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“What would you do,” Jaemin says quietly into the darkness. “If we broke up?”
Renjun blinks up at the ceiling. He hadn’t been sleeping. Neither of them had been sleeping. “Is this a hypothetical question?”
They’re sleeping in the same bed, but curled up on their sides and facing opposite directions, they’ve somehow managed to find a way not to touch even despite the narrow width of the mattress. When they first started dating half a year ago, it’d been a battle to keep their hands off each other. Renjun isn’t quite sure when that changed.
The tension in the air feels so thick Renjun thinks he would choke if he tried to swallow right now. So he holds his breath. Hears the faint sound of Jaemin’s lips parting, then closing again, as if he meant to say something but stopped himself instead. Hesitating over words is supposed to be my thing, not yours, he wants to joke, but it’s not the time.
He feels the minute the tension breaks.
“I don’t know,” Jaemin admits.
Renjun swallows around nothing. “Do you want to break up?”
It’s unbearable to wait for the answer. But like all things, good and bad, it eventually comes.
“...Yeah,” Jaemin says. “I think I do.”
His first instinct is to say no. As if this is his choice at all. You can’t keep people in your life if they don’t want to stay. Even if you could, it’d only make them want to get away more. Maybe Jaemin has been thrashing against the constraints of Renjun’s self-supposed love for a while now, and Renjun has just been too blind to notice.
If someone wants to leave, you let them go.
“Okay,” Renjun says, with more composure than he feels. He swings one leg out over the covers.
Jaemin catches his wrist as he rolls over, and Renjun is struck for a moment at the abruptness of the contact. “I don’t mean—You don’t have to go now. The rest of them are… you know.”
Right. Jeno and Jisung are up late gaming in the living room. Renjun can hear the faint sound of one of them yelling over the other. If they catch Renjun leaving Jaemin’s room at this time of the night, they’ll have questions.
“You should sleep here,” Jaemin continues. “Just for the night.” One last night.
“...Okay,” Renjun says, knowing he’s not going to be able to sleep. He feels so tightly wound, full to the brim with emotions he does not want to feel. Is it safe to be in Jaemin’s bed when he could burst and shatter at the edges any moment now?
He settles back into bed and waits for what feels like hours for Jaemin’s breaths to even out. Only then does he turn his face into the pillow, bite down on his fist, and allow himself the luxury of crying.
🌻
As far as breakups go, this one is clean. Or as clean as a breakup can be when your ex-boyfriend is also your coworker, and you also live together.
“I think this one is yours,” Renjun says, holding out a mint-colored hoodie he knows belongs to Jaemin. It’s soft and worn and still smells like him, and truthfully Renjun does not want to give it up. But it’d hurt more to hang onto it, even though Jaemin has that look on his face like he’s about to say that’s okay, you can keep it.
He thought dividing up their belongings would hurt a little more. It doesn’t hurt. All he feels is numb.
Jaemin accepts the hoodie, folds it up all neat in the way Renjun doesn’t know how to. Pressed into thirds, one sleeve under the other, the hood tucked underneath. “Thanks,” he says quietly. Renjun can barely hear him over the sound of rain pouring down in sheets, beating against his covered windows.
How do you sign off in a situation like this? Okay, thanks for the last six months, see you tomorrow. It was nice playing house with you, I’m looking forward to pretending like I don’t know how your body feels underneath mine next time we’re stuck in a changing room together at a recording. “Well.,” Renjun says, and even he’s surprised for a moment by the flatness he hears in his own voice. “If that’s it, I’ll just be going now.”
“Wait—” Jaemin starts, and Renjun hates that he listens. “You don’t want to talk about this?”
Renjun swallows. “What is there to talk about? You dumped me.” Pretty suddenly, too, at that. If things are over, they’re over. He doesn’t need to stick around and listen to all the ways he’d failed to measure up to Jaemin’s expectations.
“Renjun. Don’t say it like that.”
“How should I say it?” The ensuing silence is long, drawn-out, heavy. “Right. That’s what I thought.”
Jaemin sighs. “Okay,” he says, voice soft. He sounds defeated, even though Renjun is the one who lost here. “Tomorrow’s a Wednesday, so we’ll have to be up a little earlier. Don’t forget to set your alarm.”
Be happier, Renjun thinks. You got exactly what you wanted. This is what you asked for.
“I won’t,” he says. He almost certainly will. The tiny cardboard box of his belongings (just assorted knicknacks—one candle, one travel-sized perfume, one small pot housing a single sunflower—all the bigger items will be dealt with later) feels like it weighs ten times more than it should as he turns on his heel to leave.
“Renjun,” Jaemin says again, a thread of desperation in his voice, just as Renjun steps past the threshold of his door. “Just because we’re not together anymore doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
What else could it possibly mean? Renjun wishes he could say. If he opens his mouth he might cry, and the only thing that would be worse than losing his pride would be to lose his pride and receive pity from Jaemin. At least this way he can still pretend he’s somewhat unaffected. So he says nothing, bites down on his lower lip, and leaves without another word.
His own room is right next door to Jaemin’s, and still, it feels worlds apart. The pillows and blankets they use are supposedly the same, but when Renjun settles on the bed it feels wrong. The sheets are too starchy. The covers aren’t soft enough. Everything—all of this—feels wrong.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thinks.
From the start, it had always been Jaemin chasing Renjun. It was Jaemin who pursued him. Jaemin who confessed for the first time. Jaemin who kissed him and promised—promised—that he would be careful with Renjun’s heart.
Then again, it was Renjun who foolishly chose to believe him.
There’s a burst of pain at his jaw; he’s been clenching his teeth too hard. He has no one to talk to about this. No one even knows they were anything at all. The box gets set on the floor, the sunflower on the windowsill. Alone in his room without anyone’s pity to fear, he takes in one shaky breath, and thinks about what he could have done differently. If he cries while doing that, it’s not the point. You were too clingy, he thinks. Or maybe you were too distant. You were too much too soon. You weren’t vocal enough. Maybe you were too vocal.
Or, a small, cruel voice in his head whispers, Maybe he never loved you at all. You stopped being useful to keep around, to warm his bed.
Is it better to know definitively why Jaemin wanted to break up with him so badly he couldn’t even wait until the morning to do it? Or is it better to sit here, speculate, never know one way or another why things turned out the way they did? Renjun isn’t sure, and that’s a terrifying thought in itself.
It’s pathetic. He was never supposed to be the type of person to cry over a breakup. He used to watch romcoms with Jeno and wonder why the protagonists wasted so many tears over people who were only ever going to be temporary in their lives, anyway. Everyone is temporary. This is something Renjun used to know before Jaemin came along and convinced him otherwise. The sunflower, sitting in its pot in its new home by the window, seems to wilt that much more, as if in agreement.
The only thing that brings Renjun any comfort is knowing that pain, too, is temporary. Maybe it won’t be tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after, but one of these days—eventually—he’ll wake up, and everything will be okay.
Even after crawling underneath the covers, there’s a chill that won’t seem to leave him. The memory of Jaemin’s body, warm and soft with sleep and draped over him, comes to the forefront of his mind. He’s used to the warmth of another person, he realizes, and not even adding another quilt to the stack of blankets in his bed does anything to stave off the cold.
It’s only 5:00 PM. Even with the rain the sky is light outside, but Renjun still closes his eyes and hopes for dreamless sleep.
🌻
Renjun is seven when his grandmother tells him how to predict the weather. They’re kneeling in the dampened dirt of her garden; Renjun holds an umbrella over his grandmother’s head as she carefully cuts back the foliage of her peonies. She told him once that her grandmother planted them, a long time ago. Every year, they come back in the spring. Every year, she trims them back. This is the first year Renjun is old enough to be of any proper help.
One snip; a stem falls to the ground. Renjun collects it with careful hands. Another snip; an entire branch falls. It’s too big to fit into Renjun’s basket, so they leave it for now.
“All you have to do is look at the sunset,” she says to a sulking Renjun, whose plans to go to the park have been ruined by inclement weather. “If the sky is red, then the next day will be clear. If the sky is dark, then the next day will be rainy instead.”
