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perfeggso · 4 years

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till the sun’s seeing through my eyes (yumark)

hitting for six

Yuta and Mark are next-door neighbors who grew up together, joined at the hip until Yuta went off to college. Due to their four-year age gap, Mark’s freshman year at the same school marks the halfway point of an unprecedented amount of time apart. Yuta is sure he can handle it, until Mark’s arrival home for spring break makes him wonder if the fondness he has for his friend might be blooming quite literally into something stronger. It’s up to him to handle the consequences.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Masterlist

Characters: Yuta x Mark + NCT ensemble, other SM (and non-SM (?)) idols tbd, character families

Genres: heavy angst, fluff, Hanahaki!AU, small town!AU, slight Witchcraft/Magic!AU, College!AU

Warnings: blood and gore, mentions of death, disease, vomiting, college-typical alcohol use, swearing

Rating: T

Length: 8.3k

Yuta twirled the stick of rock candy he’d picked up at the market around between his lips, enjoying how it felt rough on his tongue and filled his mouth with the flavor of unadulterated sugar. He checked his phone – no new messages.

He tapped the toe of his sneakers against the linoleum floor of Kun’s coffeeshop and drummed his hands against the seafoam counter before pulling the candy from his lips with a pop and dunking it in his glass of mint tea. All around him, the clinking, hissing, and chatter of a well-liked café filled his ears, and the arousing scent of coffee steam kept him a fidgety kind of alert. On second thought, replace “alert” with “distracted.”

“Did you hear me, Yuta?” Sicheng was saying, sitting at the table nearest the espresso machine and picking at a mini egg custard tart. Yuta had not heard him, that much was evident.

Yuta sighed with some effort, then made a fake sorry face. “No – no, I apologize, babe, I didn’t.”

Sicheng rolled his eyes. “Whatever, it wasn’t important.” He took a large bite of his tart, pale, buttery crumbs affixing to his lips.

“Neko latte!” Kun interrupted, setting a white coffee cup in front of Yuta, the frothed milk on top of it shaped like a stubby-tailed cat that wiggled as the cup moved. Yuta had to restrain himself from jiggling its foam butt into oblivion. Kun returned a moment later with a plate. “Aaaand, let’s see, one slice of orange poppy seed bread.” He dropped his smiling customer service face momentarily as he leaned in towards Yuta. “I thought you said you could handle calling out the orders. That was my condition for letting you behind the counter, wasn’t it?”

Yuta shrugged, repeating the order at double Kun’s original volume and smirking when a customer instantly shot out of her seat to come collect it. Yuta downed his tea, burning his throat, and stuck the melting candy back into his mouth as she made her way over, pushing the now-empty cup forward as an encouragement to leave a tip in it, which the poor girl did. Kun snatched the sticky bill from the cup and shook it out, disapproval contorting his face as he voiced his disappointment with a simple “nope.”

“But Kun, I watched her earlier and she didn’t leave a tip when she ordered,” Yuta protested, making himself laugh until it was threatening to become a cough. Dammit. He pulled in a shaky breath. “I’m only trying to help.”

Kun pointed to the seating area. “Out.”

Yuta sulked his way to the chair opposite Sicheng, noting on his way that it was still pouring not insignificantly outside. Yuta had gotten off work early because of the rain; the indoor soccer field had been reserved weeks earlier for the high school team. Instead, he’d taken his kids to Yukhei’s gym for a short workout and then sent them home, choosing to wile away the rest of his time waiting for Mark with his buddies over a warm beverage.

“Has he responded yet?” Sicheng asked.

“No,” Yuta pouted. He’d sent Mark a text nearly twenty-five minutes ago saying he was ahead of schedule and to come meet him at Kun’s shop. “Ugh, wait, I’m sorry. What were you saying earlier? Nothing you say is unimportant, friend.”

Sicheng looked like he wanted to smack Yuta and hug him at the same time. Yuta was used to this.

“I was only teasing you for missing my speech last night because no one cut you off,” Sicheng clarified, wiping his hands against each other once he’d finished eating.

The memory of heaving in his bathroom in an attempt to extract whatever was obstructing his airways hit Yuta like an unforeseen ocean wave. He nodded slowly, schooling his face to pretend to be irritated rather than scared. He didn’t want to lie to his friend, but not even he knew what the real issue was, and it would undoubtedly get sorted, so why worry people?

Yuta made his face into the disappointment emoji. “Mm-hm,” he said. “Well since you can only process my suffering as it pertains to you, maybe you’ll cut me off next time you have something important to say.”

Sicheng raised his eyebrows. “Someone’s feeling bitchy today,” he observed. “This is because your boyfriend’s not texting back, isn’t it?”

Yuta scoffed. “Boyfriend,” he huffed in disbelief, but the word stirred a sickened feeling inside him. He chose to ignore that. “Yeah, it is,” he teased, “you jealous?”

Sicheng shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “It means you’ll let me be for a couple weeks.”

Yuta laughed, his body once again nearly giving into coughing. Like, choking on one’s dinner and needing the Heimlich kind of coughing. Instead of letting that happen and calling attention to himself, he doused his throat in the contents of a glass of water.

