dad? “Do you want to stay on the line?” he hedges. “Are you—safe right now?”
Chan 拿到了钥匙、鞋子和一些现金。他要给贤真的爸爸打电话吗？"你想继续通话吗？"他问。"你现在安全吗？"

Another noise: this one like a strangled puddle. “I’m fine, Chris,” Hyunjin says. “I’m literally just in this diner, using the waitress’s phone. I’ll still be here. It’s called—” A little rustling. “Eggs on Wash.”
又是一个声音：这个声音像被掐住的水洼。"我没事，克里斯，"玄真说。"我真的就在这间餐厅里，用服务员的电话。我还会在这里。它叫--"一阵沙沙声。"洗蛋"

“Got it,” Chan says. He’s out the door. “Stay right there, okay? Ten minutes. Call back if you need anything.”
"知道了，"陈说。他出了门。"呆在那儿，好吗？十分钟有什么需要再打过来。"

“Uh huh,” Hyunjin says. It sounds like he’s started crying again. “Thanks.” And hangs up.
"嗯哼，"玄真说。听起来他又开始哭了。"谢谢"然后挂断了电话。

Chan doesn’t have time to think about what the fuck he’s doing, what the hell is going on. He takes the stairs down to the garage, unlocks his car, gets in, drives. He has approximately a million and one questions. First, most significantly: why is Hyunjin ten minutes away? To be fair, Chan didn’t know or ask where Hyunjin had moved after finishing his education at a small liberal arts college in Vermont, but Vermont isn’t exactly close to here, and no one had told Chan that Hyunjin would be visiting. Another question that Chan has that he can’t quite answer is why he cares so much. What does he owe to Hyunjin, to be this urgently concerned about his well-being? He’d do this for anyone, obviously. But still. Would Hyunjin do this for him, if the situations were reversed? Where has he been, all this time?
陈没有时间去想他到底在做什么，到底发生了什么。他从楼梯下到车库，打开车锁，上车，开车。他大约有一百万零一个问题。首先，最重要的问题是：为什么玄真离他只有十分钟的路程？平心而论，陈不知道也没问过玄真在佛蒙特州的一所小型文理学院完成学业后搬到了哪里，但佛蒙特州离这里并不近，也没人告诉陈玄真会来访。另一个陈无法回答的问题是，他为什么这么在乎？他欠玄真什么，为什么要如此迫切地关心他的安危？很明显，他愿意为任何人这么做。但是如果情况相反，玄真会为他这么做吗？这段时间他去哪儿了？

Chan’s phone rings and he blindly, frantically jabs at the button on his steering wheel to answer. The call takes a crackly moment to connect to his car’s speakers. “Hyunjin? You alright?”
陈的手机响了，他盲目而疯狂地按下方向盘上的按钮接听。电话过了好一会儿才接通汽车扬声器。"玄真？你还好吗？"

“Hello?” says a different voice, tinny and muffled. “Sorry, this is Greg? With Instacart?”

“Oh,” Chan says. He’s at a red light, so he sighs and drops his forehead to the wheel for a moment. “Oh, okay. Sorry, what’s the—what’s up?”

“The elevator—”

“Just leave it right there, thank you, sorry,” Chan says, and he regrets it as soon as he does it, but he hangs up on poor Greg, in case Hyunjin calls back and can’t get through.

There’s no traffic—evidently, it being 11 PM supersedes the rainstorm’s impact on the roads—and it’s not far, but ten minutes feels like an awfully long time. What is Chan going to do if he shows up and Hyunjin isn’t there—if he ran off into the thunder? He spots the diner’s glowing neon sign through the downpour. There are hardly any cars in the parking lot, so Chan pulls up to park right by the front door and, head ducked once he gets out, rushes in.

It’s a mid-size retro-style diner. Chan looks around, swivelling his neck like a cartoon character. He sees two waitresses in yellow uniforms at opposing ends, a family with several sticky children crowded into a booth, and a gorgeous creature sitting on a bar stool at the milkshake counter. No Hyunjin. Chan feels sick. He looks around again, makes eye contact with one of the sticky children and then with the gorgeous creature at the counter, and is startled to his molecules to recognise that the gorgeous creature is Hyunjin, in fact, getting up in that sulky shoulders-first way of his to come over.

He’s tall, is Chan’s first thought. He’ll have half a head or more on Chan when he gets close. His hair, ink-black and curling, is very long, down to his shoulders, soaked as it is. There’s mud on his seasonally inappropriate thin denim jacket. His eyes are red-rimmed (and is that mascara running down his cheeks?) and his lips are parted, pouted. Chan feels like a fish, only able to stare with mouth feebly open. Hyunjin, in his city. Tall and so gorgeous that Chan had seen his face before he’d seen him. Chan feels like he should apologise—like he should leave—like all he can do is stare.

“Hey,” Hyunjin says, still congested, but his face is dry even if the rest of him is only drying. “Do you have three-fifty? The waitress let me have some coffee.”

Are they seriously going to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary about this entire situation? Chan, bemused and mildly mortified, gets out his wallet while Hyunjin calls Jennifer over and thanks her for taking care of him. Jennifer is sufficiently brassy and no-nonsense that Chan is surprised she’d taken pity on a bedraggled and doubtless ungovernable Hyunjin, but he thanks her profusely and gives her twenty bucks. She raises her thin pencilled eyebrows but takes it and tells Hyunjin to be careful. And then Hyunjin looks at Chan—looks down at Chan, and Chan coughs and tilts his head in the direction of the door, and stiffly ushers Hyunjin out.

The rain has eased, but Hyunjin still hesitates under the diner’s awning while Chan scurries forward to unlock his car. “Oh,” Hyunjin says, emerging. “You got a new car.”

So Chan doesn’t recognise Hyunjin, and Hyunjin doesn’t think that a hand-me-down car that had eighty thousand miles on it when it reached Chan would need to be replaced someday. Perhaps this makes them even. (It does not.) “Yeah, the Mum-Mobile had a good run, but I had to send her out to pasture a few years back,” Chan says, so uncomfortable with this interaction that it’s making his brain spit out stupid things.

Hyunjin, unsurprisingly, doesn’t acknowledge what Chan had just said. He folds himself into the car and has to move the seat back a little once he’s in. He’d only been outside for five seconds at most, but he’s already shivering, and Chan turns on the car and punches the button to start the heater. Distantly, Chan hopes that Hyunjin doesn’t get water and mud all over his car, but it’s probably too late. “I’m getting shit all over your car,” Hyunjin says, as though reading Chan’s mind.

“Don’t worry about it,” Chan says. He pulls out of the diner’s parking lot and sees, through the window, that Jennifer has given them a wave. He waves back.

Hyunjin notices and does a thin exhale. “It took fucking forever to convince her I wasn’t lying,” he mutters. “I think I really freaked her out.”

He’s really freaking Chan out, too. “What happened?” Chan asks, risking a quick glance away from the road to confirm that Hyunjin is still in the passenger seat, still buckled up, arms wrapped around himself, watching the lights. “Are you sure you’re okay? Have you called the cops?”

“What’s that going to do?” Hyunjin sighs. He leans his head back. He’s definitely getting water everywhere. “He literally just came up next to me and asked if he could have my umbrella. I didn’t even understand what was happening until he, like—pushed me over, I don’t know.”

Chan looks over at Hyunjin sharply, but can’t look long, he needs to watch the road. His eyes just keep sticking. “Did he hurt you?”

Hyunjin exhales again. This one sounds like a laugh. A little mocking. “No. I did what you’re supposed to do, you know, looked away and just handed my valuables over.” He holds up a wrist: elegant and slim. Chan doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be looking at until Hyunjin taps the bare skin. “Watch, too.”

“Damn,” Chan says.

“Then he told me to count to a thousand before I went anywhere,” Hyunjin continues. He’s so blithe about it, so emotionless. “He had a gun, I think. Maybe a knife. So I just sat there, getting fucking rained on. The diner was the first open place I found, and once I got Jennifer to believe me, you know the rest. See? Nothing too crazy.”

It all sounds very crazy to Chan. When Hyunjin had called him, he’d been actively crying, but now he’s so calm—only the slight stopped-up sound of his voice gives away that there had ever been any feeling there. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Chan says, softer, with a brief glance over to Hyunjin. “And I’m glad you’re okay. Glad you called.”

“Yeah,” Hyunjin says, and reaches for the handle on his seat so he can lean it back.

That had sounded a little vulnerable, maybe. A little emotional. Chan fidgets, permits another glance, but he can’t stay there long. Eyes on the road, Christopher. “Um—why’d you call me, though?”

Hyunjin is quiet for so long that Chan thinks he’s asleep; he checks, and Hyunjin’s eyes are open but his jaw is tense, and he’s crossing his arms. Chan might recognise that expression—it’s been a long time, and Hyunjin’s face is very different, but that’s how he thinks Hyunjin used to look when he was angry.

“I’m glad you did,” Chan rushes to reiterate. “Seriously, it’s no problem, I live close, it’s—you can always call me, Hyunjin.”

Hyunjin hisses out a tight breath. Chan immediately feels guilty for that, too. It’s not like he’s called Hyunjin all this time, either, although he could have. “I don’t have anyone else’s number memorised who lives here,” Hyunjin says, practically snaps. “I could have called my dad, but what was he going to do? Calling you was more efficient.”

“Right,” Chan says. “Right.” After all, he may be taller and so beautiful that Chan is still finding it difficult to reconcile this vision of Hyunjin with the gangly, spotty, surly teenager he once knew, but—it’s still Hyunjin. There’s that temper and its nastiness, lashing out to strike, spit venom at anyone who gets close. (Why does he still have Chan’s number memorised? Chan doesn’t know Hyunjin’s, although he has him in his phone, just in case.) Still, deep down, he’s the same.

Hyunjin’s voice cuts through Chan’s internal monologue as the car pulls into the underground garage. “I’m sorry,” he says. Quiet and serious. “I really appreciate it, Chris. It was good of you to pick me up, especially since you really didn’t have to, you could have just said no or called me a cab or something. So thank you.”

Chan’s guilt has no limit, does it? One apology does not an entire new personality make, but he’d misjudged Hyunjin already; of course he’s changed and grown. The last time they saw each other, Hyunjin was a child. And now he’s—this. “That’s okay,” Chan says, looking over to him with a small smile as he parks in his space. “Seriously, I was happy to. It’s nice to hear from you. When did you get into town, are you visiting someone? How long are you staying? I had no idea you were here, obviously, but now that I know, we can—” He gestures loosely to indicate hang out, although he has no idea what that would even look like, if Hyunjin would even want anything to do with Chan now that he, presumably, chooses who’s in his life.

Hyunjin puts his hand on his seatbelt. There had been something on his face very distantly reminiscent of a smile a moment ago, but now it’s gone. “I’m not visiting,” he says. “I live here.”

At first, Chan thinks he’s misheard. But Hyunjin’s flat stare is confrontational and unapologetic, as if defying Chan to disbelieve him, and Chan splutters a little. “You—what? You live—here?”

“Not too far from you, actually,” Hyunjin says. All of a sudden he looks tired. “I was walking home after work when he mugged me.”

Home? Work? In Chan’s city, and no one had told him? “Since when?” Chan manages.

Hyunjin shrugs. “About five, six months?”

“Hyunjin,” Chan says, floored. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I have?” Hyunjin counters. “I told them not to tell you, either, because I knew you’d be weird about it.”

“I’m not being weird about it—Hyunjin, seriously?” Chan says, his shock turning to dismay. Why does this hurt so much? Hyunjin has been just a few minutes away for months, but still—inexplicably—hates Chan so much, so profoundly, so inexplicably but totally, that he’d orchestrated an elaborate conspiracy to keep him in the dark? Hyunjin, stubbornly, is evidently done talking about this, so Chan puts his hands back on the steering wheel and sighs. “Okay, well—you should have told me before I—it’s fine. I’ll drive you home, then. Wait—shit, my groceries.” Why is everything so complicated? He drops his forehead against the backs of his hands, just briefly. Hyunjin is silent. Chan lifts his head. “Can you wait here for a minute while I go run them upstairs? I’ll be right back. Or—you could come with, if you want,” he offers, the kind of polite offer that he knows no one, especially not Hyunjin, would take him up on, but—

“Okay, sure,” Hyunjin says, and unbuckles himself so he can get out of the car.

Chan can’t keep up with him. (Because his legs are too long, ha. Chan’s grip on sanity is slipping.) But he tries to, getting out, locking the car, following. Thankfully, his groceries are untouched by the elevator, and Chan picks up two heavy bags in each hand, then punches the elevator code in with his thumb. “This won’t take long,” he tells Hyunjin, feeling almost crushingly awkward again, so stupid, the butt of Hyunjin’s joke. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Hyunjin says, now frustratingly neutral in place of anger.

So Chan, hoping to understand, looks over to him. He’s looking up, around, at the garage and the building. He’s so very tall. Looking at him feels like an optical illusion: tilt your head to the left, and it’s Hyunjin. To the right, and Hyunjin is gone, Chan can’t even see him in there if he squints. He grew into his lips, and the long hair suits him so wonderfully, so awfully. Is this really the same Hyunjin? Would Chan have even recognised him, if he hadn’t known who he was looking for? Or would he have just seen him, and wanted—wanted—

“What?” Hyunjin says sharply.

