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It’s been about a month since the world decided it's going to end. Every day the news flashes through the same reiterations of doom, the same false cheer those reporters force into their voices. It gets repetitive, the reminder of the impending apocalypse. A bit boring, really. There’s nothing to watch on TV anymore.
Today is different. Today the radios and television channels are singing a slightly different tune, a more somber one. Something like a funeral march.
The world is ending today, they say. Call your loved ones while you can. Seize the last few hours of humanity with the ones you treasure most. The world is ending, so we must all end together. Side by side.
Side by side. When has humanity ever been more unified than this? What better vehicle for resolving centuries of wars worth of differences, than the knowledge that we will all soon be part of one homogenous population of dust? There is only one question that remains, when all other answers have evaporated into the atmosphere.
Heeseung has no shortage of close friends. Close family. There are a number of faces he could imagine looking upon in his final blazing moments. He picks up the phone. He calls.
“Hello?”
“Kim Sunoo," he says hoarsely. The name feels foreign in his mouth. "Do you want to come over?”
Heeseung holds his breath in anticipation, his stomach rolling. He spares a second to dwell in the morbid humor of it — the world is going to burn, and here he is, feeling more anxious about a boy.
Sunoo says: “Why me?”
Here’s the thing.
Humanity is about to come to its fiery end, and still humans have been unable to answer many of the fundamental questions of existence. What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of love? Doomsday has made Heeseung introspective. Life, he thinks, is often only remembered to be precious once it is threatened with its end. Can the same then not be said for love?
Heeseung has no shortage of loved ones with whom he could spend his last twenty-four hours of existence with. He hasn’t been the most sociable person throughout his lifetime, but he has always surrounded himself with good people. But maybe that’s the thing about love. Not who you can spend your life with, but who you would want to die with.
There are many people Heeseung has kept close his entire life. Kim Sunoo is not one of those people. Some things, only once threatened with their end, are realized to be precious. There is only one question that remains. So Heeseung picks up the phone and calls Sunoo. Sunoo says, “Why me?”
“Because,” Heeseung replies. “I want to know what could have been.”
***
The thing about first meetings is that you either remember them, or you don’t.
If you ask someone how they met a significant other or a best friend, there's a chance that they'll produce a vibrant, detailed anecdote describing everything down to the smell and taste of the breakfast they ate that day. Or, their face will be blank as they laugh off the question, explaining that it is simply like they have always known each other, and that those early days are all a haze.
Heeseung falls under the former category. He's able to remember the inciting incidents leading up to all of his people entering his life — and with Kim Sunoo, Heeseung didn't have just one first meeting with him, but two.
It began the way all big things do; with a crash and a bang.
Heeseung was seated in the booth of a coffee shop, pen poised over nonsensical scribblings on a paper napkin. He was supposed to be getting some brainstorming done, but his mind kept drifting.
Then came the crash.
Heeseung looked away from the window he had been staring aimlessly out of, and towards the source of the commotion. His eyes first landed on the scattered shards of a broken mug, swimming in a pool of coffee. He then saw the boy standing sheepishly over the scene of destruction, hands still hovering in the air. The boy caught Heeseung looking, and the tips of his ears turned red.
“That’s your drink,” the boy informed him. As Heeseung raised an eyebrow at the floor, he added, “Well, it used to be.”
“Ah,” was all Heeseung could think to say.
“Sorry,” he tittered, hands fluttering, “It’s my first day.”
The boy disappeared behind the counter before returning with a mop and a dust pan, hurriedly sweeping up the spilled coffee.
“I’m usually not this clumsy, I swear,” he babbled, avoiding Heeseung’s eyes. “I just got distracted.”
“By what?”
The boy stilled. His shoulders crept up towards his ears in humiliation as he hunched in on himself.
“There was a hummingbird outside the window. It… looked pretty.”
Heeseung could validate this excuse, because he’d been looking out the very same window when the accident had occurred, at the very same bird.
Distractions. There were too many of them to count, and Heeseung could not fault this boy when he too, had had his attention pulled away from his work. He glanced down at his napkin, where half-baked plot ideas looped messily over the crumpled surface. Then he looked up at the boy carefully, memorizing the way that sheepish smile lit up his face.