His breathing had been a bit better since he’d spoken with his mother that morning, but the problem wasn’t gone, and the raw coughing fits that started the day before were only growing more frequent. A particularly violent one had gripped him during practice, scaring some of his kids enough that he’d run away to the bathroom to get it under control. Thankfully, Yukhei had been in another room.

Yuta came from a tradition of hedge witches, of which his mother was a shining example. She ran an apothecary in town with his father; handling the medicine and potions side of it while he handled the business angle. She was a skilled potion-maker and healer, and she had a keen sense of spiritual effects on the physical. She was often able to gain insights that seemed so spot-on that Yuta had no choice but to believe whatever she told him to do.

She’d encouraged her children to utilize tarot cards from an early age and endeavored ever since to teach them everything she knew. Now and then, having someone so spiritually inclined as a parent could be burdensome, but it was times like these – when Yuta felt something strange and unwelcome stirring in him – that he felt he was lucky.

When Yuta had gone to the main house that morning, he found his mother in the kitchen, making banana pancakes as his little sister looked over her advanced biology homework. The high school still had a week left before spring break.

“Hi Haruna,” Yuta greeted, shoving her face softly into her papers and receiving a well-earned glare.

“Good morning, dingus. You really shouldn’t be partying when you have work in the morning.”

Haruna was a senior, less than a year younger than Mark (a fact which regularly escaped Yuta’s mind) and possessed an attitude problem – though one quite different from Yuta’s. That morning, she wore a long, eggplant-purple frock dress with lots of heavy eyeliner and her hair in a helmet-like bob. She might have been sartorially challenged and a bit of a bitch in Yuta’s view, but she was also his adorable little sister, and a veritable genius, he had to admit.

Yuta went to the fridge and pulled out an apricot yogurt. “I assure you I can handle myself,” he said, grabbing one of a collection of mismatched spoons and plopping it into his breakfast. “The last thing I need is a seventeen-year-old lecturing me on alcohol.”

Haruna tried to flick some of the syrup on her fork into her brother’s hair but missed. “I can’t wait until Momoka comes home to visit,” she grumbled. “Maybe you’ll listen to her.”

Yuta’s mother gave her youngest and middle child a heavy look of disapproval as she flipped a pancake with a wet, resounding plop. The action itself communicated as much authority as any scolding words could have. Yuta just smiled sweetly, digging into his yogurt.

“Yuta, dear,” she began, “can I interest you in some pancakes?”

Yuta shook his head, feeling a little guilty, but he was rarely very hungry in the mornings. “No, this is enough for me,” he said. His mother smiled. It was the same smile Haruna would flash when she was about to tease him.

“Well, I’m sure you didn’t come all the way over here just to bother your studious sister and refuse my cooking, so there has to be something else, hm? I’m right, aren’t I?”

Yuta sighed. As usual, she was indeed correct. “As a matter of fact, there is something bothering me.”

His mother listened attentively as he recounted the last day’s events: the asthma scare, trying to use the potion she’d taught him with a prayer, his concern over the reading he’d had that morning. All the while, she finished shaping her stack of pancakes and leaned on her elbows, steam rising from the food and swirling in front of her paisley house dress, fluffy hair, purple kerchief, and concerned face.

“It sounds to me like you’re having anxiety about change,” she offered once he’d finished. “You always tend to have flare-ups during transition periods.”

“Yeah,” Haruna cut in, spearing a chunk of pancake and narrowly escaping dropping it on her school papers, “remember when you were a freshman and you had a panic attack before coming home for winter break? You said you could hardly breathe all night and that you didn’t think you wanted to come back.”

Haruna seemed a little too casual with that difficult memory for Yuta’s liking, although she was right that he hadn’t forgotten. He pinched his eyebrows together.

“Is this a transition period though?” he asked. Everything for him was more or less the same as it had been all year.

His mother nodded. “I’d say so. Some of your younger friends are coming home, and Taeil will be going back to the city soon. There are a lot of moving pieces in your life at the moment, dear. I don’t think it's at all strange that you’re feeling off and maybe hiding some things from yourself.”

“Alternately,” quipped Haruna as their mother went to fetch a cloudy, pastel purple concoction she had sitting in a beaker by the window, “you’re just a drama queen.”

Yuta started. “Wanna get your butt kicked by a college athlete?” he threatened. Haruna stuck her tongue out at him.

“You mean former intramural college athlete?”

“That’s enough!”

Yuta and Haruna both turned to face their mother. She looked like her hair would be suspended in exasperation if she were in a Ghibli Movie. Yuta knew that meant it was time to Shut Up. Oops.

She sighed, running her hands over the lip of the beaker in her hand and muttering to herself to calm down. Then, she slid it forward to her son.

“Bring this to work with you, Yuta,” she advised, voice still stern. “I made it fresh this morning for the shop, but I think you could use it. It has lavender, mint, chamomile, soy oil, salts, and I’ve charged it with moon water. It’s something I’ve been messing around with for dealing with anxiety and stress during liminal periods in life.” Yuta nodded, listening attentively and twirling the little vial in between his fingers. She went on. “Then later whenever you have time, I want you to sit alone with your confusion for a little while. I think that might give you more insight into what is driving this spiritually and subconsciously. Try not to smother it, whatever it is.”

