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“You came into my life—not as one comes to visit (you know, “not taking one’s hat off”) but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps.”
Light of my life, my eternal love.
I’m afraid that life feels futile to me now, my darling. I once found peace in painting on the weekends after a stressful week of constant chatter of teaching students and the faculty staff, but now, I enter an empty house. There are no angry grumbles of Nyx, no smell of food burning in the kitchen in your presence, not the scent I’ve grown so fond of over the years lingering in the air. It’s the same rusty apartment I had found when I wandered through the same unknown streets of Saint-Étienne that Yunho had helped me to move into.
This house isn’t our home.
I know it has been seven months since I moved, so I should be accustomed to everything by now. But my love, it scares me to the bone. The thought of no longer being surrounded by familiar strangers of our neighbourhood, the smell of the bakery two blocks down, the same greenery outside our home, near the balcony—it was home. It is home. It was, and will always be home. A roof over us, The Temptations and Paul Anka playing on the record player, my arm around your waist while our hands stay intertwined, your laughter echoing through the room when I would pretend to step on your toe as we danced behind the tucked curtains of dusk. Our Nyx lying on your favourite end of the L-shaped couch, purring and judging us.
I miss her, but I miss you more.
I know you are present—you are there, you exist alongside me, but I feel so alone.
I’ve had recurrent thoughts if I should continue teaching here. My soul yearns for its solace with open arms, yet you are miles away. I am sick of no longer being in your arms, your fingers in my hair when you kiss me and tell me it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. But when? How will it be okay when I am ruined in your absence, my subconscious seeks you, it searches for you in my shirts, in this... this poor excuse of a home—you aren’t here, and it drives me crazier each night.
I know I sound selfish, Hell, maybe I am now, but it has been horrible here. It seems as if I am waking up in the body of a Song Mingi who is happy to go to work each day. To go to the same buildings the real me has grown to despise. The people here are lovely, my love, don’t get me wrong—they are friendly and appreciative of the pieces I have shown them so far, even the charcoal sketch I had made of our Nyx. They found it endearing how fond I am of a cat, our daughter; but I kept it to myself. I needn’t show them that there is a man in Rome who has my heart in his grasp, a man so lovely, one who kisses me with a fervour that only the two of us will ever know. A man so beautiful, he became my muse. If I wished to unveil the secret to my motivation, I fear they would have been keen to know what you look like. An ethereal, archangel being in the form of my favourite person.
I carry a polaroid of you in my wallet. Is that surprising to you? I doubt it. Since I have moved to Saint-Étienne, I swapped the picture of you dozing in my office chair with Nyx on your lap for the picture I took of you on our first date, in the cemetery. It is one of you eating frozen grapes while you laid on my chest, legs sprawled over the pile of blankets, looking up at the stars—and I could have sworn I had never seen a more beautiful person in all of my twenty-nine years of living. That night will always hold a special place in my heart. You, comfortable on my lap, starry eyes gazing at the cosmos while you held the universe in your eyes alone.
It is a little past midnight as I write to you. There are vestiges of a thunderstorm forming in the sky from where I can make out the outline of grey clouds from the bedroom, and I love you.
I love you, Seonghwa.
I love you, I love you, I love you. I wear my heart on my sleeve for you, I bleed for you to be drenched in the blood that you helped to create. Your name is carved on the valves of my ageing heart. Rip it free from my ribcage, wring it dry and you’ll find it continuing to beat, in your bare hands. You hold me in a vice grip, you bring me back to life, you make me alive.
You consume my being, you cage me in the arms I have grown so fond of, the smallest of your actions and your soul makes me fall in love with you again, and I love you. I love to love you.
I see you in my morning cup of tea, I see you in the birds sitting on the railing of the balcony, I see you in the flowers a sweet grandmother grows beside my apartment, I see you in the sunsets, I see you in fresh fruits, I see you in the letters you send to me, I see you in the mixtapes you have made for me to listen to—I see you, and I seek you in every beautiful thing I come across... You are the most beautiful person I have ever come across. I’m not a religious man, but I thank the Gods for having blessed me so kindly to be with you in a way only you and I will know.
It is one of those nights where my longing for you keeps me up. It is Sunday now—it is 12:46 am—Yunho had offered to take me to a bar he had noticed when he was wandering in the streets some nights ago. I told him how bizarre he sounded but he remarked that I had nothing to be frightened of. I do not trust him, but I trust him. Odd, don’t you think so, love? I have made the man’s ears bleed with the times my mind treks me back to you. He has an idea now of how you are, what you look like, what your profession is, and how our daughter is like. We ended up having a small (strikingly big) argument about how I call a cat our daughter—but I do and I always will, he can shove his thoughts up his ass.
