I grab the door when my doorbell rings, thanking the kid handing over the four bags, count ’em, four bags of food, looping them over my wrists and palms before coming back to my living room, nearly stepping on Jaeyong, rattling them in front of his face in a silent but earnest question.

He just shrugs, a cute smile on his face, and I swear, he’s making this harder for me on purpose. “You said you were hungry. It’s the least I could do.”

I had a boyfriend in cégep once who liked to control my meals whenever we went out, and while I was always on the plumper side, you risk death if you come between me and my food, and I somehow let that asshole dictate how much I could eat whenever we went out, like I didn’t want to shame him with my utter lack of portion control and poor food choices.

Needless to say, I was always hungry, and my body ballooned out, as if I was storing all those calories, holding onto that weight, pushing myself deeper inside of my body so I wouldn’t have to deal with him.

I went through that kind of hell for a couple of years until I got pretty sick, and my doctor told me that I had to lose sixty pounds or else, in doctor terms.

So this is kinda big, kinda huge for me, that Jaeyong’s just buying me all this food, like it doesn’t matter how much I eat, and my throat gets tight and I have to gulp down the pain because now isn’t the time to tear up. Definitely not now.

“Thanks,” I croak, looking away, concentrating instead on taking a seat down next to him, his legs long enough that even if he sits criss-cross-applesauce, his knee still bumps into mine, warm through his pants and through my sweats that makes the knot ease in my throat, makes me not hold my body so tightly.

I rifle through the food boxes, practically salivating at the grease spots along the cardboard boxes I seem to keep pulling out and out and out. Jaeyong opens them for me, arranging them on the table in a familiar kind of teamwork that’s a throwback to all those times we ate dinner together at the Min house.

He points out the flavours: huraideu (regular), yangnyeom (sweet and spicy), and ganjang (soy sauce and garlic-flavoured) fried chicken, then opens a beer can and carefully pours it into a glass, handing it to me first, then prepares the soju shot for somaek (soju and beer mixed together).

We drop our shot glasses into our beer, clink our glasses together then take a sip of our drinks. I lick my lips, then dive into the fried chicken, starting with the soy sauce and garlic-flavoured one, groaning at the first sound of the crunch, doing a happy wiggle now that I’m eating, sating my hunger.

Jaeyong watches me, a smile on his face, cheeks rounded, cute enough to make me want to attack his face with kisses but I control myself—barely.

God, I’m being tested right now, right? Right?!

“Oh, shit, this is so good. So good. I’m so mad about how good this tastes. Aaaah,” I murmur around another bite of fried chicken, this time the sweet and spicy one, the pleasant burn of the spice making my lips and tongue tingle in the best way possible.

“I know, right? I can only eat this so many times before the staff starts yelling at me for making my clothes too tight.”

Right. Right, right, right. Jaeyong’s an idol, and he has to take care of his body, has to watch what he eats.

“Uh, are you going to get in trouble, eating this with me?” I point unnecessarily to the spread we have here, Deadpool still playing on in the background, the volume just high enough to make out what he says in English, while I sometimes get distracted by the Korean subtitles.

“I’m hungry, let me eat,” Jaeyong gruffs, sticking with his very own cardboard box of sweet-and-spicy fried chicken, groaning at how good it tastes.

“The Korean restaurants in Montreal don’t even compare.”

“How can it, I ask you. How can it?” Jaeyong murmurs, smacking his lips, being all distracting as hell, and I have to tear my eyes away from him more than once, ignoring the sudden awkwardness that fills the room, the both of us quiet while we eat.

I rack my mind to say something, anything, but end up watching the movie for the twelfth time instead, frowning at a Korean word, not able to forget about the subtitles now that I can read them and understand. It’s like watching a movie in English with French subtitles or vice versa, I’m going to get distracted by the subtitles in the end, no matter if I understand what’s going on in the original dialogue.

I also take a mental note that fifty-thousand won was definitely not enough for the meal, and I need to remedy that as soon as possible.

“Ah, shit, I’m getting full but I don’t want to stop eating,” Jaeyong mumbles, smacking his lips around a particularly big bite.

I glance over at him while he’s dabbing delicately at his mouth with a napkin. “Why don’t you take it home? You bought too much anyway.”

“Nah, I bought this for you. You should keep it so you can have leftovers for tomorrow.” He beams at me, like the idea of feeding me over the weekend without actually feeding me warms him right through.

And that’s enough. It’s totally enough.

“Jaeyong,” I say, voice sharp enough that the smile slides right off his face. “What are you doing?”

“What? What did I do?”

“You spent so much money and I—” Ah, fuck, I can’t keep up if we’re gonna be eating like this every single week, or am I being too presumptuous?

Yeah? Yeah.

“Look, I don’t know how to thank you. You bought a lot and we’re only two people.”

“Ah,” he hems and haws, looking up at the ceiling for some reason, food forgotten.