“What,” Chan says, startled, blinking. The elevator has arrived, and the doors are already about to close, but Chan has evidently just been gazing—or staring—at Hyunjin wordlessly for a while, and he sticks a leg out to stop the doors from shutting and hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels. Playing it cool is something he has never known how to do, but some situations he simply can’t explain his way out of, so he’ll have to stick with this in-between.

He waits for Hyunjin to follow him into the elevator, then presses the button for his floor, and then they’re both just looking at anything but each other as the elevator begins to move. Chan shifts his grip on the grocery bags, but they’re not too heavy; out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hyunjin noticing how much Chan is carrying, but Hyunjin doesn’t offer to help, because of course he doesn’t. With arms that skinny, Chan can’t help but note, he wouldn’t be much help, anyway.

But that thought feels unkind, and he doesn’t want to be unkind to Hyunjin, not ever again. “So where are you working?” he asks, affecting a brightness he doesn’t totally feel, and looks up at him. “What are you in?”

“What am I… in,” Hyunjin repeats, seemingly confounded.

Chan nods. “Yeah, like—do you still do musicals? Have you made the pivot to video?” He only remembers Hyunjin’s production of Grease in the vaguest terms. And he didn’t see the other musical he was in; the excitement of the burgeoning maybe-relationship with Alex has subsumed all those memories. But he remembers what a big part of Hyunjin’s life it was, how protective and possessive he was over it. In the few times he’s imagined what Hyunjin must have been up to all these years, he’s always assumed he kept up with theatre. What else would he be doing?

The elevator doors slide open and Hyunjin is so befuddled that he doesn’t even move at first, only belatedly following once Chan exits. “I work at Prada,” he clarifies, stiff and a little cold. “I’m a concierge. If you’re asking about theatre, I haven’t—I’m not in anything right now.”

Chan heard him catch himself: maybe he’d been about to say I haven’t done that in a while, or something like it. For some reason, the fact that Hyunjin isn’t doing theatre anymore makes Chan very sad. But that would be inappropriate to say, right? He has no idea how Hyunjin feels about it. “Prada, though, that’s cool,” he says, switching his right-hand bags to his left so he can get his keys. “Can’t believe I’ve never seen you, then. I’m in there all the time.”

Hyunjin looks at him very quickly, his dark and glossy eyes so judgmental and surprised, and Chan’s face heats up again.

“That was a joke,” he explains.

“You’re still not funny,” Hyunjin says, sounding for a moment so much like his sulky teenage self that Chan can’t help but crack a smile as he unlocks his apartment door.

“This’ll be quick,” Chan tells him, going in and directly through to the kitchen to start refrigerating perishables. “Um—do you want water or soda or anything? Are you hungry?”

“I’m fine,” Hyunjin says. He’s balancing delicately on Chan’s doormat so he can take his waterlogged shoes off; only now does Chan see that they’re expensive loafers, they must be part of his work uniform. He can also see Hyunjin looking around at his place, and Chan wonders how it compares to Hyunjin’s—does he think it’s small and pathetic? Big and impressive? It’s so weird to have him here. He looks edited in, somehow, cut and pasted. He doesn’t fit in, and Chan feels so shabby, even though Hyunjin’s the one who looks like a half-drowned cat. He’s slipping out of his thin jacket now, revealing long, pale arms that are as slender as the rest of him, but where as a kid he’d been lanky and scrawny, now it just makes sense—the pieces of his body click together. This time, Chan catches himself staring half a second before Hyunjin does, so he’s looking down into his Instacart bag when Hyunjin asks, “Can I use your phone?”

Chan pulls it out and hands it over without a thought after unlocking it with his face; Hyunjin takes it, then immediately starts to type, making his sock-footed way elegantly through Chan’s living room as he does so. Chan doesn’t watch him for very long—he has dairy-free ice cream, and it’s melting. In the process of unloading the new groceries, he discovers some old ones in the fridge that need to be re-organised, and although perhaps now isn’t the best time to do so, while he’s keeping Hyunjin waiting, he starts it anyway.

And Hyunjin isn’t complaining: he’s making a call. “Aria?” he says, over by Chan’s windows. “Hey, it’s me. Did you text me the rest of the story? Yeah, no, I’m not ignoring you. And I didn’t get home safe yet. Don’t freak out, okay? My phone got stolen. Like, I got mugged, actually. I’m fine, I’m fine! I’m calling from Chris’s phone. He picked me up.” A pause. More muted, more tense, Hyunjin continues, “He’s not, but yes, that Chris.”

Chan tries not to eavesdrop too obviously, and to smother a small smile—there’s another thing that hasn’t changed: Hyunjin’s insistence that they aren’t brothers, as though anyone could ever have mistaken them for such. Who’s Aria? Friend, girlfriend?

No, Chan thinks, looking over the kitchen counter to watch Hyunjin treading slowly along the runner by the entry to Chan’s little balcony, not Hyunjin’s girlfriend. He’s not sure why he’d never thought of it sooner, but now, now that they’re both adults, in some way established, he can see very clearly that Hyunjin is gay. Not because of his interest in theatre or his haute-couture job or his long vanity-project hair; the same way he would be able to see it if they’d run into each other at a club, for instance, or on the street, or at Chan’s gym. A recognition of kind. Of kin.

Chan wonders if Hyunjin knows that Chan’s bisexual. Maybe it would be meaningful to him to know it, that he’s not the only queer one in the family—but does he see them as family? He certainly doesn’t see Chan as any sort of role model. Honestly, Chan doubts he’d care at all. But if there’s a non-cringe, non-super-awkward way to bring it up, maybe Chan will. For some reason, it’s meaningful to him that Hyunjin knows it.

He finishes separating the vegetables from the fruits and colour-sorting his protein shakes. Hyunjin finishes his call and comes back to return Chan’s phone to him, but gets unexpectedly close, peering into Chan’s fridge. Chan, self-conscious about the level of organisation, doesn’t shut the door, but does regard Hyunjin warily. “Are you hungry after all?”

“That’s a lot of protein shakes,” Hyunjin says instead of answering like a normal person.

“Do you want one?” Chan attempts.

Hyunjin shakes his head and withdraws. “This is a nice place,” he says.

Chan feels illogically proud of himself for having elicited that response, although he can’t even be sure it’s genuine. “Thanks,” he answers. “I moved here after I made partner at the gym. Uh, I work at a gym,” he adds, reminding himself not to presuppose that Hyunjin knows anything about his life. If Chan hasn’t been asking his mum and Mr. Hwang about Hyunjin, why would Hyunjin be asking them about Chan? He knew that Hyunjin was out there, somewhere, as presumably their parents would tell him if he weren’t. But he’s never asked much more. Still, Hyunjin did know what city Chan lived in, so maybe he has been asking more questions. Chan watches for Hyunjin’s reaction, to see if Hyunjin will say I know or I don’t give a shit, but he does neither, just nods slightly as he moves a further few feet away.

“I guess,” Hyunjin says a little uncertainly, now halfway across the kitchen, retreating like a crab scuttling back into its cave, “I could eat.”

So people this beautiful can still be very awkward. It’s weirdly heartening. (Chan remembers Hyunjin before he was very beautiful, too; the awkwardness isn’t new at all.) “Okay. What do you want?” Chan says readily. “Are you vegan or anything?”

That stops Hyunjin in his sideways, backing-up tracks. “Do I look vegan?” he asks, coldly deadpan.

Chan can’t tell if it’s a joke or not. “Well, tell me if you are, otherwise I’ll make a chicken stir fry,” he says, and starts getting ingredients out from his pantry and fridge.

Hyunjin deposits himself onto one of Chan’s bar stools. He spins, just a little. “Do you cook a lot?” he says, and before Chan can answer, he himself answers a question Chan hadn't asked: “I don’t. But my kitchen’s not this big.”

“You can still cook in a small kitchen,” Chan points out mildly. He portions rice for the cooker, reminding himself he’s making this for two, and turns the cooker on. “Yeah, I mostly cook for myself. Gotta get my macros in.”

“You don’t need a recipe?”

Chan, now cutting the chicken into bite-size bits, glances up and over at Hyunjin. “Not really,” he replies. His bemusement has returned. Does Hyunjin really care about what and how Chan eats? “I’m no chef or anything. I just make simple stuff that I’ll want to eat.”

Hyunjin is watching Chan, with that same hostile edge he always used to have when he was younger. Unblinking, intense. It was never too threatening or intimidating before, and Chan isn’t exactly intimidated now—that’s not the first word that comes to mind—but it does make him have to look away again, as Hyunjin says, “Well, I just get delivery.”

So unsurprising. “Watch me make this,” Chan suggests, cursory at first, but then unexpectedly proud of himself for the suggestion. “Then you’ll know a recipe, and you can make it for yourself whenever you want. It’s good, you’ll see. And easy.”

“What if I forget the steps?” Hyunjin asks, and on anyone else, Chan might call that tone, that expression, manipulative faux-naïveté, but on Hyunjin—he has no idea what to think of it. He doesn’t want to judge Hyunjin. He doesn’t even know him. Looking at him now, his face so compellingly alien, Chan is stricken by just how little they know—knew—had known each other. Doesn’t everyone, including and perhaps especially Hyunjin, deserve a second chance, let alone when he’d barely even been given a first?

So Chan smiles, and says, “Then call me. You already know my number, after all.”

Hyunjin’s alien face twitches hard enough that Chan can see it out of his peripherals. A smile in return? Pain? Annoyance? “And you’d pick up.”

“Of course,” Chan says, a splash of oil into the pan, setting the heat on medium-high.

“Even though we don’t talk.”

Neither of those had sounded like real questions. Again, Hyunjin is confrontational. Like he’s just made a demand, and the subsequent negotiation isn’t going as hoped. Chan can’t predict him, clearly. It also doesn’t totally seem like they’re still talking about the chicken recipe anymore, so Chan feels secure enough to carefully and ambiguously say, “I picked up tonight, didn’t I?”

“An unidentified number,” Hyunjin muses. “And then an unreasonable request. I did think you’d never grow out of that.”

Chan had been about to take issue with unreasonable request, but now he frowns for an entirely different reason. “Out of what?”

“Being so trusting,” Hyunjin says.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Chan says, tossing the chicken chunks into the pan, and he thinks, but does not say, besides, you’re the one that gave some stranger on the street your umbrella.

Hyunjin huffs. “It makes you easy to take advantage of.”

“I don’t see it that way.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.”

“Are you taking advantage of me?” Chan asks, eyebrows raised. Isn’t that the implication? “Hardly. I’m just cooking for you. I’d be cooking for myself if you weren’t here, too.”

Hyunjin doesn’t say anything. He’s watching Chan as he slices up green onions. As Chan goes into the fridge to pull out an avocado from where he’s been keeping it in a bowl of water. When he does speak again, it’s only to ask about what Chan is doing in the kitchen: not much of a tutorial if you’re only doing, not describing. Chan answers, and wonders why Hyunjin cares. It’s not like he’s actually going to cook this for himself later. He was never polite, as a child. Never a small-talker. Which is interesting, considering his background and his face; wouldn’t he be trained, very used to well-meaning strangers trying to make shallow connections with him? (Not that Chan is a stranger, not quite.) Or maybe that’s why—his beauty is a burden, and everyone around him an annoyance. So why this sudden subtle friendliness? It clicks for Chan belatedly, just like most things, most social interactions. When Hyunjin asks about the brand of soy sauce Chan uses. Chan has never been much of an empath, to put it mildly, and Hyunjin is always inscrutable; still, Chan can see that somehow, for some reason, Hyunjin is glad to be here. He doesn’t want to leave. He’s not wishing Chan would hurry it up so he can get out of there and go home. He might even be enjoying this.

Brotherly bonding, years-belated? That guilty feeling from earlier returns, and is amplified by the fact that Chan is enjoying it, too. If Hyunjin is actually reaching out to him, actually wants to mend what was never really there in the first place, then Chan is not going to fumble it due to the awful burgeoning sense of interest he feels. Interest that isn’t particularly familial, let alone brotherly. This is the sort of thing people go to confession for, isn’t it? He won’t act on it—of course he won’t. But now, as he stirs honey and red pepper flakes into the chicken frying in his pan, and as Hyunjin leans forward across the kitchen counter and a glorious strand of his inky hair spills down over his shoulder, Chan can no longer deny that the interest is there.

Superficial? Maybe. But at the core of it, there’s a desire for a connection—to know more about him. Where he’s been, where he wants to go, if he really does hate Chan, and if so, why. Chan thinks he might be able to wrestle that interest into something less befitting of a take-this-to-your-grave kind of secret. Valiantly, he’ll try, and he starts by offering Hyunjin a piece of chicken (only after thoroughly blowing on it to cool it), and then asking what kinds of things he likes to eat normally, promising to send him more recipes, asking his mum for some as well. He stops himself, though, before he can offer to cook with him sometime; that would be too far. They don’t know each other, he reminds his own eager mind. They never properly did. He’ll have to let Hyunjin guide these interactions—or else things could get really weird really fast.

Fortunately, with each passing minute, Hyunjin seems to be remembering how this works: asking Chan vaguely invasive or overly blunt questions, and barreling forward regardless of the answer. “How’s Bruce?” is what he hits Chan with this time, and it’s so unexpected that Chan’s nervous smile has him almost slicing his own finger off as he chops up some scallions. Right—Hyunjin knows Chan’s family, of course he knows about Chan’s father. He’s not actually some beautiful stranger Chan just picked up at a late-night diner, as much as Chan keeps forgetting about that little detail.

