jewelledhours | [eeteuk/heechul, sungmin/eunhyuk] the shadows were longer that year

the shadows were longer that year by

catskilt
eeteuk/heechul, sungmin/eunhyuk, yesung/ryeowook
r; 5170 words; au, dark themes
that year was when he and jungsu reached the breaking point.
for

ky_rin. happy belated, dear cho bff ♥

the shadows were longer that year

It’s a stray they bring in one June afternoon when the wind is as hot as the sun; a boy too broken to see anyone except Jungsu, who’s gentle to the point of being maternal. The rest of them are kept away despite Donghae’s pleas to see his new friend; friend, Heechul thinks with a little contempt and a vague sort of envy; how easily Donghae uses that word. They’re ushered away and Jungsu is left to his new ward, a boy of pale skin and a breath that flutters too seemingly faint to support life.

Heechul catches a glimpse of matted hair and angry red sores through the quietly closing door as he pushes Donghae away. The boy will die, he thinks, as Joonyoung did last year; he’ll be bundled into a coffin of cheap, smelly wood, sent into an oven to be cremated, and his ashes will disappear, nobody will ever know what happened to them, and Seoul will be less of one more invisible stray. Nobody will know, nobody will care, and life will go on; nothing stands still for insignificance.

… …

Except that the boy continues breathing, angry red sores mending, bits and pieces of broken parts coming together to form a human being again. They say that his recovery is largely due to Jungsu’s care, that Jungsu was the one who wiped his sweat and fed him and cleaned him up when he pissed in bed, but Heechul knows that the burden of having kept one more boy alive is weighing on Jungsu’s mind, that the dark circles intensifying under Jungsu’s eyes are not from sleeplessness but from the guilt of having saved a life for this place.

They don’t talk about it; they’ve never talked about it, and Jungsu’s too busy with his own jobs on top of his nursing – there’s a new client, and a previous one who recently returned from his yearlong business trip in Shanghai; he’d brought silk shirts for his favourites, for Jungsu and Heechul and Jongwoon, and there isn’t time to talk. Heechul thinks that silence works. The boy doesn’t make a sound in his sickroom; no moans or whimpers or sighs; how unnatural, how unlike the way Joonyoung had screamed. It’s easy to forget that he exists. Or maybe it’s because they’ve become so used over the years to pretending that things don’t exist that they revert almost automatically to pretence.

Either way, they don’t talk. Jungsu continues receiving China-made gifts from his client, everyone stays away from the sickroom, the boy continues mending, and in the autumn Heechul watches the light in two more pairs of eyes die when Donghae and Hyukjae, the most promising kids, are forced into work.

… …

His name is Lee Sungmin and he vomits his breakfast into the sink the first morning he leaves the sickroom, sits white and wan at the table as Jungsu and Jongwoon clean up. Heechul sees the wrinkle between Jungsu’s brows as he mops up the half-digested food splattered on the sink; little whole grains of rice, blood red pieces of kimchi, revolting. Jungsu’s at the end of his tether. He’d been kept up all night by his Shanghai client (strange how they think of him as the Shanghai client now; identities are so easily altered) and he really shouldn’t be doing this, cleaning up the mess of a boy who is, after all, just another stray. But this is how Jungsu is, he cleans up after others, sets everything straight, does the shit work. He’s always been like that; he doesn’t know any other way to live. Heechul both loves and fails to understand it.

It’s Hyukjae who speaks to Sungmin first, Hyukjae of the kind eyes and bony knees skinned from tumbling all over the house with Donghae. “Are you okay?” he asks, and his hand hovers over Sungmin’s shoulder, hesitates before he touches, fingers pressing around the curve of Sungmin’s bone.

“I’m sorry for causing so much trouble,” Sungmin says.

“You’re not causing us trouble,” Hyukjae says. “You’re still sick.”

They look at each other for a moment. Hyukjae hasn’t smiled in three weeks but he smiles now, tentative and tender, and Sungmin slowly smiles back. There’s something about that smile that seems familiar.

They’ll become friends, Heechul thinks. One is emotionally wounded, and one is kind and loving. They’ll be friends. Given time, they might even become more than friends.

He looks at Jungsu, wringing a cloth over the sink. There are some thoughts that Heechul doesn’t articulate to himself. He doesn’t articulate anything now.