Is it scientific? Probably not. But it’s ninety-nine-point-nine-percent foolproof, and Renjun is the sort of person who believes in things he can’t see, anyway. His grandmother was the type of person who believed in the supernatural, in aliens, in signs from the universe. He learned it from her.
Renjun is twenty-two years old when he wakes up and his grandmother’s theory is proven wrong for the first time.
When he awakens, his awareness is fuzzy at best. The world comes to him in pieces—the scent of wet concrete and petrichor hits his nose, even though he’d been sure to close the windows last night. He’s warm—too warm.
There’s another body in his bed. Renjun knows even without looking who it is. It’s like some sort of sick joke. You say you believe in signs from the universe? Someone seems to be taunting him. Okay, try this one on for size. Because it’s not his bed at all–the sheets are too dark, the pillow is too soft—he’s back in Jaemin’s room as if the events of the past twenty-four hours never happened.
The last thing he remembers is waking up around eight, just in time to watch the reddened glow of sunset fade to black and tell Jisung that no, he didn’t want any dinner. But even then, he had been in his own bed, in his own room.
Did he just sleepwalk somehow? Is his memory failing him?
For a few seconds, he’s scared to breathe. Then he remembers—right. Jaemin is just about the world’s heaviest sleeper. It helps that they’re not touching, either. He lets one foot touch the ground. Jaemin stirs, but doesn’t wake. From there, it’s easy to slip out of Jaemin’s room and into the hallway.
He makes a mental note to himself to barricade his door before going to bed.
There’s already noises coming from the kitchen. It’s too early for Jeno to be up, and Jisung wouldn’t be caught dead cooking. “Donghyuck?” he calls out. “Did you sleep over last night again?”
Donghyuck is fiddling with the coffee machine when Renjun rounds the corner. “Good morning, sunshine. What do you mean again?” he asks. The collar of his shirt (Jeno’s, probably) slips down his shoulder.
Isn’t this the second day in a row? “Never mind,” Renjun says, eyeing a half-empty glass of milk on the counter. His perfectly reasonable 14 hours of sleep are beginning to feel a lot more like 0. “I thought we ran out of milk yesterday.”
“No, that’s the last of it. You might want to make a note to buy more later.”
That’s definitely not right. Renjun distinctly remembers tossing the empty milk carton into the trash that morning. He reaches into his pocket, unlocks his phone.
Tuesday, May 14.
“Donghyuck,” Renjun says slowly. “What’s our schedule for today?”
“Too lazy to check the calendar yourself, princess?” Donghyuck laughs, oblivious to the panic growing within him. “We’re recording for Inkigayo later today, but that’s it.”
Renjun fists his hands into the thin fabric of his sleep shirt. What the fuck, he thinks. What the fuck is going on. Is his grasp on reality really so tenuous? “We recorded for Inkigayo yesterday.” We recorded for Inkigayo, and then you had a solo schedule and I came home and stole back all the little pieces of my life from Jaemin’s room before passing out for the better part of a day.
Donghyuck stares at him as though Renjun’s lost his mind. Maybe he has. “No,” he says. “We didn’t.”
But they did. “Right,” Renjun whispers, quietly reeling. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
🌻
It would be easy to pass off as a bad dream. Maybe Renjun did just imagine, in his sleep and all his misery, all the events of the previous day. Maybe the Inkigayo recording had all been in his head. Maybe Renjun imagined the dividing up of their belongings, too. That would be nice. Comforting, even.
Except the conversations in the van are the same, and that’s fucking weird. Jisung asks Jeno if his cheeks look swollen, and Jeno dutifully replies no, you look perfect. Mark gives an impassioned speech about having fun and doing their best that would probably be very inspiring if Renjun hadn’t already heard it word-for-word, and Donghyuck teases him about sounding like a youth church minister. Chenle moans and gripes about the Warriors losing their game last night—103 to 107, Renjun says without thinking, finishing his sentence.
“Whoa,” Chenle says. His eyes are round and wide with disbelief. “Since when are you into sports?”
Renjun isn’t into sports. He just remembers the score, because Chenle had told him yesterday already, and why is he the only one who seems to be aware they’re repeating this entire day over again? “Since yesterday, I guess,” he says, even though he’s the only one who’ll understand the joke.
Jaemin stiffens, but remains silent.
From there, everything else is like clockwork. Mark pulls him aside to give him the same government-mandated-leader talk about how you seem out of it and you can always tell me anything, you know that, right? And Renjun nods the same way he did the day before, tells Mark you have nothing to worry about, nothing happened to me, I’m just tired. Jisung’s AirPod case falls out of his pocket during rehearsal, and Renjun kicks it away as soon as it hits the ground instead of almost tripping on it like he did yesterday.
The staff ooh and ah and praise his reaction time and quick thinking, and Donghyuck and Chenle both coo loudly, petting his head in a way that does more to mess up Renjun’s carefully-styled hair than to smooth it down.
Renjun drinks in their praise, and it feels like cheating.
He excuses himself to go to the bathroom halfway through lunch, because he’d already been sick of kimchi jjigae before this, and having it for a second day in a row is no more appealing than it was yesterday. If this is a dream, he thinks, hunched over the sink, his hands braced on the laminate counter. His eyes are stinging something fierce, and when he blinks, they overflow. Now would be a good time to wake up. He runs his hands under the faucet, splashes cold water on his face and ruins the last dregs of his makeup. The makeup artist will be angry with him. She’s already angry; took one look at Renjun’s red-rimmed eyes and tsked as she dotted concealer beneath them. But it’s less embarrassing for them to be redoing his makeup because he ruined it on purpose than for them to know he’d ruined it by accident from crying.
When the door swings out, it’s unexpected. Renjun glances up into the mirror—just long enough to catch a glimpse of Jaemin, looking as exhausted as Renjun feels—and averts his gaze quickly.
The lock makes an audible clicking noise as it slides into place. “What are you doing?” Renjun asks, a thread of panic in his voice. It’s clear this isn’t going to be one of their backstage trysts. Repeating the same exact events of the previous day is still preferable to being stuck in an enclosed space with his ex-boyfriend, however unexpected it might be.
“Renjun,” Jaemin starts quietly. His approach is slow, each footstep measured, as if he thinks he might be dealing with a particularly skittish animal. “You know, don’t you? That there’s something wrong here.”
Renjun’s eyes widen; he schools his face into a more neutral expression as smoothly as he can. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that you know,” Jaemin says, reaching out for him. Renjun flinches away from his hand. “That conversation in the van—every conversation, actually—is the same. We did this all yesterday already.”
So it’s not a dream. And if it’s not a dream, it can only mean that it’s something much worse than that.
Renjun swallows and ducks his head. He repeats, more firmly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The pain of their breakup is still too fresh, too raw. Renjun can hardly bear to look at him, and still, he can’t look away. Jaemin has always had that effect on him.
Jaemin’s eyes close for a moment, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. “Don’t shut me out. Not now. Not when we’re the only two people who seem to be even vaguely aware something is going on.”
“Am I really the one who shut you out?” Renjun asks. Who shut who out first? he asks with everything but his words, his shoulders stiffening as he makes a move to push past Jaemin. “They’re going to wonder where we are,” he says, his face still damp and cooling from the water. “We really shouldn’t be talking here.”
Lightning quick, Jaemin’s hand wraps around his wrist. “Will you just hear me out,” he says, and his touch feels white-hot, burning and scarring over where it makes contact with Renjun’s skin.
The phantom smell of char and smoke fills his nostrils. “No,” Renjun says, struggling to breathe. His voice is choked. “No, I don’t want to do this. Not now. Let go of me.”
“If not now,” Jaemin asks, tightening his grip as Renjun tries in vain to struggle against his significantly greater strength. “Then when?”
“I don’t know.” Maybe never. Renjun pulls free of his grasp. The imprint of Jaemin’s fingers settle into his skin like a brand. “Figure it out yourself.”
