LOOPiN.

Taesong pushes his very fine tablecloth, a gift from his mother, closer to himself and further away from Haruki, involuntarily. He runs his hands over the embroidery for a sensory release, and doesn't sigh.

Seungsoo shakes his head, raising an arm as if he’ll throw one of the couch pillows Haruki’s way. “My girlfriends, yeah, yeah, yeah, what about it? You’re so prejudiced, Kiu–”

“Prejudiced!”

“And you don’t understand the complexities of love. But anyway, no. I have plans. ‘Can’t make it for Christmas.”

“Your girlfriends could come here,” Haegon attempts from where he’s curled up on the floor, back to the couch’s arm, shy. “They could hang around.”

“They can’t,” Beomseok shuts the idea down, eyes wide and scandalized, and looks at Taesong like it’s his fault they're discussing polygamy at breakfast.

At the farthest corner of the table, a hand is raised. Taesong indulges it with a smiley, “Yes, Jiahang?”

“What’s the budget for what you want?” J.J asks, leaning with his elbows forward, tapping his nails on the table. “And if we’re doing anything, I should get two presents, because it’s my birthday.”

“December 19th, Jay,” Dylan says, in full English this time. He gives Jiahang an amused look. “We already got you three cakes. That's two cakes more than anyone got.”

“Cupcakes, Chihoon, from a CU. It meant nothing to me. What I want is–!”

“You don't choose what you get at Secret Santa,” Taesong nibs the demand by the bud, and immediately Dylan’s Konglish sounds tired.

“Man, Secret Santa? That's what you want to do, seriously?”

Taesong opens his mouth, closes it. “It’s friendly…”

It's an eruption of noise from there, mostly protest. For inexplicable reasons to Taesong, a second wave of the hyena laughter hits Seungsoo so badly that he starts coughing. Zhiming grabs him by his ankles and tosses his feet back onto the floor with a loud thud, inches away from Haegon, almost knocking him off the couch and causing a small disaster.

“Do it,” Haruki’s the one to say it at some point, too loudly. He puts his bottle down, taps at the table with it like a judge with their gavel. He’s a lot of sharp lines put together as he rises up and moves away, out of the kitchen, up to his room. He drags the noise with him.

“I guess it would be nice to… To do it…” Hanjae whispers. His eyes linger on the seat Haruki was sitting on, hoping to catch an imprint. It's plastic – Haruki left nothing behind.

Taesong finally sighs. He still finds it impossible to decode what makes them take decisions. It's definitely not him, the team leader.

But it’s been declared, and he’ll take it. Case closed, deal shut. They’ll do Secret Santa.

After having Taesong explain the rules of Secret Santa for twenty excruciating minutes at company grounds during lunch break, all cramped in the practice room, sorting out the names, J.J got a hold of his piece of paper, laughed vulcanically, and rushed to Haegon across the room to grab his arm, wave it up and down, up and down, and beg him to wait by the corridor with the broken water cooler. So Haegon tapped his foot, dug at his short nails, and went to wait by the corridor with the broken water cooler, wiping sweat off his forehead.

J.J struts to him like a prize pony, glowing. It’s a bad sign. He waves his folded piece of paper in front of Haegon's face, and Haegon stares at the neat hangul for ten grand seconds – too neat to ever come from Jiahang's crooked butterfingers –, waits for the punchline. But Jiahang’s smile goes from gleeful to maniacal, and he screeches: “Can you believe it?!”

“No, I can't. You fucking cheat,” Haegon spits, slapping his hand away and taking the scribble with him, giving it a second inspection.

“I didn’t! I didn’t cheat! I swear!”

“There’s no way you got Minwoo again,” Haegon dreads.

Jiahang flips his long hair, painted lilac at the tips now, shrugs. “He has such shit luck, Haegon. I’ll humiliate him.”

“Hang hyung, don't. Just get him nothing and be done with it. Everything will piss him off, you know it.”