“He’s good!” Chan answers, moving the knife safely away from his scallion-holding hand. “He got remarried, I dunno if you knew that. They moved to Melbourne.”

“Have you visited?”

“Not for a while. It’s a long flight, and it’s hard for me to take that much time off work. But they might come out here this summer, maybe, when it’s winter for them.”

Hyunjin makes an ambiguous humming noise. “I almost did my semester abroad in Australia.”

“Oh, really?” Chan’s not sure if Hyunjin would like it there. Melbourne is more posh than Sydney, that’s for sure, but still, he can’t imagine Hyunjin walking through either city. On the other side of the world, upside down. Chan’s homeland, in a way. He wonders why Hyunjin ended up going somewhere else. “Did you like Portugal, though?”

Another of Hyunjin’s sharp-edged intentional silences. Chan looks up at this one, now that the scallions are safely sliced. Hyunjin is frowning, but it’s a blank sort of frown, guarded. “Do you want me to apologise for not coming to your graduation?” Hyunjin asks, his tone flat.

Chan blinks at him. “What? No. That’s…” He’d honestly forgotten until just now that that was happening at the same time; it’s like the two narrative lines of their lives were running totally separately in his mind. Had it hurt his feelings at the time? He can’t even remember. He hopes he hasn’t made Hyunjin feel bad, but unfortunately, there’s no way to say I think I didn’t really care what you were doing without sounding like a total prick. “I was just asking,” he finally says. “I’ve never been to Portugal.”

Hyunjin visibly relaxes. “I loved it,” he says, which is unsurprising, and then begins to tell Chan about the wonders of Portugal while Chan finishes putting their meal together, and while Hyunjin doesn’t lift an elegant finger to help him.

If they don’t say anything else for the rest of the night, this has already more than surpassed the longest conversation they’d ever had previously. Chan can’t even think of what would have been. And Hyunjin is being—if not genial, at least not hostile. It’s new. It’s nice. Chan is smiling along to a tale of Hyunjin’s about getting drunk and lost in Lisbon, and he goes over to set the table for them, snagging a nonalcoholic beer for himself along the way. Although Hyunjin is still talking, he’s also still watching Chan very closely; Chan sees his eyes dart over every detail—the bowls Chan chose for their food, the label of the beer, the way he sets up their chopsticks. Normally Chan wouldn’t notice it if someone was watching him, but Hyunjin is very intent and obvious about it, practically turns his whole body to watch Chan go. Chan tries to remember if Hyunjin ever used to do anything like that before, and comes up blank.

“I hope it’s edible,” Chan says, sitting, and Hyunjin is across from him, and he looks at once like he fits right in and like the sorest thumb.

“Smells good,” Hyunjin says. He takes a bite before Chan can remember to look away from his mouth. Chan waits, oddly nervous even though this is, like—just his—not his baby brother, but just someone he’s never cared about impressing before this very moment. When Hyunjin rewards him with a small, approving nod, it sinks unexpectedly deep, and Chan is relieved and proud and pleased and happy and—guilty, again. He could have cooked for Hyunjin before. When their families lived together, Chan was learning how to cook. Can he make up for that much lost time, now? And does it really have to be that serious? He’s just glad Hyunjin likes it; he seems like the picky type.

Hyunjin must have been starving, because he eats quietly and quickly, and everything. The adrenaline must have gotten to him, too. Oh, fuck, the adrenaline—this isn’t just a normal night, Chan abruptly remembers. Hyunjin just went through something traumatic, and here Chan is, the worst person in the world, objectifying him. Blushing with shame, he keeps his head down, and neither of them talks much while they eat.

As the bowls empty, Chan sees a threshold beginning to formulate. How will Hyunjin act once he’s done with his meal? Get up right away, start making bored faces, look pointedly at the clock? Flat-out tell Chan that time’s up, he wants to be taken home, now? But when Hyunjin finishes, all he does is lean back slightly in his chair, chin tilting up as he looks across at Chan. “Is that good?”

“Is what good?” Chan asks, and Hyunjin points with his eyes to the nonalcoholic beer, the condensation from which is forming a faint damp ring on Chan’s Pottery Barn placemat. “Oh. I mean, yeah, I like it.”

“I’ve never tried it,” Hyunjin says. A faint echo of the past—taking Hyunjin to an R-rated movie. This time, though, there’s no sneaky mischief on his face, only a noble rumination, but Chan’s reaction is embarrassingly similar to what it had been back then, he thinks—feeling like he’ll get in trouble.

“You want one?” he offers to counteract that feeling, already getting out of his chair. They’re both adults now, and it’s nonalcoholic, anyway.

Hyunjin shakes his head, so Chan stills. “What if I don’t like it? Then you’d just waste a whole bottle.”

Fair enough, although Chan wouldn’t really hold it against him. He’d be surprised if Hyunjin liked beer. He sits again and tips the bottle in Hyunjin’s direction. “Try it, then. If you don’t like it, I have… what do I have. A lot more where that came from, mostly. And hard cider.” Again remembering Hyunjin’s trauma, he mentally searches his freezer and the back of his pantry, and sympathetically adds, “And vodka, if you want something stronger.”

Hyunjin is already reaching across the table, pale fingers curling around green glass. “Why do you have alcohol in your house if you don’t drink?”

“I do drink,” Chan says, eyebrows raising. “Just shouldn’t, tonight.”

“But you’re not working tomorrow,” Hyunjin says, and lifts the bottle to take a mouthful. Like with the food, Chan holds his breath for Hyunjin’s reaction, although in this case, that’s even more idiotic—Chan had nothing to do with the production of this beverage. Unlike with the food, Hyunjin visibly hates this, his pretty face scrunching up into something so childish, so familiar, that it’s honestly startling at this point, just when Chan was getting used to how he looks now. It’s all Chan can do not to laugh as Hyunjin shakes his head quickly and slides the bottle back over to him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, throat working as he swallows. “All the more for you.”

“Thanks,” Chan says, working to conceal his smile, and takes the bottle back, thumb pressing to the cold seeping through the label. It would be weird to say he’s proud of Hyunjin for trying, right? It would be. He doesn’t say it. “And no, I’m not working tomorrow, but I still have to drive you home.”

Hyunjin’s sour expression doesn’t sweeten. “Hard cider,” he says.

Although Chan isn’t totally sure whether he meant it as a question—as in, why do you have hard cider?—or as a request, he still gets up again and heads into the kitchen. The feeling of taking Hyunjin to see Kingsman, that’s what it was, the movie he now sees as a covert gay classic, returns. There’s two-thirds of a six-pack left at the back of his fridge, and he pulls out a can for Hyunjin, brings it to him, reflexively pops the top without thinking. Hyunjin looks surprised when Chan sets the can in front of him, as though he hadn’t asked for it—and maybe he hadn’t? But he’s sipping before Chan’s overthinking can get worse. This time, his beautiful face stays smooth, unscrunched by disgust. His lips are a little wet when he brings the can down, and Chan takes a sip of his own beer. In comparison to whatever Hyunjin must be tasting now, it’s bitter.

“You live alone,” Hyunjin says.

Again with the statement-questions. He has a very direct stare, such a confrontational shine in his eyes. The optical illusion from the parking garage is back: now, with Hyunjin across from him, Chan can barely see the boy he knew—didn’t know—under there. But he can see him. He is in there, somewhere. “I do,” Chan answers, a little belatedly, and his cheeks are warm from the exertion of keeping his thoughts from getting away from him. He almost says it’s his second time living alone, now, that this is the second place he’s gotten on his own, but he doesn’t know what details Hyunjin wants, which ones he cares about. Probably none. Safer to turn the conversation back to him. “You have roommates?”

“No,” Hyunjin says, as vehemently as he’d denied being vegan. The oddest things offend him. “Are you coming to Thanksgiving this year?”

What is this, Twenty Questions? The rapid-fire round? So much for redirecting the focus onto Hyunjin. “Uh, that’s not for a few months, but I guess I was planning on it,” Chan says. “Are—”

“Bringing your girlfriend?”

“My… who?” Chan says. He might have assumed Hyunjin was joking, but Hyunjin doesn’t seem in a gaming mood, and even if he were joking, it’s not like Chan would be able to pick up on it. Not with him. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“I thought you brought one to Thanksgiving a couple years ago. When I was in Cabo with my aunt.”

“Oh,” Chan says. “Oh.” That opportunity he’d been thinking about earlier—to make sure Hyunjin knows Chan’s on his team, as it were—it’s come sooner than he’d expected. Fuck it, then. Confirmation of kind—let’s go. “Yeah. I didn’t actually bring him. And anyway, we’re not together anymore. He, um. He had to move, and I just couldn’t do the long-distance thing, you know? I need to see someone every day to, y’know, remember they still like me.”

Too much information. Classic, classic TMI. Why had Chan kept talking? Why did his brain decide to spit those particular details out? He sounds pathetic, can’t even play it off as a joke, it’s too real. Across the table, Hyunjin has gone impossibly stonier, from porcelain to marble. Chan’s cheeks, in contrast, are hotter. There’s a difference between a casual no-big-deal come-out and whatever the hell that was. Already Chan can see the disdainful curl of Hyunjin’s lip, the cold toss of his hair, the cutting laugh building in his long throat. There’s no way Chan read Hyunjin wrong—he didn’t know him when he saw him, but in a way, he did. Why isn’t Hyunjin saying anything? Should Chan apologise? Yes, definitely. But for what?

“I’m the same way,” Hyunjin says quietly.

What, needing to see someone every day to remember they still like him? Chan, internally, goggles a little at the thought. Not only that Hyunjin is still insecure, like he was when he was a kid, but also that—Hyunjin dates? Of course Hyunjin dates. Whom does he date? Is he dating right now? Chan is being as silent as Hyunjin had been just now, although his thoughts are almost certainly running down a different track.

“But,” Hyunjin goes on, still quiet, “I don’t really date that much.”

God, can he read minds? Chan fucking hopes not. He can’t even blame the mortified glow of his face on any alcohol. It’s all just his own fault again. “Oh?” is the most he can muster.

Hyunjin shakes his head. He’s looking very intently at the can of cider. “There’s still,” he says, sounding far away, “someone I’m kind of hung up on.”

“Oh,” Chan says for the millionth time, exponentially dumber with each iteration. A nervous little laugh, and he puts on his best big-bro face, curling his arm to flex his delt and tricep. “You want me to beat him up for you?”

Hyunjin glances up at Chan and looks like he wants to die; Chan knows the expression is mirrored on his own face, and he un-flexes quickly. They both feebly grimace at each other until finally Hyunjin says, “Um, no,” sounding like the sullen teenager Chan had all but forgotten him as.

Point taken. Chan is still cringing. To cut the awkwardness, he half-blurts, “I’ll go if you go. How’s that?”

“What,” Hyunjin says, staring.

Instead of cutting the awkwardness, Chan seems only to have doubled it. “Thanksgiving,” he clarifies, and gets up to clear the table.

Now it’s Hyunjin’s turn to say, “Oh,” and of course, he doesn’t move to help Chan with the bowls. He’s catatonic while upright, staring blankly at the grain of the table, and whatever burgeoning friendship or brotherhood was just building between them, Chan fervently hopes he hasn’t ruined it with his own big, clumsy mouth. He busies himself with rinsing out their dishes and depositing them in the dishwasher, and he grabs some plain yoghurt and frozen berries for dessert without thinking; he only notices he hasn’t asked Hyunjin if he’d like anything when he’s already sitting back down and doling both components out into the same bowl, only one, just for himself. His cheeks, again, heat with embarrassment; this situation is so discomfiting that it’s making him revert to an earlier version of his own personality, reflexively selfish.

“You can have as much as you want,” Chan says lamely, setting the finished bowl in the middle of their two placemats.

“Thank you,” Hyunjin says, his dark eyes tracking the movements of Chan’s hands.

“I lead a pretty bowl-based lifestyle,” Chan explains needlessly and idiotically, embarrassed of everything in his life, his home, his job, his food, in front of—who? Hyunjin? The kid who locked himself in a room for a week when he got a smedium zit in the middle of his forehead, the kid who pulled an all-nighter to study for his chemistry final and still barely scraped a B-, the kid who was too scared to learn how to drive even a golf cart? Hyunjin saw Chan through some pretty mortifying years, too. Chan never cared about impressing him then. Is it really that different now that he’s independent and gorgeous? (Yes, unfortunately. It is.)

“Clearly,” Hyunjin says.

“That—I was joking.”

“I figured.”

Chan doesn’t know what to say to that. Is Hyunjin making fun of him? He just gets them a spoon each and returns. Hyunjin scoops himself a bite, choosing a frozen raspberry to go in it, and his lips pucker from the cold; Chan glances down and aside quickly so he doesn’t offend Hyunjin with his smile. He himself opts for a blackberry, and they finish off the rest in silence, alternating bites. Chan, pushing the near-empty bowl across the table, lets Hyunjin have the last piece of fruit: a strawberry, seeping pink into the yoghurt around it.