It has begun to rain now. I can hear people’s boots clacking on the pavement as they run to a place for shelter. The doors to my balcony are wide open, just as it was like at home. I wish to wrap my arms around your body now, have you lean your body against my chest while your scent invades my nostrils and grounds me. Every fibre within your body and soul is worth cherishing, a beautiful piece of a melody composed by a man who loves you oh so dearly, and misses you so terribly.
Forgive my previous letter, by the way, darl. I had found myself in a slump with a piece that had a late deadline, but I managed to submit it on time… well, perhaps I might have been a few minutes late... It was twelve minutes, fine. But being friends with the creative director helps a great deal—he cuts me some slack, but doesn’t let me off the hook entirely. I like that about Yunho, but maybe I wouldn’t have been so lost if you were here with me. Me in a corner of the living room, fabrics of different colours and styles sprawled out on our floor—you sprawled over the carpet, soft music echoing through the room as we concentrated on our tasks at hand. It is one of the things I love about us.
Do you re
The thunder startles him, and the ink of his pen splatters on the table. His paper is smudged, his letter is smudged. Mingi thinks the night couldn’t have ended in a worse way, and then it did.
An exasperated sigh leaves his dried lips. He unconsciously reaches for the pack of cigarettes from the third drawer of the table, his eyes looking up to the drenched night through the balcony doors. It is lovely, he thinks. The ignition from the lighter lights up the room, the candles were put out long ago so Mingi didn’t have to worry about buying new ones for another two weeks. He leans back in his chair, watching the midnight unfold in front of him.
It was a different city for Mingi to live in, too accustomed to the bizarre mood swings Rome’s weather would have. For the first time since he had lived in Saint-Étienne, it was petrichor soaking the streets in its entirety. The streetlights accentuated each droplet falling on the metal railing, the marbled floor, the newspaper Mingi had forgotten to take inside with him—it looked lovely.
Each puff of nicotine released in the air makes his ribcage burn. It stings his thoracic cavity with an ache he can’t give a name to. The painting he had been working on has been left idle, sitting in a far-off corner of his office, tucked under a translucent cloth; a reminder of his unfinished piece. He feels guilty, so fucking guilty, yet he can’t fathom moving. His bones are worn down, his limbs refuse to cooperate, his soul feels lethargic.
Mingi no longer startles the longer the storm persists, the cigarette between his fingers now lays forgotten; the smoke snuffed out from the filter, it weighs nothing more than a few grams but he feels as if he was ordered to lift the heaviest stone above his head, and forced to keep it in that position till he ran a hundred laps with it. It carries a burden he isn’t aware of, keeping the tension on his shoulders more stagnant than before.
The downpour turns heavier the longer he continues to stare at it. Frogs croak, jumping out of their homes to soak in the scent of the first rain. Mingi decides that Sunday will take an eternity to last and conclude.
He gets up on his feet. Muscles straining from languor, he drags the half-lit cigarette to the ashtray he keeps on the kitchen counter. A storm similar to the one outside runs amok underneath his cranium, it’s a deluge that seems to never halt since he began living here; the only thing keeping him grounded was his beloved who was in Rome.
Venom courses his bloodstream, a viper striking and injecting its poison within him that paralyses the contents within his sternum. It continues to flood, a never-ending torrent Mingi refuses to put a stop to. He will revert back to his stoic self by Monday, following that façade till Friday, let himself soak in the pool of yearning and misery throughout Saturday and Sunday, and repeat it all over again.
The first soft rap at Mingi’s front door goes unnoticed, eyes trained on the water gradually gathering up in the streets. He is aware there is someone at his door, but he is too worn down to move his body at all. It could be someone important—hell, whom was he kidding? There is no one important in this strange city that he knows of besides his childhood best friend, which he is aware would be dozing peacefully to the sound of the rain with two candles situated on his nightstand.
He sighs when the banging at his door continues, and increases. It stole the small fragment of peace he had begun to receive in the monsoon rain. He gets up groggy, his limbs refraining and telling him to stop fucking moving but he wanted to tell this person destroying the sandglass of his peace to quit wasting his time first. What the fuck did they even want?