(Haegon speaks vehemently because Secret Santa has sort of happened before, and it was an organized surprise attack done in December last year. On his 18th birthday, Jiahang suddenly descended from the Heavens – his obnoxious central Seoul apartment with a pool, three empty bedrooms beside his own, and a mini golf area – with his personal manager, Han Qiong, pulling a cart filled with boxes and more boxes of gifts. He gave Hanjae an Xbox, got a vinyl player for Dylan, arranged an entire two-day expedition to China for O.z, so on, and so forth.

It’s of note to know that ever since he got here, Jiahang had sort of tried to give Minwoo a billion gifts before, for a truce, all very fiercely rejected. Jiahang went all out on that year’s July 7th, Minwoo's birthday, and got him a very beautiful Yamaha SLG200NW that Minwoo sold the following day to some old man on the staff team for a grand total of twenty bucks, plus a pack of half eaten chewing gum he did not consume. He had declared: ‘I told you. You have nothing I want.’

So Jiahang got to Minwoo last December, who had his arms crossed like he was bracing for something awful, and walked right past him, greeted everyone else goodnight, vanished. Minwoo was simmering for the rest of the night about it, eying a spot on the wall. And, Haegon could swear on it, he was also smiling.)

“Hae hyung, listen, listen,” Jiahang says, pulling an arm over Haegon's shoulder. “You never ever ever pull the same trick twice. That's not how you play the game.”

“There's no damn game. He's going to beat you up, and you’ll deserve it.”

“Wrong! Minwoo’s a pussy. What’s he going to do about all of this?” Jiahang points at his broad shoulders, his tiny waist, and Haegon scoffs, tries to shake him off. “I’m invincible.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes, I am!”

“No, you’re–!”

“Haegon. A minute?”

They turn around, still conjoined, and under Beomseok's mild gaze Haegon pushes Jiahang fully off him, to the wall, and fixes his slouched posture.

“Hyung, I– Hi.”

Beomseok smiles at him, waves his hand as if to say ‘rest’, or ‘calm’. “Hello. Who did you get?”

Rubbing at his left elbow, J.J gasps annoyingly. “Beomseok, you can’t know! That’s cheating, and cheating is not mainly. You have to leave all the cheating to me.”

Beomseok turns to Jiahang directly and morphs his grin thinner, makes it into something someone would throw at a kid who’s talking too much, because it's impolite to yell at a kid to shut the fuck up. “Ah, J.J. So good to find you. Seo CEO wants to speak to you in his office, if you’d be so kind.”

“Whatever,” Jiahang very eloquently blows a raspberry. “He’ll wait. Who did you get?”

Beomseok laughs – three perfectly polite and hollow ha-ha-ha’s. “You’ll know when you know, Jason.”

J.J is being extra dismissed, doing overtime with them by the broken water cooler, but he’s great at pretending to not take a hint, even though Haegon is sure Jiahang has never gone through a single social interaction without the upper hand, the fuerdai bastard. And so J.J smiles like a shark, tilts his head, a twinkle in his eye. After some evaluation and crunching of his nose, he declares: “Haruki. You got Haruki.”

Beomseok’s face twitches minimally, his jaw gets a little tense, and he blinks slowly, quiet.

“You fucking cheat!” Haegon exclaims, and shoves J.J some more. “You're spying!”

“I’m not spying! He’s so easy to read, Haegon, c’mon! No one’s taking Secret Santa seriously anyway, just get him like, a stuffed owl or something, don't sweat it. Haruki’s kind of goth,” Jiahang walks forward and touches Beomseok's shoulder, patting him like a pet. It feels odd, improper even to Haegon’s eyes, for the two of them to be so near in weight. “Now now, you go tell Taesong, who I know got me, that I want fresh fruit for Secret Santa. None of those supermarket packages with little cubes inside, but whole starfruits or mangoes or melons! I miss those. Two of each is a good number, I’ll count it for my Christmas-Birthday. Just take that decision off his hands before he panics and gives me a plastic plant or a sweater. Thaaank yooou.”

And with an infuriating push of his bangs from his face, Jiahang is leaving, still springy. From behind Beomseok's shoulder, Haegon catches him mimicking puking before disappearing behind a corridor.

“What was that about?” Beomseok asks him. “Why did he ask you to wait?”

“Just to chat, he–” Haegon clears his throat once, twice. “He got Minwoo again.”