And then they just sit there, and no one’s said anything for a few minutes. Hyunjin’s earlier stream of questions seems to have dried up; Chan is still so mortified about, well, everything that he can’t even let his nervous energy propel words out of his throat. He’s a little paralyzed, even, staring at the empty bowl without making a single move to get up and clear the table for the second time.

It had seemed like they were clicking, for a moment, earlier. Keeping up with Hyunjin is still difficult, nigh impossible, but at least there had been five to ten hostility-free minutes, no tension, not so fraught. Not anymore, though. He’d thought Hyunjin wanted to stick around before; not anymore. He’s not looking at Hyunjin right now, but he’s sure that if he did, he’d see Hyunjin fidgeting and searching for a clock, any excuse to tell Chan to take him home already, or maybe even call him an Uber so they won’t have to spend even an extra second together.

The experiment has failed. Not time nor distance could make them get along. They’re simply not meant to be family—which is fine. Their parents’ relationship was never about them. They were strangers then, and they’re strangers now. The silence has dragged on for too long. Chan could hear a pin drop, Hyunjin’s heart beating. He risks an upward glance, but before he can even register the expression on Hyunjin’s face, Hyunjin’s perma-pouted lips open, and he says—

“I thought you wouldn’t want to hear from me.”

Always full of surprises, this one. Hyunjin’s train of thought is a TGV, and Chan is trying his best to keep up on a broken-down handcar. “Pardon?” he says feebly.

Hyunjin makes him wait for it; he takes a long sip of his cider while Chan squirms. “That’s why I didn’t contact you, or even let you know I was moving here,” he says, once he’s swallowed.

“Because you thought I wouldn’t want to hear from you,” Chan clarifies, flummoxed. Hyunjin nods, leaned back in his chair and slouching. Chan frowns, and copies him, sipping his beer before responding. “What made you think that, though?”

“Are you kidding?” Hyunjin says. Flat. Two steps down from hostile. “Why would you want to hear from me?”

He makes a good point. They had nearly a year of cohabitation to become close, and it never happened, so why would it be any different after years of separation? Sure, Hyunjin was a bit of a nightmare as a kid, but there’s a lot that makes Chan blush with shame when he remembers it, too. Hyunjin made a point of refusing to share his phone charger, even if Chan had less than 10% battery left, but Chan used the last of Hyunjin’s nice shampoo and didn’t have the decency to tell him it had run out. Hyunjin skipped Chan’s college graduation, but Chan skipped Hyunjin’s musical first. Hyunjin asked rude, invasive questions about Chan’s life, but Chan never showed any interest in him at all. They were both kids, is the point. And although they’re not anymore, nowhere near it, Chan can’t blame Hyunjin for judging him by his past. Hadn’t Chan done the same to him? “We can try again,” he says, his voice softer.

Hyunjin’s mouth twists. “Can we?” he says, acidic.

“I wasn’t there for you,” Chan braves on. Saying it, getting that off his chest to the one person who’s the most directly affected, feels oddly like a relief. “I can be here for you now.”

“I don’t need anyone to be here for me,” Hyunjin mutters.

He looks a little surprised, though, that Chan is taking the blame on himself, but how could Chan do anything else? Hyunjin was—is—younger. Chan’s supposed to be the responsible one, the mature one. He’s proud of the life he’s built for himself, of everything he’s accomplished over the last few years. But one thing in his past sticks like a splinter, aching when he presses on it, radiating a sickly pain; that thing is Hyunjin. There was so much unkindness when they were young, even though they were only in each other’s lives for a few months. It doesn’t matter who struck first—both ended up scarred. And those scars can start healing, now. Chan looks across at Hyunjin, so familiar but so new, and he’s more determined than ever to bridge this gap, to try again, to care for him. He can put everything else aside. Hyunjin deserves it.

“Well,” Chan says, “I’m here for you whether you think you need it or not. Seriously, can we commit to, like—coffee? Lunch? Once a week?”

Nothing from Hyunjin, not even a bat of his long lashes.

“I can shop at Prada,” Chan insists, smiling at the irony. “You can take some classes at my gym.” He’s getting ahead of himself, but he’s excited about these ideas, genuinely. He feels he owes it to some earlier versions of Hyunjin and himself to give this his all. But Hyunjin not only isn’t lighting up at these ideas, he’s closing off, slouching harder, lips pulling thin and displeased. “Or at least lunch,” Chan concedes, weakening. “Just—just keeping in touch. So we don’t fall out again.”

“I don’t know, Chris,” Hyunjin says. He looks so tired again, like in the car on the way back here from the diner, like in the car on the way back home from seeing Kingsman: a time when it had been so good, and then, abruptly, for no discernible reason, Hyunjin slammed the barely-open door and left Chan in the dark.

Does that mean Chan should just give up? That’s not something he likes doing, ever. “But I want to,” he says. Looks at Hyunjin as openly, as honestly, as he can—even if that means an edge of that desire slivers through. “Really, I do.”

Hyunjin has been very difficult to read this whole time—their entire lives—but his reaction to that is explicit: for whatever incomprehensible reason, he’s pissed. “Well, it’s not about getting what you want, is it,” he says, and crosses his arms.

Message heard loud and clear: Hyunjin is not interested in friendship, family, or anything else. Chan won’t give up, but he’ll at least back off, for now. Momentarily rendered speechless, as though slapped, he stares into their empty bowl for a moment, then accepts it, and nods. “It’s getting late,” he says. “I should take you home.”

Hyunjin’s up in a second, like he was waiting for that. Maybe he was. He brings the can of cider with him, though, and he’s still holding onto it when Chan meets him in the front hall after leaving their bowl in the sink to soak.

“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t like it,” Chan says.

“I know,” Hyunjin responds, almost a snap.

Shit, whatever Chan did, it really ticked him off. “Okay,” he shrugs.

Hyunjin mutters, “I like it,” defensive as though Chan had tried to snatch the can from his hands.

“Okay,” Chan says again, even more mildly, staying well away from him. Right now, all Chan can really do is appease Hyunjin and stay as neutral as possible. One wrong move, and he fears there’ll not even be anything to give up on, going forward.

Hyunjin keeps clutching the can as they leave the apartment and head back to the elevators. He has it cradled against his chest, practically, as they get back into the car. Chan has kept quiet, and Hyunjin is silent as stone, so when Chan starts the engine and pulls out his phone to get the GPS running, each noise reverberates almost painfully loudly. Without Chan’s having to ask, Hyunjin, still sounding stiff and nasal, provides an address that’s not far from Chan at all: even closer than the diner had been. At least this sure-to-be-painful drive won’t take too long. And it’s a shame, when the night had started off with so much potential. Hyunjin calling Chan in his time of need, trusting him to help. Everything since then has been so up and down that it’s making Chan dizzy and upset. Why does it have to be like this? Whose fault is it? Is “fault” even the right lens through which to examine whatever is going wrong here, has been going wrong since Chan’s mum and Hyunjin’s dad first fell in love? They don’t talk on the drive, and Chan has the radio off by default, so it’s just road noises and their silence. Chan wonders if he’ll see Hyunjin again, after this. Oddly, but inevitably, though Hyunjin has been mercurial and a little bit mean, Chan knows that he wants to. Part of it’s superficial; he likes being around beauty. But a greater part, a more significant part, wants to make amends. Wants to be there for Hyunjin like he wasn’t before. Wants to try it, just to try it, and see what happens.

Hyunjin’s apartment building suits him: it’s sleek and narrow. Not an area of town Chan is overly familiar with, because it’s a little above Chan’s paygrade, even now, but still, it’s not far. (He hates that he’s cataloguing that, even in his own mind. Not like anything’s going to come of it.) As they’re pulling up to the building and Chan begins to slow, searching for a place to come to a temporary halt to let Hyunjin out, something changes in Hyunjin’s demeanour. He goes from sullen in a languid way to upright, tense, alert. He’s looking around, but also shrinking, peering through the window even as he moves away from it. It’s very strange.

“You alright?” Chan asks, gently. His mind races, and for some reason settles on—does Hyunjin have a controlling boyfriend who won’t like seeing him in a car with another man? But Chan will just explain that no, it’s not like that, Hyunjin is just his—but the boyfriend will see Chan, the way he’s looking at Hyunjin, and will look right through him. And then they’ll both be in trouble. Fuck. “Hyunjin?”

“It’s just that he took my wallet,” Hyunjin says, voice small. “My ID has my address on it.”

Chan’s heart sinks. How can he keep being so fucking selfish and disgusting—objectifying Hyunjin again, imagining some perverted knight-in-shining-armour scenario, when Hyunjin is literally still traumatised from his near-death experience earlier? Hyunjin deserves so much better. “I’ll walk you in,” he promises. “Can I park here?”

Hyunjin turns those startled doe eyes on Chan. “Sure, but—Chris, you don’t have to, it’s okay.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Chan says, shaking his head, filling into a parking spot on the street, and all Hyunjin does next to him is exhale a quiet, shaky sigh.

It’s very late at night by now—well past Chan’s typical bedtime. But he’s never been more alert. As Chan turns the car off, Hyunjin unbuckles his seatbelt, and Chan stills him with a hand across the car, looking around the dimly-lit area where he’d just parked. “Chris,” Hyunjin says, neither reproachful nor mocking, just quiet.

“Just—give it a second,” Chan murmurs. “What’d he look like?”

“I didn’t really have time to catalogue his whole appearance while he had me at knifepoint,” Hyunjin snips, but subdues himself right away: “But he was… I don’t know. Shorter than me, wearing a windbreaker. Sneakers.”

That’s not much of a description. Still, there’s no one matching it on the street surrounding Hyunjin’s apartment. “Alright,” Chan says. He takes his hand back so Hyunjin can finish unbuckling himself. “Let’s go.”

Hyunjin keeps his head ducked a bit as they walk the short distance between Chan’s car and the door of the apartment. By unspoken agreement, Chan goes into the building with him, and under normal circumstances he might be impressed by the marble floors in the lobby and the cool, smooth recessed lighting, but he’s just got his eye on every shadow, where Hyunjin’s mugger might be lurking. Hyunjin is taller, his stride must be longer, but Chan is keeping pace with him until they make it into the elevator without incident. It’s heartening that the elevator, at least, is pretty much identical to the one in Chan’s building.

They both look up to watch the numbers click to six. “Thanks,” Hyunjin says, and when Chan, surprised, turns his head to see him, Hyunjin’s face is neutral, eyes fixed on the shifting floors.

“For what?” Chan asks, bemused.

“Tonight,” Hyunjin says, and it turns out there is a difference after all: his elevator is faster than Chan’s, so here they are, on six, and Hyunjin goes out and to the left, with nary a cautionary peek out the doors for muggers first, and all Chan can do is follow.

He’s still holding the can of cider. Is there really that much left? Chan would be a little endeared by that if he weren’t keeping a protective eye out as, together, they head down the hallway past nondescript but expensive-looking doors to the one at the very end. Of course Hyunjin has the corner unit. Just as Chan starts worrying about whether Hyunjin’s keys got stolen, too, he sees the keypads above the handle on each door. Of course.

When they reach the last door before the corner, Hyunjin finally slows, and it’s as if he remembers Chan is there, and why Chan is there; he turns back, and for a second, he looks lost, thumb halting over the three on the keypad. “I’m good from here,” he says.

“Are you?” Chan says. He looks back, too, over his shoulder. They’re the only ones in the hall. It must be 1 AM by now. And to Hyunjin again, who, when Chan had turned away, had keyed in his code and is now holding the door open, neither in nor out. “Do you feel safe?”

“I’m fine,” Hyunjin says.

He looks trapped, though, like he wants out. Or in, as it were. Chan’s chest clenches with worry. “Will you text or call me if anything feels wrong, though?” he presses, gently. “Ah, fuck—no phone. Um. I don’t know, just—”

“Chris, seriously, I’m fine,” Hyunjin insists. “He’s not here, and I’m fine. You can just go.”

He’s turned, and now he’s inching his way back into his apartment, his hand snaking in to flick on the front room light and his body blocking most of the view of what lies beyond. But something flares up in Chan. Either preemptively doing reconnaissance for his mum, who will surely ask about all the details if or when he tells her about this little misadventure, or just satisfying his own nosiness. When they were younger, Hyunjin had always been protective of the sanctity of his room in a way that seemed to go above and beyond that of a usual teenager. As a result, Chan barely ever saw it, whereas Hyunjin was always barging into his room to ask if Chan would order a pizza for them on a Saturday morning. How is he living now? His room before was always tidy and decorated in dark tones, practically pristine compared to Chan’s creative chaos. But was that just his dad keeping him in line—is he messy, now that he’s flown the nest? Chan’s curious.

So he can’t help himself. Hyunjin hasn’t blocked everything. Chan tilts his head, cranes his neck just a bit, and takes a peek.

“Chris—”

“Hang on,” Chan says, eyes narrowing like he’s trying to zoom and enhance what he’s seeing. “Is that—”

“I can explain,” Hyunjin says, all in a rush.

So it is what it looks like, then: the dorkiest thing Chan’s ever done in his entire career (so far), stuck up on proud display on Hyunjin’s enormous chrome refrigerator. It had taken a few months of cajoling from the other partners and a targeted voting campaign by the gym’s clients before Chan would even consider participating. But they wore him down in the end, and the final result wasn’t as bad as he’d feared; in the entire TIMBERWOLF FITNESS PRESENTS: Wolf Gang Hunks 2022 Pinup Calendar, he only appears once, as the topless, smouldering coverhunk for the month of October. Which is the page Hyunjin has it hung open to. On his fridge. In July.

