moving day | Heeseung x Jay

twenty-three

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"You two should do a time capsule together or something," Sunghoon had said the day they'd graduated middle school.

The three of them had been waiting for the last bus of that school year to pull in because it was late. Jay had been writing in Sunoo's yearbook some inside joke they'd developed to pass the time during environmental science, and Heeseung had been wondering out loud how they should all commemorate this "momentous moment."

"Why just us two?" Heeseung had asked, playing the make-a-drawing-out-of-this-squiggle game with Niki over the teacher's pictures section of the yearbook. Niki had just drawn an obscure wiggle, and Heeseung had created a narwhal out of it while Jake snickered over his shoulder, sharpie cap in hand. "Shouldn't we all do it?"

"Nah, you two dork-wads are more suited for that stuff than we are." Sunghoon flicked at Sunoo's earring absentmindedly with his pinky, irritating Sunoo, who slapped his hand away.

"Who're you calling a dork-wad, dork-wad?" Heeseung had poked at Sunghoon's ribs like the bones were a whack-a-mole game, and Sunghoon had muttered, "oh my god," before flinching away from Heeseung.

When Heeseung and Jay were getting off at their neighborhood, waving goodbye to Jake and Sunoo who lived at the last bus stop, Jay had spoken up.

"I know it's kinda cheesy, what Sunghoon said, but we can do the time capsule thing—if you want, or whatever."

Heeseung had simply shrugged and said, "Okay. Your house?"

"My house."

Jay had pulled out gel pens and printer paper from his father's office, and Heeseung had scavenged his basement for old Amazon boxes that his mother always saved when they received packages.

"Okay," Heeseung had clicked his pen open and tested it on his palm for ink. "I sort of know how this works; it's like a letter to our future selves. Unless we write about an item—I didn't think of that until now. Did you wanna do that instead?"

Jay had folded his piece of paper hamburger-style and shook his head. "Nah, I'm cool with this. We're writing to ourselves, right? Not each other?"

"Most of what I've seen is self-dedicated."

"Okay, sounds good to me."

It had started out chill, just two guys sitting in a kitchen and trying to write themselves messages. After a while, when neither of them had thought of anything, Heeseung had sighed loudly and knocked his pen against the table, saying: "I'm just- ugh, 'gonna write whatever comes to mind."

Jay had agreed to do the same, and the next fifteen minutes consisted of them word-vomiting onto their papers. Heeseung had finished his first, his message looking long and poignant, but then the boy had harrumphed and headed into Jay's father's office, and Jay heard the whirring sound of paper shredding.

"Hey!" He'd called out, half-choking on a laugh when Heeseung came out mildly flustered. "Was it so bad that you had to shred it?"

"It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. Super awkward, even though I know it's only to myself. This would be so much worse if I had to write to you."

"Yup." Jay doodles the outline of a car on the side of his paper before huffing and standing up. "Mine's bad too. Imma start over. Hey, by the way, really think about what you wanna say before you write it. We shouldn't waste paper."

Heeseung had given him a thumbs-up, and he'd gone to shred his own failure of a message. When he came back, Heeseung had been practically burning holes into the paper with his eyes, and Jay couldn't blame him.

Why was it so hard?

Jay had then turned over Heeseung's words in his head. Sure, they weren't writing to each other, but maybe it'd be easier for him to write something to his future self regarding his friend. It could be, perhaps, a secret that he could laugh over in the future, or it could be a nice memory that happened in the past year that he would forget and be pleasantly surprised to be reminded of when he opened the letter in the future.

Eventually, he'd come up with the right words and jotted them down. Heeseung looked satisfied with what he'd written, too, as he'd folded up his paper into a neat square. "What next?" He'd asked.

"We put the papers in the box and bury them. No cheating and looking at the other person's."

"I know." Heeseung stood and rummaged through a kitchen drawer to find duct tape. "Let's tape the box just in case."

Jay had folded and placed his paper in the Amazon box, the corners dog-eared out of habit, and Heeseung did the same before they closed the cardboard flaps and taped them down with thick strips of neon green.

"We can bury it in my backyard. I know a good spot. I don't have a shovel, though." Jay had said.

"We have one." Heeseung had glanced at the Amazon box. "It's in our garage. I'll go get it. Don't open that!"

"Yea, yea."

While Heeseung was gone, Jay had thought about Heeseung's comment regarding an item as opposed to something written to put in the time capsule. Without putting too much thought into it, he'd run up to his room to grab the red lei that had lain dormant in his drawer.

He'd heard Heeseung opening the door when he was rushing back down the stairs and had stuffed the lei up his shirt, half-tucking it into the side of his pants, near his hip.

They'd gone out into Jay's backyard, and Jay had chosen a spot that his mother wouldn't kill him for digging up later. "This spot is good," he'd said, and Heeseung had plunged the shovel into the earth, spraying dirt and dust.

Jay had held the box and nervously blinked, wondering how he'd secretly put the lei into the box. Heeseung was right there, so it'd be hard.

Jay didn't even know why he was being so shifty about this. Maybe it was the idea of Heeseung finding out that he'd kept it for so long. Honestly, Jay had thought, he might not even remember that day.

Once Heeseung had dug enough of a hole, Jay had thumbed at the bottom of his shirt, feeling the outline of the lei. "Can you close your eyes?" he'd asked, and Heeseung had given him a strange look. "Please?"

"Why?" Heeseung had asked, crossing his arms and looking perplexed. "You're just putting the box in."

"It's embarrassing!" Jay had looked down at the ground, his stomach twisting. "I don't want you to watch."

"You're so weird," Heeseung had said, closing his eyes without more of a fight.

"We both are for doing this." Jay had kept his eyes on Heeseung to make sure he didn't peek as he knelt and removed the lei from under his shirt, putting it in the hole before covering it with the Amazon box. The lei wasn't made of real flowers so it wouldn't disintegrate over time, and hopefully, it wouldn't succumb to the weight of the box. When he was sure that it was hidden from sight and that the box was snugly tucked into the dirt hole, he patted the cardboard and stood. "You can open your eyes now."

Heeseung's lashes fluttered open. "When will we dig it up?" He had asked.

"When we graduate high school."

"What if we forget?"

Jay considered this. They were thirteen, so forgetting that they'd done this was a genuine possibility, but he decided that they'd take their chances.

"Then we forget and feel bad about purposefully littering in the ground forever."

"Bet." Heeseung had picked up the shovel to cover the box with the dirt he'd shoveled out earlier. As the earth re-piled back onto the box, hiding the secrets it kept underneath, Jay had told himself that the lei would be a reminder to his future self—for things that once were and what he wished could be.

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| end of part 2 |