Of course his mom’s advice was essentially “meditate.” Why had he even bothered to ask? He nodded one more time, subdued, and dropped the vial of pale liquid into his pocket. He would put it into a water bottle and bring it along.

Yuta finished his yogurt and chucked the container into the recycling. “Thank you, Mom,” he said, snagging a pancake on his way out of the kitchen just to win a little more of her favor. “And have a good day, Haruna.”

“You too, dingus.”

“Tell me if you’re feeling better tonight!” his mother called after him, finishing off with a mild threat: “And I’ll be able to tell if you didn’t follow my directions!”

Yuta sighed for what felt like the eightieth time all day, watching the café’s glass door from over Sicheng’s shoulder for any signs of Mark. He didn’t know how to summon people or things, but he half-imagined that he did, concentrating so hard on the door that it was making his eyes cross. And in a matter of seconds, it worked (or, at least, the universe gave the illusion of it working).

Mark rushed into the coffeeshop, looking harried and tugging a cumbersome guitar case along with him which he tried desperately to protect with a too-small umbrella. The image put Yuta at attention, smiling.

“I’m so sorry!” Mark spluttered as he rushed through the door. “I was practicing, and I didn’t check my phone!”

“Whoa there,” Kun warned from behind the counter. “This does not need to be advertised to my entire clientele.”

Mark shook out his umbrella and shoved it into the holder in the entryway, checking with Yuta that they planned on staying for at least a little while and apologizing sheepishly to Kun.

He sat down at the table with Yuta and Sicheng as Yuta grinned at him.

“Don’t be sorry, Markie-boy,” Yuta said, poking Mark in the side and making him almost giggle his way out of his chair. As the chair tipped and then slingshotted violently back to its starting position from Mark regaining his balance, it clattered so loudly that it attracted more concerned looks than Mark had when he’d busted through the door. Yuta hardly seemed to register this as he gushed about how devoted his friend was to his craft that he would haul his equipment through a rainstorm. Kun rolled his eyes and huffed in defeat at yet another disruption.

“Mark, the usual?” he asked, and Mark nodded after nervously confirming Yuta didn’t have other plans for them to go eat somewhere.

Only then did he allow himself to settle in, peeling off his damp jacket and balancing his guitar case against the side of his chair.

“Did you carry that all the way here?” Sicheng asked, and Yuta shot him an obvious look.

“Of course he did,” he replied for his friend, and Sicheng glared at him. “The kid can’t drive, after all. Just like you.”

Mark nodded in confirmation as Kun set a mug of hot chocolate and a cream cheese bagel in front of him. “I love being referred to as ‘the kid’ as if I’m not present,” he snarked. “Also, thanks, Kun.”

“Sure thing.”

Yuta crunched absently at the end of his rock candy. “Aw, don’t go trying to make me feel bad when you forced me to wait for thirty-five minutes and didn’t even tell me you were on your way. It’s like you want to keep me in constant suspense with your little surprises.” Mark scowled, but his mouth was too stuffed with bagel to form a retort, so Yuta went on. “Anyway, you got a guitar in there?”

Mark swallowed. “What do you think?”

“I think we’re just impressed you lugged it all the way here,” Sicheng clarified, trying to clear the air of Yuta’s usual bitchiness. “Surely, you brought it for a reason.”

Mark clapped his hands against each other to rid them of crumbs, body going taut with excitement.

“Actually yes!” he mouthed around his food. “I did have a reason. I wanted to show off what I’ve been practicing!”

“Oooooh!” Yuta buzzed, applauding preemptively at hyper-speed. “You might want to check with the stickler in charge though,” he warned, stage whispering and indicating towards Kun. The subject of the jest frowned at his table of friends.

“I can hear you, Yuta,” he said, “and it’s fine. Just give me a minute to turn the speakers off.”

Soon enough, Mark had extracted his guitar from its case and had it over his knee, strumming experimentally to warm up and drawing the attention of most of the customers behind him.

“Don’t look now, Mark,” Sicheng began. “But it looks like you’ve roped yourself into a little concert.”

“A little what now?” he asked, immediately going against the advice he’d just received and turning around to meet the gazes of at least fifteen people he only marginally knew. “Oh, uh, okay. This is fine.”

Yuta smiled to himself as he watched his friend adjust his fingers over the metal strings and clear his throat, red face betraying that he might not, in fact, be fine.

Pretty soon though, he was finger-picking his way through the intro to Frank Ocean’s “Cayendo.” Once Mark started singing, Yuta found himself lulled into an admiring trance at the smooth sweetness of Mark’s voice. Mark was usually shy about singing solo, but he’d been working on it and Yuta loved that he had gained some confidence. The fact that the song was in a language Yuta couldn’t understand served even further to pull him under its calm spell.

He pretended to swoon at the little performance, rolling his eyes around and fanning himself theatrically. “Ooh, Markie, take me now,” he joked, just loud enough for his table to hear and no one else. Mark’s ears went red and he struggled to sing through a giggle.

Right in the middle of the song though, Mark sang a stanza that Yuta did understand. It ended with a melancholy plea of love:

When I still really, really love you, like I do

If you won't, then I will

If you can't, then I will

Is it love to keep it from you?

