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There was a pile of bones behind the shed just off Dogwood street—and Minhyung, Hyeonjun, and Wooje used to take guesses at what they used to be. Minhyung listened to Hyeonjun say dumb, wrong answers as they walked past the pharmacy with a salon above it. The shed was in an abandoned lot that sang with cicadas and the rustle of empty metal cans. They never stopped long to look at the bones. If anyone asked, Minhyung said it was a cat, even though he didn’t really believe so.
“It’s not a fox, Hyeonjun,” he said one day. “Why would there be foxes around here?”
Hyeonjun cleared his throat and spat on the asphalt. “Look at its skull,” he said, putting two fingers up, one on each side of his head. “Those’re ear-holes, right? Totally ear-holes.”
“So? Other animals have ears too.”
“But we already guessed those.”
“But a fox is stupid, dude. There’s no forest nearby.”
“Shut up.” Hyeonjun pulled at the straps on his backpack, then loosened them. “What do you think it is?”
“A cat.”
“You always say that. You’re no fun. Ooh—how about a bobcat?”
“Those aren’t ear holes,” said Wooje.
Hyeonjun and Minhyung turned to look at him. The sidewalk was only big enough for two people, so Wooje walked a pace behind them. He preferred to stay at the back since he walked the slowest. They never got too far without him; Hyeonjun would always glance backwards after a minute or two, silently, before slowing down or speeding up. He looked behind himself more than he did at Minhyung, or the cars crossing the street at intersections.
“What?” Hyeonjun said, staring at him.
“I said those aren’t ear holes on that skull. They’re eye holes.”
“Seriously?” Minhyung snorted, glancing at Hyeonjun with a stupid grin. He expected some kind of comeback. Instead:
“Oh, okay.” Hyeonjun nodded. “So they’re eye-holes.”
Minhyung looked back at Wooje, who had returned to playing with a stalk of fountain grass he’d taken from a crack next to a vending machine. As he twisted its stalk, the grass’s soft, fuzzy head twirled in circles beneath his chin, occasionally brushing his lower lip.
“But how do you know that for sure?” asked Minhyung. “Like, they could just be really big ears, or something.”
Wooje shook his head. The fountain grass bent beneath his jaw. “Skulls don’t have ear holes that wide,” he said, “and besides, they’re at the front. You don’t have ears on the front of your face, do you?”
“They sort of looked like they were on the back…”
“I thought you said it was a cat,” said Hyeonjun.
“Cats have ears, genius. Besides, you thought they were ear holes too.”
“What do you think it is, Wooje?” Hyeonjun suddenly asked, turning to look behind him.
Wooje’s pupils drifted upwards and hid halfway beneath his eyelids. The grass twirled. Minhyung kept looking between them and the path ahead, since Hyeonjun didn’t seem to be focused on anything else. Their sneakers scraped against the sidewalk through the silence.
“Hm,” said Wooje.
“Come closer.” Hyeonjun reached out and grabbed Wooje by the left strap of his backpack. “We can’t hear you.”
He pulled him forwards, forcing Minhyung off the path and into the grass. Wooje intentionally dragged his feet as Hyeonjun held him. His shoulder clashed with Hyeonjun’s elbow, and his head bobbed side to side, falling in whichever direction Hyeonjun was tugging. Finally, he gave a response.
When Wooje spoke, it sounded as if he were talking through a homework book rolled into a tube: muted and far away. His eyes were fixed to the sky. It was a habit that sometimes annoyed Minhyung; he wondered if Wooje thought he was a martyr or something, always looking towards the horizon with a quiet, beseeching look.
“It’s us,” Wooje replied.
“What?” Hyeonjun tugged the strap. “You mean the bones?”
He nodded. “Us—just not here, and not yet.”
Minhyung knew then and there that he’d never get science. Hyeonjun suggested that they all get ice cream later—there were several stores on their way back home—and the two agreed; it was a hot day. Hyeonjun pulled Wooje along the entire way, stumbling, complaining whenever Wooje tried to slip his backpack off in secret. It meant Minhyung had to walk on the side of the road, but he said nothing.