… …

Jongwoon gets caught the next day fucking Ryeowook into the wall. To be accurate, they both get caught, Jongwoon and Ryeowook, but Ryeowook’s too young to be counted; the excuse of youth is the only mercy they receive at this place (and even then, Heechul thinks, what are they exploited for, if not for youth?). Jongwoon is sent to the office and remains there for an hour, and there’s a silence in the house, a silence that involves the cracking of a whip meeting flesh and strangled moans too beleaguered to raise into screams. Ryeowook sobs into Jungsu’s shoulder.

“Hyung won’t be sent away, will he?”

“No, he won’t,” Jungsu says, stroking Ryeowook’s hair. Jongwoon doesn’t have a large number of clients like Heechul does, but the few he does have are rich enough to keep him in this place. They won’t send him away. They won’t be emotional enough to send away a money-maker just because he was short-sighted enough to take away the virginity of one of their trainees. They’ll simply make sure that the only fucking he does from now on is in the right place with the right person.

Heechul says, “It’ll never be this good again.”

Ryeowook, lifting swollen eyes from Jungsu’s shoulder, asks, “What will never be this good again?”

“Nothing,” Jungsu says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Growing up, Heechul almost says. Falling in love. Sex.

He remembers the first and only time he’d ever kissed Jungsu, lip on lip in the thick heat of a mid-afternoon. He doesn’t remember the date now. The curtains had been drawn back; the sunlight had drawn dazzling, distinct lines on the polished floor. They had breathed, once, against each other. They had thought, so this is what a kiss feels like, but they had never done it again. They had learned, somewhere along the way, somewhere amid the seeming friendship and comfort and carefully manufactured serenity, to be afraid.

… …

Hyukjae creeps into Heechul and Jungsu’s room early one morning, when the sky is still greying and Seoul is awakening to its daytime life. Inside the house, they prepare for sleep.

There are spots of blood on Hyukjae’s shirt, and when Jungsu lifts it to see what’s bleeding underneath, they see whip lashes across his back, thin and deep and harsh. Hyukjae shivers when Jungsu gently applies antiseptic, leaks silent tears out of his eyes as Heechul sits up in bed and chews on his lip in impotent, inexpressible rage.

“He can’t do this to you,” Heechul says at last. “We’ll go to the office and tell hyungnim that you were beaten by a client and his sick ass should be fucking kicked out of here.”

“The office knows,” Hyukjae whispers. “He offered to pay double.”

They don’t say anything more. They know how futile it is. Once again, they reflect on the bitterness of betrayal. Once again, they wonder to themselves; is it possible to escape? Once again, they realise that there’s nowhere for them to escape to.

Hyukjae is wrapped up in Jungsu’s blanket with Jungsu’s arm around him when he says, “How can we stop Sungmin hyung from having to go through this too?”

Jungsu cuddles Hyukjae closer. He wants to keep them safe, like this, close to him. He wants to embrace their innocence, or the shreds of it. He wants, because they look up at him with trustful eyes and that makes him want to cry. Hyukjae’s hair is soft against his cheek; it reminds him of how soft Heechul’s hair had been in the far gone nights they’d spent sleeping together in the same bed. If he presses hard enough, he knows he’ll be able to feel the shape of Hyukjae’s ribs. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he says in Hyukjae’s ear, and watches him fall into sleep.

… …

“Is this really your home?” Sungmin asks. “Have all of you always stayed here?”

It’s been half a year since he arrived, and he’s beginning to be beautiful. Some days they look at him and their breaths catch; Jungsu says that Sungmin is going to be the most beautiful boy they’ve ever had aside from Heechul. He doesn’t say it admiringly; it isn’t good to be beautiful, at least not here. But Sungmin is.

“No,” says Hyukjae and stops, looking first at Donghae and then at Jungsu, wondering how much he should tell. “I came here five years ago.”

“Where were you from before?”

“My parents died when I was a baby,” Hyukjae says, shrugging. “I ran away from my orphanage. Donghae and me. We couldn’t stand being bossed around by the matron of the orphanage anymore, and they used to beat us there, too.”

“We were out on the streets for a month before we were found and brought here,” Donghae pipes up. Heechul remembers the night the two of them arrived, clinging together with arms so thin you could snap them in half if you tried hard enough. They had both been crying, but without tears; they had had no more tears; they had simply made sick, tearing sounds through their noses and throats. Jungsu, thirteen years old then, eyes as bright as the sun, had taken care of them. Even then, Heechul thinks, children stopped crying when they were in Jungsu’s arms.

“How about you, Sungmin hyung?” Donghae asks. “Where are you from?”