It was such a sad sentiment. Yuta thought that if he were a more sentimental person, and under different circumstances, he would have started to cry. Though, maybe he wasn’t as unsentimental as he thought he was…

Mark transitioned back to singing in Spanish and Yuta took the moment to lose himself less in his friend’s voice and more in the space around them: the chatter of impressed coffee-sippers, the whirring of the espresso machine, the soft and appreciative expressions on his friends’ faces. It was almost as sweet as the leftover sugar which coated the inside of his mouth – almost sweet enough for him to forget that some kind of repression within him was causing him vascular stress. Almost; almost.

Mark plucked the last note of the song and the café broke into a pitter-patter of applause which echoed the pounding of rain outside, and in that moment, as if to remind him of the tenuousness of his almosts, Yuta found himself hurled into the most intense pain he’d felt in the last twenty-four hours.

He bent himself over and started retching into a napkin. It was the same sensation he’d gotten the night before at the party, when he’d locked himself in the bathroom and coughed himself raw into the white sink, trying to force something out that just wouldn’t budge. He felt like he had a copper wire weaving through his muscles, and someone was sending shocks of electricity through it.

Sicheng and Mark stared at him in concern and Sicheng pushed a glass of water his way. He choked out his thanks before downing it in one go, once again taking note of the clump of – something – which drifted back down along with the liquid. By the time he had himself back under control, both his friends were posing some variation on the same ‘you okay?’ question.

“Yeah, yeah,” he lied. “Just aspirated some very sharp candy.”

Sicheng winced. “Ouch,” he said. “At least you had the courtesy to wait until Mark was finished.”

Yuta stuck his tongue out, but the way his friend went so casually back to teasing him actually made him feel a little better.

“I know the Heimlich maneuver!” Mark said, a stupidly proud grin crossing his face as he set his guitar back into its case and puffed his chest out involuntarily. “So I could have saved you if it came to that.”

Yuta smiled weakly. “That’s very reassuring, Mark.”

“NBD.” Yuta groaned, the sharp pain from only moments ago leaving him just as quickly as it had come. He cringed. Had Mark really just said “NBD?” Whatever. Mark continued.

“Seriously though, what did you guys think?”

“It was really good,” Sicheng said, “and I would say, a glowing testament to your four years of high school Spanish.”

Mark snickered. “What about you, Yutaaa?”

“Well if you couldn’t tell by the way I reacted at the beginning, I loved it! Really, like your voice just keeps getting better and better.”

Mark placed a hand over his heart, meaning to indicate that Yuta’s compliment had touched him.

“Aren’t you not supposed to be using instruments though?” Sicheng chimed. “I mean, considering you’re an a cappella person?”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Very funny,” he said. “But thanks, guys. I think I might play it live sometime on the Serotonin Hour.” That was the name of the radio show Johnny had left to him upon graduation.

“You know,” Yuta began, rapping his fingers against the table, “when Johnny willed his time slot to you, I don’t think he expected you’d use it for such self-serving purposes.”

Mark rolled his eyes even farther into his head this time. “It’s an hour where I impose my music taste on the small group of people who actually bother to tune in. What could be more self-serving?”

Yuta clicked his tongue. Mark had a point.

“Anyway,” said Mark, hopping to his feet, “what do you want to do, Yuta?”

***

Since it was raining out, they decided they would have to stay mostly indoors, so they resolved to wander around the market hall until they came up with a more exciting activity, Yuta letting Mark store his guitar in the trunk of his car while they perused. Sicheng was invited along too, but he had a dance class to run in half an hour and needed to review his lesson plan ahead of time, so it was just the two of them.

Well, it was just the two of them until they got to the Jung family farmstand at the end of the long, warehouse-like building. Jaehyun sat behind it, writing something into a notebook and looking so bored that his face was practically melting into the hand supporting it.

“Oh, thank god,” he said when he saw his friends approaching. “It’s been such a slow day I was ready to choke myself out just to have something to do.”

“Ooh, kinky,” Yuta guffawed at his friend as Mark nodded slowly.

“Nice to see you too, man,” Mark said.

“Want anything?”

Yuta and Mark surveyed their options: a selection of dairy products, meat, and eggs in a set of coolers, and a table covered in artichokes, celery, pears, asparagus, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbages, and a veritable rainbow of root vegetables. As usual, the Jung family farm’s output looked delicious. Maybe Yuta would get something for his parents to put in tonight’s dinner. He grabbed a bundle of radishes by the leaves and shoved them at his friend with a grin.

Mark, on the other hand, knew immediately what he would go for.

“And, uh, can I get a banana milk?”

Jaehyun nodded as Yuta gave his younger friend his best side-eye.

“You just drank a giant hot chocolate. Haven’t you had enough dairy for one day?”

Mark pouted, fishing for his wallet, and Yuta couldn’t help but smile at the way Mark’s eyes looked like shiny tea saucers. He could be devilishly cute sometimes. Cute enough to make Yuta want to buy shit for him, which he did, paying for the radishes and the milk before Mark even had the opportunity to complain.

“Drink up!”

Mark glared. “Fine. I’ll just sneak-buy you something next time.”