He kept his eyes on the path ahead as Hyeonjun gazed behind them.
Time passed and Hyeonjun got mean and Wooje got sick. At about the same time, Minhyung stayed painfully the same. He’d knock on doors just to hear about Hyeonjun’s new friends, or Wooje’s swollen ankles. Eventually, Wooje’s mother answered the door to say that he had been transferred to the hospital. Hyeonjun stopped answering the door soon after.
One frigid day, despite knowing this, Minhyung knocked anyway. He’d driven himself after getting his learners’ permit and was hoping to get his licence before graduating. He knew it was terrible, but as he stood in front of the door, shivering, he found himself thinking of the test, or the amount of driving hours he needed to get instead of Wooje and Hyeonjun. To his surprise, someone did come to the door—but it wasn’t Hyeonjun.
The hinges creaked open. “Who are you?” asked a thin, pale-faced boy. His voice rasped with the accumulated gunk of nicotine.
“Is Hyeonjun home?” Minhyung asked.
“No.” The boy began to close the door.
“Wait,” said Minhyung, putting a hand out to stop him. He gripped the side of the door and stared down at the boy. All the dim porchlight looked trapped around his shoulders. “Tell him that he should come downstairs. We’ve got to visit Wooje.”
The boy hesitated. “He won’t respond,” he said.
“What?”
“He’s upstairs…with a girl.”
Minhyung blinked once. Then he nodded. “I see,” he said slowly. “That’s fine, then.” And he let go of the door. The boy watched him as he turned and walked down the porch steps, shoes hitting the weathered wood in steady clump-clumps.
It was only when Minhyung pulled out the driveway that he shut the front door.
“Did he say anything?” asked Wooje, fiddling with an IV tube coiled in his lap.
Minhyung shook his head. He was sitting in a chair that reeked of coffee at the side of Wooje’s hospital bed. Someone had drawn the curtains that divided the room in half, shielding them from the view of the doorway. “He’s been busy lately,” Minhyung responded. “Hasn’t had time to drop by. Stupid guy.”
He knew Wooje had heard him, but instead of responding, he continued to play with the tube. The plastic was wrapped around his fingers like a grape vine. His hair fell well past his eyebrows; Wooje hadn’t been able to get it cut for a while. When they suggested he get it cut in the hospital, with a barber at his bedside, he got so sullen he refused to eat for three days. Now, it looked matted from being pressed against a pillow. Wooje’s hair was the kind that suffered the most from neglect, fluffy and prone to kicking up in tufts. Minhyung thought it kind of looked like sheep’s wool.
“He’s busy?” Wooje said absently, winding the tube around his index finger. “With what?”
“With—” Minhyung watched as his eyelashes fluttered, “—schoolwork. We’re nearing the end of the term, so everyone’s worried about finals.”
A slow, deliberate blink. “Finals, huh?” remarked Wooje. “I don’t think I’ve taken a single one since middle school. I haven’t even done midterms.”
“It’s alright,” said Minhyung, leaning forwards in his chair. “They’ll help you get caught up once you get back. And then after we get through a few years, the fun will begin. In uni.”
“University…” Wooje glanced up from his IV tube and towards the windows behind Minhyung, where the hospital room overlooked a parking lot. “Huh.”
Minhyung sensed he was growing distant. “We’ll get to drive and live on our own,” he said enthusiastically, “like real adults. Hell, you can eat whatever you want. Even at three in the morning.”
“Why would I want to eat that early?” Wooje wrinkled his nose. “I’d be asleep.”
“I mean, you could though. That’s the thing.”
“Sure.”
Minhyung observed him as he gazed out the window. He didn’t know why; there was nothing there, just an endless parking lot with shiny rows of empty cars, all sidled up to each other in varying degrees of alignment. Surrounding the lot was a tall chain-link fence. The sky was vibrant blue, and other than the asphalt, it was the only colour outside. Fat clouds milled along the barren horizon.