Sungmin puts his arm over his eyes, blocking out the sunlight. His mouth, they notice, is shaped into a perfect M; pink, vulnerable, innocently seductive. “I ran away from home,” he says.

“Why?” Donghae asks, but Sungmin doesn’t reply. He stays silent, and they see, instead, thin lines of tears snaking from beneath his arm and smearing down the sides of his face.

Hyukjae crawls over the grass to him, puts an arm around his waist. “Don’t cry, hyung,” he says. “You have us now. We’ll support you.”

Sungmin turns over and grips Hyukjae like he’s his lifeline. Donghae makes a little jealous-sounding noise, but for once they don’t pay attention to him. They’re looking at each other, and Heechul sees the worry in Jungsu’s eyes. They recognise what’s going on with Sungmin and Hyukjae. They’ve seen it all before, and they know what happens in the end. They know it better than anyone.

… …

“We should stop them,” Jungsu says as they flip their gay pornographic magazines, look disinterestedly at seemingly ecstatic men fucking each other. “We don’t want another Jongwoon and Ryeowook situation on our hands.”

“How do you stop them?” Heechul demands. “We’re all stuck here in a rut and all we see day in and day out are each other. Things like that are bound to happen.”

“I don’t want it to happen to Hyukjae.” Jungsu shuts the magazine and flings it carelessly to one side. “He’s been hurt enough by his client. He doesn’t need more hurt in his life.”

It comes out before he can stop himself. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned with getting rid of the shit in your life first before you go around trying to save the world?”

Jungsu reddens, and Heechul would apologise, but it’s only what he’s been thinking for the past three years, after all, and there’s no sincerity in apologising about something which he secretly despises Jungsu for.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says instead. “We’re eighteen, we can do whatever we want. Get normal part-time jobs. Find somewhere cheap to stay.”

“With no formal education, no work experience we care to talk about?” Jungsu laughs, short and dry and brittle. “I thought you would be the last one to fantasise, Heechul.”

“I don’t fantasise,” Heechul says, “and I don’t intend to sit back and take it when people mistreat me. No matter what they may have done for me.”

Jungsu lies back in bed and looks up at the ceiling. There are bumps in the paint, little tiny crooked cracks. It’s strange how he barely remembers his life before he entered this place. Granted, he had only been eight when he came, but surely he would remember something? Or has the life inside here stained his mind to the point that he has no aptitude to remember anything else?

“You should go if you want to,” he says. “Keep a bit of the money, sneak out of the gate, buy a train ticket out of Seoul. If anyone could survive out there, you could.”

They’re silent for a while, noting the singular ‘you’. “I’ll stay here,” Jungsu says eventually. “I don’t want to leave them. I was the one who saved them for this place. I have a responsibility to stick around.”

“You should get rid of that whole ‘responsibility’ bullshit,” Heechul says. “You didn’t bring them in here, and you’re not the one who forced them into all this. You have your own life, you’re not tied to them.”

“And what’s going to happen to them if we both leave?” Jungsu turns his head to look at Heechul. “The office isn’t just going to sit back and accept the financial losses. Do you think they’ll extend the boys’ working hours? Five, six clients a night instead of three or four? Special BDSM services? Maybe Hyukjae will get burned and handcuffed instead of simply whipped. That would bring in triple payment instead of double. Or maybe they’ll make Sungmin the new central attraction now that you’re gone. We know that of late they’ve been eying Sungmin’s physical development very interestedly.”

“We don’t live our lives tied to others,” Heechul says, but his voice is thin, reedy, cracking up.

“We do,” Jungsu says.

… …

Sungmin is flushed and smiling the first time he kisses Hyukjae, lip on lip in the autumnal cold of a mid-afternoon. The trees are beginning to lose their leaves, the sky is overcast. Heechul sees them from the corner of his eye, mouths together and hands roaming shyly as Donghae raids the refrigerator. He doesn’t stop to think. He goes over, pulls them apart and slaps Hyukjae squarely across the face. It’s so loud that Donghae drops a Tupperware, scrambles to turn around and grab Hyukjae’s head in his hands. “Hyung!” Donghae screams.

“Fucking idiot,” Heechul snarls. “I thought you were smarter than this, Hyukjae.”

Sungmin pulls Hyukjae away from Donghae, hands coming up to stroke Hyukjae’s cheek. “Why did you do that?” he almost shouts at Heechul. “How could you hit him like that? We weren’t doing anything to you!”