“What the fuck do you w—”
The words died in his throat when his eyes adjusted themselves to the scarcity of light. There was a lantern well-lit in the further corner of the long hallway, but Mingi could recognise that sharp slope of a nose, doe-eyes, long, silky black hair, plump, full lips in a heartbeat. Venom no longer runs through his blood, an elixir binds with his blood and pushes the venom out through his agape mouth. His hands twitch, palms covering in sweat as his breathing labours.
He is woken from inertia when he cages the man in a bone-crushing embrace. Mingi rests his face in the small junction of the older’s neck, inhaling the sweet citrus tones of the lingering perfume. His heart thrums again, not out of force and strain this time, but out of a will to live and of love . He thinks that there is beauty in death. There is beauty in old barks of worn down trees, there is beauty in abandoned manors that once were the crux of happiness to someone, there is beauty in decayed fruits; in cemeteries, in hospitals, in houses that were once a home.
Mingi believes there is undying beauty in the living at this moment. No amount of praise and awards for his paintings can replace the jars of yearning he had kept within himself for months which are slowly breaking away the longer he clings to his lover. He helplessly latches onto the older’s body, afraid that this might be another dream.
The beads of his glasses bear into the ridge of his nose, his mouth is dry as he tells—reminds—himself that this is not one of his dreams. He is here, holding him in an obtusely lit hallway in France. He is here, he is really here.
And real. So completely real.
Beauty lies in the living. The rush of blood coursing through his blood vessels, his ribcage threatening to fall apart with how rapid his heart beats, his limbs no longer ache; his muscles are replenished after inhaling the sweet scent submerged to each clothing the older is wearing. Neither one of their arms forbidding the tight hold, Mingi chokes on unshed tears.
“Seonghwa.” His lover’s name slips from his lips in reverence, a burning ache in his soul cures him. He is a remedy, an antidote—all the good things in this frenzied world, in the form of Mingi’s favourite person.
He steps back slowly, his hands resting on the curve of Seonghwa’s waist, keeping him at arm’s length as he rests his forehead against his. This is home. Mingi belongs here, always has belonged here. Seonghwa grasps his chin and pulls him into a kiss. The fervent clash of soft, sweet flesh against his chipped ones was enough to have him reeling. He had imagined this scene to occur soon, where he would have himself under control with a body that was taken care of, but wasn’t either of them right now.
One of his hands trails up from the older’s waist to cradle his jaw, he caresses the bone in familiarity the more the kiss turns into all tongue and teeth. Mingi breathes through his nose, the pulse in his jugular and wrists throbbing when Seonghwa’s hands grab onto the back of his neck. The kiss turns violent. Mingi feels Seonghwa gut him alive when his hands wander over the rough material of his frayed polo shirt, and he lets him. Seonghwa can gut him alive anytime, and Mingi will morph into his body again if the older wishes to do it all over again.
Although Mingi is always the one in control, the one in charge; little does he realise the amount of power Seonghwa has over him. He is at his mercy, on his knees to worship him. Kiss his blest, revered skin with tenderness, remind him that he is of divine power—a deific deity.
Their lips are bruised from the fierce waltz of their tongues, laboured breaths resonate in the hallway and Mingi admires his lover again. His hair sticks to his temples, the umbrella he had in his hands lay on the wooden floor in nescience. He releases a shaky breath, unable to hold back the love in his eyes as he watches the way Seonghwa traces the outline of Mingi’s hands and kisses the fingertips.
Even in the pale light, his darling looked as beautiful as the day he had first met him.
“Do you plan on us talking in this dirty hallway while I’m half soaked?” His Seonghwa’s voice brings him at peace, he hadn’t known just how much; he got his answer now. Mingi tucks a stray strand of his hair behind his ear and pulls him inside his apartment after grasping onto his hand, the mere friction of his hand against his own ignited a series of electricity through his blood vessels. He had missed him dearly.
The remnants of lethargy and weariness pass over him when he watches Seonghwa observe each corner of the apartment, Mingi drags the large suitcase inside and lets the open umbrella dry up behind the kitchen counter, and perhaps he had grown a sixth sense when it came to the older but he knew he would venture out the open balcony. Mingi inwardly scoffs at his already damp socks when he rests his forearms on the metal railing. He sets his glasses and stalks towards his lover, enveloping his arms around his waist with ease and resting his chin above his shoulder.
“I’ve missed you, so much,” Mingi whispers, akin to a sacrilege promise. He clings to Seonghwa further, curling himself into the junction where his neck connects to his shoulder, he kisses his skin—marvelling in his cologne and the body pressed against his own. It had been a brutal few months without the comfort of his favourite person, his eyes close to savour the moment. “It was like a part of me was ripped apart, but it’s fused into me again.”