Yuta wobbled his head like an anime heroine as he spoke. “Oh, so I’ll get a next time? Man, this date is going so well!” he said, and Mark’s ears flushed for the second time in thirty minutes. A niggling voice in the back of Yuta’s head told him he wanted to see Mark like that more often. He brushed that idea away, not quite knowing how to process it.

“Whatever,” Mark mumbled as Jaehyun looked on in his usual casual detachment. Yuta turned his attention back to him.

“By the way, Jae, where are your parents? Can’t they come relieve you of your existential dread?”

Jaehyun blew a puff of air at his bangs. “I wish,” he responded. “They’re out of town for the weekend though, so I’m left to suffer alone. Oh – which reminds me! Can you go check on Sugarfoot and Lacey for me? They probably need their water troughs refilled right about now. And besides, I’m sure they miss Mark.”

Yuta and Mark agreed easily. Everyone loved those horses, even if Sugarfoot could be a pain in the ass. When Yuta was a teenager, she had apparently decided he’d lived long enough, because she tried to buck him off until Yuta was pretty sure he’d suffered acute whiplash. Besides Jaehyun, Johnny was the only person she seemed to tolerate (and tolerate simply meant she was a bitch to him rather than straight-up murderous), but alas, Johnny wasn’t around.

“Perfect,” Jaehyun said. “I’d do it myself, but everyone here knows my parents and they’d definitely somehow manage to tell them I’d abandoned my post. You know where the keys to the stable are and everything, right?”

“Yup!”

And with that, Yuta and Mark left Jaehyun to return to pondering auto-asphyxiation.

It had stopped raining outside, and the sky was in the process of clearing from a mournful grey to a clear periwinkle, like a windshield-wiper was slowly swiping across it to rid it of clouds. They ran into Taeil on the way to Yuta’s car, in the middle of walking five dogs of varying sizes and breeds.

Naturally, Mark became immediately preoccupied by the tangle of fur attached tenuously to Taeil’s wrist by a set of leashes. The cute scene made Yuta’s chest go tight with fondness.

Yuta told Taeil they’d missed him at the party the night before as Mark rolled around on the wet ground, getting his face smothered by a particularly friendly Chow Chow and laughing like his lungs were about to burst out of his chest.

“I know, I’m sorry!” Taeil said, trying not to let himself get tugged around. “It was just last minute and I’d already been roped into cooking for my family, and we had friends over – bad timing.”

Yuta waved him off. “Don’t worry, I’ll only hold it against you forever. But when do you go back to the city?”

“Next week,” Taeil replied, leaning down awkwardly to save Mark from five rough tongues. Taeil didn’t have a dog himself (although he did have a goose in his backyard, a fact which Yuta was never not perplexed by) but his family owned the local pet shop and he always had dog-walker duty when he was home. It was also how he made money when he was in high school. “We should definitely get together before I go back though!” Taeil continued. “You guys can help me make this pasta dish I’ve been wanting to try. Sound good Mark?”

Mark got up, brushing the wet dirt off his backside. “What? Oh yeah, for sure! I’m always down to eat – and to see you, Taeil. I didn’t forget about you.”

Taeil looked dryly at his younger friend. “Yeah, of course. But listen, Mark, it’s really good luck we’re home at the same time. I need you to tell me all about how the Aca-Fellas are doing.” Mark nodded shyly. Taeil had been the star of the a cappella group at his college, so he’d had plenty of run-ins with the Fellas at competitions. His own superiority at singing was something it was at times difficult to get him to shut up about. Taeil continued:

“Anyway, I should be going. These guys are getting squirrely, and I don’t want them to do their business right here. I’ll see you two around, I guess. Enjoy the rest of your date!”

Hey, Yuta thought, that’s my joke. Somehow it made him feel weird to hear someone else use it.

***

They were at Jaehyun’s stables after a short drive, and they found the keys easily. Mark scratched lovingly at Lacey’s chin as Yuta filled the troughs with water. Then, they decided it was as good a time as any to see if Johnny was free to FaceTime. He was.

“Heyoooo,” Johnny greeted once his pixelated face flashed onto Yuta’s phone. Yuta laughed. His friend looked happy and healthy. “Oh what? You have Mark with you? Sweet!”

They caught up on Johnny’s life for a few minutes; he was having a great time on his own, but he missed everyone and couldn’t wait to come home in the summer.

“Hurry home,” Yuta joked, getting up from the bail of hay he’d been sitting on because Sugarfoot was cribbing on the door to her stable. “I think Taeyong is wilting without you here.”

Johnny chuckled indulgently. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.” He gasped and his image froze in the exaggerated reaction face he’d pulled, making Mark squeak with laughter. “Is that my favorite girlie?” came his crackling voice.

Yuta held the phone up to Sugarfoot, nudging her head a bit to get her to detach her teeth from the wood. “Sure is.”

Johnny asked if Jaehyun was there, so Yuta informed him on their friend’s predicament. Then Johnny addressed Mark, telling him he should try braiding Sugarfoot’s dark mane – he’d found she had come to enjoy it. Mark, being the least experienced with Jaehyun’s bitch of a mare, immediately fell for it and tried, causing Sugarfoot to squeal and jerk her neck away from his touch. He fell back on his butt in surprise and Johnny cackled through Yuta’s phone speaker.

“Aw, I see college hasn’t made you less gullible, Markie-boy.”