Heechul doesn’t bother to explain to Sungmin, this boy who looks like a girl who’s still under the belief that they’re all one big happy family of outcasts. He looks at Hyukjae. “Never do this again unless you want to get what Jongwoon got. He still has scars on his ass, Hyukjae. He hasn’t even seen Ryeowook since that time.”

“What?” Sungmin says, still furious. “What the hell are you saying? What has Jongwoon hyung got to do with you slapping Hyukjae?”

“Do you understand?” Heechul leans over the table and stares straight at Hyukjae’s face.

Hyukjae looks back at Heechul. His eyes are dumb. They cannot speak. They are, for the moment, completely incapable of displaying emotion. All along the small of his back up to his shoulders, the whip lashes are burning into his skin. From now on, they will always burn into him. He nods.

Heechul withdraws.

That night, Sungmin and Hyukjae attempt to escape. They steal a little money from the office, sneak out of the gates, try to find the train station. They don’t get very far.

… …

Donghae keens like a dying animal when Hyukjae is barely conscious and Sungmin is being ravaged by the first man who wants him, a rich investment banker with a wife and two children. One of Heechul’s regulars, lured by the youth of this new boy. They hear Sungmin’s screams and they cringe, they try to block it out, to pretend as they always have that it doesn’t exist, but Donghae is crying in the most heartbroken way they’ve ever heard and Jungsu grips the quilt in both hands when the screaming stops, muffles his sobs into the pillow as he fails, for the first time in years, to detach himself from everything that his client is doing to him.

They barely see Sungmin for the next couple of days. He has been broken in, he knows now what this place is all about, and he’s so beautiful that everyone who sees his picture wants him. In the daytime he stays in his room, too traumatised to talk to anyone. He’s watched in case he attempts suicide but he doesn’t; he simply lies in bed staring blankly up at the ceiling. At the bumps and little crooked cracks.

Jungsu spends all his spare time in Hyukjae and Donghae’s room, wiping the sweat off Hyukjae’s forehead, administering injections, feeding him medication at the appointed times. Hyukjae’s body is something he never wants to see again; he can’t fathom how a body can be so tortured and yet continue supporting life. They hadn’t spared Hyukjae. He is an old-timer, he has been here for six years, he should have known that running away is one of the most severe crimes to commit. He has gashes to remind him now, thick and disfiguring scars.

“We should have stopped them. We knew what would happen,” Jungsu says brokenly. He can barely sleep anymore, and even when he does he sees Hyukjae’s scars. He thinks that they will never leave him.

For once, Heechul doesn’t argue back. He helps to change Hyukjae’s clothes and drip water down his mouth. It’s a week before Hyukjae opens his eyes, two more days before he moves. He lifts his hand, looks at them, but they find out soon enough that he has lost his voice. He can’t speak. Whether out of terror or trauma, they don’t know, and they don’t know either what to do about it.

For the next few days, it seems that all they hear is Hyukjae’s laughter as it used to be, high and pitchy and infectious; his voice shouting over Donghae’s, whispering to Jungsu, assuring Sungmin that everything will be okay. It seems that what they really hear is his silence.

Heechul tries to hold back, but at last he cries.

… …

It’s sinister now. It has never been an open, caring environment ever since they turned fifteen and realised why they had been so nurtured and taken care of without having to pay for it, but after Sungmin and Hyukjae’s attempted escape, there’s a strong, indefinable, frightening feeling lurking. Donghae throws up everything he eats and Jongwoon sleeps more than usual and Ryeowook barely speaks now, they compare it to Hyukjae’s silence, they wonder if silence can be contagious.

The shadows are longer that winter, the baring trees are sadder. Hyukjae watches the trees outside his window, counts the curled brown leaves on the grass one by one. He shows Donghae the numbers in his notebook, but he doesn’t talk. He might be going out of his mind, this blushing boy who’d kissed Sungmin and tumbled all over the house with Donghae. Heechul thinks of the kiss. He remembers it well; the innocence, the daring, the promise of how much happiness and heartache it had held.

I refuse to continue living like that, he tells Jungsu, but he knows he won’t be able to walk out of this alone. He lies in bed in the morning and listens to Jungsu’s breathing, so strange and raspy now, as though even in his sleep he’s crying. Jungsu had been the one to patch up his wounds when he came, Jungsu had hugged him, told him stories, ran races around the garden with him. In the early mornings Heechul traces his history with Jungsu; their rough and tumble childhood days playing mafia and pirates games in the garden, reading manga, dreaming of impossible dreams. Jungsu had been the first person he’d loved. He despises Jungsu for his weakness, but he thinks it may be strength too, a sort of strength that he doesn’t have and therefore can’t really understand.