Beomseok pinches the bridge of his round nose. “Of course he did. He cheated. You?”

“Seungsoo hyung. I didn’t share, or cheat,” and as an afterthought: “Because it’s not… Mainly.”

Beomseok hums, but not quite yet in approval. He gives Haegon a once over, then fixates on something. “Whose shirt is this?”

Haegon looks down at his shirt, lime green, and feels his shoulders shrink. “I don't know, I just, I… I got it from the bin. Hanjae’s, I think, but he hasn't said anything. I’m not stealing. I'm sorry.”

“It's too long on you, Gon.”

Beomseok takes four steps closer, Haegon takes five back, reflex, back to the white wall. Unceremoniously, Beomseok pushes both sleeves of his shirt up and up. He eyes Haegon's from the wrists to the armpits, inspecting. Haegon stays still, angry for a second, and then not. 

Finding nothing odd – or odder than the butchery Haegon’s armpits have been since he was thirteen years old – Beomseok calms down, pushes the fabric back into place, Haegon’s twitchy hands safe into hiding. “If you don't know where your clothes are, say something to the cleaning woman. I’ll go back to sorting yours with mine. Don't make the members uncomfortable, Haegon, I beg you.”

“I won't, I’m not, I don't want to be–” Haegon doesn't say what. He doesn't need to. Quieter, head ducking down, he mumbles: “Thank you, hyung, for taking care.”

With a swift finger, Beomseok extracts a lonely strand of lash hair from Haegon’s cheek. Says: “You're welcome.”

“You’re really doing Secret Santa? Boo.”

Looking from his phone screen, open at a browse tab for Coupang, to the rolling char in front of him, Zhiming says: “To turn it into content.”

“Boo. It's like you guys aren't even trying to have fans. Did Sonny pitch it? He can’t pitch this type of stuff, he’s so stupid.”

Kwak Minyoung is, as always, too at home in Studio 1C, and having to deal with her so early in the afternoon has drained Zhiming of all of his patience. She’s launching, sat on his chair, one shoe over Minwoo’s, her body like a ‘NO TRESPASSING’ tape keeping him off the mixing table. They have nothing in common but a need to be working far earlier than they’re supposed to, just to have a false sense of slacking off on the clock, and Minyoung has officially declared them done for the week. She’s having lunch fifteen minutes before she’s supposed to.

“Taesong,” O.z clarifies. He pockets his phone, sits straighter in the tiny microfiber couch, and picks up a red sharpie. “Seungsoo didn't want to waste Christmas. He’s going to spend it with all of you.”

Minyoung crunches up her nose, eyes him up and down with a flare of disgust. “Who’s ‘all of us’?”

For a moment, Zhiming’s entire body goes rigid. He wonders if he made a mistake. “The girlfriends. You, Doah, Delilah.”

“Pfffff,” Minyoung laughs. A little piece of cabbage flies off her mouth, and O.z takes off his glasses to not see where it lands, cleans them on the fabric of his grey shirt to no avail. His lenses sit foggy on his face when he puts them back on, and he still catches the chewed piece of food, now a red and limp dot on the soundboard. “He's so sentimental, I’m not with him. We’re just fucking.”

Zhiming gives a leveled stare at Seungsoo’s flight jacket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape, at Seungsoo’s green cap keeping her dark hair occult.

“Please, producer Kwak, don’t use crude language inside the studio. I’ll be obligated to report you to HR.”

Minyoung’s smile grows wider, and she points with her chin to the whiteboard O.z is meticulously erasing. It should be plucked to the wall and used to keep track of everyone’s tyrannical recording schedules, nowhere close to any pair of hands but manager Choi’s.

“I’ll report you to New Wave Entertainment’s imaginary HR, ‘Z. You can't keep acting like we don't have deadlines and we don't need to keep everyone used to the new schedule.”

“We’re yet to have a release date for 2020. Deadlines are pointless. I won't enforce them,” Zhiming deadpans, which is not a lie, but it's not a winning argument either.

Minyoung adjusts herself on her seat, back straight in a mockery of him, and nods at O.z disapprovingly. “You should be crueler, Jimin, for your own good. You're too sheep, especially when it comes to that noodle limped crybaby. He’s not Rapunzel, there's no tower for you to climb. He doesn't need your help. No one does right now.”