Chan’s jaw has dropped a little, and Hyunjin is talking, rambling: “My friends are so—annoying, like, I mentioned you one time or something and then they started snooping, and actually, one of them’s a member? At your gym? So they got this for me as a gag gift because they thought it was super funny, but I never thought it was funny, I just—haven’t gotten around to taking it down. No, you know what, I did take it down one time, and then the next time they came over, they put it right back up. So annoying. And I told them to leave you alone, but—”
陈的下巴都有点掉下来了，玄真在说话，滔滔不绝："我的朋友们太讨厌了，比如，有一次我提到了你什么的，然后他们就开始打探，实际上，他们中有一个是你的会员？在你的健身房？所以他们就买了这个送给我作为礼物 因为他们觉得这很有趣 但我从来没觉得这有趣 我只是还没来得及把它取下来不，你知道吗，有一次我把它拿下来了 下次他们来的时候，又把它放回去了真讨厌我叫他们别烦你，但..."

Chan isn’t really listening. There are other things on Hyunjin’s fridge; now that Hyunjin, in his panic, has stepped back into his apartment, the view of the kitchen (not at all tiny like Hyunjin had complained) is much clearer. There’s a postcard of the Sydney Opera House, and a shopping list, and a magnet version of some Monet water lilies, and Chan’s calendar is right in the middle of it. He makes eye contact with himself, and when he looks up at Hyunjin again, it just clicks, and for once he just knows: Hyunjin is lying. And Chan knows exactly why.
陈没有认真听。贤真的冰箱上还有其他东西；现在，贤真在慌乱中回到了自己的公寓，厨房的景象（一点也不像贤真抱怨的那样狭小）清晰多了。冰箱里有一张悉尼歌剧院的明信片，一张购物清单，还有莫奈睡莲的磁铁版，而陈的日历就在中间。他和自己对视了一下，当他再次抬头看向玄真时，他突然明白了：玄真在撒谎。陈也很清楚为什么。

“Hyunjin,” he interrupts, starting to smile. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, it’s okay. I get it.”
"玄真，"他打断了我，开始微笑。"没事的。别担心，没事的。我知道了。"

Hyunjin’s mouth moves for a few more syllables, voiceless. He closes it, frowns, and tilts his head slightly. His cheeks are an uneven red. “You… do?”
玄真嘴巴动了动，又发出几个音节，没有声音。他闭上了嘴，皱起眉头，微微歪着头。他的脸颊红得不均匀。"你......会吗？"

“Yes,” Chan says, smiling wider. “Hyunjin, seriously, you should have just said. I know, I know why you didn’t reach out, but—it couldn’t have hurt to just try!”
"是的，"陈说，笑得更灿烂了。"玄真，说真的，你应该直接说出来。我知道，我知道你为什么不伸出援手，但试一试也无妨！"

“Try what?” Hyunjin says, and crosses his arms, hugging himself.
"试什么？"玄真说着，双手交叉，抱住了自己。

Now that Chan gets it, he feels comfortable enough to cross over into Hyunjin’s apartment, rapturous happiness and relief cutting through his earlier guilt and worry. Realisations are tumbling like dominoes; he can barely keep up with them all as they topple. “You’re just shy,” he concludes, awed, endeared, then works backwards to explain, feeling a bit like a conspiracy theorist: “You—you’re probably the one that’s the member at my gym. That’s how you knew I was off tomorrow! Because I didn’t tell you that, did I? You know that because you come in on days that I’m not there, right? And—and! You called your friend from my phone, but you said you don’t know anyone else’s number. You called me specifically because—because you just wanted to see me! Because you do want me in your life!”
现在，Chan 明白了，他觉得可以放心地走进 Hyunjin 的公寓，狂喜和欣慰冲破了他之前的内疚和担忧。各种认识像多米诺骨牌一样翻滚着，他几乎跟不上它们倒下的速度。"你只是害羞，"他得出结论，惊叹不已，钦佩不已，然后努力反向解释，感觉自己有点像阴谋论者："你可能是我健身房的会员。所以你才知道我明天休息！因为我没有告诉你，不是吗？你知道是因为你在我不在的日子来健身，对吧？还有你用我的手机给你朋友打电话 但你说你不知道别人的号码你特意打电话给我 因为你想见我因为你真的希望我出现在你的生活中！"

In his excitement, he’s gotten a bit loud, so he pushes the door closed behind him. It’s late, after all, he doesn’t want to wake Hyunjin’s neighbours with these fraternal epiphanies. Hyunjin, for his part, has gone from unevenly red to pale, his arms tighter than ever around his own body, and he’s not saying a fucking word.
由于激动，他的声音有点大，于是他推开了身后的门。毕竟天色已晚，他不想因为这些兄弟间的顿悟吵醒贤真的邻居。玄真则脸色苍白，双臂紧紧地抱着自己的身体，一句话也不说。

So Chan charges forth. “This whole time, I thought you hated me, but you’ve just been too shy to reach out and admit that you do want us to be close. But I want that, too, Hyunjin! I was always open to being your brother. I know I wasn’t there for you, like I said, and I’m sorry for that, I am. We can fix that now. You don’t have to sneak around and pretend like you don’t care about me. I care about you, too. I’ve been worrying about you this entire time, even when I didn’t know it. I’m so glad you called me, Hyunjin. Now we can start over. We can—”
于是，陈冲了出来。"一直以来，我都以为你恨我，但你只是太害羞了，不敢主动承认你确实想让我们亲近。但我也想，玄真！我一直都愿意做你的哥哥我知道我没有陪在你身边，就像我说的那样 我很抱歉，真的很抱歉我们现在可以弥补了你不必偷偷摸摸，假装不关心我我也在乎你我一直都在担心你 甚至在我不知道的时候我很高兴你打电话给我，玄真现在我们可以重新开始了我们可以

“No.” "不"

Chan chokes on a half-word and coughs. Hyunjin is glaring down at him, sharp elbows jutting out of his sides like wings. (Chan belatedly realises that Hyunjin’s left his jacket at Chan’s place. An excuse to see him again, maybe?) “No?” Chan tries, a bit embarrassed now that the rug has been yanked out from under him. “What part?”
陈哽咽着说了半句话，然后咳嗽起来。玄真瞪着他，锋利的手肘像翅膀一样从两侧伸出。(陈姗姗来迟地意识到，玄真把外套落在了陈的住处。也许这是再见到他的借口？）"不是吗？"陈试探着说，现在他有点尴尬，因为地毯已经从他脚下被扯开了。"哪部分？"

“All of it,” Hyunjin says. His jaw works tightly and, in contrast with the sudden pallor of his cheeks, his eyes look even darker. It’s not quite anger—not quite hurt—it’s an expression Chan has never seen on anyone’s face before. “You’re wrong. That’s not what I want.”
"全部，"玄真说。他的下巴绷得很紧，与突然苍白的脸颊形成鲜明对比的是，他的眼睛看起来更黑了。这不是愤怒，也不是受伤，而是陈从未在任何人脸上看到过的表情。"你错了。这不是我想要的。"

Although his expression is unfamiliar, this reaction is a little easier to recognise; Hyunjin always gets very mean when he’s defensive. Chan remembers that. He can placate him down from this, though, he can talk him down. They’re on the same page. He just has to catch Hyunjin before Hyunjin runs away again. He can put his own selfish, inappropriate feelings aside for good, for Hyunjin. He can. He will. It’s the right thing to do. “Whatever you do want, then, let’s make it happen,” he tries, softer.

“No,” Hyunjin repeats, even more firmly than he’d snapped it before. “You have it all wrong. I’m not some—some Disney Channel family-friendly misunderstood antagonist, shoving the hero into a locker while secretly wishing I could sit with him at lunch. This isn’t a wholesome story about second chances and redemption. It’s nothing like that.”

Chan is getting lost. Hyunjin is slipping through his fingers. He wavers; could he really have been wrong? But what’s the explanation, then, for Hyunjin’s weird behaviour—treating Chan like he’s oil and Chan’s water while clearly keeping very close tabs on his life? “Then… what is it like?” he asks.

“Seriously?” Hyunjin says. Fuck, he’s fuming, Chan can see it now. “Are you serious, Chris?”

“I am,” Chan says, helpless, “I am, I want to try, I want to help, if you’d—”

“Just let me,” Hyunjin says, his eyes suddenly wild. “Just let me—”

He moves like a viper strike, and Chan flinches, thinking for a moment that Hyunjin is going to hit him. But there’s no impact other than the rapid pressure of Hyunjin’s bony arms wrapping around his shoulders. A hug, tight and a little frantic. Hyunjin is tall and trembling. The closest their bodies have ever been. And Chan doesn’t want Hyunjin to fall or to hate him, and he wants to prove that they can do this, and his arms fit so naturally around Hyunjin’s waist, his slender middle. He holds him, and Hyunjin trembles harder, so Chan holds him tighter until, after the strongest shudder yet, his trembling begins to subside.

Chan doesn’t understand. He fears he never will. Does he have to understand Hyunjin, though, or does he just have to accept him? This is nice. It’s so nice. Couldn’t they have been doing this the whole time? Hyunjin’s head is buried in Chan’s shoulder, their lungs are pressed together through their ribcages and shirts. When Hyunjin breathes for the first time in what feels like minutes, it almost sounds like he’s starting to cry again; his chest is occasionally wracked by something. He’s so narrow in Chan’s grip, like he’s made of paper, crumpling. Chan unfolds one of his palms to press it against Hyunjin’s back, to the narrowest point of his waist. He closes his eyes. Hyunjin makes another quiet sobbing noise, and Chan hurts—for Hyunjin, for himself, mostly for Hyunjin.

Chan can’t think of the last time anyone held him like this, if ever. Hyunjin’s grip is so unwavering, like Chan’s the only person Hyunjin’s ever wanted to hold. Serpentine, he has Chan encircled. Chan’s shoulder feels a little wet where Hyunjin’s face is pressed into it. Leftover terror from getting mugged? Distress over Chan incorrectly interpreting all his past and present actions? Chan can’t fathom him. All he can do right now is hold him, breathe in, breathe out.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, nonsensical but sincere. So quiet, but Hyunjin is right next to his voicebox, he’ll hear it. “It’ll be okay, Hyunjin.”

“Tell me it’s not that big of a deal,” Hyunjin breathes unsteadily.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Chan answers right away, although he has no idea what it even is. Hyunjin, this Hyunjin, his Hyunjin, Chan would do anything for him.

“Tell me I’ll get over it.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“Never mind,” Hyunjin says at normal volume, shockingly loud from how close they are, and moves in Chan’s grip like he’s going to pull away. “You’re just making it worse.”

Hyunjin’s flicked match lands in Chan’s powder barrel. “Jesus, what did I do to make you hate me this much?” Chan demands, and Hyunjin emits a breathy, hysterical noise and pulls away in earnest, and as they unseal from each other, Hyunjin goes left, Chan goes right, and there’s something about the angle, something about the way Hyunjin had his face tucked so deceptively sweetly into Chan’s shoulder—or maybe it’s Chan, how he’d had to lift his chin to accommodate Hyunjin’s taller frame—or maybe Hyunjin was going in for it. Or maybe Chan was. And it only lasts a split-second, anyway; the barest brush of lip on lip. It’s less intimate than sharing the bowl of fruit earlier, than drinking out of the same bottle. Chan doesn’t even get a taste of him. But it’s enough to pull Chan’s head out from under the water, and he gasps, apology springing to his lips, but—

Hyunjin’s grip on Chan’s shoulders immediately gets vise-tight. Chan can feel him; he gets hard so fast it’s like he flipped a switch. “Finally,” Hyunjin whines, and then, “oh, please—” and all Chan can do is the only thing he’s never tried: kiss him, on purpose this time.

And, miraculously, inevitably, it works.

Hyunjin kisses like he’s trying to climb inside Chan. Chan has to hold him back, one hand digging fingers into his waist, the other flashing up to grip the nape of his neck. He’d bite through Chan’s lip otherwise, he’d send them both crashing to the floor. Hyunjin is panting and whimpering and Chan can’t stop kissing him, fascinated, twisted by his own desire. He turns him, pushes Hyunjin up against the door, and Hyunjin sobs into his mouth, hauling Chan closer, pulling at his shirt, his hair, his arms. He’s pressed back, crowded entirely with no room to run or even squirm, and if the way he inhales as Chan tongues into his mouth is anything to go by, he likes it like this. He doesn’t resist. He just gives while Chan takes. All sweet, no sour. Like he’s finally, finally getting everything he’s ever wanted.