What kind of story is this the beginning of?
“Yeah,” Heeseung said. “Pretty.”
***
The second time Heeseung met the pretty, blushing boy who got distracted by birds was through a mutual friend. This friend was of course Park Jongseong, who somehow knew about everything and everyone there was to know about in this town.
“This is Sunoo!” Jay said brightly.
“You,” Heeseung blurted. Sunoo looked at him blankly, and when Heeseung realized there was no hint of recognition on his face, he coughed lightly. “You… It’s nice to meet you,” he said in a lame attempt to cover up his blunder.
“You too,” Sunoo replied mildly, his tone polite. Jay’s eyes shifted to Heeseung, ever observant. His stumble had not gone unnoticed by his friend.
“We should all get together sometime,” Jay continued with a big grin. “Do something fun.”
Sunoo chuckled wryly. “What is there to do in this town?” It was true, and everyone knew it. But Heeseung was surprised by how wistful the boy sounded. “Plus, I’m busy with shifts at the café these days,” he added regretfully. “Working overtime, you know. But I’ll see if I can make something work.”
Heeseung’s intuition told him that Sunoo would not be able to make something work, and that perhaps they would not see much of each other ever again. As Sunoo made his leave, he found himself left alone with his inquisitive companion.
“You seemed to recognize him earlier. Do you know him from somewhere?” Jay asked curiously.
Heeseung stared after the boy's retreating figure, an empty sensation settling in his chest. He wondered why it felt like a part of himself was walking away, like a book falling shut before the pages had a chance to be turned. He turned to Jay and smiled weakly.
“He brought me my coffee.”
***
“A coffee shop? This is how you want to start our last day off?”
Sunoo is smiling, but there’s no light to it. Light is a thing of the past, both in the world around them and in the faces of its inhabitants. Everything is now painted in grey-tones, strained smiles swathed in shadow.
“What better way to kick off the morning than a coffee with a friend?” Heeseung says lightly. Or he tries to speak lightly — gravity is stronger than ever today, winding its way into the abstract. Each attempt at a carefree word sinks like a weighted stone.
“We barely know each other,” Sunoo says bluntly.
“I know,” Heeseung replies. “So let’s get to know each other.”
“At the fall of the world?”
“You know what they say,” Heeseung says with a grey smile. “There’s no time like the end of time.”
Sunoo whistles, a low, breathy birdcall. “I’ll drink to that,” he says, and lifts his mug to his lips. The steam makes his cheeks glisten, and he lets out a small hiss as the liquid scalds his tongue.
“I met you here, for the first time,” Heeseung finds himself saying. “Before Jay introduced us. I sat at this exact table.”
Sunoo frowns contemplatively. “Was it when I was working here? I don’t remember.”
“I know you don’t,” he says with a small laugh. “You didn’t recognize me at all.”
Sunoo squints his eyes in curiosity. “Jog my memory?”
“You said it was your first day.”
Sunoo snorts and shakes his head. “I’ve had a hundred first days,” he says. “That doesn’t narrow it down much.” At Heeseung’s questioning glance he explains, “I’m clumsy. People are more forgiving when they think you’re a clueless idiot.”
“I see,” Heeseung says, hiding his smile behind his own cup. “Then I’m just one of many unsuspecting customers who had to witness you murdering their drink firsthand. No wonder I didn’t stand out.”
“Please don’t take it personally,” Sunoo pouts, looking almost regretful. “I was probably distracted.”
“You were,” Heeseung recalls with amusement. “You saw a hummingbird outside the window.”
“That makes sense." His eyes float over to the same window, three years past that memory. The sky is dark, and the rosebushes have withered. “There won’t be any distractions now,” he murmurs.
“No,” Heeseung agrees. “None.”
They sip the rest of their coffee in comfortable silence, surprised at how familiar the company feels. There are no distractions anymore. Just them.
At the end of the world there are no more novelties, no more wonders, no pretty, shiny irrelevancies. When all the ornamentations and embellishments of life fall away, there is only one thing left: the people.
With no more life to live, you can only hope that you have met the right ones. Heeseung can't help but think that he has. He looks across the table.