“It most certainly has not,” Yuta confirmed, and Mark attempted a glare, but it only ended up looking like what he’d done when Johnny tried to teach him how to flirt that one time.

Johnny continued. “Anyway, Mark how are you really? I don’t care about this old hag; Yuta, give the phone to Mark.”

Yuta handed over the phone with a casual threat of murder.

Mark was doing well. Johnny asked if his a cappella group had let him rap yet. Mark rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, leaning against the stable door right next to Lacey.

“Naw, not yet,” he said. “Just beatboxing for now. Eventually...”

Johnny shrugged. “It’s okay. When you’re a senior you can run the group and do whatever the hell you want. And, when they see how good you are, that’ll really show ’em.”

Yuta watched the conversation unfold, reveling in the warm feeling he got from watching some of his favorite people interact.

“Are you doing the Serotonin Hour justice, by the way?” Johnny asked. “Playing that good shit?”

Mark fumbled around a response so Yuta cut in, yelling from off-screen. “He’s great, Johnny! Wish you were here to tune in because I think he might be surpassing you in quality already.”

Yuta heard Johnny scoff as Mark looked embarrassed. “Impossible!” Yuta leaned in next to Mark and Johnny asked about his own parents.

Yuta frowned. “Can’t you just call them and ask how they’re doing?”

“I did! I do!” Johnny said, exasperated. “I wanted to hear it from a third party though, otherwise all they tell me is ‘we’re good, John, we’re good. Everything’s just fine.’ Know what I mean?”

Mark answered. Mr. and Mrs. Seo were doing just as well as they let on to their son, as far as he could tell. This seemed to satisfy him.

Johnny had to go soon after this, so Yuta and Mark took the opportunity to get back in Yuta’s car and drive to his house, where brand new purple crocuses had pushed through the dirt in the front yard.

Yuta led Mark straight to his loft when they arrived, happy to finally have some actual alone time with his friend. He didn’t know where this territorial streak was coming from. He usually did it as a joke – especially with Mark and Sicheng – but all of a sudden, he didn’t feel like he was joking anymore. He shrugged it off mentally. It probably had something to do with his repression, he figured, realizing he hadn’t followed all his mother’s instructions yet. Oh well, the meditation could wait.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” he offered. “We can hang out all day that way, until you’re absolutely fed up with me.”

Mark giggled as they traipsed through the wet grass, passing the fresh crocuses.

“Uh, yeah, that sounds good,” Mark agreed. “I’ll text my parents and ask them.”

“I don’t think you’ll need to,” Yuta remarked, pointing straight ahead to where Mr. Lee stood in his driveway, getting ready to go out. “Mr. Lee!”

Mark’s dad turned around, startled for a moment, before waving.

“Your son is eating dinner over here!” Yuta yelled. “We’ll take good care of him!”

Mark laughed nervously at Yuta’s side as his dad consented. Yuta had to admit that his life was a little emptier when Mark’s ridiculous giggle-fits weren’t a daily feature.

Back in Yuta’s room, Mark hooked his phone up to Yuta’s Bluetooth speaker and played one of his most recent DJ set playlists while Yuta sat at his vanity and yanked a radish from the bunch he’d bought earlier from Jaehyun, biting off a chunk. It tasted watery and sharp.

“What are you doing?” Mark protested. “I thought those were for your parents.”

“I’m only taste-testing,” Yuta defended, mouth full of radish. “Calm down.” He poised the other half of the radish as if he were about to overhand chuck it in Mark’s direction. That was, in fact, what he planned to do. “Open up.”

Mark’s eyes went wide. “But it has your spit on it!”

Yuta rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a baby.”

Mark nodded in acquiescence, opening his mouth for a split second before thinking of something else to worry about.

“This seems dangerous though, like what if I choke on it?”

“Then that’s really too bad because I do not know the Heimlich,” Yuta snarked. “Try not to.”

Mark opened his mouth again and Yuta threw the radish in an arc the few feet between them. Mark shuffled a little to align his mouth and caught the radish, doing a little dance of victory when he realized he’d succeeded.

“Yoooooo!” he yelled around his mouthful.

Yuta clapped, he remarked to himself, like a cheerleader congratulating his boyfriend. Whatever. He wasn’t above that.

“That’s what I call synchronicity!” he said.

Then, Yuta decided to experiment with combinations of the new earrings he’d bought recently while he and Mark talked. They ended up mostly reminiscing about the stupid hijinks they’d gotten themselves into over the years: the time they got drunk and went skinny-dipping in the bioluminescence despite a slew of recent shark sightings (Mark kept trying to drift off into the mist and when they heard a loud splash near them in the water, Yuta asked Mark if he’d retrieve his dick if it got bitten off. “Is that something you would want me to do?” Mark had responded); the time they went cliff-diving as a group and somehow Yuta managed to injure himself while stumbling over rocks to take a picture and then tried to tell everyone who hadn’t been there that he’d hurt himself jumping into the water so he wouldn’t sound like an idiot; the time Mark tried weed for the first time and became convinced he was suffering an aneurysm, begging Yuta to make him a potion for it; all the times Yuta and Mark travelled to dance competitions together as kids and shared hotel rooms, planning their entire futures as they waited to get sleepy. They had promised to always have houses next to each other, and that their families and spouses would be forever close.