It feels better than it should to walk away from Jaemin first, to not look over his shoulder for the expression on his face. Even with the darkening imprint of Jaemin’s fingers at his wrist, the sting fades to the background of his consciousness.
So maybe Renjun is a little vindictive. He thinks he’s earned it, in this situation. It’s good to know, in a way, that he has some autonomy after all. That he won’t go running back into Jaemin’s arms or wilt like a flower in the face of his changing whims. It was a very real fear of his. Still is, if he’s being honest.
He loves Jaemin, which is a fact as unerring it is humiliating. Love doesn’t just leave because the other person does. Renjun knows this now. Today is the first step on the long journey that is falling out of love.
“Where’d you go, hyung?” Jisung asks, his voice sweet. He is exactly as cute as he was the day before. Renjun can’t resist pinching his cheek as he takes his seat next to him. “I saved you some soup.”
“Bathroom,” he replies. “And thank you, Jisungie, but I’m not really hungry.”
Jeno perks up suddenly. “You didn’t happen to see Jaemin on your way back, did you? We’re supposed to be back on in like, ten minutes.”
“Nope,” Renjun lies. “Didn’t see him.”
You are not going to end up back where you started, Huang Renjun, he tells himself. Things will be different this time. Maybe this nightmare is a blessing in disguise. Maybe it’s exactly what you needed to learn this lesson.
🌻
Renjun wakes up on Tuesday morning in Jaemin’s bed with a bright-red mark around his wrist, and turns to scream into a pillow.
🌻
“You know,” Chenle starts. “Not that Daegal isn’t happy to see you, but if I wanted you to come over I would’ve invited you.”
Renjun half-heartedly scratches behind one of Daegal’s ears. “Shut up,” he says. “I did your dishes, didn’t I? Stop trying to keep me away from my daughter.”
“Is she your daughter? I thought she was your sister.”
“No, that’s Mark.”
“And Mark is your father, so she’s your… niece?”
“I don’t know,” Renjun sighs, going still. Daegal nudges her head into the palm of his hand until he resumes his petting. “The whole family tree is confusing. Why couldn’t we all just be brothers instead?”
Chenle plops down next to him on the couch and shrugs. “Dunno. Where’s the fun in that?” Then, like an afterthought: “Are you gonna stay the night?”
So maybe running away to hide at Chenle’s place isn’t the most mature thing Renjun has ever done. Part of him is pretty sure it’s useless, anyway—he’ll probably wake up in Jaemin’s bed again no matter where he ends up falling asleep. But it’d been hard enough to act normally around him in the morning while they worked, and Renjun hadn’t even done a good job of that. Several times Donghyuck pulled him aside and asked him, not unkindly, what the fuck was going on with him.
What the fuck is going on with me, Renjun wanted to laugh in his face. More like what the fuck is going on with everyone else?
Chenle’s apartment is something of a safe haven. Here, he doesn’t have to deal with Jisung’s probing gazes or Jeno and Donghyuck’s over-the-top displays of public affection or Jaemin’s awkward silence. They haven’t been truly close since Chenle stopped needing Renjun to act as his de facto translator, usually seeking out other members for company instead, but still—being with him is easy. Sharing a language is enough to have in common sometimes. Renjun often forgets that. Their back-and-forth banter is familiar, almost comforting, and requires very little thought.
It’s nice. Renjun is already tired of thinking, and it’s only been two days of this—whatever this is.
“Yeah, if that’s alright.”
“I don’t care either way, but I’m not sharing my bed.”
Renjun wrinkles his nose, even though he knows Chenle will end up caving eventually. “What, not even for your favorite gē?”
“Huh,” Chenle says, looking around exaggeratedly. “I don’t see Kun here—ow! Joking! I’m joking!”
“We used to share a bed all the time,” Renjun says. The pillow he’d been using as a weapon a few seconds ago falls to the ground, and Daegal jumps at it with all the fierceness in her 3-kilo body. “Remember that? You were so small back then. So cute. You’d sneak into my room after the managers left and whine about missing your mom, or—”
Chenle claps a hand over his mouth, but the blush that rises to his cheeks is unmistakable. “Stop,” he whines. “That was years ago. Things are different now.”
That’s the problem, isn’t it? That things always have to change. That they always end up different than when they started. “I wish they weren’t sometimes,” Renjun says, after wrangling Chenle’s hand away. “Sometimes I wish things could just—stay the same.”
“Is this about Jeno and Donghyuck?” Chenle asks, squinting at him suddenly. “You and Jaemin have both been acting weird since they started dating.”
“No we haven’t,” Renjun says.
“Yes you have.”
“Have not.”
“Have too.”
Renjun steals the pillow from Daegal again just to thwack Chenle in the shoulder. “Have not.”
“Aw,” Chenle coos. “Are you jealous you’re not the only one getting attention from Donghyuck anymore? I didn’t think you would be the possessive best friend type.”
“I’m not,” Renjun says stiffly. “That’s not what this is about.” He’s happy for them. Really, he is. Maybe he’s a little bit envious, but not in the way Chenle thinks.
Chenle picks Daegal off the ground to settle her in his lap. She lays down without any protest. Maybe Renjun should get a dog. Maybe a dog will fix him. “Of course it’s not,” he says.
“I’m done talking about this,” Renjun says, grabbing the remote from the coffee table, and just because he knows it’ll start a fight: “Let’s watch a movie. I’m gonna pick.”
“What,” Chenle squawks. “It’s my house, I’m the one who should pick—”
It’s easy. Predictable. They bicker over a movie that Renjun barely pays attention to, and then Chenle lets him share the bed, just like Renjun knew he would.
Not that it matters, when Jaemin is the one he wakes up to in the morning.
🌻
So they wake up on Tuesday morning. Then they do it all over again.
It’s terrible. It’s excruciating. Every morning, Renjun wakes to the sound of a thunderstorm and creeps out of Jaemin’s room before he’s woken up and takes back the little pieces of his life. Candle, perfume, flower pot. It’s a matter of principle. Something he has to do, even though he knows they will only end up back where they started once the day resets.
He waters his sunflower, too, even though he knows it will never grow. These all feel like tiny, bite-sized exercises in futility.
For the first few days he goes about the schedule. It is, in a word, uneventful. Maybe it’s karma, he thinks. Did he not hold a door open for someone? Accidentally cut someone off, or ignore someone, or otherwise commit some sort of wrongdoing against the universe? But then the week passes, and despite Renjun’s best efforts, he is no closer to finding a solution. Whether he acts the same, whether he does one or two or three things differently, the day never progresses.
He comes to find out there are rules to this:
- He and Jaemin are the only people aware of the situation.
- Attempting to tell other people about the situation results in a few confused, concerned looks, and then Renjun blinks, and he’s back in Jaemin’s bed, and the day has been reset again.
- It doesn’t matter where he falls asleep—he always wakes back up in the same place.
- Staying up past midnight doesn’t work, no matter how many half-empty cups of tea he drinks throughout the day. Right as the clock strikes twelve, everything goes black.
So acting differently doesn’t seem to help. Acting similarly, letting the events of the day play out exactly the same as they did the first time, doesn’t seem to be working either.
Two weeks pass, and after that, Renjun stops counting the days.
“G—”
“Good morning, sunshine,” Renjun drones back at him. He’s not entirely sure why he even bothers coming into the kitchen anymore—the smell of Donghyuck’s burnt eggs and the sight of him in Jeno’s shirt got old five repeats ago.
Truthfully, he’s not entirely sure why he even bothers doing anything anymore. It’s not like it seems to matter.
Donghyuck opens his mouth, and Renjun beats him to it once again.
“H—”
“How did you know what I was going to say? Are you in love with me or something, Renjun-ah?” Renjun opens the fridge, grapples blindly for the carton of orange juice he knows is stuck somewhere in the back. He found out a few resets ago Jeno had been trying to hide the last of it from them. “I guess that’s what happens when you’re around someone for long enough, Donghyuck. Maybe you’re getting predictable.”
Donghyuck, visibly baffled, coughs on the end of his swallow and looks up wide-eyed at Renjun. “We’re out of milk.”