His lips are even softer than they look, but underneath, beyond, he’s sloppy with his tongue and teeth. He tastes of salt—he really was crying again. He’s moaning, gasping, trying to spread his legs or wrap one around Chan’s hips, but Chan won’t let him move—he cages him in tighter, digs his thumbs into the razor-sharp jut of Hyunjin’s hipbones, kisses him with an upward jerk of his head to get Hyunjin’s chin tilted up, and when it works, he can break off, press in to kiss his neck instead as Hyunjin’s hands make a mess of Chan’s hair. What is he doing? Hyunjin’s skin is so soft; he makes a noise like a mewl when Chan mouths under his ear. Chan is never like this—his sex is always playful, sensual, respectful. A little slow, even when it’s hot. It’s certainly never been like this, a mad grapple for power—Hyunjin’s hands wringing helplessly at the fabric of Chan’s shirt over his shoulders until finally he gets enough leverage to push him away, and then strip himself near-naked in seconds. And Chan doesn’t even have time to look at him—he’s too frantic, too. He just sways right back in, slides his arm tight around Hyunjin’s waist, squeezes him, and Hyunjin kisses him with an open mouth and leaps, all his beautiful long limbs wrapping around Chan’s sturdy body and clinging, stubborn, for dear life.

Chan grabs at him. Chan can’t stop kissing him. Chan carries him, and makes it as far as the literal kitchen table before what Hyunjin is now doing—biting his ear, what the fuck—gets to be too much, and he drops Hyunjin there, spare keys and sunglasses and vape carts clattering, so he can press Hyunjin down and back, while Hyunjin’s spine arches like a bow and the long, hard arrow of him in his Prada briefs points straight at Chan. He’s raking his claws down Chan’s arms and Chan thinks he hears a seam tear as Hyunjin yanks at his shirt to make him take it off. Once that’s over his head and landing on the floor, Chan catches just a second of eye contact; Hyunjin’s gaze is fucking molten, Vesuvius oozing down itself to destroy Pompeii, but then his face is too close to see—his grip is tight on the back of Chan’s neck as he hauls him down, grappling, legs around his waist again to insistently pull Chan into him.

Chan rolls his hips, and it feels so good. Hyunjin’s body goes briefly slack, like without Chan’s body on top of him and the table below him he’d just melt. Chan catches him. Rolls his hips again, coaxes Hyunjin—who’s suddenly twitchy and jumpy—to move with him, and he swallows the way Hyunjin sighs out when their cocks line up just right. Hyunjin lets him do this for a few delicious seconds of friction, but then his hands vanish from Chan’s arms and reappear on Chan’s beltline, rough unzip, clumsy and firm grab for Chan’s dick. He grasps it and pulls like he’s trying to guide it into himself through two layers of fabric, dry, and Chan chokes a bit, missing Hyunjin’s mouth on their next kiss and just sliding wet lips over Hyunjin’s cheek, which makes Hyunjin moan and thrash. Hyunjin is nasty. Hyunjin is beautiful. Hyunjin is seriously going to shove Chan’s cock directly inside himself with zero prep if Chan doesn’t stop him, so Chan hoists him up into his arms again, but doesn’t actually lift him into the air this time, just gets him on his legs so they can both stand.

At first, Hyunjin is like a ragdoll, he’s stumbling like a fawn, but with a firm grip on Chan’s biceps, he manages to stay upright. He swoops in to kiss Chan again, and the motion is synchronised as he pulls Chan with him, out of the kitchen and into the hall. Chan nearly forgets they’re walking when Hyunjin is kissing him like that; every few steps, he’s slowing, and it’s up to Hyunjin to rush him along, hands branding his shoulders, his ribs, his hips.

The lights are off, so it’s a blind stumble, and Chan can only trust Hyunjin to get them where they need to go—he wants to see Hyunjin’s apartment, but not right now. Hyunjin sucks on his lips and tongue and pulls Chan into a room, one where it’s still dark but it smells like Hyunjin does. It’s closer in here, smaller, and Chan wants more but what he has right now is so enticing, and Hyunjin seems keen on getting distracted, too, swaying in to press the entire sinuous length of his body against Chan’s while they come back together for a soul-sucking kiss.

In under five minutes, it’s become routine: Hyunjin’s arms around Chan’s shoulders, Chan’s hands fitting to Hyunjin’s waist. He’s smooth, slender. In the dark, his whimpered sounds are louder, and Chan is barely even touching him; he’s so responsive. His dick is pressing against Chan’s abs. They sway together, breathing, groping, but then Hyunjin drops away from him and Chan is left holding nothing until his eyes adjust to the dark and he sees Hyunjin knelt by the side of the bed, going through an overstuffed IKEA two-by-two bookcase.

It’s too dark to see, and Chan, suddenly, can’t bear to be away from him. He goes down, too, his palm sliding down the swoop of Hyunjin’s spine, and Hyunjin jolts, turns so he can meet him, and then they’re kissing on the floor instead of doing what they need to be doing.

This feels pretty close to what they need to be doing, though. If this were happening at Chan’s apartment, he’d want to get them off the carpet, but based on the feeling of the rug under his knees, he can tell that Hyunjin’s the sort of person who vacuums, or who gets his place vacuumed for him. Hyunjin’s mouth is pliant and he’s shivering, crawling closer to Chan, settling a softer hand on his shoulder while the other has gone still in the bookshelf. Distracted. Chan isn’t noticing the rugburn he’s sure to have after this, only the soft wet seal of Hyunjin’s lips on his own, and how Hyunjin is barely breathing.

A quiet clatter as something inside the bookshelf falls gets their attention back to the goal at hand, though, and it seems like Hyunjin is struggling to find what he’s looking for. He makes a small, frustrated noise and breaks the kiss, turning to get back to rifling through, and Chan wants to help him, so reaches over his head for the lamp atop the bookcase. When he pulls the beaded chain, the room floods with warm light, and Hyunjin is intent on his search so Chan can actually get a look at him—his slim and lovely shoulders, his long neck, his parted kiss-slicked mouth, his diamond-soft jaw. Chan’s the one barely breathing now, because how does Hyunjin look like that? How? And Chan gets to kiss him—touch him—more? Hyunjin has finally found a gallon-size Ziploc bag full of various sex-related objects, and he turns back to Chan, triumphant, and—fuck, his face. Chan’s jaw involuntarily drops. He looks like sunrise. He looks like a sexbot. He looks confident and cocky and commanding as he rolls his eyes at whatever Chan’s face must be doing, then pounces on him, shoving Chan back against the side of the bed and clambering into his lap.

It’s a great place for him to be. Chan isn’t even that mad about not being able to stare at him anymore. Hyunjin’s free hand has settled on Chan’s low stomach, kneading at his abs, scratching at his happy trail, and Chan grabs for his thighs, slides up to his ass. Hyunjin is the one to roll his hips now, riding himself down dirty in Chan’s lap. All over him, licking the backs of Chan’s teeth. He sucks on Chan’s lip hard enough that it makes Chan groan in pain, but that only gets Hyunjin more excited, squirming against Chan’s thighs and dropping the Ziploc bag in favour of grabbing at the sides of Chan’s neck with a mirrored grip, kissing like devouring.

He’s so pent-up. Chan is, too. Down only to his jeans by now, he still feels sauna-hot, and he wants to spread and stretch Hyunjin out, this gorgeous creature who can’t get enough of him—he wants to give him that enough. While Hyunjin rubs his hips on Chan’s, hitched breaths huffing hot against Chan’s jaw, Chan takes one hand off him to pat around for that Ziploc, and he finds lube in there, endearingly wrapped up in a paper towel in case of spillage. But Chan can’t think with Hyunjin latched onto him like this, let alone multitask. He needs just a second of air, of space. And he wants Hyunjin in the bed, so the next time Hyunjin goes to sleep, and all the times after that, he’ll think about what happened there.

Hyunjin is really latched onto him, though. Chan releases the bag, too, and grabs for Hyunjin’s hips again, ducks his head a little bit to dislodge Hyunjin’s hungry mouth. When Chan has a tight enough grip on him, when Hyunjin misses his next kiss, the window of opportunity is small, but Chan has to take it, capitalise on the power of having caught Hyunjin off-guard; his arms flex, and he pushes, lifting Hyunjin up and out of his lap—set. Plants himself against the floor and throws, over his head and left, flipping Hyunjin onto the bed—spike.

It’s shockingly easy. Hyunjin is kitten-limp and weightless. Now Chan is worried—does he eat enough? Also, fuck, he just threw Hyunjin across the room—is he okay, was that okay? He scrambles after him, undone jeans pushed down his own thicker thighs, and sees where Hyunjin landed: squarely in the centre of the bed, and he’s now rolling from his side onto his back, his eyes blown huge, slack mouth gasping, hips and legs squirming and jerking around like he’s too turned on to have muscle control. He sees Chan and makes an incoherent wailing noise, arms flinging wide to beg Chan to come down, bony grabby fingers straining out, and Chan kicks his jeans off the rest of the way, snags the Ziploc from the floor, and tumbles down on top of him.

Hyunjin is wet through his briefs. Clinging hands, immediately, digging into Chan’s arms as he cuddles up to Chan’s chest, panting desperately against Chan’s skin. Chan tips his chin up and kisses him while he works on sliding Hyunjin’s underwear down and off. It’s hard to make Hyunjin stay still long enough for Chan to actually proceed, because even when Chan is trying to uncap the lube and get his fingers wet without making a huge mess, Hyunjin is kissing his neck, writhing, grinding his now-bare cock into Chan’s hip. But he settles quickly when Chan’s hand goes between his thighs.

He’s responsive here, too, as Chan rubs his fingers over where he’s tight to get him loose. So vocal, so unsubtle. But Chan isn’t worrying about neighbours anymore—only about how Hyunjin burrows closer to him and arches his back when Chan curls his fingers just right inside. Chan’s cock, trapped in his own boxers and somewhat neglected in all this Hyunjin-pleasuring, feels impossibly heavy, throbbing thickly in response to each of Hyunjin’s little yelps. Hyunjin is sweating, his breaths raw in his throat, like he’s just run a marathon through the desert. Chan keeps thinking he’s just accidentally made Hyunjin come, but when he looks down to check, it’s still only precum—he’s just that loud, he’s just that drippy. Two fingers, then three, working and twisting in and out of him while Hyunjin rocks his hips back and forth. His eyelashes are brushing the underside of Chan’s chin. Chan needs to be inside him. He needs to keep making Hyunjin feel this good. He pulls his fingers out slowly, and Hyunjin, who had just been happily sucking the world’s biggest hickey into the side of Chan’s throat, seizes up and starts whining, but Chan shushes him, kisses him, tips him onto his back again, and goes for the Ziploc with intent.

That makes Hyunjin shut up and get serious right away, moving up the bed and spreading his legs impatiently, but Chan won’t keep him waiting long—still can’t bear to be away for longer than he absolutely has to. He grabs out a Durex, pulls his boxers down, tear pinch roll on, and the direct stimulation to his dick after being treated to an immersive seat at the world’s hottest show makes him have to bite off a groan. He moves between Hyunjin’s legs. Hyunjin has propped himself up on his elbows and he’s staring directly at Chan’s dick with the craziest, most feverish eyes yet—or at least Chan thinks they’re the craziest yet until he actually lines himself up and begins, slowly, to push inside, and Hyunjin’s eyes roll up to meet Chan’s.

Chan nearly comes. He can’t do it—he has to stop temporarily at just the tip, has to drop himself down to catch Hyunjin in a kiss—he can’t let Hyunjin look at him like that while he’s starting to split him open. Eye contact has always been overwhelming for Chan, but the way Hyunjin licks him with his eyes is a new circle of Hell; nobody has ever made Chan feel like this. He’s gasping a little into Hyunjin’s mouth now, too. Hyunjin is whimpery and even more impatient, trying to work his hips low to get Chan deeper, and when Chan has sufficiently calmed down, he can acquiesce, reaching down to steady his slide. He goes in. Hyunjin stops breathing.

They kiss and clutch each other. Hyunjin is the first to move, but it’s only to lower himself, melt back against the sheets, going completely boneless, so sweet it makes Chan’s whole body hurt. If he’s done working, if he’s done fighting, Chan will do the rest for him. It feels very good. Hyunjin is very tight, but his tiny noises aren’t muffled cries of pain, he just sounds like he’s basking in the sun. It’s a stretch, a squeeze. Chan’s jaw tenses and his teeth nip at Hyunjin’s mouth. He bottoms out, gives Hyunjin time to adjust to him, while he’s adjusting, too. It’s been a while for him. And even if it hadn’t been, it’s never felt like this before, claustrophobic in the best way, like Hyunjin holds all the air in the room and is merely deigning to share a scrap of oxygen with Chan from time to time. Chan rolls his hips, and Hyunjin throws his head back and grabs helplessly for Chan’s arms and moans.

Chan should be exhausted—on any normal night, he’d have been in bed, asleep, for hours by now. Plus, there’s the emotional energy he’d expended on trying to understand Hyunjin. But he’s never felt more awake, more alive, than now, using the full power of his hip flexors and core to push deep, deep into Hyunjin, while Hyunjin twitches and trembles. Hyunjin’s hands are gripping Chan’s wrists, and Chan can’t breathe if they’re kissing, so he has to break off, instead press their foreheads together as he strokes into him.

Each thrust brings them momentarily closer together, and Hyunjin makes a quiet keening noise in his throat, lips opening, tongue slipping out, so weakly asking for another kiss. Chan can’t deny him; who needs to breathe? They’re barely even actually kissing, just panting into each other’s mouths, and Hyunjin moves under him for the first time in a while, but only to start raising one of his legs, which makes the angle better, deeper, right away. Chan catches him mid-thought and fits a palm over that lifted thigh, folding his leg back, pushing, until he’s stretched Hyunjin’s leg over his shoulder and Hyunjin is practically in a split. He’s flexible like taffy—it’s a little shocking. Again, Chan is scared he’s hurting him. But Hyunjin is loving it. His eyelashes are dewy and he can’t take in a full breath—each inhale keeps getting caught in his chest, and he only exhales when Chan fucks into him.