“You're mistaken.”

Minyoung crosses her arms. “How so?”

“You are.”

There’s a one-minute-long stare match between them, heated, until Zhiming casts his eyes down, back on the board, and makes a sequence of perfectly round zeros. Erases them. Replicates the numbers, even more neat and overlapping.

“Great, now I got to be out of reach by Christmas, thank you all very much,” Minyoung says. She takes another bite of her lunch, and concludes around a mouthful, openly smelling Seungsoo’s jacket, smiley: “I hate Na Seungsoo, fuck.”

It takes Beomseok way too long to take in the crowd of staff setting up cameras and a light reflector, and understand what's happening around him on Secret Santa day. They rented the company reception for it, with the nicer plants and seats, the all white lights hanging from the vases and legs, the ‘content corner’.

“We’re filming it?” He asks the first person he can see when he’s rushed to sit down by staff, which happens to be Seungsoo, getting blush on his cheekbones.

“Duh? Why are you surprised, it's on the group chat.”

“I haven't…” Beomseok reaches for his pockets, takes out his phone, clutches it. It’s all cold and smooth metal slipping through his fingers.

Seungsoo snorts and elbows Minwoo on his right, who’s getting cat-eyes drawn over his cat-eyes, says, “Minwoo, Old Man has the group chat muted.”

“I fucking know. It’s why I sent you a message directly, as always, Beomseok. Didn't you see?”

“Minwoo,” Seungsoo repeats, “Old Man has you muted. Everyone has you muted.”

“I thought it would be a team exercise,” Beomseok says through plucked lips and tight teeth as a woman brushes lip tint on his mouth, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

“Yeah, a filmed one. Why are you shitting your pants? What the Hell did you buy?”

Beomseok tries to rub his temple, gets his hand pushed back down by his makeup artist who now has a curling iron in her nimble hands, mumbles: “Can we not?

Minwoo pushes his chair further back, stares him up and takes a long and loud sip of his pitch black coffee, moving his jaw like he is somehow chewing on it, and might spit it on Beomseok's face. He turns away soon, not dignifying Beomseok with a direct answer.

More and more people come, all the members, sat and ready too fast. Haruki does the honors of kicking off Secret Santa, and Beomseok can not hear him over the anxious bee hum in his ears, can’t register a thing at all but a small commotion endless minutes into the whole thing: right after Minwoo stands up, a gray and worn out guitar case sustained against his seat, passing it on Hanjae all the way on the back.

Hanjae’s face becomes overcome with emotion when he gets the hammered zipper to open, revealing an old acoustic guitar, chipped and yellowed by time. Minwoo’s very first instrument, Minwoo explains, and Hanjae can't stop cradling it like it’s a newborn baby, eyes watery.

“I’ll treat it well, I…! Thank you, really, it’s…! It looks well cared for, hyung, so…!”

Minwoo gives him a short nod, face blank. “You’re welcome.”

J.J scoffs, too loud, crossing his legs. “Wow, a junk guitar. A junk guitar from some dumpster,” he makes two mocking thumbs up, lifts an imaginary glass. “Cheers.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Cameras. Don't be an animal,” Sangwon stresses from a corner, hands clasped together, and then contained: “J.J, please. Behave.”

But there’s no saving it anymore. They’ll have to mute the footage, and when they can't, probably cut some of Hanjae’s big gratitude off the video.

They go on. Hanjae got Haegon a nail polish kit that Beomseok disapproves of. Seungsoo receives a bright orange Speedo from Haegon, a gift that reeks of staff interference by some faces behind the camera, and Beomseok has hated it ever since Kwak Minyoung pulled Haegon to it behind his back, but not as much or as openly as manager Choi does. The cameraman says they’ll blur it to incognito, but Seungsoo can’t stop cackling about it, some inner joke Beomseok missed, and Jiahang is making a case that it should stay crystal clear, it’ll get a big laugh, they should put it on the thumbnail, so it will happen, it’ll be on the thumbnail, Choi Sangwon liking it or not.