The orange juice gets unearthed and poured into an empty glass Renjun snatches off the counter. “I know,” he says. You told me yesterday, is on the tip of his tongue. But yesterday isn’t real. It never happened, or it’s happening now, or maybe none of this is real at all. You told me yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that too, and I can’t be bothered to count any further than that.
He bumps into Jaemin in the hallway on his way back to his room.
“You forgot this,” Jaemin says, the first acknowledgment he’s made of Renjun since their bathroom confrontation all those days (weeks, months?) ago. He pushes something into Renjun’s hands and his fingers close around cool metal.
Renjun doesn’t need to look down to know exactly what it is. He thought this bracelet was lost to time, or the depths of Jaemin’s closet. Nausea rises, lodging itself in his throat. He takes in the defeated slump of Jaemin’s shoulders, the sullen look in his face, and thinks—I know. God, I know. You were looking too, huh?
In the first week, he turned his room upside down countless times. Looking for clues as if he just looked hard enough, a piece of paper would fall out of the sky telling him why this might be happening and how exactly he might fix it. He uncovered a lot of things—an old album of polaroids from when they were trainees. A shirt he thought he’d lost while doing laundry. A lot of dust.
But no clues.
“That’s okay,” Renjun says quietly, a wry smile crawling across his face as he pushes the bracelet back into Jaemin’s hand.
“I’ll get it tomorrow.”
🌻
It’d be cruel to force Renjun to relive the day of their breakup. But being forced to relive the aftermath is something worse. Though Jaemin is constantly within reach, Renjun has to keep reminding himself to fight the continual pull to Jaemin’s side that he feels whenever he looks across the room to find him standing there, staring off into space like he’s trying to make sense of it all.
The more he tries his best not to think of Jaemin, the more he ends up thinking of Jaemin anyway. He’s always been self-destructive at heart, stubborn in terrible ugly ways, and he’s never been so keenly aware of this tendency until now.
It feels like living with a ghost. Jaemin showers a little later in the mornings so he won’t run into Renjun brushing his teeth. Renjun avoids the kitchen in the evenings so he won’t have to bump into Jaemin, dutifully cooking dinner for them as he always does. But even that’s not the worst part, because avoidance comes easy to Renjun; a second language he’s never needed to find fluency in.
The worst part of it is that at every turn Renjun has to be reminded acutely of Jaemin’s absence in his life, in the most mundane ways. He re-folds a sweater and shoves it into a drawer and finds that it doesn’t fit quite as neatly as before, when Jaemin would fold it for him. The coffee he makes in the mornings is always just a little too bitter. He goes to take a tissue from the box on his nightstand only to find it empty, because Jaemin would’ve replaced the box before Renjun even noticed it was running out.
These reminders become part of his daily routine in the same way everything else does. Jaemin’s absence at his side is tangible, palpable even, and sometimes, he looks across the room to see Jaemin looking back at him, and he has to talk himself out of believing that Jaemin might be fighting that same pull to him too.
Of course he’s not. Why would he be? He’s the one who let Renjun go to begin with.
🌻
Maybe this is what makes him crumble. Or maybe it’d be more accurate to say all of it makes him crumble.
It’s not sustainable to live this way. There’s a limit to how many times someone can repeat the same day, the same actions, the same words, over and over again. Renjun thinks he probably surpassed this limit some ten-odd cycles ago. He’s always hated the rain, but he’s never hated it quite so much as he does when he wakes to the sound of it for the nth time in a row.
So it was only a matter of time, really—he was always bound to lose it. It’s not as though he wanted to snap at Donghyuck. All he wanted was to shut himself in his room and stay in bed all day instead of going to the same fucking schedule again (and again, and again, and again). They sent in Jisung to fetch him, because they knew Renjun would never be able to say no to Jisung—a cheap tactic. Renjun feigned coughing, whined about feeling under the weather, and Jisung, either too naïve or too weak to call him out on the obvious acting, pet his head sympathetically and left him to rest.
Donghyuck, on the other hand—it should go without saying that in the same way Renjun has never said no to Jisung, Donghyuck has never pulled his punches with Renjun when it comes to calling him out. They might be best friends, but their friendship—however close it might be—has always been prone to fits of fury. Like a lit match hovering over a gas burner, ready to burst into flames at a moment’s notice.
And burst, it did. Donghyuck called him an immature brat, Renjun called him an inconsiderate bitch, Donghyuck threatened to call Jaemin to intervene. From there, Renjun hardly remembers half of what he spat out at him. Just that he was slinging words to hurt, and he knew they would hurt, because their closeness is a double-edged sword. He knows Donghyuck’s weak spots just as well as Donghyuck knows his, knows what to say to get under his skin, to get him to well up and storm out and leave him the fuck alone.
At least the fighting had felt new, Renjun thinks, dropping his head into his hands. He felt terrible when Donghyuck slammed the door shut behind him, just barely holding back tears. But Donghyuck isn’t the one who will have to remember this tomorrow. Renjun is.
Donghyuck will get a fresh, clean slate, left blissfully unaware that he’ll be reliving the same day over again, and Renjun won’t get that luxury. So it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. Renjun could walk into traffic, spend the next 14 hours in the hospital, and still wake up in Jaemin’s bed on Tuesday to find himself with only surface-level bruising.
He still has his head in his hands when Jaemin enters. He doesn’t look up. Doesn’t have to, because he’d recognize the sound of those footsteps anywhere, even now, even buried ten meters deep in the ground of his own misery.
“I can hear you overthinking from here,” Jaemin says, voice distant in more ways than one. The door closes behind him with a thud.
Of course Donghyuck would choose now of all times to go running to Jaemin. Guess he wasn’t bluffing.
Renjun swallows down a bitter laugh. “That’s not impressive. I’m always overthinking.” Jaemin used to be the one to pull him out of this tendency. Now though, Renjun only has himself, and it turns out this is one of the many things he’s worse at than Jaemin.
They haven’t really spoken in what feels like forever. It’s awkward. Jaemin hovers a fair distance away from Renjun, like he can’t decide if he should stay standing or risk sitting beside him on the bed. “Should I leave?”
“I don’t know,” Renjun says, swallowing down another bitter laugh. “Should you?” A non-answer for a non-question.
Jaemin kneels on the ground in front of him. His knees sink into the plush of Renjun’s rug and Renjun can’t see what sort of expression he might be making, but his mind is doing a very good job at filling in the blanks. Pity is the most likely option. Disgust is a top contender too.
Or maybe he’s just tired. Tired of all of it, just like Renjun is.
“Will you at least look at me?” Jaemin asks. The floor is suddenly so interesting. Renjun stares down at the patterned wood grain until his eyes cross. “Please. Just for a second.”
Renjun manages, but only barely. “I’m looking.” He mumbles, lifting his head.
Sad. There’s only sadness in Jaemin’s face when he stares up at Renjun. It’s not what Renjun expected. He can’t decide how he feels about it. “I know this is difficult,” he says. “Trust me. I know. But you need to apologize to Donghyuck.”
“Since when are you on his side?” Renjun snaps, nerves worn. “You fight with him more often than I do.” Donghyuck and Jaemin are never on the same page. It’s convenient that they should choose now to start doing it. Even more convenient that they’re doing it to gang up on him.
“We fight,” Jaemin agrees, because it’d be pointless to deny. His hands twist in his lap. “But not like that. It’s never been that bad. You know it, too.”
Sure, Renjun knows it. But knowing something and wanting to admit to it are two very separate things. A hush falls over them; the silence is heavy enough that Renjun holds his breath for fear of choking on it if he were to open his mouth.
Jaemin’s voice is hushed when he speaks up again. “You shouldn’t have brought up Jeno.”
Renjun tries to curl his hands into fists to stop them from trembling, but he’s not sure how effective it is. Probably not very effective, judging by the way Jaemin’s expression twists itself into a frown. “I was just being realistic,” he forces out, and now his voice is trembling, too. As if this situation couldn’t get any more humiliating. “He thinks he and Jeno have it so good. They have no idea— They don’t know that—”
“That what,” Jaemin says. “That they could end up like us?”