Each time they’d met, it had been like it was their first. No progress, no development. No new milestone reached. Just chance encounters, and fleeting moments that led to nowhere. Knowing Sunoo had been like walking in place, with his destination just beyond reach of his fingertips.
Loving Sunoo was a hundred first days, and the promise of a tomorrow that would never come.
***
Heeseung was not an outdoors person. He stayed in his room to the point where he was basically a permanent fixture at his desk, and when he wasn’t working in his room, he was frequenting a nearby coffee shop. He hadn’t been to that particular coffee shop since he had met that boy.
Today Heeseung had brewed his own coffee, and for some inexplicable reason, he had decided to go outside.
It was a small town that they lived in, and there was not much of an 'outside' to explore, really. One of the only notable places to visit was the botanical garden. Heeseung hated bees. He was maybe even allergic to them — he couldn’t really remember. He was for sure allergic to pollen. But for some inexplicable reason, he took his coffee and he went. And who did he manage to run into, but Kim Sunoo.
“You,” Heeseung blurted.
“Do I know you?” Sunoo asked innocently, and Heeseung felt like he was experiencing a particularly frustrating case of deja vu.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said in disbelief. Sunoo let out a tinkling laugh, and Heeseung had trouble discerning how genuine it was.
“Of course,” he chirped. “Jay’s friend, right?”
“Right,” Heeseung replied, a bit dryly. “Never in all my years did I think my existence would be reduced to ‘Park Jongseong’s acquaintance.’”
Sunoo shrugged, a hint of a smirk on his lips. “Some would consider that title an honor.”
“Some, being Jay?”
“Precisely.”
A breathless laugh escaped him. Talking to Sunoo was easy, a comfortable back and forth that felt like it was colored with years of friendship, when in reality they were virtually strangers.
“Here to smell the roses too?” he asked. His nose was already beginning to itch. His skin crawled with the prickling heat of summer, and he felt a drop of perspiration slide down his spine. He would have wished for nothing more than to be back in the cool, dry air conditioning of his own home — had he been alone.
But now he had company. And he was perfectly content, right where he was.
“I’m here for birdwatching,” Sunoo told him matter-of-factly.
“Is a flower garden the best place for that?” Heeseung questioned. This particular area was sparse in trees, and there weren’t any birds that he could see flying about. The only things with wings they were in close proximity of made buzzing noises, and made Heeseung inch away nervously.
“Hummingbirds,” Sunoo said simply, and that was explanation enough. Heeseung gave a slow nod.
“Seen any yet?”
“No-ope.” Sunoo stretched the word out over two syllables, popping the p. “The thing about hummingbirds,” he said, “is that they never stay in one place for too long.”
“That is a problem,” Heeseung acknowledged. Sunoo bent down, bringing his face close to a nearby spray of petals. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes.
“I suppose we can just watch these flowers instead.”
Heeseung looked at the roses. He looked at Sunoo. One of these, he thought, is not like the others.
He didn’t know what it was. Something about the way Sunoo carried himself, maybe. Like he could take off at any moment, soar away from this place in a flurry of wings, leaving not a trace of a feather behind. His smile bloomed sweet and fresh like a flower, but unlike these other blossoms, he had no roots tying him down. He could come and go as he pleased, dipping in and out of Heeseung’s life like he had never even been there at all.
It was a bittersweet fragrance, that impermanence. Something much more potent than the scents of the garden, and somehow more compelling. It could only be carried by on a transient breeze every once in a while, but wasn't something that could be bottled and kept. That was what made it all the more beautiful.
Heeseung was a blossom, full of nectar, rooted to the ground. Sunoo was a hummingbird, flitting by and drinking mouthfuls of his time for a few, sweet moments, before he went streaking away once more. Heeseung couldn’t miss him when he was gone, not really. They didn’t know each other well enough for that. But Heeseung wanted to. He wanted Sunoo to be something to him, a person he could ache and long for in his absences.
He watched Sunoo silently as the boy darted around, admiring various plants and inspecting their different aromas. He trailed slowly after, unable to keep the slight smile off his face at the way Sunoo fluttered from flower to flower, unknowingly emulating the very thing he had come here seeking.