“There’s nothing to thank, honestly. It’s nice hanging out with you, if you still want to hang out, that is. I just…sometimes I need a break from the guys, you know? We’re always together, have been almost since we were trainees, but it’s nice to see you, to think about the old days before my life got a hell of a lot more complicated. Shit, no…” He rubs over his baseball cap, shaking his head. “I’m not ungrateful, I’m not, I swear.”

“You just need a break,” I supply for him, nodding.

“Yeah. See? Just a break. And we’ve got like six months off now, while everyone works on solo projects, and I don’t really have anything to do—I can work out, eat a lot until I panic and have to drop weight before we get back into promotions again, and fittings. I hate fittings, holy shit. I always feel like Gigantor, like I’m too bulky, you know?”

I nod my head. “Yeah, Korean clothing just doesn’t fit me, like at all. I had to bring all my pants over from Montreal here. Some of the cute jeans or skirts I like don’t go up to the size I need them to, and everything looks so good on everyone else, and I’m just sitting over here, about to bust through these pants. Well, not these pants, but you get my drift.”

Jaeyong’s quiet for a time, like he’s thinking about asking me something, the air weighted with unspoken questions and answers that will remain unsaid. A lot can happen in the years we were apart, after all. So much. Not enough. Not nearly enough. “I’m sorry.”

I snort instead, expecting something else. “What? You’re going to apologize for the whole country or something that I can’t find clothes that fit me?”

Jaeyong shakes his head, earrings tinkling against one another. “No, because it upsets you.”

I drop my fried chicken, I’m so freaking mad. Oh my God, who the hell does he think he is, being like this with me?

I missed out on so much with you, Jaeyong. I missed out on so, so much. All that time wasted. Why? What for?

How come I had to wait so long to get here with you?

My heart’s beating overtime in my chest, thrumming hard against my sternum, my pulse points at my throat throbbing as I pull in shaky breath after shaky breath. “Jaeyong.”

He rolls his eyes at me, grinning. “You can call me Lucas. I don’t mind.” He shrugs, shy, leaving it up to me.

I shake my head, uttering his Korean name one more time, trying to tell him what I can’t say.

“Jaeyong,” I murmur again, throat flaring with the kind of pain that I get before I start bawling my eyes out. Is it bad that at the first sign of familiar kindness since I got here I want to burst into tears? What the hell does that say about me?

I want to ask Jaeyong, what do you want from me?

I want to ask, what can I give you that you haven’t already have bought for yourself?

I want to ask, what are you doing to me, unravelling me like this with your sweetness, like we haven’t spent all this time apart?

I want to ask, will you always be this sweet to me? Can you be, please?

The words get caught in my throat, but Jaeyong keeps looking at my face, eyes roving over my features, picking up clues that I don’t know I’m letting through the cracks in my façade.

I like Min Jaeyong.

I’ve probably always liked Jaeyong, the potential of it thrown out in the garbage, forgotten from existence until one day I found him again, after all this time. I found a boy who has become a man that achieved his dreams. After all that, though, he still seems to be a lot like the boy I knew, just all grown up now.

“What’s wrong? What did I say?” Jaeyong panics, moving so that he’s sitting in such a way that both of his knees bump into the side of my leg, turning his entire body towards me.

I shake my head, mash my lips together so they don’t tremble. It always feels like I’m seconds away from crying about something, feelings too sharp in my chest, making me cut myself more often than not.

“I just missed you, you big idiot. I really, really did.”

So much would have been different. So much.

Maybe everything. Maybe not.

Jaeyong plants his elbow on his thigh, presses his head to his palm, looking at me with something like fondness, if I’m reading it right. If, if, if. “You’re being dumb.”

“Why? You didn’t miss me even a little?” I ask, voice cracking with my need to throw off the melancholy that’s dragging me down, down, down. I poke him in the shoulder, hard enough that my own knuckle cracks, and I gulp. Okay, so he’s got super muscles now.

All right. I can roll with that. I can. Sure.

Jaeyong shakes his head, the negative response like a knife rattling around my rib cage, but his smile might just be my saving grace.

“No, not a little. A whole lot. I thought about you every single day for a year, and every other day for two more years after that, and once a week for the next five years. Shit, I couldn’t even find you on any socials. I wondered every time I did a live stream if you’d be watching somewhere back home, if you were proud of me, if you missed me as much as I missed you.”

Jaeyong used to be pretty forthcoming about his feelings when we were younger; I was the one that was emotionally constipated, refusing to talk about anything if it was going to make me cry. I held it in for so long, I’m confused how I didn’t break anything inside me, but now I cry at a second’s notice.

“I did, I promise I did. I’m just not…I’m not the same person anymore, you know?”

Jaeyong shrugs, leaning back onto his hands, looking comfortable and cozy, and shit, I’m not just in trouble, I’m in danger.

“I’m not the same kid, either. Obviously. Have you seen my arms and chest?” Jaeyong moves to take off his jacket, but stops when I start laughing at him.

He joins in, and it feels like everything is going to be fine.

It feels a lot like there’s a streak of sunlight inside of a cloud of rain, the golden light breaching the gloom, like we’re finally leaving the rain clouds behind.

Like the start of something new—whatever that might be.

Yikes.