Bathed in moonglow, Byungwoo becomes everything around him. The music feeds into him and the sand takes him whole bodied and breathing, weathering him into bits that will scatter and remain—here, with the parts of himself he left last time. If they make it to Gangneung enough times, maybe the entire beach will be theirs, maybe one day they’ll return only to find themselves sinking into every version they’ve been together, a mausoleum he’ll finally be able to feel good about, a celebration of life made from two.
A rose is a rose is a rose, so they say, and Byungwoo’s fingers curl around the memory of orange peel left on this very shore as he muses over the way an orange will never be an orange, will never be an orange, will never be an orange. Or a poppy, or a meal at the kitchen table, a bottle of whiskey, a toothbrush. How many ways can his reality be recreated? How many ways will the things he’s touched so many times be reborn into blessings?
He feels his heartbeat in his head and it feels like pain. Sometimes it hurts to lend yourself to love, just as everything worthwhile seems to cost an ache, as if affliction were a form of currency exchanged for pleasure. His breath stutters through it, his pulse thrums despite the way the world comes to a standstill, a chimera of now, now, now that’ll last a lifetime somewhere within them. He’s reminded of the time he’d spun a hair’s breadth or two to the left, the last time he’d begged wholehearted and shameless for the horizon to sit stubborn at a pause. Maybe this is why the earth spins without permission, he thinks. Maybe this is why it leaves you grasping at seconds like spare change in your pocket when you’re going hungry. There are more meals to be had, to share, to be hungry for.
“Love you, Byungwoo. Sorry that took so long.”
Growing pains used to keep him up as a child, limbs giving way to the aches for the purpose of another year and another inch or two. There’s something to be said about the way growing pains still keep him up now, a testament to how his chest is erupting to stretch and make room for something bigger than himself, painstaking yet welcome, just to give more space for Kijun and the people they’re becoming together—of all the versions they’ll be, because an orange isn’t an orange isn’t an orange anymore.
Byungwoo pours his heart in a salt language and drips sentiments down the sides of his own face, his eyes bringing tides to a shore that waits patiently for more of the two of them. There are infinite ways to speak without words, and he wonders how many languages they’ve used to date, if they’d be able to count on the four hands between them. He wonders if it’s measurable, let alone if something sacred can even be defined. He wonders how many disciples it would take to recount this divinity.
Love tastes different again today. It tastes like desperation, tastes like he might just cry out a prayer to a god he doesn’t believe in just to cover all his bases, a declaration to everything that might be willing to listen that he will seek and be sought now, later, evermore. He thinks back on lore, on universes parallel or intersecting, on threads he’d cried about and been kissed over in early, mild mannered June.
From the toothy grin of a man who has seen more than his share of terror, from the tender heart of a man who has felt insurmountable grief, from the gentle hands of a man who has had to use them in ways he never wanted to, Byungwoo receives and relishes love. For once, for a lifetime of offerings, for every time he was just outside of the reach of worth, Byungwoo is somehow enough. Through Kijun, he’s learning how to feel worthwhile just for showing up at the door with empty hands. Byungwoo has always hoped he’d be good for something, and how lucky he is to be good enough for this.
How lucky he is to echo, "I love you."
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