He doesn’t need Seonghwa to turn around to know he is smiling like a fool with his impromptu confession, he already knows it with the way his smaller hands cover his larger ones, he caresses his knuckles in mindful circles and leans his back against Mingi’s chest. He basks in the silence in the downpour, it no longer suffocates him to death, and death no longer frightens him. Death has always been a terrifying notion—it is deemed irrelevant if he were to be reborn in a life where Seonghwa would be present beside him again.
They are drenched in the rain as minutes pass by, eyes remain closed but they open when Seonghwa turns on his feet, his back now rests against the railing, bambi eyes bore into Mingi’s with hands clasping behind the back of his neck. A phantom of a smile covers itself on his beautiful face, Mingi’s lips ache to kiss him again. The rain falls off his body in elegance, his body and soul composed of honeyed sanctitude.
Seonghwa pecks Mingi’s cheek while standing on the tips of his toes, the turn of his nose, his jaw, and his throat. His hands are caressing Mingi’s skin with such veneration, and the way he looks at him—he almost believes himself to be a God. In the solitude of the rain pouring around them, Mingi understands that Seonghwa grants him the permission to eat him. Feast his insides in selfishness, possessiveness, in utter vehemence; ravage him open to pour his blood into a gold Chalice and serve it as a Sacramental wine in bloodied hands of a man who loves him, so ardently, so much.
A möbius strip of perennial adoration, a vessel of the Lords in Mingi’s palms to quench and satiate his hunger.
Seonghwa grounds him back on Earth, the touch of his fingertips over Mingi’s collarbones has him exhale a weak sigh. He is smiling, and he looks beautiful. “I miss you even while you’re this close to me. The loneliness that I was in for months went away the moment you opened that door,” His nose ghosts over Mingi’s jaw, and their chests touch once again. Seonghwa is still smiling, the younger’s heart helplessly convulsing with each touch. His skin ignites in its wake when he continues to speak, “I don’t feel so alone anymore.”
Stop looking at me like that, Mingi wants to say. Stop looking at me like you’re waiting for your death, like you want me to feast on you like a madman, I’m too in love with you to cause harm to you, but Seonghwa has other plans.
“Fuck me? Please.” And how could Mingi deny his sweet plea? He is a sculpture Mingi moulded with love to life, he will show him the vast skies over mountains and the depths of the oceans if he asks him to. He was hopelessly and helplessly in love with him; he was his muse since the dawn of time. He is so beautiful, he bleeds like the sun. His bloodstream is a current of elixir which Mingi wants to let linger on his tongue for a lifetime.
An amused grin plasters the younger’s face when Seonghwa palms his chest, feeling the muscle of his pectorals. He strokes the older’s cheeks gently. “Impatient already, baby?” He delights in the scoff he gets in return. Mingi chooses to let them indulge in their cravings tonight. He slots his left thigh in between the older’s legs, observing the rain cascade down his face beautifully and savouring the sweet moans he exhaled.
They had done this before. Fulfilling their fantasies in stray hallways, broom closets, dull alleyways of roads far away from home, but not so out in the open, and it fuels him with a bestial hunger to claim the man in the open space, for the entirety of Saint-Étienne to look at them.
Mingi no longer wishes to yearn. The man he loves most is in his warm, damp embrace; he now only craves violence.
The blood vessels inside Mingi beat profusely when he latched his lips onto the older’s neck, painting the flesh in mauve bruises. His fingers slip inside Seonghwa’s soaked jeans in remembrance, past his underwear, circling his slick labia and bathing in his whimpers while he continues to adorn his neck in shades of purple.
He is merely bones, rinds of several muscle tissues and blood—a human, mortal being. But right now, with Seonghwa’s eyes rolling back into his skull from just his fingers inside his cunt and grasping onto the younger’s shoulders, Mingi is a madman with no indication and knowledge of sanity. He will feast, and he feasts.
He is losing his sanity with the person who keeps him sane, how ironic. He would be elated to experience a tragedy the poets died writing about.
“No more, please. I’m ready for you, I’m ready,” Seonghwa chants into Mingi’s shirt, a soft request only audible to him, and how grateful he is that it was. He has always been grateful for his lover. He recalls their days of friendship in endearment, their first date, the first time they fucked, when their friends met each other, the dates that followed over time, the nights he would go to sleep with his Seonghwa and wake up to him tucked beneath his chin, sound asleep. They turn blurry now with the growing desire present in his irises, clouded with the pure need to make up for his absence over the past months. “Fuck me, Mingi. I will take the next train back to Rome if you make me wait another second.”