And yet Wooje stared. He had that same look when he cast his eyes upwards, silent and searching. His hospital gown was as wrinkled as his sheets, which were as wrinkled as the covering on his bed—which had been elevated so he could sit upright. The light from outside cast a ghostly shine over his face. His skin appeared almost yellow as a result.
If you looked closely at his hospital gown, it had tiny navy flowers printed on it. Minhyung noticed how Wooje’s lips were dry and flaking. They’d lost their colour and become an ashen pink. Instinctively, he wanted to reach out with a thumb and soothe them with Vaseline.
“How’s Hyeonjun doing?” Wooje asked out of the blue. He turned to face him.
Minhyung hesitated, putting his forearms atop his thighs. When he did speak, he sounded confident.
“He’s doing great. We go out after basketball practice and just hang around. He’s a terrible shooter—but hey, at least he made the team, so it all worked out in the end.”
“Hyeonjun plays basketball now?”
“Yeah.” Minhyung nodded. “I see him play pick-up games at the park. Only goes home once the sun goes down.”
Wooje thought about this. Then he smiled. “I see,” he said. “I like that. I like that a lot… the basketball, I mean. I always knew Hyeonjun would make the team.”
Knitting his fingers together, Minhyung crossed his thumbs. “You had more hope than I did,” he said, raising the corners of his mouth in an effort to smile.
“He’s an athletic guy. I can’t imagine a meathead would do anything else.”
“A meathead!” Minhyung laughed appreciatively.
Wooje turned back towards the window. Minhyung gazed at him as he spoke. “But you know,” he began, “I don’t see why you keep asking about him. He hasn’t come to see you once.”
“That’s why I keep asking,” Wooje replied without looking away. “You said he was busy, right?”
There was a fraction of a pause as Minhyung straightened up. “Right,” he said slowly.
“You know, I watched a movie today.”
“Did you?”
Wooje nodded.
“What was it called?”
“All Dogs…” Wooje murmured, struggling to remember, “All Dogs Go to…”
“Heaven?”
“Heaven,” he repeated, nodding. “All Dogs Go to Heaven. They brought in a TV and I watched it on Blu-Ray. I liked it a lot. It got me thinking about animals and stuff.”
Minhyung hoped he hadn’t noticed him stiffening up. Both of them knew what the ‘and stuff’ entailed.
“Do you think that dogs have a special heaven, or do they go where everyone else does?”
Minhyung hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe they go with their humans.”
“In the movie, there’s a dog heaven,” said Wooje, winding and unwinding the IV tube. “The main dog character dies and he goes to somewhere called the Good Place, full of bones and water fountains. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”
“Well… won’t they miss their owners?”
This reply didn’t satisfy him. Wooje shook his head. “All dogs, no matter how bad or good they are, get to go to a place just for them. It’s like the universe made it that way—like how someone’s parents build them a tree house.”
“I see.”
“I want to think of it that way. There’s a whole bunch of rotten dogs in the movie, but in the end, all of them get to go to heaven. Because they’re good boys.”
“But don’t you think that’s unfair to the good dogs?” Minhyung asked suddenly.
Wooje thought about this. “Maybe,” he said. “In the end though, if they really are good, they’d want to see everyone happy. All dogs are born puppies, blind and noisy. You can’t tell one apart from the other. It’s only later that they become ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or quiet, or spoiled. I think in dog heaven, all of them are puppies again.”
“Huh.” Minhyung nodded. “I think I get it.”
“But it’s just a movie,” Wooje finished, “and they aren’t gonna show me another one until next week. The TV is supposed to go to the younger kids’s unit.”
“That’s pretty lame.”
Wooje looked away. “I guess.”
Minhyung wiped his palms on the dark denim of his jeans. They weren’t sweaty; it was a tic he’d developed after realising he liked the rough feeling against his skin. “Did you like the movie?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Wooje, nodding enthusiastically. “I really liked it.”
“How come?”
“There’s this one dog that reminded me of someone. In the movie, he’s a con artist and makes money by rigging horse races.”