Chan can’t believe this. Can’t believe him. Could they have been doing this all along? He raises up enough to see him better, enough to strike yet another new angle. The view he’s met with takes what little breath he had left away for good: Hyunjin’s hair is fanned out all over the white duvet cover, lovely sprawling fractals. His hip movements are so delicate, the sheen of sweat over his entire angular body is so radiant. He’s still got his eyes open, which is a surprise, but it looks like he’s fighting to keep them that way—his lashes keep fluttering, and when he actually sees Chan looking, he—he smiles, and in the midst of this filthy, urgent fuck, it’s such a ray of innocence, toothy and giddy and almost disbelieving of his good fortune. It’s cute.

So Chan can’t help but to smile back at him, and he watches the way a blush blooms over Hyunjin’s face. Chan has Hyunjin literally folded in half, and he’s driving his cock in and out of his ass and stroking against his prostate with each push, but Hyunjin is blushing because Chan smiled at him while he’s doing it. His smile vanishes instantly, though, when Chan shifts his weight so he’s supported only on one hand while the other grasps at Hyunjin’s beautiful, arched cock; if the way his eyes dart directly to Chan’s supporting arm is any indication, he’s as affected by the display of physical prowess as he is by the direct touch.

Silly, but fuck, Chan kind of gets it—in a way, Hyunjin’s reactions to him are as hot as the feeling of being inside him. Hyunjin is perfect. Chan doesn’t know anyone like him. He wants to tell him—wants to tell Hyunjin how beautiful he is (but Hyunjin certainly knows that already), how good this feels (Hyunjin feels it, too), how he never wants to stop (too weird). In fact, anything Chan could say would be weird. And he doesn’t want this to be weird, although of course it inherently is. He just loves it. So he keeps saying nothing. He just grips Hyunjin tight and lets the motion of his deep, grooving thrusts work Hyunjin’s dick through his hand more than he’s actually stroking him, because if the way Hyunjin is now moaning can be trusted, he won’t need much.

Hyunjin must come to the same realisation—he’s clinging to Chan tighter, regaining some measure of earlier strength as his hips work and his moaning ups in volume, but Chan can’t tell if he’s leaning into it or trying to stave it off. His nails are digging crescents into Chan’s flesh, the sounds of Chan’s hand moving over him are obscene, he’s visibly starting to go a little crazy again, like he’d been when Chan was kissing him against the door. Even the prolonged eye contact feels stubborn, in competition with himself. Chan, encouraging, tightens his core and fucks him faster, just a little rougher without actually roughing him up. Hyunjin’s lips tremble, and his newly-returned bravado drops again, leaving him gasping, in hysterics, as Chan holds him down and gives it to him.

It’s a frenzy. Chan, equally delirious, feels a violent tug deep in his bones, and he knows he’s about to come, too. His muscles involuntarily clench, he needs to drop from palm to elbow on his support arm so he doesn’t fall and crush Hyunjin. Hyunjin’s moans are sobbing out of him again so loudly and he presses his face blindly into Chan’s, teeth on skin, and he’s coming, his cock is jerking in Chan’s hold and he’s trying to writhe around but he can’t because Chan is pressed too closely against him, but Chan is on the edge, Chan is tipping over, Chan is shooting off and shuddering, electrified down to his molecules, heart pounding, body throbbing, every part of him moulded to every part of Hyunjin. It’s a full body-slam of an orgasm, shattering him, leaving him reeling, his face in Hyunjin’s throat. It just keeps going. Even when it finally ebbs, he gets lost there, breathing in the sweet of whatever perfume Hyunjin wears and the salt of Hyunjin’s real self underneath, and in the fog, the only words that come are—this is what we were missing.

Hyunjin is gripping onto him with shocking strength, considering what just happened, how he just was. It’s almost like he doesn’t want to let Chan go, but Chan has no intention of letting him go, either. The fever is retreating from Chan’s brain surprisingly quickly—did he really just fuck Hyunjin?—and leaving him more than a little flushed and embarrassed, but—he’s not pulling away. He doesn’t know what happens next. He wants Hyunjin to know that—what? What does Chan know, even? All he can do, really, is tilt his head and seek Hyunjin out, nose nuzzling for a moment at his cheek before he catches him in another kiss, their lightest yet.

It feels different when their lips are dry. Now that they’ve gotten it out of their systems. Chan doesn’t know about Hyunjin, but personally, he’s reeling a little bit. He just fucked Hyunjin. Underneath him, Hyunjin is still catching his breath, and he’s not much kissing back. Having a similar micro-freakout, maybe? Chan doesn’t regret it. How could he? It’s the only thing that’s made sense, all night. But he just—doesn’t totally understand, either. How could it have been so good? Where did that come from? How long has he wanted this—how long has Hyunjin?

Before Chan can even start to formulate any of those questions aloud, Hyunjin makes the point moot; he squirms and slips out from under him, pulling himself off of Chan’s cock and escaping the cage of his arms. It’s fast and leaves Chan a little physically uncomfortable, and it must be even worse for Hyunjin, not that he shows it—he’s off the bed already, standing, shaking out his long limbs. He’s not looking at Chan, and that blissful brilliance is gone from his face. The resulting neutrality of his expression is in odd contrast with the way his skin is still flushed and glowing. And it makes Chan’s heart sink; what’s wrong? Did he do something wrong?

While they were entangled, he hadn’t wanted to speak for fear of making things weird, but if they keep not talking now, that’ll make it even weirder. He’s propped on his arm and moves his other hand for modesty’s sake, covering himself, and blinks soulfully up at Hyunjin. Are you okay feels like the wrong question to ask. So does Was that okay. Hyunjin has pearl-strings of cum across the plane of his lower stomach, and Chan stares at them for a moment before shaking his head to clear it. Once that’s done, Hyunjin actually does look at Chan, and his gaze is so—so cold that it startles Chan into speech, and what comes out of his mouth is, “Do you want me to leave?”

Hyunjin’s lips, puffy and bruised from so much kissing, compress into a displeased line. “Do you want to leave?” he counters.

Is that a trick question? Chan weighs his options, and considers Hyunjin. It feels like what just happened was the first page of a decoder handbook, the key to open the first lock on Hyunjin’s outermost door. He doesn’t have full access to the full treasure past the traps and obstacles, but at least now he knows it exists, and he can keep working to unlock the rest. For instance, as he watches the minute shifts in Hyunjin’s posture, what would previously have resembled hostility and passive-aggression is now clearly a stance of self-defence, his shoulders hunching and ribs curling to protect vital organs. Hyunjin is just protecting himself. There is a reason, after all, that roses have thorns. Granted, Chan doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but it feels like an applicable metaphor. “No,” he says.

“Then no,” Hyunjin answers, with the barest flash of warmth. He turns, stretches. His body is long and lean, all the softness of a knife’s blade, but Chan still wants to touch him. Over his shoulder, Hyunjin says, “I need a shower. You can keep me company.”

Bossy. Chan gets up immediately. (And rids himself of the condom, too. He doesn’t know if Hyunjin even has a trash can in his bedroom, so he has to very awkwardly bring it with him to the bathroom. His boxers, finally off, he just leaves on the bed.) His head is swimming, that exhaustion the sex had staved off now making its presence very known, but he keeps his eyes on the spare lines of Hyunjin’s back as he follows him, which makes it easier to stay upright.

The ensuite is large and Chan winces a little when Hyunjin turns on the light—so much white marble, it’s blinding. Hyunjin’s expression is still guarded, but when he sees Chan’s blinking and squinting, there is a faint curve to the corner of his lips as he goes ahead and turns the water on in his roomy glass shower.

Chan is relieved to see a small metal trash can by the sink, and tosses the condom into it while Hyunjin is distracted by the temperature settings in the shower. As Hyunjin waits for the water to heat up, he glances back at the mirror that’s currently behind Chan’s head, and Chan watches his lips reflexively purse, eyes instinctively go heavier-lidded. Is that how he thinks he needs to look? Did he think he wasn’t just as beautiful when his face was unschooled? Just for kicks, Chan turns to check himself out, too, and the sight of the fucking monster hickey on his neck makes him gasp involuntarily.

“God,” he says, leaning in to see it as he tilts his head to the other side and gingerly prods it with his fingers where it’s the darkest, angriest red, getting an answering zing of pain. “Ow!”

There’s a quiet snickering noise from Hyunjin, who’s now delicately stepping his way into the shower and closing the door, which has already begun to fog up. Chan is a little too scandalised by the sight of his own throat as a chewtoy to revel deeply in the sound, but when he’s done twisting around in the mirror to assess the damage on his upper arms and back (pretty bad), he’s left with a warm feeling, and glances briefly through the glass; Hyunjin’s cheek remains lightly bent by a smile.

So maybe not all is lost. Chan still doesn’t totally understand why what just happened just happened, but maybe he’ll get there. He yawns, leans his hands back against the bathroom counter to keep himself propped up. Hyunjin must either know Chan is watching him, or else he showers like this all the time: shampoo-commercial antics, elegant head-tosses, soft sighs as the hot water soaks into him. Nothing Hyunjin would ever do could be methodical. Nor should it be.

While Chan is here, he may as well satisfy a fraction of his further curiosity, so he tears his eyes away for now, looking around the bathroom to see what there is to see. Rows and rows of skincare lining the sink, of course, matching the myriad bottles inside the shower, just like how he used to be. Intimidating objects and devices—something that looks like a hunk of raw jade, a scissor-looking thing with an uninviting metal arc on the end, multiple sets of tweezers—scattered over the counter. Hairspray and dry shampoo. A micro-USB charger. An entire rack of astronomically expensive perfumes and colognes. By Chan’s left hand, closest to the electric toothbrush stand and the sink, an orange prescription bottle. Hyunjin Hwang, Lithium 300mg, take twice a day. It’s a life. Hyunjin is alive. He lives, here. He’s been living this whole time, with his own worries and hurts and needs and desires ranging from quiet to loud, and Chan never saw him—never thought twice. Oh, Hyunjin. How can Chan ever, ever make it up to him?

He pushes off from the counter and crosses to the shower. Hyunjin looks surprised, then irritated as Chan opens the door, releasing a powerful gust of steam. “You’re letting out—”

“Budge up,” Chan says, and Hyunjin moves right away, shuffling to the side to make room. Not that it’s a particularly tight fit; this is altogether too much shower for one skinny boy. And Chan wants to be close to him, anyway, a hesitant hand resting on Hyunjin’s low back.

“What are you doing,” Hyunjin says, but it’s a mumble, it’s frightened. He doesn’t shy the touch off, but he doesn’t lean into it, either, a shiver sliding down his body, and Chan has to keep him from running away by putting his other hand on Hyunjin’s side and guiding him, pulling him, close.

“Just let me,” Chan murmurs.

Hyunjin folds. He knows where his own hands should go by now, and so that’s where he puts them, while the heels of Chan’s palms rest on the shelf of his pelvis. Chan could fall asleep like this, standing up, blanketed in the hot steam. His lips are at Hyunjin’s collarbone, and he kisses there, and higher, and finally up to Hyunjin’s mouth, though they both then swallow water. Where has Hyunjin been, all this time? Has he just been waiting? Chan kisses him again, reaches up to push Hyunjin’s wet hair back from his face. All his touches are very slow, very deliberate, very careful. The kid-glove treatment. A precious thing. An impossible thing. To be handled with the utmost care, from here on out.

“I’m fine, Chris,” Hyunjin tells him quietly—he’s seriously telepathic. Chan just wishes it went both ways—what could possibly be going through Hyunjin’s mind right now? He wants Hyunjin to let him in. He wants to help. He never wants to be apart from him again. But finally, Hyunjin is kissing Chan back, and they remain that way for a long while, until there is an ominous clunk from deep in the building’s pipes and the water abruptly ratchets itself to five degrees above freezing.

Hyunjin, naturally, shrieks in horror and attempts to hide behind Chan, using him as a human shield or furnace, and Chan, more than used to contrast showers, isn’t even the slightest bit fazed. He just grins and reaches out to shut the water off while Hyunjin continues cowering with his hands, still warm, gripping at Chan’s upper arms, as though he’d take any excuse to dig his fingers in. “Cold showers are really good for you,” he says, over the dripping from Hyunjin’s hair and his somehow offended-sounding shivery breathing. “We gotta toughen you up.”

“Over my dead body,” Hyunjin sniffs.

Chan laughs. Drama queen. But all of a sudden, the energy is so much less fraught, and he and Hyunjin leave the shower together on steadier footing than they’d gone into it. Hyunjin dries himself off with the fluffiest towel Chan has ever seen outside of a hotel, then spends about five minutes spraying his hair with various oils and minerals, as though Chan isn’t literally right there and trying not to fall asleep standing up again.

Eventually, after Hyunjin has brushed his hair literally one hundred times, he nods at his own reflection, then leaves the bathroom without so much as a word to Chan. Chan, by this point losing the ability to distinguish between reality and a dream, trails after him; is he staying over? Hyunjin had said he doesn’t have to leave, but—“Could I have, like, a blanket?” he says, and yawns.