Sometimes he thinks of Hyukjae and Donghae and Jongwoon instead; the three kids who’d come in after him and whom he’d grudgingly taken care of initially and learned, almost unconsciously, to love. He thinks of Donghae chubby-cheeked and wide-eyed at his knee, soaking in the fanciful tales of warriors and wild adventures and fascinatingly strange animals in Africa; he thinks of Hyukjae giggling at the romance stories, covering his mouth with his hand because he hates the way his gums show when he smiles. He thinks of the way Jongwoon used to sing in the kitchen, his voice so rich that they listened even though they didn’t know the songs.

We live our lives tied to others. Heechul turns to look at Jungsu’s sleeping face. I can’t escape them, and I will never be able to escape you. And yet we must escape.

… …

It is the culmination of everything; the years between fifteen and now, the doomed escape of Hyukjae and Sungmin, the broken relationship of Jongwoon and Ryeowook, the boys he has trotted around the garden and told stories to and sat back watching them fall apart when they were considered old enough to leave the embrace of childhood. It is the culmination of everything that has brought them to this point, sitting side by side in a police station with cold off-white walls and nondescript black plastic chairs. Jungsu’s shivering a little, looking over his shoulder expecting someone from the office to come in. Heechul can feel his shivers even though they’re in different chairs, and he reaches over to hold Jungsu’s hand. They’ll be okay. They’re nineteen, and they can do whatever they want.

… …

The news explodes all over the papers the next morning, old headlines torn off to make space for the more newsworthy. ‘SEVERAL BOYS UNCOVERED IN ILLEGAL GAY PROSTITUITION RAID’, says one. ‘BOYS LOCKED UP AND FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION’, says another. ‘MISSING BOYS OF THE PAST DECADE FOUND IN SECRET BROTHEL.’

The public eats up the sordid details; boys picked up from the streets at a young age, sent into a barred up house in the suburbs of Seoul to be taken care of until the age of fifteen, when they are forced into gay prostitution. They read about the clients going there in the cover of the deep night, helping to keep it secret from the religious and legal authorities. They read about the boys lacking formal education, studying by themselves at the house with no proper teachers. They read about the two oldest boys who’d somehow managed to escape the house one day and gone to the police station to make a report on the horrors they’d endured under the hands of what the police thinks is an organised crime syndicate of prostitution and child labour.

Well-meaning, law-abiding citizens shake their heads over it in grief and dismay; they can’t believe that such things could happen in their country, right under the noses of the police, without detection for four years. Psychologists are interviewed for their opinions of the emotional effects on the children; column writers expound on the danger of a complacent nation, the need for a better social care system. The churches preach against the dangers of succumbing to the sins of flesh, the need to follow a pure and godly life. A large majority of the population offers donations; a couple of companies offer to hire the two oldest boys, nineteen years old and ready to work.

A sympathetic public is dumbfounded when more interviews are conducted with the victims and they learn that one of the boys, a beautiful seventeen year old with a perfect M-shaped mouth, talked of loving another boy, a thin child who has forgotten how to speak. They don’t know how to react to the matter anymore; do they accept, do they condemn? Things like that should be clear-cut, black and white; they shouldn’t require people to decide whether to empathise with the victims or shun them for falling into social disaster.

Some people are certain that they can be talked out of it; once they’re in the real world meeting some lovely girls, they’ll get over their infatuation. Others aren’t so sure; you can’t expect the boys to change just because they’re in the greater society now, with all its different norms and rules.

In the end, a couple of mega-churches take on the financial responsibility of providing education for the boys below sixteen years of age. The two oldest take up part-time jobs at a supermarket; the other boys are put into welfare homes until they have somewhere else to go, and they send the beautiful boy back to the home that he’d run away from. The editors of the newspapers and television news cut out the parts reporting how the mute child and another boy, chubby-cheeked and big-eyed, had cried when they were taken from the house and placed in the welfare home. The authorities are helping these stupid, clueless kids. They don’t need to have their actions questioned.

News comes in every day; life goes on. It doesn’t take long for the news media to turn to other matters; the public has a short attention span. A week or two, and then the latest North Korean military scandal is selling more papers than the boy prostitutes. The nation forgets when the news media does.

… …

They’re standing at the entrance of the welfare home when Heechul comes to retrieve them, Hyukjae and Donghae and Ryeowook, and all three of them cry when Heechul hugs them. They try to think of something to say, but nothing seems adequate. It’s been a year. The wind is getting chill again.

