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Breathing, what is it?
It’s lips upon lips but not touching.
Air moving but not freely.
It’s the grasps of two hands on another’s cheeks, lips barely touching, and dragged breaths that greets the sunset and bids the sunrise goodbye.
It is Sunggyu with his hands and Woohyun with his cheeks and it is everyone and no one in the blue ocean and red sky as Sunggyu promises with his eyes that the land isn’t for him; but for Woohyun, he will always come back on a whim. He makes no other promises. He doesn’t even leave behind a kiss. Instead, it’s the ghosting of lips before the taller, leaner, older redhead escapes onto a boat with no promises of looking back.
Woohyun closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he realizes he was dreaming.
Sunggyu hasn’t come back in over ten years since he first climbed into the begotten ship and left Woohyun behind, never once wondering, if Woohyun would like to come along. No, he never asked. Sunggyu and his red flair, Sunggyu and his young determination even if he feared everything that even breathed or attempted to even take a breath. Sunggyu who left him behind and taken everything but Woohyun’s physical body with him.
Woohyun hated him.
Because Woohyun was breathing here, but Sunggyu was still looking for it somewhere else.
Woohyun rubs his eyes with the back of his hands and figures it’s time to get up, time to face the red sun and its angry scorching marks on the world and with what we, as selfish humans beings, have done to it.
He moves out of bed and glances out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Smoke rises—blackened and filled with ashes—into the skies from the littered buildings below. The world has changed since Sunggyu last stepped there, and Woohyun, unbeknownst to himself, could never fully leave in case Sunggyu ever came back for him. (He’s tried). The suburban homes that once littered the streets are no longer there, the developing technologies of the world instead revitalizing rapid phases of industrial revolutions with countries all over the world in a global race for the fastest transportation, the fastest internet, the most secure and deadly military weapons, the next innovation, and the most automated but sustainable modes of manufacturing and composite technology operations.
Woohyun looks at the expansive red of the skies and the hues of the blacks and grays one last time before making his way out of his home, towards the tunnels, and into the trains.
The world had continued to evolve around Woohyun. Tall skyscrapers loomed over smaller skyscrapers, buildings, and interconnected bridges, underground subways, over-ground rails—a mass destruction of transportations and modes of declination of nature and an attempt of human beings trying to breathe through nostril technology that cleans the air from the nanobots in their ears. Vile smoke that paints the skies red and turns the ocean a dark stormy blue.
Woohyun wonders if Sunggyu would be able to find him in all of this, even if he’s never moved, the world has shifted him.
He closes his eyes. He’s reminded of Sunggyu again and the sort of dying beauty that still exists in the world. Something that still breathes Sunggyu around him.
Blue and purple mountains existing on the outskirts of the world with still-barely-there greenery of trees creating fresh oxygen—despite the fact that sometimes the blue and purple mountains seem to freeze, unable to breathe, stifling itself from the world…somehow, still glowing with ease, as if breathing was the last of its worries because there were still green trees and blue and purple mountains in an enclosed sanctity protected from human touch. It was what one would called a “nature.” A fixation of something so long ago, something Woohyun could barely remember in the recess of his mind.
It was also in those same areas (both in his mind and in those outskirts of a real world) that Woohyun knows there are animals confined to these spaces and locked in giant false paradises. He wonders if Sunggyu felt like them on land. Woohyun does not think the animals were so unlucky. He, instead, spends time wishing how he’d roam free like them too in a prelude to the black smoke and violation of bodily functions that the world now physically shackled onto them. A false sense of security to the world where he has stands left behind.
Woohyun takes a deep breath.
The world is not his problem.
He closes his eyes and opens them again to the skies beyond the station.
It was blue now. Calming. No longer red, like the inside of his eyelids. (Like the strands of Sunggyu’s last hair color. Everything reminds him of Sunggyu, even after ten years. It’s like he’s living, suffocating, and breathing all at the same time for Sunggyu).
He moves forward, gloves on each hand, a nanobot suit enclosed around him and into the world where Sunggyu no longer breathes from. He gets on a train from the station and then changes the mode of transportation to an air rail, waiting for escalators to bring him upwards (and later, downwards again), before walking through interconnected air tunnels to get to his office at the Department of State.
Woohyun works a government office job. He travels often, but Woohyun makes sure to always come home. (He’s still afraid of leaving).
Most of the time, Woohyun is busy on the phone, making sure to pick up each call because he never knows when anyone will call for the need to disengage a serious situation—like a lost Foreign Service Officer (or a lost ship in the middle of the blue ocean away from the red sun). Most of the time, Woohyun is busy on the phone, re-directing calls about how to get a new passport or form of identification for South Koreans lost in different countries, worlds away from their own.
Woohyun doesn’t mind most of the time. After all, it’s the gasps and harsh breathing on the other line that reminds Woohyun of the days when the skies weren’t red and the things in his ears didn’t have to help him breathe. A time before where breathing did not sound so strained and false.
Today, the skies are blue, and Woohyun’s first call demands for a need to disengage from his wandering thoughts.
“Sir! We need help! There’s an unidentified ship attacking us off the shores of Ulleungdo Island! It is nearing Dokdo Island and into unclaimed coastal waters!”
Woohyun breathes and gathers his thoughts. He quickly answers a series of protocol and then asks for identification marks from the ship, if there are any. He asks quickly about the individual’s name, number of people—foreign and domestic, and demands the individual calm down on the other line. Woohyun doesn’t realize, he’s the one yelling when there’s yelling and screaming on the other line and a voice comes through in Korean. The other man’s voice no longer a panicking civilian or officer.
