STARTING LINE

It’s a long abhorrence, scalding, one he nurses to a malleable perfection. Its particular use, however, was still undecided. Still as debatable as it had been since its inception, somewhere along his adolescence. He recounts himself almost festering amidst his unlit bedroom, this resentment a type of possession asphyxiating him tightly, cutting more deeply each passing schoolday. 

He suspects it’s because he remembers his original foray into the highschool. Still young enough then to be unassuming, innocent and openminded. A new attendee: he wanted friends, he had to reach out to make them. He ensured his own amicability, words fumbling, smiling nevertheless. 

A vulnerability. His hatred begins when he makes himself weak and doesn’t assess it as weakness. When he tries to reach out and doesn’t dismiss the thought as pointless. That moment recycling itself: stood stupidly at lunch period, working a wasted hope for social acceptance, maybe. 

Haseok tramples that.

The figurative stampede persists unrelentingly in a resounding murder. It’s repeated by the day, any mutual period change that might see them beside each other in a corridor. It never ends, evidently. It’s just a long pause, resumed when the superyacht they’re aboard proves uncomfortably small somehow. Small enough that they overlap, a brief collision seeing Sunan’s drink poured over Haseok’s shirt in a generous douse. 

“Fuck!” Glass put aside, hands padding about for some kind of tissue. “No, it wasn’t fucking deliberate. Don’t start with me, either. You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I care enough about you to try and ruin your fucking clothes at a party.” Venomous enough for a partial lie. “Maybe if you fucking moved instead of just fucking standing there — !”

he never liked the presence of that new kid, the one who always walked with far more pep and energy in his heels that made him bouncy, likable to others. haseok hated the way that korean sounded on the boy’s tongue, far too foreign and broken than anything that could be deemed acceptable. in truth it made haseok think about the own accent that lingered on his tongue that distinguished himself from everybody else, but the matter of the fact was everyone would always look the other way with haseok — his parents paid for him to just be groomed that way. he was adored by many with no effort of his own; all thanks to his mother’s and father’s charitable contributions to the holy church and god’s watchful eye over their precious family.

and, of course, the same watchful eye that had know what had been happening between haseok and taehyun all throughout their high school years, the nights haseok made the other male swear eternal secrecy to never telling a soul.

haseok would never let anything about his personal life slip to anybody in his class. and even if that meant subjecting the new boy from thailand to years of relentless harassment and bullying, haseok still preferred pinning the target of gay kid on the back of anybody that wasn’t himself.

“i didn’t even say anything,” haseok is already hot on his toes, ready for a round two of belittlement and public shaming to begin. time really does a number. sunan’s korean has improved considerably since they’d finished their younger years together at hannam, words that haseok never expected could come out of the foreign male’s mouth now sounding almost as naturally as his own. hearing his improvement pushes haseok to rack his brain for a retort as he glides his tongue across his bottom lip in search for something to spit back. 

everyone a stone’s throw from everywhere—sabrina is still shaking the polaroid in her hand by the time the beach comes into view. the shore in eyeline seems crowded. they make an unspoken agreement to steer their course, turning left. find somewhere infinitely less crowded. darker, and darker. quieter and quieter. the photo finally starts to show. the crowd thins. the night deepens. she snaps her gum and it echoes against the open air. she pushes her pink heart-shaped sunglasses onto her head. bubblegum bitch through and through in her tight lightwash denim beach shorts, red crocheted crop top and raspberry dior slides. dainty gold-and-pearl chain necklace and red instax hanging around her neck. fragrant dark cherry lip tint coating her lips. she squints at the polaroid in her hand, then laughs. “sexy,” she comments, in her most pronounced and obnoxious american accent. sabrina holds the picture up for him to see—a candid: him in his room, topless, about to put on a shirt—then laughs out loud, silky black hair brushing her bare silky-skin shoulders as she throws her head back. so far so that her gum might have rolled down her throat. she checks, chews. it’s still there, so she blows another bubble as she holds up the picture in front of her. gives his arm a playful squeeze, hiding genuine surprise at how hard his bicep actually is, “you’ve been working out.” the bubble pops. she slides the gum under her tongue. she swallows—excess saliva from all the chewing. she’s still looking at the picture—objectifying at this point. her voice quiets to something more sincere, “you look good.” she slides the polaroid into her pocket.

haseok hadn’t bothered to ask her about the engagement. he didn’t find a need to, simply because there was no ring on sabrina’s finger to question in the first place. 

in truth, haseok had forgotten about the polaroid she’d snapped of him earlier, back when he’d almost forgone a shirt entirely and considered coaxing her onto his mattress instead. sabrina always felt so temporary and fleeting; she was the sand between his fingers that he could never manage to save a single piece of in his own selfish antics. but here she is, again, in the flesh; he makes too much eye contact with her, just enough counts of shoulder brushes that hinted at something between them. (but what?)

he doesn’t blink when she reaches for his arm, giving his muscle enough of a squeeze that sparks something inside his chest and zeroes his gaze in on her. he basks in the moment he witnesses of sabrina evidently staring at his picture for too long. it gives him a slight ego trip, because she looks equally as good beside him. the thought of how easily her crop top could slip off at any given moment makes a quick appearance in his thoughts before drifting away again when he watches the pink bubble appear and disappear between her lips. “so do you,” he picks his brain for something to say before deciding upon those three words, his delivery confident and direct, just as he means for them to be. 

as she’s putting the polaroid in her own pocket, haseok reaches for the underutilized white instax camera that had been slung across sabrina’s chest.

sometimes it escapes her how small the world really is. too much time spent looking into microscopes, feeling bigger than. it’s dangerous, but by the time she realizes it, it’s always too late. and she should really start minding the width of the world more. should start paying closer attention to how narrow the hallway of life is.

one wrong step and the walls close in. one wrong turn and she’s stuck.

this is definitely a wrong turn, she thinks. sitting at a table inside a trendy english café near his campus. waiting for her order buzzer to buzz. she’s scratching the insides of her palms, forgetting that paint chips. and she keeps glancing towards the door, thinking—no, knowing, she should leave. abandon this whole daring escapade. but it’s not like her to second guess. stubbornly, she refuses to do so.

she turns her eyes to her shoes, her hands. café lights catch in twenty-four carat. sabrina stretches her fingers, stares at the glittering, glimmering thing.

she slips off her ring and tosses it into her handbag.

bzzzzt! bzzzzt! too late to leave now.

nor would his newly self proclaimed office he’d also used his pretty privilege toward claiming for himself — it took almost no effort to win over doctor jung, a doctor not even fifteen years older than himself. she was still quite pretty for her age, haseok had noted, considering a compliment like that from the jin family heir to be law.

not that she made any difference in his mind, though. haseok was so confident that the undivided attention he could command of any female doctor in his wing of the hospital was well deserved, and almost expected by him. he painted every conversation, every small talk or mild flirting with the older female doctors with sheer improvisation and bullshitting. anything he could say that would help him always be sure to get his way, especially with hansol often working alongside him and unwilling to listen to anything the other male had to say, was all that mattered to the seemingly pristine and well-mannered young man. 

it does matter, however, when haseok returns from a quick run to the kimbap restaurant inside the hospital and is greeted by the sight of the face of someone who didn’t match the ambiance of the hospital in the slightest. adorned in her luxury attire and poised posture to match, haseok processes then that sabrina is here. she’s actually here.