“Will we all live together again?” Donghae asks when they’re in the taxi. “Will we really all live together, and we won’t have to be separated?”

Heechul hates making promises, but this time he says, “Yes.” He and Jungsu, and latterly Jongwoon, have worked their asses off for a year so that they can make promises like this.

“I want to see Jongwoon hyung again,” Ryeowook says.

“You will when he gets home tonight,” Heechul says. He turns his head to look at Hyukjae, squashed up against the side of the car as Donghae bounces happily between him and Ryeowook. “Hyukjae-yah.” He’s two years too late, but he tries anyway. “I’m sorry that I slapped you.”

Hyukjae smiles. He looks like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t. He looks out of the car window instead, leans his forehead against the cool glass and watches the gravel in the road skidding past. Donghae grips his hand, and he grips back. He has never closed himself to Donghae. He used to show Donghae the total numbers of dead brown leaves lying on the lawn.

They have a proper reunion that night when Jungsu and Jongwoon return from work. Hyukjae and Donghae refuse to let go of Jungsu, and Ryeowook is practically glued to Jongwoon. They laugh and cry and hold each other and promise that they’ll never hurt again, that they’ll be together always, that no amount of interfering public and nosy churches and insincere sympathy will pull them apart again. Jungsu says he has dreamed of this for the past year. They look on, and they smile a little, when Heechul kisses the side of Jungsu’s mouth with a gentleness they always knew he possessed.

… …

Hyukjae speaks for the first time a week later, voice almost rusty from disuse. He has to clear his throat a couple of times before the words come out.

“Sungmin hyung gave me this before we were separated,” he says, picking something out of his jeans pocket. Jungsu takes it, and Heechul leans over to look at it. It is a crude sketch of two boys, hand-in-hand, at a train station.

“Oh, Hyukjae,” Jungsu says, and hands back the paper to him so carefully that it might be a piece of jewel. Hyukjae pockets it again.

“He was raped by his dad, you know?” he says. “That’s why he ran away from home.”

Heechul suddenly sees Sungmin vividly, the flushed cheeks and shining eyes and smiling mouth that day at the kitchen, the delicate shape of his face, the way his lips had quivered when Hyukjae was slapped. He wishes he could un-see Sungmin, but he knows he can’t and this stifling sadness, this feeling of momentary suffocation, will always be Sungmin’s mark on him.

“I’m so sorry, Hyukjae.” Jungsu rubs away the tears forming at the sides of his eyes. “I should have been able to save him. I should have hidden him away when they tried to send him back home.”

“You didn’t know,” says Hyukjae, reaching out to touch Jungsu. His long sleeves fall back and they see the scars on his arms, still so startling against his pale skin.

“I should have known,” says Jungsu, but he knows that blaming himself hurts Hyukjae. He pulls Hyukjae tight against him instead, breathes into his soft hair. There are some things that won’t change, no matter how much they wish they could rewrite the past. They just have to find a way to make sure that the past doesn’t write into the future.

… …

Even the most devastating wounds heal. They agree that they won’t talk about anything from the past that induces tears, and the ban works better than expected.

Donghae finds a job, and then Hyukjae. The jobs aren’t great, aren’t anywhere near great, really, but it’s a start. Together, they save enough money to send Ryeowook for tertiary education, and he says he’ll become a successful businessman and none of them will ever have to want for anything. He’ll take care of all of them, give Jungsu hyung and Heechul hyung a break. Donghae thinks the idea is awesome, and Hyukjae asks to be taught about the global market and stock trading and everything that confuses him about economics. Jongwoon warns Ryeowook against looking too long at the other guys in college, and Ryeowook laughs at him.

At night, Heechul sleeps with his arm around Jungsu’s waist. Dreams about how far they’ve come, and (somehow this feels more important), how much further they’ll go.

end

I am so, so sorry about the vagueness of this entire thing.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ky-rin.livejournal.com

what, oh my god, HYUKMIN A:SLDKA:SK i need to read this when i'm sober, ok. ♥♥♥ I love you prissy cho bff!!!

SERIOUSLY

I LOVE YOU

AND I'M TOTALLY MAD SOMEONE BEAT ME TO FIRST COMMENT :| COS I'M POSSESIVE LIKE THAT

Edited Date: 2010-05-29 08:45 am (UTC)

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[eeteuk/heechul, sungmin/eunhyuk] the shadows were longer that year

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