Woohyun’s hands freezes just right above another phone, set in during emergencies just like this. He needed to call the national navy out to aid as well as domestic police and national water security to ensure no one escapes. It was pertinent, and lives were at risk; but his hands freeze and he feels his breath catching.
He can’t breathe.
A quick hello comes through, along with a spunky message, “No worries, no one will be harmed. This is Captain Kim Sunggyu of the Infinite. We’re just taking a few supplies and we’ll go. No harm, no fault? ”
Woohyun screams out the name.
“Sunggyu!”
But the line quickly drops dead. Woohyun doesn’t know if his voice made it through the other side. Woohyun’s hands are automatic now, pressing numbers and his mouth is flying through words and his head is buzzing. Woohyun doesn’t know what he says, if he even makes sense, he just knows that was Sunggyu breathing on the other line for a moment.
That was Sunggyu’s breath.
He’s close to home.
Is he coming back to him?
Did he look back and realize what he left behind?
After the long day, Woohyun comes home from the air rail, the escalator, the train, and into his bed. He sees the news floating about his head in a hologram, reporting about today’s incident near the islands. Help came. No one injured. All persons accounted for. Meager supplies taken.
Woohyun should be happy. He should be breathing okay now.
Woohyun, however, feels that his breaths have stopped.
He looks over to his windows, and sure enough, it’s not the red sunset the greets him; but the blinding blonde of a bright sun. (Just when did dawn come?
Sunggyu hops in through the open window, as if knowing, Woohyun has always intentionally left it opened for him. (Woohyun has no response to that). His hair is no where near the sunset red that plastered the skies, instead, stripped of all colors, reflecting them. He smiles at Woohyun, a cheeky smile, while he saunters over—as if he had just not left Woohyun ten years ago and time has done nothing to him or them. He looks the same, perhaps younger, Woohyun doesn’t know. (But he breathes).
Sunggyu’s hair is bright white, like the blinding of a morning sun. His hands are soft—reaching towards him. He wonders if captains of ships have soft hands instead of hard callouses and dried skin despite the phrasing of all hands on deck.
He feels Sunggyu’s finger tips on his cheeks, pulling him close, their foreheads touching.
It’s lips upon lips once more, but not touching.
Air freely moving.
It’s the grasp of Sunggyu’s hands on his cheeks, lips now touching as the sunset bids goodbye and the sunrise says hi.
Sunggyu presses his lips against Woohyun first in a greeting, before he adds pressure and moves his hands to the back of Woohyun’s head, keeping the latter from moving away, from trying to fight him. He kisses Woohyun like he’s never left, even if he’s never kissed Woohyun before. He presses and surges on and Woohyun wonders what he’s trying to do. Woohyun tries to get his name out of his throat, hand on the latter’s chest, but Sunggyu takes the chance and slides his tongue in, forcing Woohyun’s mouth completely open, and keeping his name lodged deep in his throat. He tickles the roof of Woohyun’s mouth and then, Woohyun feels him sucking his breath out. It goes on until Woohyun feels a heavy burn in his lungs, filled with emotions of want, anger and frustration, and so many I missed you and why did you leave me and I love you—I’ve always loved you that I’ve hated you.
He pushes Sunggyu from him, ripping their lips apart. Woohyun is breathing, deep harsh breaths, looking half insane at Sunggyu.
Sunggyu wipes the spit from his lips with a thumb and smiles at Woohyun, as if this was okay. As if, he expected all of this.
Woohyun continues to look at him, his white opened clothed shirt and still pale skin in contrast to Woohyun’s tan skinned and nano-technology suit. (He hadn’t even the chance to change, the chance to relax. He had barely had time to catch a breath).
Woohyun lunges at Sunggyu and tackles him into the ground, landing fist against skin one after another. His eyesight becomes blurry and he can’t see and he can’t breathe and the technology in his ears have somehow fallen out and stopped working…(his breaths didn’t feel so restrained and the air smelled faintly of something Woohyun has never smelled before). Sunggyu’s still below him, taller as ever, now missing his baby cheeks, and soft belly that Woohyun has once kissed in mild interest.
Woohyun lets his fists become still and his heaving chest turns into hiccups and body tremors when Sunggyu kisses a knuckle each. He smiles at Woohyun, as if he had every right to. His eyes are bright, his lips a rosy pink (and perhaps a blue and purple will replace it tomorrow), his high straight nose still a lovely sight. Sunggyu smiles a cheeky smile at Woohyun (Woohyun wishes he punched and broke the latter’s nose) and says,
“I heard you breathe and I knew you were here.
On a whim, I came for you, just like I said I would.”
Woohyun collapses and sobs into his chest and Sunggyu holds him, kisses the crown of his head, and when Woohyun stops crying, his eyes closed from exhaustion, Sunggyu steals him away to his ship. Together, they escape from the lands dreaded with technology and human bestiality of smoke, smog, and entrapments, and enslavements, and no breathing. Woohyun wakes up to the image of Sunggyu next to him, the ocean breeze, and the greeting of the setting sun. The skies are a mix of a blues, purples, pinks, orange, reds, yellows, and whites. A strong red hidden in the edges of the horizon line, skittering above a deep ocean reflecting the colors of the skies.
A ship far away from the red skies and unkept promises of whims. Woohyun blinks and presses a finger against Sunggyu’s lips. He wakes the latter with such a motion.
Then, there’s moving air, a free breeze.
Their lips are upon lips but they’re not touching.
Instead, they’re breathing.
(That’s it. That’s Breathing).