Hyunjin, already turning down his bedsheets for bedtime, looks over his shoulder at Chan, Orpheus aghast. “A blanket? Why?”

“So I can… couch,” Chan explains with an awkward, hesitant shrug.

Hyunjin straightens up, tossing his glossy hair back. “Chris. How the fuck are you this stupid?”

Chan frowns a little. “That’s very rude,” he says mildly.

Hyunjin huffs again. Another toss of his hair. “Whatever.”

Maybe it’s Chan’s sleepy brain—maybe it’s the few hours he’s just spent with grown-up Hyunjin—maybe the fact that he just fucked grown-up Hyunjin has something to do with it, too. But as he looks at Hyunjin, and the way Hyunjin is glaring at him like he’s no more intelligent than a cedar log, something just—clicks. “Are you flirting with me?” he asks.

“Shut up,” Hyunjin says, suddenly pale but blotchy red.

“You are,” Chan says. He feels much less sleepy now, the realisation having made him perk right up. “Were you always? When you said things like that? That’s… an interesting strategy.”

“Shut up,” Hyunjin insists, and quickly turns away, busying himself with fluffing pillows, but Chan can see that even his neck is starting to flush. “Just—no. You were being fucking stupid. No blanket. No couch. Get in here.” And he flings himself into the bed and pulls the covers up past his nose.

So, so awkward. Chan feels a stab of something strong, an even harder pulse than had gone through him in the bathroom and compelled him to join Hyunjin in the shower. Hyunjin is glaring at him balefully over the top of the blanket, and Chan doesn’t want to stop looking at him, but he does want to hold Hyunjin in his arms as they both fall asleep, so he approaches the bed like Steve Irwin approaching a croc enclosure. Slow and steady, one hand out to reach for the covers, the other hand going for the pull cord of the lamp. He tugs it, and the light snaps off, and from there, he has to rely only on touch and sound to make it into the bed, until his eyes can adjust.

Hyunjin is there. Waiting for him, and quiet, and moonlit. He stays still and waits for Chan to get close to him. He’s more yielding when Chan puts his arms around him, slipping down a little right away so he can use Chan’s shoulder as a pillow, as though he’s been planning to put himself there for a while. He probably has. His wet hair makes Chan shiver, but the rest of his body is warmer, or warming up. So Hyunjin sleeps naked, eh? Not in monogrammed silk pyjamas? Chan runs his hand up and down Hyunjin’s side, and Hyunjin shivers but doesn’t move away. Sweet, now.
玄真就在那里。等着他，静静地，月光下。他一动不动，等着陈靠近他。当陈用手搂住他时，他更加顺从了，马上滑下一点，这样他就可以把陈的肩膀当作枕头，好像他已经打算把自己放在那里有一段时间了。他可能是这样想的。他湿漉漉的头发让陈打了个寒颤，但他身体的其他部分却更暖和，或者说正在变暖。这么说玄真是裸睡的？不是穿着印有花纹的丝绸睡衣？陈用手在贤真的侧面来回抚摸，贤真颤抖了一下，但没有走开。这下好了

It’s dark and quiet, and Chan is so tired. He rests his cheek against Hyunjin’s damp hair. “Are you okay?” he murmurs.

Hyunjin makes an incoherent grumpy noise. “You’re asking all the wrong questions.”

Now that Chan knows Hyunjin has, apparently, been snapping at him all these years as a misguided, failed flirtation strategy, his response to that sort of thing is very different. Hyunjin doesn’t discomfit or upset him anymore. Hyunjin was just—trying to connect with him. It’s a love language thing. They’ll figure it out. So he just smiles, thumb brushing lightly over Hyunjin’s skin. “What should I ask about, then? What you meant earlier?”

“When, earlier?”

“You said I had it all wrong, earlier. You know, when I deduced that you wanted to be friends. Is…” He has to word this next part carefully. He has a long time to make up for; so does Hyunjin. He doesn’t want to hurt Hyunjin’s feelings—he just wants to make amends, and see where they end up, together. “Is this what you meant?”

Hyunjin is silent for a very long time, so long that Chan would have thought he’d fallen asleep if not for the blinking brush of his eyelashes over Chan’s shoulder. Then he opens his mouth, and begins to tell Chan a long string of secrets, the kind of secrets that go back years, that were kept by Hyunjin and all his friends and enemies and lovers. Chan and their parents, it seems, were the only ones in the dark. Hyunjin had been making it so obvious. Chan was his sexual awakening. He tells Chan secrets that make Chan smile—when he’d had that choppy DIY haircut, for instance, it was because Chan had thoughtlessly said his long hair looked cool one day, and Hyunjin, fourteen and more than a little manic, couldn’t handle that much attention and had begged his friend to be the rational one here, and when the friend had pronounced the verdict that “Chris was just being polite, probably,” Hyunjin had asked for a haircut with all the noble gravitas of a captured sailor walking the plank. There are also secrets that make Chan blush and wish he hadn’t heard—“I had my first orgasm thinking about you.” Hyunjin is, indeed, a member at Chan’s gym, but he’d signed up with his coworker’s name so as not to get Chan’s attention before he was ready to come forward. The night of Chan’s prom, Hyunjin had cried himself to sleep—and all the other nights that week, before and after. “I’m kind of a crybaby,” Hyunjin tells him, unabashed, as if Chan didn’t know that already. “Only over you, though,” Hyunjin adds, which is new.

Each secret he tells is a new clicking puzzle piece, filling out a complete and glorious picture. He’d thought Chan would hate him, if he knew. He thought Chan did hate him. But before Chan can tell him that he thought exactly the same thing about Hyunjin, and before he can ask for more secrets, before he can start apologising and tell Hyunjin a few secrets of his own—like how he always wanted to be close, and even though he can’t match the depth and breadth of everything Hyunjin’s had going on for the last near-decade of staying out of each other’s orbit, he knows for certain now that he doesn’t ever want to be apart from him again—he falls asleep. Hyunjin is literally mid-sentence, and Chan is so interested in everything he’s saying, but—it’s been a very long night. He’d be embarrassed and apologetic about it (like everything else) if he weren’t, well, asleep.

The next time he moves, it’s very dark, and very quiet. Some sort of primal anxiety had awakened him, a feeling he’d thought he’d forgotten: reaching for someone in bed and finding no body there. The digital clock on Hyunjin’s nightstand reads 4:01, and there’s a quiet noise from beyond the bedroom. Chan rubs his bleary eyes and considers going back to sleep, but what if something is wrong? What if Hyunjin is upset? He makes himself get up and pull on his boxers, eyes barely open as he follows the light to the kitchen, where Hyunjin is leaning over his laptop on the counter, his back to Chan.

His back. He’s wearing a faded red shirt; well-worn, well-loved. Familiar. Chan hasn’t seen it in years; he thought it had been lost in the move, but evidently, Hyunjin has had it this whole time? Chan’s varsity jersey. Emblazoned across Hyunjin’s shoulderblades, it says BANG—name, claim, or instruction? Chan shudders. Is he a total caveman for being into that? Hyunjin’s hair is up in a high ponytail, and he’s in yet another pair of tight black briefs to show off his perky little bum, one ankle crossed back over the other as he scrolls down a webpage.

He’s so beautiful. Chan’s throat is suddenly so dry. He clears it, and, idiotically, says, “Hey?”

Hyunjin glances back over his shoulder. His face is soft and sleepy, and Chan is absolutely gobsmacked by Hyunjin’s beauty, even in the middle of the night, when Chan feels like he himself looks like a freshly-uprooted turnip. “What?” he says.

“Nothing,” Chan says. “I just—didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Hyunjin shrugs a little. “Couldn’t sleep. Wanted a midnight snack.”

It’s 4 AM, and Hyunjin is holding a Starbucks iced coffee. He and Chan live on entirely different planets. It’s kind of amazing, and Chan is so distracted by the fucking jersey. He’d thought he’d more than gotten his rocks off earlier, but—evidently there are still rocks to go. Fuck, not now. “Okay,” he says. Hyunjin raises his eyebrows at him, then turns to his laptop again, but he hasn’t told Chan to fuck off, so Chan dares to approach, standing by his side. “What are you up to?” he murmurs.

“Picking out a new phone,” Hyunjin says. “I have to go actually get it tomorrow.”
"在挑新手机，"Hyunjin说。"我明天就得去买"

“Today,” Chan corrects. "今天，"陈纠正道。

Hyunjin huffs quietly but doesn’t snap, just keeps scrolling down the specs for the new iPhone Mini. Chan looks askance at the jersey again, and swallows to try and wet his parched throat. It’s quiet and different, in the late-late night. Under normal circumstances, Chan’s alarm would be set for two hours from now. He’s not sure if Hyunjin is upset, or angry. He feels like he missed something. Hyunjin clicks on the red colourway, and scrolls to see that it’s in stock at the nearest Apple store.
玄真低声哼了一声，但并没有发作，只是继续向下滚动新款 iPhone Mini 的规格。陈再次斜眼看了看球衣，咽了咽口水，试图润润干渴的喉咙。深夜里，安静得与众不同。正常情况下，陈的闹钟应该定在两小时后。他不知道玄真是不高兴还是生气。他觉得自己错过了什么。玄真点击红色款式，滚动查看最近的苹果专卖店是否有货。

“I’ll go with you,” Chan says before he can overthink it. “What else do you wanna get up to?”
"我和你一起去，"陈还没来得及多想就说。"你还想做什么？"

At that, Hyunjin does look at him directly, unhappy in the blue light coming from his laptop screen. “Chris,” he says. “Let me make something very clear. I don’t want to be friends. I don’t want to be brothers. That’s—I have no interest in that, whatsoever. So if that’s what you’re hoping for right now, then forget it.”
这时，玄真确实直视着他，在笔记本电脑屏幕发出的蓝光中显得很不高兴。"克里斯，"他说。"让我把话说清楚。我不想做朋友。我不想做兄弟。我对此毫无兴趣。所以，如果这是你现在所希望的，那就算了吧。"

Chan blinks. Even before Hyunjin’s done talking, he’s shaking his head. How deep must Hyunjin’s insecurity go for him to still feel that kind of clarification is necessary, even with his marks on Chan’s neck, with the secrets he’d been telling ringing in Chan’s ears? They’re on unbalanced ground, Chan knows. Chan has a decade of catch-up to play. It’s not as clear-cut to him, the way it is to Hyunjin. Hyunjin, even now, exists in a place that says care to Chan. All tied up in regret, compensation, guilt. And beauty, too. Desire, now. Hyunjin has been holding onto that jersey for all these years—while Chan wondered where it went. And Hyunjin had it. “Not what I’m hoping for,” Chan says.
陈眨了眨眼睛。玄真还没说完，他就摇了摇头。玄真到底有多深的不安全感，才会让他觉得这种澄清是必要的，即使他在陈的脖子上留下了印记，即使他说的秘密一直在陈的耳边回响？陈知道，他们处于不平衡的状态。陈有十年的时间可以追赶。对他来说，这并不像对玄真那样一目了然。即使是现在，Hyunjin 对陈来说，也存在于一个 "关心 "的地方。遗憾、补偿、愧疚，这一切都联系在一起。还有美欲望这些年来，Hyunjin一直紧紧抓住那件球衣不放，而Chan却不知道它去了哪里。而 Hyunjin 拿到了它"这不是我想要的，"陈说。

“Then what?” Hyunjin says.
"然后呢？"玄真说

“I’m hoping,” Chan says, “to give you what you want.”
"我希望，"陈说，"给你你想要的。"

“Do you even know what that is?”
"你知道那是什么吗？"

Good point. “I’m hoping to figure it out,” Chan admits. “If you’re willing to let me try.”
说得好"我希望能想出办法，"陈承认，"如果你愿意让我试试的话。" "I'm hoping to figure it out," Chan admits."如果你愿意让我试试的话"

“I told you earlier, actually,” Hyunjin says with a sniff, reaching for his iced coffee again, “but you were asleep.”
"其实我早跟你说过了，"玄真吸了吸鼻子说，又伸手去拿冰咖啡，"但你睡着了。"

Chan reaches out to still his hand; they meet on cold condensation. He hears Hyunjin’s shiver. “So tell me again.”
陈伸出手，想握住他的手，但却碰到了冰冷的冷凝水。他听到玄真在颤抖。"再告诉我一次"

Hyunjin’s lips purse. He’s giving Chan a look; it’s familiar. It reminds Chan of the way Hyunjin always used to look at him, when they first met. Even the first time, too, under the dimming lights of the cinema. Chan knows what it means now, he thinks. I want to know you, but I’m scared. Hyunjin says, his voice a little small, “Can’t you just guess?”
Hyunjin 的嘴唇抿了起来。他看陈的眼神很熟悉。这让陈想起了他们初次见面时玄真看他的眼神。即使是第一次，也是在电影院昏暗的灯光下。陈现在知道这意味着什么了，他想。我想了解你，但我害怕。玄真说，他的声音有点小 "你就不能猜猜吗？"

Chan closes the laptop and leaves them both in the dark, so they’re alone together. Blindly, he reaches up to cup Hyunjin’s face in his hands. “I think so,” he says, and guesses right.
陈关闭了笔记本电脑，把他们俩留在黑暗中，让他们单独在一起。他盲目地伸手捧起贤真的脸。"我想是的，"他说，并猜对了。