“As a dog?” Minhyung laughed incredulously.
“Yeah. And he steals people’s wallets. He’s a dirty stray and has a mafia accent.”
“Who does he remind you of? Not me, right?”
“No, no,” said Wooje, smiling. “Definitely not you.”
Minhyung waited for a follow up, but when it didn’t come, he sat back in his chair. Wooje had a habit of starting thoughts and never finishing them, leaving them to float down the lazy current of time. The sky had turned a harsh, fiery orange by then, throwing shadow across the room. Wooje’s face looked golden. His skin, smooth and markless, drank in the light like soapstone. Minhyung must have looked like one big shadow sitting beside him.
“They’re letting me pick a movie the next time they come,” said Wooje, “but I don’t know what to choose yet.”
“What would you like to watch?”
A pause. Wooje looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Anything with dogs.”
Later that evening, Minhyung drove himself home and stomped all the way up to his bedroom. He threw open the door and fell onto his checkered sheets, shimmying out of his left sock and leaving his jacket half-zipped. His face burned from the cold. He put his hands behind his head and thought about all the lies he’d told Wooje.
Minhyung hadn’t talked to Hyeonjun in over a year. After Wooje fell sick, he withdrew and stopped looking at him at school, or waving in the hallway. He knew he played basketball from watching him on the courts after class, but had never hopped in a game against him, shying away at just the last moment. Hyeonjun wasn’t on the basketball team. He’d been kicked out after getting caught smoking in the bathroom.
Exhaling loudly, Minhyung stared up at his now-indigo ceiling. When that didn’t sound loud enough, he sighed again. His ears felt like they were underwater.
At the time, he didn’t have the heart to tell Wooje that he didn’t believe in Heaven, or Hell. People died and then they stopped thinking forever. The idea that there was a special Heaven for dogs was novel, but only in a childish, simplistic way. He thought about what Wooje had said about all dogs going to Heaven.
“Dogs…” he said, words escaping his teeth in a hiss. “Poor things. They’ve probably suffered enough to go to Heaven, honestly.”
His mind ping-ponged between Wooje’s matted hair, the boy at the door, and pet dogs lying in front of doors as he laid in bed. He began to grind his teeth together. Why had Hyeonjun left him like this? The taste of ice cream and sun blazing beneath his skin felt like a lifetime ago—all he could do was knock and wait. Someone would answer Wooje’s hospital room door, no one would greet him on Hyeonjun’s porch; and if they did, it was either the pale faced boy or some dark-eyed, disheveled girl who would eye him distrustfully before slamming the door on his foot.
He would be fine though, Minhyung told himself. He would be fine.
And he was. And he was throughout Wooje’s last week—all of it; the knocking, the news, the phone calls and whispered conversation in the kitchen. He sat in his car, driving down the highway in the middle of the night to complete his last few hours for a provisional license, all in silence. He was fine just like he’d said.
Hyeonjun was not, funnily enough.
When the doctors told him he was Type O and could save Wooje’s life, he kept it in for weeks until he broke down crying, telling Minhyung he just couldn’t.
And he didn’t.
They were in the gym locker room around eight at night, right before the building closed. Minhyung didn’t remember the events leading up to then, but there he was: standing above Hyeonjun as he bent forwards, fingers knit together in front of him, head hung so low his shoulder blades created a deep crevasse. Minhyung stared down at the top of his head. He had dyed his hair blonde in their second year of high school and it had yet to fade out.
Hyeonjun was silent for half a minute before the sobs started to escape. He refused to raise his head; Minhyung saw fat, wet droplets hitting the concrete floor and bleeding out in dark patches. They fell with an insistence that surprised him. Just like that, Hyeonjun was crying.
“I’m—sorry,” was all he could say, over and over. The phrase was so choked with tears it became incoherent. He repeated it like a chant, a mantra, a prayer, until it had lost all meaning. Hyeonjun’s voice had grown deeper than Minhyung remembered. It cracked more now that he was inconsolable.
Silently, Minhyung stared down at him. He felt his face going numb.