That there was ever an us, Renjun thinks, wishing he could sink into the ground. He can still remember the uncharacteristically bashful look on Donghyuck’s face as he held Jeno’s hand and quietly announced to their half-asleep van that he and Jeno were dating. He can still remember the way Jaemin stiffened next to him, and the way he reached for Renjun’s hand, too. He can still remember the way he had batted Jaemin’s hand away, part of him too scared to take it and the other part of him too shocked by the entirely-too-casual way Donghyuck had broken the news to them.
He remembers the way they’d fought afterwards, too.
“Why should I apologize to him when he won’t even remember it tomorrow?” he counters. “Why does it matter?” He’s not sure why he says it. Maybe some part of him wants to be proven wrong. Despite his outward appearance, Jaemin has always been the more level-headed one between them, a moderating influence to what Donghyuck calls Renjun’s Sun-in-Aries tendencies. Whatever that means.
The truth is that he’s terrified that things do matter, and that there are consequences to his actions, and that those consequences yet unseen are going to bite him when he least expects it. The other, more difficult, somehow contradictory truth is that he’s even more terrified that things don’t matter at all. That this nightmare is entirely meaningless. “No matter what we do, we’ll just wake up tomorrow, and it’ll be the same day all over again. It’ll be the same day all over again—” His voice breaks, and all pretense of him being a functional adult who is not hung up on this breakup has disappeared into nothing.
“Renjun—”
“It’ll be the same day all over again,” Renjun repeats. “And we won’t be together.”
Jaemin surges forward, then, still kneeling on the ground. He gathers Renjun into his arms right as he crumples, bent in half to accommodate the somewhat awkward position of their embrace. If Renjun didn’t know better, he might mistake his own trembling for Jaemin’s.
“Just because they won’t remember doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to lash out at them,” Jaemin says finally. The stern tone of his words is somehow at odds with the way he threads fingers through Renjun’s hair. Gentle, tender, familiar and foreign in equal measure. “It doesn’t make their hurt now any less real.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right, he always is. Renjun presses his face into Jaemin’s neck and breathes. When he can’t press any closer than he already has, Jaemin pulls him into his lap, rearranging their limbs until Renjun’s body curves close to him and he can wrap his arms around him properly.
Renjun would like to say he resists the pull, but he’s been resisting it for so long now that all he can do is submit to it. “I’m tired, Jaemin.” His cheek is pressed to the hollow of Jaemin’s neck, so his words come out muffled, but he can tell by the way Jaemin’s hand tightens at his waist that he’s been heard loud and clear. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Outside, the rain is almost deafening. "I know,” Jaemin says softly. “I know.”
His voice is so soothing. It’s such a cruel thing that the one person he can find comfort in is also somehow the source of his sadness. “If the universe was going to force me to go through this,” he says. “The least it could’ve done was make sure you didn’t remember either.”
“You know I don’t believe in signs from the universe,” Jaemin sighs.
Renjun smiles against his skin. It’s good to know some things don’t change, even in a situation like this. “So what do you think this is, then?”
A beat of silence as Jaemin pauses. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But there must be a reason it’s just the two of us, right?”
“I can’t tell if we’re being told we should stay broken up, or that we should get back together.” Renjun laughs. Jaemin doesn’t.
“You shouldn’t joke around like that,” he says. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I mean it. Were you really that unhappy with me? Being with me—was it that bad?”
Jaemin swallows audibly. “No. Of course not, I—”
“Don’t answer that.” Renjun interrupts him, suddenly nauseous at the thought of hearing his answer. “Just tell me. Are you happy now?”
“No,” Jaemin says once more. “No, I’m not.”
“So is it better to be unhappy apart, or unhappy together?”
Jaemin inhales a sharp breath. “Renjun,” he says, with the tone of a warning. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” Renjun struggles in the silence; swallows around the air, suddenly grown frigid. He searches for a retort, a defense, a justification, an answer, and comes up empty. What does come out is: “I really want to kiss you right now.”
Of all the words he thought would fall from his mouth right now, these are somehow the most surprising and the most unsurprising of them all. He does want to kiss Jaemin. He never doesn’t want to kiss Jaemin. It’s a truth he can’t deny, but now that it’s been said out loud, he’s afraid it might break whatever spell they’re both under right now.
Jaemin says, very simply— “So do it then.”
Renjun hesitates, even though he’d been the one to bring it up first. “You’re not afraid they might come looking for us?”
“It’s just a kiss.” Jaemin reaches out, gentle, and cups a hand against Renjun’s cheek. “Right?”
It’s never just a kiss with them. But even if someone comes looking for them, they won’t remember this tomorrow, and Renjun is so tired of being miserable, of pretending he hasn’t missed being with Jaemin like this.
“Right.” Renjun breathes out, and closes the distance between them.
It’s a mistake. Of course it is. But he just wants to feel good again, and kissing Jaemin is always good. He wants to feel beautiful, to feel loved again, even if only for a moment. The last time he felt loved was just a few days before they broke up, what feels like a lifetime ago. Jaemin held him apart and fucked into him with a tenderness Renjun could not understand as he covered his own mouth with his hand for fear of waking up Jisung, sleeping one door down, and when they were done, he smiled an odd unhappy little smile and kissed Renjun’s breath away before he could read into it.
He’s had forever to read into it now, and he has, but Jaemin holds his neck and kisses him soft and sweet, slides their tongues together and curls one hand into his hair and suddenly thinking at all is a very difficult feat. Renjun doesn’t understand how one man has this much pull over him. Just one touch, just one word enough to leave him weak.
Jaemin’s thumb strokes over the high point of his cheekbone. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, like he can read Renjun’s mind, his voice curling warm over the shell of his ear.
Renjun’s mind, overactive even now, conjures up an alternate reality where Jaemin crowds him into a corner and whispers it against his neck like it just tumbled out of him, his affection unraveling like a spool of thread with the same inevitability of an oncoming storm, or a dark sunset before a rainy day. So in love he wouldn’t be able to keep the words to himself. It’s preferable to this reality by far, where they’re still broken up and still doomed to repeat the same events again until—
Until what, Renjun isn’t sure.
That’s not fair, he thinks, heart pounding. Whatever autonomy he thought he had only turns to dust when he’s this close to Jaemin. How is that fair at all?
It’s easy to let himself get caught up in familiar touches though. Jaemin squeezes at his hip with one hand, almost reverently. Disentangles the other from his hair so he can ruck up the hem of Renjun’s shirt. He touches Renjun’s softest places with so much tenderness it feels misplaced. Soft, soft, soft. Their bodies are so different; Jaemin always used to marvel at it. Renjun did too, at the circumference of their wrists or the breadth of their shoulders or the firmness of their abdomens.
A sigh spills from his mouth as Jaemin sinks teeth into his lower lip, and Renjun lets his hands skim the lines of Jaemin’s shoulders and sneak beneath the warm cotton of his tshirt where his skin is smooth and warm to the touch. The need to touch feels driven by something other than urgency, settles warm in Renjun’s chest as Jaemin pushes their clothes aside until they’re touching skin to skin, near feverish even in the chilly air of Renjun’s too-cold room. Their bodies move against each other with the kind of ease that comes from years of sharing more time together than they’ve spent apart.
Jaemin tucks his hands behind the backs of his knees and lifts, and Renjun gasps into his mouth as they stumble backwards, one unit, and his back collides with the wall. It doesn’t hurt—Jaemin is careful to cushion the back of his skull with his hand—but the action has enough force behind it that the wall shakes. From its new home on the windowsill, his potted sunflower teeters; Renjun watches as it tips over, the pot splintering into pieces when it hits the ground.
The noise it makes is shattering. Renjun winces; Jaemin doesn’t seem to take notice of it at all, his lips sliding from Renjun’s mouth down to his jaw, down to his throat.
“Wait,” Renjun gasps. His eyes are wide open, stuck on the image of broken ceramic and clumped dirt and tangled roots emerging from the mess, the stem of the sunflower bent clean in half. “Wait, Jaemin, the pot—”
“It’s okay,” Jaemin says, soothing. “We can clean it up in a bit.”