Yuta sometimes found that, with long-time friends he didn’t get to see as often as he would have liked, it was easier to reminisce than to create new, whole memories. It had nothing to do with Mark’s value as a friend, and they still came away from every summer with plenty of additional experiences and stories, but Yuta hated the feeling he sometimes got of their rhythm being off during the shorter breaks. He worried their friendship would calcify into something past tense. But then again, he figured, a deep understanding like what he and Mark shared didn’t need constant updates.

Being with Mark sometimes took him back to being eighteen – right before he left for college – and in a way he liked that as much as he liked his friend. He just got an occasional sinking feeling that they were missing each other’s landmarks. It was irrational, but he couldn’t deny it.

Mark had moved on to updates about his friend group as Yuta held a thin and dangly silver earring against his lobe. Mark nodded in approval and Yuta worked to stifle a sudden bout of coughing. Ah yes. There it is.

Later, at the dinner table, Yuta hardly got a word in edgewise with his parents and sister grilling Mark on how his first year was wrapping up: was his friend group holding up? Yup. Did he like his second semester classes? He did. Was he still sure he wanted to pursue a conservation major? Yes. Did he know who he’d room with the next year? He was going to try to room with his friend Yeri, but they had to sign a consent form for co-ed housing first. When was his next a cappella performance? The big one was in late April. Did he have a significant other?

Yuta almost hacked up a spoonful of his root vegetable soup before glaring at his mom, the source of that query.

“Aish, why does everyone wanna know that?” asked Mark, setting his spoon down for a second. “Sorry, it’s just really funny to me. No, I don’t.”

Yuta looked across the table to his mother and caught her sending an irritated look right back at him. He figured it was probably related to the vague threat she’d made earlier that she would know if he didn’t follow all her advice by the time he got home in the evening.

Once they’d finished eating, the boys helped wash the dishes and Mrs. Nakamoto gifted Mark a little vial of her signature lucky potion for him to use during finals.

“Bye, little dingus,” Haruna called to Mark as he and Yuta were on their way out for a quick post-prandial stroll. Yuta turned around.

“Don’t talk to your elder that way!” She rolled her eyes.

Outside, it was fully dark, and a distinct late-winter chill tinged the air enough that Yuta had to burrow his chin into the collar of his bomber jacket. Rather than the chatter of crickets they would have heard at that hour during summertime, the air sung with the hush of breeze rustling the pines and the distant break of ocean waves. Yuta thought bittersweetly about how the next time he’d see Mark for an extended time, the crickets would be back.

“Sorry for all the prying,” Yuta grumbled as the two made their way to the little pedestrian suspension bridge over the river on the edge of town. The river led to the ocean eventually, but inland, it felt thin and closed-off all the same. This bridge passing over it was one of Yuta and Mark’s favorite spots to sit and chat late at night without anyone hearing. In fact, it was that type of spot for most of the town’s young residents.

“Don’t be,” Mark said jovially, kicking his feet leisurely as he walked. “I expect it at this point. Bet you remember what that’s like.”

Yuta nodded. He did.

“You know,” Mark began, “it’s actually sorta calming to get the same questions over and over again. Cuz like, for some reason I keep getting really stressed out when I come home. I don’t know why…It’s kind of annoying.”

Yuta pointed at Mark in recognition as he chimed in. “No – I know exactly what you mean. I used to get that too. Remember when I had that panic attack?”

Mark nodded. “Oooh yeah, man, I do. You were calling me at like two in the morning and you sounded like you were crying. I had no idea what you were on about. But I guess now I understand more.”

Yuta smiled to himself as the sound of the river added its own particular hush to the mix of natural noises. He tried not to take too much comfort in the idea that his friend was now suffering the same way he had. At least it was a pretty privileged form of suffering…

Yuta took a deep breath, looking up and trying to find stars in the hazy dark sky.

“My mom calls it liminality. She says it's natural to feel spiritually detached at times of transition. It’s like your identity is thrown into flux and it can be hard to balance your competing selves all at once. You’ve got your independent college self and my little Markie boy who lives with his parents and can’t drive.” At this, Yuta grabbed Mark and tried to give him a noogie. “I think that’s what’s stressing you out. Might do you some good to recognize it and hear it verbalized.”

Mark laughed. They were approaching the entrance to the bridge. “I guess that makes sense. I – wait.”

Yuta took a second to register that Mark had cut himself off and stopped walking. He was staring into the distance towards the bridge, so Yuta followed his gaze. He blinked a few times in the dark, but once his vision focused, he noticed what Mark had been looking at: a dark lump in the center of the suspended walkway. It seemed to be moving – writhing almost – and Mark placed a finger over his mouth to indicate they should be silent. Little groans and giggles emanated from the wiggly lump over the rush of the water. It was a person – no – people.

Yuta felt himself about to start laughing, and he didn’t want to disrupt whatever moment was going on in front of them, so he grabbed Mark’s arm and hauled him away, running back towards their houses and cracking up the minute they thought they were out of earshot.

Mark tried to catch his breath from all the exertion. “Were, were they –”

“Fucking?” Yuta finished for him. “Yeah, I think so.”