His impatience had always run thick with curiosity and need. Sometimes he would allow Seonghwa to tell him what he wanted to do, and what he was in the mood for, and let him speak continuously. The other times, he would put a gag around or his fingers plunged deep inside his mouth, reminding him that he talked too much when he fucked him into the mattress at the ghastly hour of three in the morning.
Tonight, he will let him do the former; because no matter how deranged Mingi might (and could ) get, he missed his Seonghwa to the brink of lethargy. He wanted him to keep talking, flood his ears with dulcet tones, greedy hands wandering wherever they wanted to touch and hold while they tasted blood in their amalgamated mouths.
“Bullshit, we both know that you won’t,” He holds his jaw in a death grip, the tinge of horror flashing in the older’s eyes—Mingi keens. He runs wild with need, having the older writhe in lecherous sybaritism with his fingers plunging deep inside of his wet pussy, what a sight he had always been. He traced the infoldings with his thumb in tender contempt, grinning at the state of his helplessness despite his sweet begging. “You’re so tight baby, you didn’t take care of this pathetic cunt by yourself in my absence?”
He knew he nicked Seonghwa’s arteries with his words, anger coloured his gorgeous face so prettily, so heinously. If Mingi didn’t know any better, he would have enjoyed the tight hold of his neck, forced to look into his eyes when his digits hit the spot that made him shudder, sweet moans filling the large space of the balcony, and the streets. He was sure some of the crowd left in embarrassment, but he couldn’t find himself to care in the slightest. Seonghwa’s free hand rubs over the thin fabric of Mingi’s sweatpants, desperately palming his sheathed cock achingly slow. Too slow, almost tauntingly.
Ever the tease.
Mingi unpleasantly heaves his pants aside with his other hand, his briefs fall unceremoniously along with the shards of his patience, and slicks his cock up with the fragments of a pseudo orgasm. He watches Seonghwa’s cunt clench around nothing, rutting the air helplessly for the slightest bit of friction and achieving none.
“My poor baby,” He smiles vindictively, one hand coming up to wipe the water off his cheeks. His thumb stroked the bottom lip in familiarity, and out of inclination, Mingi’s lips find Seonghwa’s. He is still smiling when Seonghwa falls with him, a languid pace as their mouths stitch themselves into one. Just like this, Mingi uses the kiss as an inviting distraction to slip himself inside the tight, waiting heat.
The first drag of his cock in Seonghwa’s cunt knocks the air out of his lungs. He starts off slow, perceiving the gasps and whimpers into the filthy kiss with the older’s hand clutching the black strands of his hair to ground himself. His organs set aflame with their contact. Seonghwa is naked from the abdomen down, for the world to see, to admire but never touch. He relishes the manner with which he chants his name each time he thrusts into him, his grip on Mingi’s shoulders and the railing increasing.
Each mellifluous wail makes Mingi mouth at his sternum, leaving amorous, adoring kisses where he feels his ribs. He wants to rip the skin free, save it as an appetiser, and devour his heart with naked palms and a mouth too selfish. He would etch his name on the thick walls of his arteries, making them remember the man who miserably, impotently adores his soul and flesh. His cries are holy. A liquid created from the divine for others to be envious of. He would save his ribs, bones and all as a reenactment of the Lord’s supper. Skin, blood, a body worth worshipping—worthy solely for Mingi’s eyes.
Selfishly, obsessively, he leaves a trail of bruises on Seonghwa’s ivory skin; a reminder for their onlookers that they have that title retained for life.
Mingi feels the familiar clench around his cock the more brutally he thrusts into the heat. He weeps on Mingi’s shoulder, an overstimulation he can bear no longer, but he does. Their chests meet, shared heartbeats with hands intertwined; he muses that he would revisit this memory again in the distant future. The mantra his lover recites of his name, is a sacred prayer.
I’m close, so so close. Please, please let me come.
Wait for me, my love. Just a little more, can you do that for me?
He nods with open, doll-like wrecked eyes. Yes, till forever loses its meaning.
Mingi couldn’t love Seonghwa more. His heart was a dormant vessel, an odd admixture of mere fluids and muscles, till he met Seonghwa. He thawed the once extinct vessels, and somewhere along the way, he had made a lasting space in its chambers—a reason it continues to keep Mingi alive. He never needed a faith or prayers to bring him tranquillity, not when Seonghwa is his faith. His salvation.
