Outside the restaurant, Chan-ho let himself go all at once, blowing out a sigh as he drooped.
"I hope you're happy," he said, pouting.
"I don't think I'm ever going to be able to set foot in there again. I really liked that place too." There was just enough exaggeration in his voice to make it a joke, and in truth he was mostly fine. Mostly. He would miss the food, but it wasn't like he had an excuse to go there
very often.
And it
was technically his fault. Sort of.
Then he felt the air shift between them with Young-soo's words and blinked, not precisely caught off guard but not quite sure what to do with what was presented to him. The awkwardness lay between them again, though the lines of it were different. There was something he could read there, if he wanted to. He wasn't sure that he did.
He saw, as he always did, the options laid out before him. Make a joke. Make light of it. The wish--- it would have been easy. Or he could pursue this thread to its end, whatever he found there. No, came the thought; dismissed as quickly as it had come. He could smile, and...?
"Come with me," he heard himself say.
"There's a place I want to show you." He was smiling, grabbing Young-soo by the wrist, tugging him along, even as his free hand came up to flag down another taxi.
----------------------------
It was a smaller, quieter neighborhood, one of those hilly little places, still within the heart of Seoul, but altogether different from the polished towers and shopping centres and tourist traps. Seoul was a big city. Not all of it had gentrified, or at least not the same way. Chan-ho was smiling as he approached it, his eyes light with genuine gladness, to find this place still like he remembered it.
But then, he had always said it was too vertical for development.
The climb was a long one, up stairs and steep roads barely wide enough for a car to pass. Residences and the occasional small shop lined the streets, made quaint by all the signs of lived-in family homes: a child's plastic tricycle, an old washboard propped up in a yard, the curious look of a dog through a sliding glass door. There wasn't a convenience store in sight. This late, most of the residents were indoors. Chan-ho walked steadily on, ignoring the burn in his legs, too buoyed by the giddiness of finding himself here, and the strange thrill of knowing that Young-soo was behind him.
"Here," he said at last, ducking through an even smaller alley. Through it, he emerged onto a pedestrian path, a rail marking the other side. Past it, the ground dropped sharply away. The city sprawled out beneath them. The city, at night, with all its lights, sprawled out beneath them.
Chan-ho went to the railing, and stepped up onto its lower bar, heaving himself up with his hands braced on the top. It was effortless, familiar. The wind moved through his hair and he smiled unconsciously, leaning into it, his weight pressed against the cool metal of the rail. In that moment, everything was forgotten, and he was timeless. In that moment there was no idol, no crisp blazer slightly rumpled by the events of the night, no flashing lights and glitz and years, years of hard relentless training. There was no one and nothing else but the almost weightless sensation of being on top of the world--- of his world. The same rush he had always known, here.
And then it was gone, in the space of the time between one breath and the next. He breathed deep and opened his eyes, his head half turned to look at Young-soo behind him.
"Well," he said,
"what do you think?"