Renjun tries to swallow his sudden discomfort. It’s not okay. It just feels so symbolic somehow; a sign that they’re somehow doing this wrong. He looks down at them now, at Jaemin’s palm spread wide on his waist, and for a moment, the image of it almost seems to waver. “But the flower…”
“Will be fine tomorrow morning,” Jaemin whispers against his skin.
Jaemin mouths over a sensitive spot on his neck then, and Renjun holds his breath, not daring to move. He’s become so accustomed to Jaemin being background noise, a ghost of a presence. At this point, Renjun hardly remembers what it’s like to have so much of him all at once. His mind is a mess of emotion. It’s overwhelming. It’s addicting. It makes him wonder why he ever gave this up to begin with, and then—
And then he remembers he wasn’t the one who gave this up. It was Jaemin. Now that the warm buzz of desire has partially worn off, the moment broken along with the flower pot, Renjun is once again deeply aware how tenuous a plan this really is.
“I can’t do this,” he says, pushing at Jaemin’s shoulder, and Jaemin immediately pulls back. “Jaemin, I can’t— We can’t—”
Jaemin reaches out to steady him as he stumbles, his face drawn with worry. “That’s okay. We don’t have to do anything. Let’s just sit here and breathe for a moment, alright?”
Maybe he can sense the panic in him. Renjun can’t breathe. “I can’t,” he says again. His breathing starts to turn ragged, his chest rising and falling so quickly he’s surprised he can manage the words. He blinks; tears slide down his cheeks, and at once, he realizes how pitiful he must look. Half-undressed and red-cheeked and sniveling and still dressed in his pajamas and always so, so weak.
“Do you want me to leave?” Jaemin asks, hesitant, even as he puts distance back between them.
The truth is that Renjun doesn’t know what he wants. Wanting Jaemin used to be the simplest thing in the world—still is, in some ways. But even that feels muddled right now. He nods, his ears ringing, eyes still trained on the ground.
“You’re sure?”
Another nod. Part of him doesn’t expect Jaemin to actually leave. They’re both stubborn; always an immovable object to Renjun’s unstoppable force.
But he does, with some reluctance. “I’ll tell them you’re not feeling well,” he whispers.
There’s a moment where Renjun thinks of saying wait, of trying to claw the words back, of saying he didn’t mean it, of begging Jaemin to stay. Instead, he lets him go, waits until the door is finally shut again to sink to the ground, crying over the broken pieces of ceramic and the fruitlessness of it all, of this entire situation, of all of it combined.
🌻
“Renjun-ah,” Mark says, shaking him awake. “Hey. You shouldn’t sleep here.”
Why the fuck is Mark here? Renjun wonders, and then realizes the obvious answer is that no one else was brave enough to attempt approaching him after the tantrum he’d thrown earlier. The burden must’ve fallen to Mark, being leader and all.
Renjun unfurls himself from the ground. He’s got an ache in his neck and his eyes feel like they’re burning. He’s so fucking tired of crying. It feels like that’s all he does, lately. “What time is it?” he asks. It’s dark outside. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t m—”
“I’m tired of today,” Renjun decides. Surely the universe will forgive him for twisting its rules for his benefit just once. “Hyung, we’re in a time loop.”
“Wh—”
“Jaemin and I are the only two people aware of it. And in five seconds, I’m going to wake up in his bed, and it’ll be like today never happened.”
Mark’s brows knit together in clear confusion. “I don’t understand,” he says. “Why are you telling me this?” He looks like he’s three seconds away from trying to send Renjun to the psych ward. Thankfully, he doesn’t have the time.
“Because you’ll have forgotten all about it by the next time I see you.”
He blinks.
🌻
Renjun awakens the next day to a touch so gentle he thinks he’s dreamt it up at first. He feels Jaemin’s hand smooth his hair back, and a feather-light press of lips on his forehead. He’s not quite sure why he pretends to stay asleep, why he goes still and evens his breathing and keeps his eyes closed. But he does, and by the time he opens them, Jaemin is long gone.
It’s raining, because of course it is.
A quick glance to the right shows the sunflower in its ceramic pot sitting in its usual spot on the desk, untouched, still intact, almost like yesterday never happened at all. But yesterday had happened, Renjun thinks, thumbing over his own lower lip as if to remember the way Jaemin’s teeth had sunk into it. The slight pressure almost stings; a sense of dread knots in the pit of his stomach.
It takes a few moments to gather his bearings enough to actually get out of bed. He doesn’t bother collecting any of his belongings today, heads straight for the kitchen instead.
Donghyuck is—as always—fiddling with the coffee machine when Renjun rounds the corner. “Good morning, sunshine,” he says, looking over his shoulder, and Renjun has never been so relieved to see him in Jeno’s stupid fucking too-big shirt. “You’re up early.”
“Good morning,” Renjun replies. He’s reaching out to hug him from behind before he even processes fully what he’s doing. It’s not often that he’s the one to initiate physical affection with Donghyuck, but he feels sort of nice to hold. To wrap his arms around his soft waist and bury his face into his shoulder and breathe in sunshine and warmth, even as the sky outside remains overcast. Maybe Renjun is a little more touch-starved than he realized.
“Hey, what’s gotten into you?” Donghyuck laughs, his whole body shaking with it. Renjun holds him tighter. “Did you have a weird dream last night or something?”
Renjun bites the inside of his cheek. “Or something.” He hesitates over his next words. “I just… wanted to let you know that I’m sorry.”
Donghyuck makes a confused noise, then tries to twist around in Renjun’s arms to look at him. Renjun holds him in place. He feels a little bit like if Donghyuck looked at him right now it might break him. “Sorry for what?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Renjun says. He can’t very well tell Donghyuck that the reason he’s apologizing is because he’d let an argument Donghyuck doesn’t even remember get out of hand.
“You’re acting weird. Is everything okay? You’re not drunk, are you?”
“It’s 7 AM.”
“So?”
A laugh bubbles out of Renjun. “I’m not drunk. Shut up and just let me hug you.”
“Okay,” Donghyuck snorts, covering Renjun’s hands with his own where they’re wrapped around his middle. “Weirdo. I accept your sudden apology for nothing in particular, I guess.”
They stand there quietly for Renjun doesn’t know how long, until Jisung drops by for a glass of water and wrinkles his nose at them and calls them weird. Donghyuck laughs first, then Renjun, and soon they’ve both dissolved into fits of giggles, and finally Renjun relinquishes him from his hold, letting his arms fall back to his sides.
“So,” Donghyuck says, shaking his arms out like the circulation to them had been cut off until now. He’s so dramatic. Renjun’s grip wasn’t that tight. “Are you feeling ready to face the day now?”
“Yeah,” Renjun breathes out. “Yeah, I think so.”
🌻
So he gets in the van and tries not to look at Jaemin, sitting up front in the passenger seat, and he listens to the same conversations he’s heard countless times before, mouths along with them. His lips form around the words before they’ve even been spoken aloud.
Hyung, do my cheeks look swollen, I
probably shouldn’t have eaten all that ramen last night.
No, you look perfect.
Come on guys, listen up, it’s gonna be another great day
today, let’s all have a lot of fun and be sure to do our best,
I know the last few weeks have been tough, but—
Renjun takes a moment to giggle to himself at this. He hardly remembers the last few weeks, apart from a few key moments. It’s impossible to keep track of it all when you’ve been stuck repeating the same twenty-four hours over and over again.
You sound like a youth church minister, you’re just missing the robes.
Chenle-yah, you look tired, were you up late watching basketball again?
Yeah, and the warriors didn’t even win their game, they lost—
“103 to 107,” Jaemin says. Renjun stiffens.
“Whoa,” Chenle says. “Since when are you into sports?”
Jaemin looks over his shoulder. When his eyes meet Renjun’s, his smile turns a little wry. “Since yesterday, I guess.”