Heeseung’s eyes misted over. His throat tickled.
He was highly allergic to pollen.
***
The birds have long since disappeared. There’s been a great deal of speculation — it had been all over the news when the phenomenon had first been observed, and people wondered if the birds had simply sensed the impending doom and gone into hiding, or if they had migrated elsewhere to slowly die out.
The sky is no longer spotted with winged creatures, and it no longer beams with rays of light. The sun hasn’t shone in months now. The clouds are a rumpled, lavender-grey, and the days taste like dusk from morning till evening. Darkness hangs over them like a wet blanket, and the chill does nothing to soothe the ache of anticipation rising in every stomach. The grass is damp, seeping through the thin cotton tablecloth that Heeseung spreads out for them to sit on. The entire park is dotted with many such layouts, the lawn sprinkled with specks of candlelight that illuminate their midday vigil.
Now that there isn't even a table separating them, no cups of coffee to busy their hands with, there's an expectation simmering. An expectation to speak, to converse. Not just to talk, but to have a conversation. Time is ticking by, and there are no seconds to be spared on wasted, hollow words.
“Why did you leave?” Heeseung asks quietly. The air between them shifts. It's the first time either of them have addressed the elephant in the room, the grand reason why this is the first time they are seeing each other in a long while. Not that they saw much of each other before that.
“I was restless,” Sunoo says.
His voice is calm, and he looks peaceful. Heeseung recalls the way he had looked that last time he'd seen him, right before he'd disappeared. Sunoo's face had been in turmoil then, raindrops weeping tears onto his cheeks. It had hurt to look at him like that. But now he's more vibrant than ever, in the hours when the world is darker than ever. It no longer hurts to see him. It feels full, a missing gap finally filled.
“What did you do?”
“A little bit of everything, I guess,” Sunoo replies, lost in thought. His finger traces the rim of the glass between them, in which a candle has been lit. His hand maneuvers dangerously close to the open flame. “I travelled, did some soul searching, et cetera.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Heeseung wants to know. He wants to understand the purpose of it all, to determine whether it was all worth it. But Sunoo just smiles, and his answer is as hazy as the smudge of sun through the dust blanketed sky.
“I heard the world was ending. As exciting as it is to explore the great unknown, I’d like to die surrounded by home.”
Something in his words sends a shiver down Heeseung’s spine. It's only as he's suppressing a full body shudder that he notices Sunoo is shivering as well. He hesitates.
“Are you cold?” he asks. Without waiting for an answer, he slips his left arm out of his oversized coat and scoots closer to the other boy. Their thighs press together. Heeseung drapes the loose end of the garment around Sunoo’s shoulder, pulling it to cover as much of his bare skin as possible. He can feel eyes trained on his face.
“I feel like you don’t know much about me at all,” Sunoo says suddenly. “And I don’t know much about you. Only what we’ve seen.”
“We haven’t seen a lot,” Heeseung agrees. Their shoulders are touching now. Their elbows. Their wrists. The backs of their knuckles.
“What do you want to know?” Sunoo asks.
“Everything.”
It is a day of silence, a day of mourning. For humanity. For the world. Amongst a candlelight-speckled lawn and silent, bowed heads, two boys exchange more words between them than they ever have before.
They learn each other. They know each other. Maybe if they had more time, even just a single day — maybe then, they could do more than that. But their hours are numbered, and they know this - so they simply talk, and learn, and know.
“What are the chances,” Sunoo says, amusement pulling at his eyes, “that it would be us two together on a day like this?”
Heeseung deliberates for a moment, but the answer is already on his lips, another memory already drifting towards the forefront of his mind. He presses closer to the warmth by his side, as close as he can without gathering the boy up in his arms.
“Maybe one in ten thousand,” he says.
***
There was a large hill on the periphery of town, dense with trees, and a dirt trail leading right to the top. It was the perfect place to hike up to, and would have had the perfect vantage point for a nice view, had there been anything worth looking at.