Several leisurely kisses make home between them when they fall down together, the balcony’s floor an obscene mess of their fluids, but that was a matter for the morning. Mingi picks a torpid Seonghwa up, on the brink of tucking into Morpheus’s embrace. The rain lingers, and so does Seonghwa; Mingi heedlessly wishes for each of his days to start and end like this.
He cleans the last remnants of his release from Seonghwa’s inner thighs and watches his eyes close. He leans further into the scent of the pillows, his nose breathing in the homely fragrance as he dozes into a quiet slumber. Mingi straps them from the last bit of wet clothing and climbs into bed beside him. He pulls the older closer to him, allowing him to nuzzle into his chest with a hand wrapping loosely around his waist.
The birds rest comfortably outside the balcony doors, chirping their morning lullabies. The sleep withers from Mingi’s body as he stretches, he stretches and stretches… and there is no one there.
Had he gotten so lonely that he had conjured the past five hours in his mind with Seonghwa?
Dread filters from his body the way it had entered when the sound of a quiet laugh pours in through the bedroom door. He notices Seonghwa reading his unfinished letter to him.
Ah.
The thunder, nicotine and whiskey made his body falter with each beat, until he had received his favourite parcel. Mingi slowly creeps up behind him, lacing his arms around Seonghwa’s small waist, bending down for his chin to rest on his shoulder.
“I thought my mind was playing tricks with me when I didn’t find you in bed, until I heard you laugh,” The sleep was evident in his voice, his octaves low and audible only to Seonghwa. Mingi nuzzles into the crook of his neck, who couldn’t seem to contain his contagious smile and incessant giggles. “It is still the prettiest sound I have ever heard.”
“Shush, I saw your letter and... well, curiosity killed the cat,” Seonghwa says, his voice gentle and so, so sweet. Mingi hums in response, too sleep-deprived to give a coherent response.
I love you. Your existence brings peace to someone—me. I need you in a way I need no one else in this life.
“Come back to bed with me.” He demands, heavy-eyed. He is met with a small, loving eye roll and a pull towards the bedroom. Seonghwa makes himself comfortable first, making grabby hands that Mingi falls helplessly into with a smile of his own. Their legs tangle underneath the large duvet and Seonghwa’s pleasant perfume makes Mingi nestle into his chest, his safe place.
The older cards his fingers through his hair, a small gesture that electrifies each pulse in his chest. Seonghwa kisses his hair gently, and asks just as gently. “Do you really?”
“Hm?”
“Do you really love me like how you wrote in that letter?” He continues to run his fingers through Mingi’s hair, and he thinks he might fall asleep again, but he grabs Seonghwa’s wrists as he sits up with the help of his elbows. He kisses the pulse flowing through them, slowly covering them in gentle kisses as he touches them and reveres.
“I often wondered what the point of love was if it was going to end in such a short duration. Hell, I don’t even think I had loved the people I had been with before, until you. I am grateful I kept talking to you from that day onwards, and I am grateful of you so fucking much. You consume me in a way that I no longer can call myself my own, I belong to you—and I think I always have been,” Each word was laced in honesty and raw emotion that Mingi had to hold himself back from bursting into a dam. “You have such a great impact on me that drives me to become a better version of myself; if not for me, it is for you. I want to be better everyday because you deserve it. You deserve every bit of good this world has to give, my love.”
Mingi notices his lover sniffling, rubbing his eye sockets so harshly that they must burn tremendously. He reaches out and wipes Seonghwa’s eyes with his thumbs, looking up at him with a bright smile.
“So yes, I love you like how I wrote in that letter. Even more than there are stars in the sky.”
Seonghwa lunges forward and pulls him into a deep kiss. Mingi feels like he is floating, and he has the love of his life beside him, just by an arm’s reach. This kiss wasn’t like the others that they shared the night before, but he got his answer with the slip of Seonghwa’s tongue inside his mouth, a small tug of his hair from behind as he rested their foreheads over the other’s, their breaths lingered over each other’s lips. I want you to be mine in every life I will be reborn in.
“I love you, too,” Seonghwa whispers while tucking the stray locks of Mingi’s hair behind his hair. “I love you to death.”
As the Sunday morning persists, Mingi knows that Seonghwa will stay. He isn’t sure for how long, but he knows that nothing could steal their fleeting moments from him.