Seungsoo got Dylan, Dylan got O.z, O.z got Beomseok – a tie –, and by then nothing is a mystery anymore, and the room has become hazy.

“Who’s left? Who got me, who got me?” Haruki asks for show, tapping his one ringed finger on the leg of his chair, metal clinking against metal.

Beomseok hesitates when manager Choi motions for him to stand up. He runs his sweaty palms over his jeans, counts to ten internally. He walks from the center of the room to stand directly in front of the sitting form of Haruki, who’s got his shoulders slouched for once. Beomseok’s back is to the center camera, now how he’s supposed to walk. Haruki looks wan. They always put him in foundation one shade lighter than his real oily skin.

Mutely, Beomseok reaches for his back pocket and hands Haruki three pieces of laminated paper – warm yellow, navy blue, street-cone orange. There’s no words pooling in his mouth, and in the quick seconds that it takes for the gifts to go from hand to hand, everything outside gets greyed out.

“It’s… Counseling,” Haruki announces to the room at large, his dark eyes dragging around the printed letters like his mouth has not caught up to his brain. And then he stares into the papers, eyes unblurring, and Beomseok has to sustain a look back, has to watch as Haruki says, Korean tight and slow, head rising: “I do not understand.”

It's a bullet off Beomseok’s mouth, the killer response: “You’re an alcoholic, Haruki, and I’m deeply worried about your well-being.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chihoon says, his version of cursing, and with it the main cameraman immediately makes a lousy signal for every single camera to be turned off.

“Okay,” it’s Haruki’s answer, mid laugh, and again with a curt nod, crumbling the flyers all together on his palm: “Okay.”

“Beomseok,” Taesong calls, flinching before all the syllables are out, but Beomseok won’t move in any direction, it’s a little petrified with adrenaline.

“You’re not doing this at Secret Santa, my God,” Dylan is scandalized. “That’s such a dick move, respectfully."

“It’s been hard trying to find a good moment to talk–”

“So you chose now? Look at all these people!”

“I didn't know we would…” Beomseok motions to the tight space, made tighter by the filming crew, too much to scatter gracefully even with manager Choi’s commanding eyes on them. “Someone has to have this conversation with him, Chihoon, now more than ever, it’s unbearable, and everyone is dragging–”

“And why should that someone be you?! What do you even know?!” Seungsoo pipes up, and he’s in blink right there, hand on Haruki’s shoulder.

Haegon gets too angry on Beomseok's behalf, face red, and his chair is on the floor from the impact of him jumping up: “Shut up! Taesong wanted to talk to him last month, in the van to the thing, the variety thing, we had to stop three times because he looked like he was dying, we all said before the comeback we had to! You’re all fucking cowards!”

“And Taeng didn't, Haegon! No one did because it’s not good timing!”

“Enough, all of you!” Sangwon’s voice is a crack of thunder falling over the reception, and he’s moving like an avalanche until he’s inches away from Beomseok’s chest, digging a strong finger at the center of his ribcage. Beomseok doesn’t flinch, but it’s by very little. The manager’s voice is a sibil: “You have forty minutes to find something decent, Lee. Get a Sneaker bar from the vending machine and wrap it in toiled paper, for all I care, but don't stress me any further, do you hear?”

Beomseok gives Sangwon a curt, robotic nod, and feels his feet walk him out of the company through the front door.

“Manager Choi,” Taesong meekly attempts to speak, eyes wide and ever moving across the room, sensing it hollow. “It might be best not to keep–”

Sangwon lifts a paralyzing hand Taesong’s way. “Park Taesong, we’re on schedule. I don't wanna hear it.”

“Thirty minutes,” Haruki interrupts, his grin razor sharp and crooked, almost laying on his seat. “Not forty, bring him back, say it’s–”

“Don’t you dare talk over me, Japan. Forty. Now, the rest of you, wrap everything back up, and clean the damn floor. Fifteen minutes,” He gives Haruki a poignant glare, claps once. “We’ll try a second take once he’s back.”

“Cunt,” Haegon whispers, kicking and stepping on all the bubble wrap he can get under his feet.

Sangwon walks around the room humming, one with the low light, holding a trash bin and shoving throwaway packages of snacks, knocking bottles inside.