Like most days, Heeseung was experiencing writer’s block, which was usually dealt with by lying down and waiting for inspiration or motivation to strike — which had about the same odds as him getting struck by lightning. Heeseung finally decided to get up and actually do something. Maybe a change in scenery would do him some good. So with nothing but a chilled bottle of water in hand, and a hope that the fresh air would bleed some imagination back into his desiccated brain, Heseung went on a hike.
At the very least, he hoped he wouldn’t run into too many people and be forced to exchange awkward nods of acknowledgment with panting by-passers. Of course, nothing ever worked out the way he planned for. But maybe it was better that way.
Heeseung did run into someone, a familiar face that he had not seen for some months. This boy should not have felt so familiar to him — after all, their meetings were few and far in between, and this was all but the fourth time they had encountered each other over the course of their strange, vignette-style relationship. So why did he feel so familiar? Why did seeing him feel like an exhale of relief after months of holding his breath?
“You.”
It was Sunoo who uttered that first word this time, his eyes wide with surprise — and thankfully, recognition.
“Are we going to meet like this every time?” Heeseung said, his tone nonchalant and playful. His heart was pounding. How can an almost stranger feel like home? How can an almost stranger feel like the muse that I’ve been missing? “Why are you here this time?” he asked the other boy. “For bird watching again?”
“No,” Sunoo said quietly, and it was only then that Heeseung noticed the blankness of his face. His voice was more melancholy than he remembered, and his eyes held none of their usual gleam. It was strange how well Heeseung knew the features of a person he had seen just thrice. “I just needed to… do something. Anything.”
Heeseung blinked. “Me too."
“You too what?”
“Hm?”
“What brings you here beside me today on this lovely hill?” A smile appeared. Or a shadow of one.
“Ah,” Heeseung said. “Hit a bit of a creative block. I’m a writer,” he added.
“I didn’t know that,” Sunoo said, looking intrigued. “What are you writing about?”
“What does anyone write about?” he shrugged. “Love, I guess.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
Heeseung swallowed painfully, his throat suddenly dry. Sunoo was gazing at him, curious and penetrating, and he felt bare. He wanted to turn his face and hide, but even more than that, he wanted to give this boy his raw and honest truth.
“No,” he said. “But I want to be.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re having trouble then,” Sunoo replied. He started picking away at a seam in his jeans, avoiding Heeseung’s eyes. “The solution to not being able to experience something firsthand, is to research it instead.”
“How can you research love?” Heeseung chuckled. “It’s not like there’s data for something like that.”
“There are statistics for everything, Heeseung.”
Heeseung jolted. Something about the sentence Sunoo had just spoken felt jarring, and he realized that it was the first time that the boy had called him by his name.
“Well then tell me," he drawled, "what’s the statistical probability of meeting your soulmate?”
His words came out strangely bitter, the tendrils of annoyance tugging at his chest. What did he have to feel annoyed over? Was it the fact that Sunoo thought throwing a number at him would fill that empty space? Or was it that against all reason, Heeseung wanted Sunoo to be the one to fill it?
“One in ten thousand,” Sunoo said simply, full of confidence.
Heeseung’s lips parted. He shook his head.
“That’s not as improbable as I thought.” His brief flare of irritation died down as quickly as it had flared up, and all that was left was bemusement.
“Well, meeting people is easy,” Sunoo told him. “How many people do you meet over the course of your lifetime — how many faces pass you by that could be ‘The One’?”
“I guess you have a point.”
Heeseung felt something wet hit his forehead, and he looked up. The sky had clouded over without his notice, and a soft rain was beginning to come down. The temperature was mellow and the droplets hitting his skin were warm, as rain tended to be at the height of summer.
“I think the question shouldn’t be, ‘What are the chances of meeting your soulmate?’” Sunoo continued, either not noticing the development in weather or choosing not to comment, "but instead, ‘What is the probability that you’ll fall in love with them?’”
This particular line of thought left Heeseung feeling strangely hollow, so he quickly turned the conversation around. “And why are you really here?”
Sunoo was silent for a long time. His face, which had begun to color with its usual animation over the course of their dialogue, dimmed once more. “I guess I have nowhere I want to be.”
“Nowhere at all?”
Sunoo looked at Heeseung, like he was searching for something. But he wasn’t looking at Heeseung, not really. His gaze was turned somewhere within himself, and Heeseung didn’t know if those eyes would ever fall upon him instead.