Mark leaned over his knees. It was the same position Yuta had used several times in the last day to combat his lung issue. “Shit, man,” he said. “I was not expecting that.”

Yuta shook his head in disbelief. “Me neither. Here; on that note, let’s get you home. The Lees deserve their son back.”

“Sounds good. That’s enough excitement for one night.”

***

Yuta tiptoed back into the kitchen before going to the barn to sleep, opening the fridge to sneak another few bites of the raspberry meringue cake his mom had bought on a whim from the Seos while shopping for dinner.

Her voice in the dark startled him so badly that he jolted against the refrigerator shelving, rattling a whole row of bottled drinks and sauces and causing a racket.

“Holy shit, mom, you’re going to kill me,” he said, holding a hand against his chest like a 19th century gentlewoman.

“Come to the living room with me, Yuta,” she said, bypassing his griping.

Yuta gulped, following his mother’s directions until he was sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of her lounge chair.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d notice if you blew off my instructions?” she asked, sipping from a cup of tea. It smelled like chamomile and it was making Yuta sleepy.

“I know,” he said, “but I was with Mark all day and I didn’t want it to be weird for him while I like, went off into a corner to ruminate on my inner demons or whatever. I was still gonna do it. Also, I drank the potion you gave me.”

“I understand Yuta,” she said, cutting him off before he could spew any more excuses, “but you’re going to do it right now. I want you to feel better.”

“I already do feel a little better,” Yuta said, though he knew he was lying. His mom knew it too, because she gave him a skeptical sideways glance.

“You looked like you were holding in a coughing spell all through dinner,” she informed him. Had he? Yikes… “So, close your eyes.”

Yuta knew how this was going to go, but still, he let his mom lead him through breathing and visualization, focusing on tracking and changing the color and temperature of his internal energy as it passed through each of his limbs, his gut, hit neck and shoulders, his head, and finally, to his lungs. He tried to pull air in until it touched the extremity of them, boundaries of his body going fuzzy in concentration, but it was difficult for him; shaky almost.

His mother’s voice floated into his consciousness, instructing him to imagine the hollow of his mind and let thoughts begin to trickle in without obstruction; to let them come and go without judgement.

He thought of what Mark had been saying on their walk and how it resonated with his own experiences, how it frustrated him that he could never quite recreate the comfort of his and Mark’s dynamic when he visited him at school and they were with all Mark’s first year friends (at least Kun and Jaehyun were around at times, but still). He thought about how weird it felt for all his friends to be scattered around. Mostly though, he thought about the strange burning tightness that had been threatening to cut off his air supply over the last day whenever he dwelled too much on thoughts of his best friend, on observing him, on feeling lucky to know him.

Next thing he knew, he was coughing aggressively again, dragging in empty breaths whenever his throat gave him a break from its violent convulsing. The metal wires felt like they’d made their way into his heart. Neither his breathing nor his coughing was satisfactory though; there was still something stuck. What on earth was wrong with him?

Yuta latched back onto the sound of his mother’s voice as he calmed down and opened his eyes. She knelt next to him on the floor, rubbing over his back and knitting her brows in concern.

“Oh darling,” she cooed. “Have some tea.” He drank gladly, but this time the obstruction inside him stayed right where it was halfway down his windpipe. “It’s just as I thought. Something is blocking you off from your spiritual self.”

Yuta blinked some tears of exertion from his eyes, smirking as he returned somewhat to himself.

“You sure it’s not just my sarcasm?” he joked, and his mom scowled.

“Well, that’s certainly not helping,” she said. She kissed his forehead and pulled away to find her tarot deck. “But I am proud that you took that seriously. It obviously stirred something. Let me do a quick reading for you and then we can both get to bed.”

Yuta waited as she set up the deck and drew a six of cups, reversed. He sighed. Intense nostalgia; feeling caught in the past or with a past self. That much was obvious.

Yuta’s mother smiled at him softly. “Whatever this is, it’s holding you hostage in memories and longing.” He nodded, remembering his earlier conversation with Mark where they couldn’t seem to stop dwelling on an idealized highlight reel of teenage shenanigans. Right. “Do you want to talk about it now?”

“Not really.” Yuta yawned. He didn’t know if it was because he was actually tired or because he wanted this to wrap up.

Mrs. Nakamoto started packing her cards back up. “That’s alright. You should get some sleep anyway. Good night, dear.”

“G’night.”

***

Yuta gave back into coughing the minute he’d crossed the threshold to his room. He ran to the small trashcan next to his desk, still full of bottles from the night before, and heaved into it so hard he thought his eyes might pop out. Finally though, he had a twinge of relief when the thing that had been caught in his airway materialized on his tongue and his trachea cleared fully for the first time all day. He reached into his mouth and plucked out the offending object, holding it between his fingers over the trash. It was long and yellow and smooth, shaped like the wooden paddles Donghyuck’s ice cream shop gives out for testers.

A horrifying thought crossed Yuta’s mind as he rolled the delicate yellow petal softly between his fingers, watching it disintegrate under his touch and the acid of his saliva. He turned to the bouquet on the coffee table to his left, shivering as he caught a glimpse of the sunny yellow rays of petals adorning each of the three baby sunflowers in the vase. His heart dropped into his feet.

Of course.

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