Haruki lets the dust sit and simmer during the week, waiting for Sangwon to pull him off a pile of scraps on the miracle nights he can arrange, an excuse – it's important to make it seem like he can't do anything alone to not be left alone, to always room with the manager.

“You're on my bed, mister,” Sangwon says, not having to turn around to actually check, and Haruki laughs small and honest about it.

He turns on the loose bedding, elongates his limbs, his stomach flat and bony under his shirt. “I like it best here. Smells like you. Like it would be, if it was our bed."

Sangwon’s eyebrows lift all the way up on his face, touching the deep wrinkles on his forehead. He smirks almost, a lopsided stretching his full cheeks, and walks over, sits at the edge of the bed,

“What’s that on your hand, uh?” Sangwon asks, and gestures to the fist Haruki has for a right hand, resting against his chest. Inside it, the street-cone orange pamphlet, salvaged.

“It… is nearby. Near the church that’s all white and blue.”

Sangwon grabs at the paper, stands one hand out, a gesture of ‘give’. Haruki contorts his body and reaches for his jeans' back pockets, takes out the two other paper balls, and they're off his hold, tossed to the dark pit of trash.

“Forget about that. You’re not an alcoholic, Haruki, you’re twenty. Beomseok was trying to humiliate you. He’s projecting, poor fuck. That moron thinks everyone that's ever drank a drop of Soju will get themselves in a chair like his useless father. Don't mind him at all.”

“Will you do anything about it?”

A long, long pause from Sangwon, as if he’s mulling something over, something Haruki can’t peek. The bed creeks when he leaves. “I’m doing enough by being here.”

Haruki sighs through an open mouth – frustrated maybe, tired definitely. He looks at the vague shape of the alarm clock on the nightstand, concludes: late.

“Will you stay?”

“On a Tuesday?” Sangwon asks. Whoosh goes the blackout curtains when he leans forward to unwrap them, covering the entire window over his sometimes-bed. Haruki reaches a hand to tap at one of the bottoms of his shirt, gets his hand batted away. “Why?”

“Why not? If you can not on Christmas…”

Sangwon looks down at Haruki, shakes his head, his smile retreating slowly. “Christmas is not important. We don’t care about Christmas.”

“We can not care about Christmas,” Haruki corrects, and pushes himself by the torso up with a shaky elbow. The gloves are off on both of them now, sudden like that. “Are you taking him, her somewhere? Your son. Your wife. The family, the dog. For the holiday life.”

“Holiday life?” Sangwon chuckles and leans down to poke him firmly, feeling at Haruki’s cheekbone, wiping leftover makeup a tad rough, cleaning his finger on Haruki’s pillow. “Why are you being so bitter to me, hm? What did I do?”

“Nothing. So your usual.”

“‘Nothing’, you say? My usual is ‘nothing’?”

“Just… You could ease up on me in front of everyone. Since you love me. ‘Japan’?”

Sangwon is rolling his eyes; Haruki can feel it more than see it. The world that is their sometimes-room spins, shrinks. “Grow a spine, Haruki, for fuck’s sake. That's nothing. You think I would get to tuck you in if I held your hand every time someone is a dick to you? I talk to everyone the way I must in the office, and you know exactly why that is.”

“But it's all the time now,” Haruki pushes, rubbing at his bangs, uneven and shallow. He gets hair extensions now, just on the front – from stress, from lack of vitamins. “You are rude all the time, to me, when in here too. You are bitter at me, I can tell. I can always tell.”

“Nonsense. What I am is annoyed at you now, because you're not making any sense. The effort you put on to be insufferable when you want to is truly commandable."

Haruki shakes his head firmly, almost a spasm. The korean is too quick, too rigid off Sangwon, in and off his ears. Haruki tries to chase vocabulary, can’t, ends up with a nosedive on his accent: “More deep than that. I do not remember when– Do not turn, look at me, please, it is hard to say all– When you last said it to me that you love me.”

“Haruki, not this shit again,” Sangwon drags both palms across his face, angry. He needs a minute, when it flares, to place his hands somewhere.