Renjun isn’t sure what he’s doing, or what it means—if it means anything at all. It’s probably just Jaemin’s odd sense of humor. But it makes him smile anyway, something small and soft and stolen and secret as he turns to look out the window.
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Chenle complains. Renjun fails to stifle a laugh. “And why are you laughing, huh, what’s so funny—”
“Nothing,” Renjun says, settling back in his seat and pulling his cap over his eyes. They’ll miss the next red light, then get stuck at a train crossing, which gives him maybe a solid twenty minutes to nap before they make it to the SBS Open Hall. “Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
When he excuses himself to go to the bathroom during lunch, it’s Jeno who finds him standing in front of the mirror, hands braced on the sink. Part of Renjun was expecting it to be Jaemin again. He’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed.
“Hey,” he starts softly, like he’s afraid Renjun might run off if he speaks above thirty decibels. “You seem…a little off today. Is everything alright?”
Renjun gnaws at his lower lip. It still feels bruised, a little tender, from the not-day-before. Maybe it’s just his imagination. “Yeah, everything is fine. I just…” Jeno stands, waits patiently, and suddenly Renjun feels himself crumble. His knuckles go white around the counter as his grip tightens. “No. I don’t know why I said that. Nothing is fine. Everything feels wrong.”
“Donghyuck told me about your conversation this morning,” Jeno says, and Renjun’s cheeks flush. It’d felt good to apologize to Donghyuck, to feel like his slate got wiped clean even if it didn’t really, just to hold and be held—but it’d been embarrassing too. Really embarrassing, especially in the aftermath. “Does this have anything to do with the dream you had?”
“Not really,” Renjun replies. “Or sort of. It’s just—do you ever feel like you’re repeating the same day over and over again?”
Jeno’s eyes seem bright even in the flat fluorescent light of the restroom. “Isn’t that our whole job?”
“Moreso than usual, I mean.”
“Sometimes. There are definitely some weeks where I feel like the days are almost indistinguishable from each other just because they’re so similar.”
Cool, Renjun thinks. Now imagine that’s been your entire life for who knows how long, and you’ve been stuck reliving the aftermath of your breakup with your ex-slash-coworker. “I feel like that all the time lately,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
Jeno tilts his head to the side, regarding him with a careful gaze. “Who says you’re doing something wrong?”
Of course Renjun is doing something wrong. He has to be, or this wouldn’t be happening to them. But there’s no way he can say that. “Jaemin and I, we…” He swallows around nothing. “We sort of had a fight the other week. After you and Donghyuck...you know.” That much is the truth, at least.
“A fight?”
“More like a disagreement.” There’s no real need to split hairs over the difference in definition, but Renjun feels the need to clarify things anyway. For a moment he wonders if he’ll regret this, then figures it doesn’t matter. “We were together,” he says, shifting his weight to the other foot. “For almost half a year. I wanted to keep it a secret, and he didn’t seem like he cared one way or another. But I think seeing you two made him think that we could have that too, even though he never said that out loud, and—sorry. I’m not trying to change the subject, but you seem seriously unsurprised by this.”
Jeno’s face, carefully neutral up until now, cracks with a faint smile. “I mean…I had my suspicions.”
Renjun groans. “So everyone knows, then.” Jeno is a very smart guy, but also oblivious at times. If he picked up on the fact that there was something going on between him and Jaemin, then the rest of them are a done deal.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Jeno looks down at his feet, like that might help him find the words he’s visibly struggling with. “We all know you’re both private people. And we’ve been together—known each other—for so long it’s impossible not to notice when one of us starts looking at someone else a certain way. Also…”
“Also what?” Renjun demands.
“I…I probably shouldn’t say.”
“I actually insist that you say it.”
Jeno’s gaze stays fixed firmly on the ground. “The walls,” he says. “They’re really thin.”
Fuck the time loop. Renjun’s about to slam his head into the tiled wall and end it himself. “Oh,” he says weakly. “I’m sorry.”
The tips of Jeno’s ears are bright red. “It’s okay. That’s not the point. You were still talking, right?”
“There’s not much else to say.” Renjun clears his throat, and it does nothing to clear the choked up feeling within him. “We had a disagreement, and then we made up in the morning. And then two weeks after that, we broke up.”
“Two weeks after Donghyuck and I told you guys that we were dating,” Jeno says quietly, in realization. “So—”
It’s silly how much the hurt still manages to sting. Time is supposed to heal all wounds. The universe won’t even allow him that much. “Yesterday,” Renjun says, even though it was so much longer ago than that. His voice scrapes raw against the inside of his throat. “We broke up yesterday.”
Jeno lays a single solid hand on his shoulder, and they both pretend they don’t notice the wetness at the corner of his eyes, clumping his lashes together. There’s really no time to cry. Someone will be looking for them soon; not much of their lunch break is left, and they both know it. But for a while, it’s silent. Jeno knows when to push and prod, but he also knows when to fall back. Renjun is thankful for this much.
“Jeno,” Renjun blurts out suddenly. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure. Of course.”
Renjun closes his eyes and tries to focus on the steady back-and-forth motion of Jeno’s hand rubbing his shoulder instead of the lingering discomfort in his stomach. “Do you believe in signs from the universe?”
“Not in the way you do, I think,” Jeno replies after a moment of contemplation. His hand keeps moving. Renjun is thankful. It’s the only thing keeping him grounded right now. “I mean—can a sign ever really be universal? Nothing ever means the same thing to different people.”
It’s such an elementary concept, and one that Renjun has forgotten, because for as long as he’s been alive, he has always believed in signs from the universe. When he was 7, he dreamt that his mother’s favorite rose bush wilted overnight, and took it as a sign from the universe that he should water it a little extra the next morning. When he was 15, he found a poster for SM Entertainment auditions stuck to the bottom of his shoe as he left school and took it as a sign from the universe to give it a try. When he was 17, and feeling truly homesick for the very first time, a boy gave him a small little potted plant—a sunflower, barely a seedling—and said I saw this and it reminded me of you. Renjun wondered if he couldn’t take it as a sign from the universe that maybe he could find a home in a person instead of a place.
When he was 22, the same boy asked him a hypothetical question—what would you do if we broke up. And Renjun took it as a sign he no longer loved him.
Renjun is silent for so long that Jeno must feel the need to keep explaining himself. “I mean—of course we want to believe that there’s meaning in things, because otherwise life feels meaningless, and that’s scary, right? But the universe doesn’t assign meaning to certain things—we do. So whatever we’re searching for is a sign in itself.”
“That was…” Renjun blinks. “Surprisingly deep.”
“I can be deep when I want to,” Jeno says, smiling. “I’m more than just a pretty face.”
For the first time in a long while, Renjun feels like he can breathe. The knot in his chest begins to unravel. He hadn’t even realized there was a knot there, incrementally strangling the breath from his lungs in fractions of seconds, so subtle and so slight that its effect went unnoticed until it was gone. Now, he blows out a sigh, inhales deep, and with the air comes a sense of clarity.
He and Jaemin are probably overdue for a talk.
“I know you’re more than just a pretty face,” Renjun says. “You happen to be a pretty good friend, too.”
“A better friend than Donghyuck?” Jeno teases, elbowing him in the side. “Where’s my ten-minute long hug, then?”
Renjun smiles, rolls his eyes. “Don’t push it.”
🌻
Jaemin leaves his door slightly ajar that night when they get back to the dorms.
Renjun spends an entire five minutes staring at it from the hallway and wondering what it means before he remembers that is partially what got him into this mess to begin with. He slips through the crack and closes the door behind him.
At the sound of his footsteps, Jaemin looks up from his laptop. Probably editing. He closes the lid, sits back on the bed, and pats the open space next to him where Renjun woke up just that morning. Where he’s woken up every morning.
And Renjun definitely doesn’t pull away from the door, definitely doesn’t lean toward Jaemin like a sunflower unfurling and stretching toward the light. That would be embarrassing. But he does settle beside him and curl underneath Jaemin’s waiting arm.
For a few minutes, breathing is all they do.
“Are we doing it?” Jaemin asks, half-joking. “Are we finally having this talk?”