“I think I need to leave this place.”
The rain was sticking his hair to his forehead and his clothes to his skin, and the rain was warm, but the boy was shaking from something other than cold. A different kind of chill, one from deep inside. Heeseung wanted to hold him. He wanted to comfort him. He wanted to give Sunoo a reason to stay. But he was a coward, and so he did none of those things. Instead he did the simplest thing there was to do:
He let him go.
He didn’t see Sunoo for eighteen months after that. He hadn’t been counting. But after the boy finally re-entered the bubble of their small town once more, he couldn’t help but calculate the time that had elapsed in his absence. Eighteen months. It had felt like much longer. Something closer to eighteen lifetimes.
One in ten thousand. Not the best odds in the world, but in the grand scheme of the universe and the great unknown vortex of fate, it seemed like a rather healthy chance. Heeseung thought of a certain boy, and wondered if maybe he fell within that one in ten thousand. Meeting him had been easy. Heeseung had met him twice, even.
But perhaps the probability of falling in love with your soulmate was much, much smaller.
***
The sky is the color of a bruise, the hill they are sitting on painted violet. The air smells like fire and smoke and charred endings, and the two of them let the poison fill their lungs. Particles of dust leap and twirl around them, tiny dancers performing their final swan song.
They are quiet.
When you have filled in the gaps of years within the span of a day, what words are there left to be uttered?
“Birds,” Sunoo says. He says it so softly, so hesitantly, that at first Heeseung doesn't even register that he's spoken.
“What?” he murmurs back distractedly. His mind is still drifting somewhere in the past, somewhere in this exact spot. Isn’t that what he’s been subconsciously doing all day? Revisiting the places of the past, and repainting them with the present?
“Birds,” Sunoo repeats, more sure of himself this time. “On the horizon.” He lifts his hand and points.
At first, they appear as nothing more than black smudges on his vision, the contrast lost against the darkened sky. And then, a flicker of movement. The beating of wings, up and down. It's faint, but as they draw nearer, it becomes unmistakeable.
“But how?” Heeseung says in disbelief. “They all left.”
“Things leave, and disappear.” Sunoo looks at him carefully. “And things also come back.”
“Now, of all times.” He laughs, his breath leaving him in a wet gasp.
“What time is there like the end of time?” Sunoo says. He’s looking up at the sky. A storm is brewing, a storm that will wash away everything and everyone, leaving nothing in its wake.
When all is done, there will be no trace of them left on this hill. There will be no trace of this hill left on this earth. They will all return from whence they came, to drifting masses of stardust wandering across an endless universe.
***
It ends the way all big things do; with a crash and a bang.
At first it looks as though the sun has descended upon them to swallow them whole, its fiery orange mouth open wide. The comet shatters against the atmosphere, like a crystal ball hitting the floor and fracturing into a million tiny knives. It's raining stars. It's raining fire and light, streaks of weeping sky that cut through the air and sink gashes into the ground.
Heeseung had come upon Sunoo in the rain once, not quite like this. He had been trembling, and cold, and Heeseung could have held him. He could have. He almost did.
He watches the stars begin to fall. The birds are no longer flying at low altitude, but have landed and settled upon a perch on some branch or patch of grass. Perhaps even those with wings seek to treasure the feeling of the ground beneath their feet while they still can.
“I’m grateful,” Heeseung says, “that I almost knew you.”
Sunoo looks at him; in his eyes are the echoes of sunsets they never had, and the last one they’ll ever see.
“You do now,” he says.
His hand is warm when Heeseung folds it into his for the first time. He wonders why he has waited so long. Maybe it really took the cataclysmic fear of going down in ashes and flame to wash away the tiny, flickering fear of holding the boy he wanted to love.
They sit quietly, hand in hand, as the heavens come to a boil and violet gives way to searing scarlet. Life erupts around them, but they are at peace. The birds watch with calm gazes.
“I really wish I could have written us a happy ending,” Heeseung whispers. He feels a thumb brushing against the inside of his wrist; the flutter of a wing.
“I like this one.”
Two boys close their eyes, and dream of warm summer rain.