“Stop. Stop, serious, Sangwon, do not right now. It’s a talk, just a talk! I told you, I do not need it every day, not all the days, just sometimes, like now. I would like,” Haruki swallows dry, forces it out: “To hear you say it now, close to Christmas."

Sangwon says nothing for maybe thirty seconds more, and the cooling down failed. He puts both hands on a grip on his waist, on his belt, scoffs. “You're making a demand on my face for three words you can’t even pronounce right? For the sake of what, your own ego? That's not how life works. You can't extract what you want when you want it, I’m not a claw machine.”

“If it is true, why is it hard to say it all the time?” Haruki asks, on his knees on the bed now, looking at the blur Sangwon is. “I say I love you easy all the time, because it is the truth!”

“Oh, do you? Because you shouldn’t, not unless you want me fucked!”

“‘I love you, Haruki’! Four words, not three, simple to say! So say it, just– Say it!”

Sangwon laughs, an explosion of a sound, disarming. “That's the most pathetic you’ve sounded in years. Can you not hear yourself?”

Haruki blinks thrice in a millisecond, lips tights. He’s off the bed, crossing the ocean of linoleum tiles, his bones aching, his hands forward.

“Sangwon, just say it one time,” He mumbles around a hard swallow, the words feverish, and they're almost face to face. “I just need it one time, and I’ll shut up for the whole month, promise. Until next year.”

Sangwon looks down at where Haruki is holding him by the collar, their feet bumping, so near a collision they are, and then up slowly. His eyes are very round, very dark. He has twin dimples dotting the corner of his mouth, and Haruki tries to remember them, tries to remember the way they make him feel when they pop up on Sangwon's face, the first time he touched one of them – magic.

“You're grabbing at me now, that's what you're doing? Have you lost your fucking mind? You’re that unwell? Hey, you’re going to force out of me what you want? That’ll make you feel real good about yourself, Haruki, won’t it? Real mature. Real fucking human.”

Haruki’s hold becomes a grip for a short second, the end of his thumbs and index fingers as white as the polyester of Sangwon's button, but he lets go, retreating completely. He presses his tongue between his premolars, and breathes tight as Sangwon cultivates the silence between them, adjusting his collar, running a hand through his shallow hairs. A punishment, Haruki understands, for failing to cool them down.

“Listen,” Sangwon calls out eventually, voice an octave lower, rumbling. “I know it gets to you when it's cold outside and there's not a lot of sun and everyone's going back home for a day or two, and you can't, because no one wants you back. But I’ve been here with you despite everything, haven't I? My neck’s been on the line ever since you crawled into my life, Haruki, illegal, needy, but when have I ever run away from what you are? When haven't I chosen you and me, me and you, through the two long years you’ve been under my watch, tsunami and all? Not even when it would be easy, when it would be right for me to leave you, did I leave you. And that's your answer right there, that's what you should hold on to. Have some fucking confidence for once on yourself, for me. For us. Because I can’t stand this theater. Understood?”

“Yes,” Haruki nods. His tongue is, suddenly, made of dry sand. “It is understood, but–”

“Good. It's good you understand. I need you to understand,” Sangwon says, eyes unblinking, and reaches his right hand forward. He presses Haruki’s cheeks together, turns him into a gaping fish in between his thumb and index finger, and kisses him there with a quick peck. He has to get on his tippytoes to do it – tippytoes or a yank at Haruki's face down to meet him, no in-between. Tonight: tippytoes, a feather-light brush of skin. “Goodnight. Don't call me.”

“I will not call,” Haruki croaks, chin trying to follow Sangwon’s fingers peeling off him, and: “I am… sorry. Very sorry.”

“I know, I know. No hard feelings. I know you, you’re tired, I get. Get to bed now, your bed, I’ll turn the light off. It's all good. We're okay, it’s all okay. I’m not angry.” It’s chanting from him, lullabying even, and Haruki eyes the floor as he’s moved backwards, nodding aimlessly. He’s tired, definitely – and he’s not angry, too. He doesn’t want to be.

Sangwon helps him out of his shirt, folds it for him and puts it in a chair near the door on his way out, neat. Haruki can feel the shadow of him linger. To it, he mumbles: “Happy Christ–”