“You’re fine,” he said, realising he sounded lame. His voice was transparent. “You’re fine, bro. Just breathe.”
But Hyeonjun didn’t breathe. He didn’t raise his head, even as Minhyung’s neck ached on his behalf. Harsh wheezing noises escaped his body like pressing down on an inflated IV bag. In, out, in, out—soon, Minhyung forgot the sound was even coming from Hyeonjun himself.
Between breaths, Hyeonjun managed to utter a few words. Minhyung almost missed them.
“I just—couldn’t,” he gasped, “couldn’t do it. I’m such a fucking pussy—” His words died off. It seemed that if he didn’t focus on exhaling, his sobs would asphyxiate him completely.
Head bowed, his breathing sounded like the heavy panting of a dog.
Minhyung was never mad at him. Anyone who knew Hyeonjun knew he hated needles, and blood, and latex gloves. It was why no matter what he experimented with, he never touched ‘the vein shit.’ It was why when during their middle school biology class, as the teacher slid thick, sharp pins through a dead frog’s flesh—Hyeonjun ran out the room, dry heaving into Wooje’s shoulder as Minhyung and the rest of the kids watched from the hall.
And no one reminded him, but he punished himself with a combination of alcohol, sex, and opium. Every time Minhyung saw him, the circles under his eyes grew darker. His hair changed colour several times, suddenly shaved before growing back.
They talked once senior year, right before graduation. Just a text message from Hyeonjun at midnight, saying, “I hate it man.”
Minhyung had said something like, “I know.” He’d typed it out on his own, but it had also appeared on the auto-response bar at the top of his keyboard. He hated it. That night, several hours earlier, he had just gotten his official driver’s license. The test had drained him, and Minhyung barely read what he’d typed before sending it. It didn’t seem important at the time.
It was in the news when Hyeonjun died in a puddle of Type O after writing five words on a sheet of notebook paper in granite pencil.
I was scared. I’m sorry.
Minhyung often sat in bed at night, shaking. Too tired to get up and too anxious to sleep—he would close his eyes and fantasize about a life when the three of them were still at the shed. Their voices floated over his head.
Hyeonjun hooked his fingers on the straps of his backpack. “I’m telling you,” he said, “I think it’s a bobcat.”
“Stop it,” Minhyung groaned. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Seriously. That stopped being funny a week ago.”
Between them, walking with his elbows brushing Hyeonjun’s side, Wooje breathed out. “It’s so hot,” he complained. He was holding the dangly strap on Hyeonjun’s backpack in his fist like a dog leash. They would have walked faster, had Wooje not been pulling Hyeonjun towards him.
“You said that earlier,” Minhyung pointed out.
Hyeonjun turned to look at Wooje. “Let’s go get ice cream,” he said.
“But we already passed the last store.” Minhyung frowned. “We’d have to go back, and that’d take another twenty minutes—”
“Sure,” said Wooje, swinging Hyeonjun’s backpack strap back and forth. “Let’s go. But I’m not paying.”
“I didn’t bring my wallet,” Hyeonjun began sheepishly, turning towards Minhyung.
“Guys—”
But Minhyung found himself hurrying after them anyway, back down the street, past the church and the bushes, towards where they came. After some time, they secured the ice cream and ate it at a languid, leisurely trot. They eventually came to where the shed was.
“Those’re the bones again,” Hyeonjun commented.
Wooje’s gaze lingered on the bones as they walked past. He was holding a melon popsicle. Beside him, Hyeonjun had already finished his and was gnawing on the stick. The two brushed against each other as they walked—so close Minhyung wondered how they didn’t fuse together from the heat. No matter how slow Wooje went, Hyeonjun stayed at his side, obediently taking his ice-cream wrapper when offered and tucking it in his back pocket.
“What’re you looking at?” asked Hyeonjun, gazing at the side of Wooje’s face.
Wooje finally looked away. “Just the bones,” he said.
“They’re nothing special, dude. We see them all the time.”
“What am I supposed to look at, then?”