Renjun manages a half-smile in response. “Technically, it’s only been a day.”
Jaemin laughs at that, a small puff of air against the crown of Renjun’s head. “Right. Of course.”
They lapse back into silence, and almost instantly, Renjun’s resolve fails him. He hasn't thought this through at all, he realizes. He hasn’t come up with a plan or an outline or anything else that might guide the conversation they’re about to have. This is uncharted territory. “I told Jeno about us today,” he says quietly.
“Because you wanted to?” Jaemin asks. “Or because you know he won’t remember it tomorrow?”
“...A little bit of both,” Renjun admits.
“Mm. And how did it feel? To tell him about us?”
“Good,” Renjun says. “Different. A little less scary than I thought it would be.”
Jaemin hums noncommittally. “I see.”
“I didn’t just tell him we were together though,” Renjun continues. “I also told him that we broke up.” He angles his chin upward to look for Jaemin’s reaction. It’s never bright in Jaemin’s bedroom, but it feels especially dim today. Jaemin’s face, all angular and sharp, is softened by shadow and warmed by light. So much of their relationship was in the dark, in places they couldn’t be seen by anyone else. The thought of stepping into the light is near petrifying.
The corner of Jaemin’s mouth twitches. “And how did that feel?”
“Like shit,” Renjun whispers, and suddenly the atmosphere grows tense. Heavy. “I feel like I’m going crazy. I don’t know how I’m supposed to move on like this.” How many more times will he have to relive the aftermath of this breakup? How many times is the universe going to force him to break his own heart over and over again until it’s satisfied?
Renjun watches Jaemin carefully. He’s chewing at his lower lip, at the insides of his cheeks; nervous habit. “Is that what you want?” he asks, voice soft. “To move on?”
Yes, Renjun thinks. Of course. So much. It’s the only thing I want. Why wouldn’t I want to move on.
“No,” he says into the relative silence of the bedroom, a quiet confession. He drops his gaze to his palms, wrung together in his lap so tight he’s afraid he’ll see the marks tomorrow. “But I have to, don’t I? I have to let go of you, because you—”
“You didn’t even try,” Jaemin says, suddenly tense. “You didn’t even talk to me. You wouldn’t even look at me for a while, Renjun—”
“What we had,” Renjun interrupts him. His lips get caught in a tremble he can’t stop before he purses them together. “Was it good?”
Jaemin visibly hesitates. “You were perfect.”
“That’s not what I asked. If I was so perfect—” Renjun swallows, hiccups around the word. “Then why did you want to leave me?” His own voice sounds small and childish, even to his own ears.
“I didn’t want to keep our relationship a secret anymore,” Jaemin says, his gaze set on the opposite wall, faraway and glazed over. A muscle in his jaw jumps. “Doing it much longer would have broken me. If I were stupider I would have let it happen. I love you so much that sometimes I think I should have let it break me anyway.”
Some things take root deeper than others, and they’re harder to eradicate. Like weeds. Some things take root deeper than others, and they’re meant to stay. Like his grandmother’s peonies. They come back, season after season. Renjun’s been trying to get rid of his feelings, pulling them up by the stems and leaving them to rot, when he should have been doing the opposite.
He bites into his lip and tries to keep what remaining composure he has. “I love you,” he says, feeling pathetic despite himself. “I’m sorry. I was so scared. I’m still so scared.” He’s rambling, but he feels like his only options right now are to talk too much or not talk at all. Jaemin’s grip is all-encompassing as Renjun turns to face him, and Renjun is too scared to hold onto things tightly because he’s afraid when they slip away—they always slip away—all he’ll be left with is the imprint of his nails in the palms of his hands. Evidence, physical proof that he had cared too much and still couldn’t manage to keep what was precious to him. But he holds onto Jaemin tightly, like he means it—because he does, because there’s no other option. “I’m scared of things becoming real, I’m scared that if we go all in and we still break up, we’ll never be able to go back to being friends, I’m scared that things will change. I don’t—I just want things to stay—”
“The same?” Jaemin finishes for him.
It seems so stupid when he voices it out loud like that. Things have been the same for a long time now. And Renjun is somehow more miserable than he thought he would be. “I wanted to tell you no when you said you wanted to break up,” he confesses. “But I didn’t want to force you to stay with me if you didn’t want me anymore.”
“It was never about not wanting you,” Jaemin says, his mouth flickering into a tentative smile. “And you can say no now, if you want.”
“No to breaking up,” Renjun whispers. His hands shake as they come up to rest at Jaemin’s shoulders. “No to keeping us a secret. I want to do this right.”
Embarrassingly, his eyes begin to well up. He feels his own face contort. It’s odd—they’re supposed to have such fine control over their expressions. Even when Renjun cries on stage, it’s a half-pretty cry that doesn’t look too terrible when captured through an expensive camera lens. He knows the face he’s making right now is ugly. But Jaemin takes his face between his hands and kisses the tears away from his eyes, and then he’s pulling him into a kiss so familiar Renjun thinks he could call it home. It tastes like salt, mostly, and it’s wet—courtesy of his own lingering tears—and altogether not that pleasant, but he wouldn’t change it for the world.
Time could be flowing in reverse right now, for all he cares.
Jaemin draws back, presses their foreheads together like a brand. “We’ll figure this out together,” he promises. Renjun is surprised by just how much he believes him. “One day at a time.”
Renjun barely manages to brush his lips against Jaemin’s cheekbone, suddenly exhausted. “Yeah,” he agrees, his eyes slipping shut. “One day at a time.”
🌻
For the first time in a long while, Renjun doesn’t wake to the sound of rain.
He’s still in Jaemin’s bed, but the sun is shining into his eyes. Jaemin himself is curled against him, soft and sweet with sleep and pressed so tightly against his side Renjun thinks it’s a wonder he managed to fall asleep in such an obviously uncomfortable position. The sunflower on Jaemin’s desk stretches towards the lazy, golden sunlight filtering into the room.
There’s a knock at the door. He lifts his head, breathes in deep. “Come in,” he says, sitting up slowly. He does his best not to disturb Jaemin, but he stirs anyway, groans and curls into Renjun’s lap that much more.
“Hey lovebirds,” Jeno says, seeming very unsurprised by Renjun’s presence. “I know we don’t have a schedule today, but that doesn’t mean you guys can sleep in past noon. We’re gonna all go for lunch. Get up.”
Jaemin rolls over to the side of the bed to grab hold of a pillow and fling it in Jeno’s direction. “Get out,” he mumbles, dragging Renjun back down into the blankets.
Jeno catches the pillow with ease, probably because Jaemin is still drowsy and his aim is not half as good as it normally would be. “So are you coming or not?”
“We’ll come,” Renjun says, squirming against Jaemin’s hold. “Just give us a few minutes—”
“Last warning,” Jaemin calls out. “Get out now, unless you want to watch me make out with my boyfriend.”
Renjun would laugh at how quickly the door slams shut after that, but it’s a little bit hard to do anything besides kiss Jaemin back once he’s pressed their lips together. His lips are warm, his skin warmer, and the gentle scratch of Jaemin’s stubble sliding against his skin is a sensation Renjun easily finds himself getting lost in.
And he knows things between them aren’t perfect. They have plenty of things to discuss, with their friends and with each other, and more apologies to make and more forgiveness to dole out. But they’re together. It’s a new day, and the cycle is broken, and whatever they face today and tomorrow and all the days after will be as unexpected as it is welcome. Something in Renjun’s chest flutters; he’s giddy and overwhelmed and he’s happy. It’s as close to perfect as Renjun thinks it could possibly be right now.
His eyes slowly open as Jaemin pulls back, grinning down at him with a warmth Renjun has sorely missed. “Good morning,” he says, barely a whisper.
Renjun takes a moment to close his eyes again, let the affection wash over him, and appreciate the warm spill of the afternoon light as it sinks into his skin. Finally, he places the unknown emotion blooming in his chest.
Hope. It feels like hope.
“Good morning,” he replies. “It’s a beautiful day.”