For a fraction of a second, the popsicle stick in Hyeonjun’s mouth stopped moving. He swallowed.
“Whatever’s closest to you.”
“Huh.” Wooje wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His fluffy bangs had grown frizzy, resembling dryer lint. “But the bones are close, aren’t they? Am I supposed to wear blinders or something?”
“Don’t argue with me,” Hyeonjun groaned. “It’s too hot for that.”
With an air of mischievousness, Wooje turned his head away at a sharp angle and kept his eyes focused on the left of the sidewalk, away from Hyeonjun. He nearly walked into a ‘Yield’ signpost. Soon, Hyeonjun began darting between his left and right shoulder, trying to catch his gaze. The sound of panting, giggling, and the scrape of sneakers against asphalt followed. Minhyung complained when Hyeonjun accidentally elbowed him in the ribs while sprinting around.
Finally, it seemed Hyeonjun had gotten tired of running. He slowed to a jog. Wooje was still turned away, this time looking at something in the trees, past the fences of houses.
Suddenly, like a dog diving for a frisbee—Hyeonjun lunged for the popsicle waving around in Wooje’s hand and snagged a voracious bite.
“Hey—!”
“Mmph mmrph!” garbled Hyeonjun. He had a shit-eating grin, or as much of one he could manage with cheeks full of ice-cream. Soft green liquid dribbled down his chin and brimmed between his lips; shiny and tinted an artificial colour. His eyes gleamed with mirth.
Wooje held his now-devoured popsicle limply. He stared at Hyeonjun in shock. Then:
“Come back here!”
Hyeonjun took off down the street as Wooje tried and failed to grab the strap of his backpack. They were running again, running despite it feeling like moving in hot soup, and Minhyung had no idea how they had the energy for it. The sun had begun to dip below the horizon and dyed the sky a soft pink, bleeding into retreating baby blue. Cicadas, roused from their daytime sleep, thrummed in the background. The air had taken on that wistful quality which, no matter how long winter lasted, announced its arrival with the scent of cut grass and cool evening breezes.
Somehow, Minhyung found himself running after them: Hyeonjun turning to look behind him, cackling, lips sticky sweet, with Wooje in pursuit; bangs ruffled by the wind and face flushed. Minhyung brought up the back, looking eternally forwards—watching as the two of them disappeared into the distance, eager as puppies. Suddenly, the scene burst into colour. The edges of leaves, the soles of their shoes appearing as they ran, all took on a breathless quality.
Minhyung’s heart pounded in his ears. All he could do was keep his eye on the two until they were gone.
Much later, once Hyeonjun had allowed Wooje to catch him and give him a good biff on the head, the three walked side-by-side towards the neighborhood Wooje lived in. He was always the first stop they made when parting ways. By then, the sky had become a deep indigo. The feeble hands of night curled around what was left of that evening; the cicadas grew deafening. Even so, Minhyung still heard what they said as clear as day.
“By the way,” Hyeonjun began, “what were you thinking about back there?”
Wooje turned to him. “Back where?”
“Before Hyeonjun stole your ice cream,” Minhyung added helpfully.
“Oh.” Wooje turned towards the distance and exhaled. An absent look settled across his features. “Not much. Just the bones.”
“Still?” snorted Hyeonjun.
“What about them?” Minhyung asked him, facing his direction. “And don’t give some weird, philosophical answer. You don’t really think they’re from a bobcat, right?”
Despite Hyeonjun’s hopeful look, Wooje burst out laughing. It was a strange, delightful sound, one that came in warbling gasps. Minhyung always thought it sounded a little bit sad, like something was balled deep inside Wooje’s throat.
“Oh no,” he sighed. “Of course not. I’m not an idiot.”
“C’mon,” whined Hyeonjun. “That’s mean.” Then: “Well, what do you think it is?”
Wooje smiled. Whenever he did, it spread across his face like a lotus flower, blooming like being torn apart.
Minhyung fantasized about a life when the three of them were still at that street with the shed, and Wooje would go:
“I think it’s a dog.”