twenty-three suns | kang taehyun

TWENTY-THREE DAYS LEFT

23 DAYS LEFT

Summer was a difficult time for you. You'd look forward to it all winter, longing for the snow to melt away and the only cold in your life to come from creamy vanilla soft-serve ice cream and icy-cold lemonade that made your sensitive teeth tingle with delightful pain. But once it arrived in all of its blazing-hot heat and seemingly endless sunny days, you began to look forward to autumn, the chill of a crunchy-leaf filled breeze and glowing yellow lights inside vibrant orange jack-o-lanterns.

This year was no exception. You felt as if you were melting into the thatched weave of your mother's patio furniture, the sun-warmed material almost too hot for the bare skin of your legs to rest upon comfortably. Slipping your large black sunglasses—that your best friend said made you look like an oversized housefly—over your eyes, you willed the heat to go away, leave you alone until next year, when you'd be far, far away from your hometown.

Because you—yes, you, had managed to snag a fancy job at a snazzy company, one that would take you to a new country where you could stay for as long as you wanted, doing much more important work than you did at the sad part-time jobs your resume was filled with. When you'd first told your parents about the job, they'd protested at first, asking why you wanted to work in a foreign country, hundreds of thousands of miles away from your loving family and friends, and everything that you'd known since you were born. But you couldn't put the feeling into words, that wanderlust, that craving for adventure. Even if the job didn't work out, you knew that you wanted to travel the world, and what better place to begin than South Korea?

Eventually, your parents accepted it reluctantly, beginning to be more curious than anything about what this new job entailed, and though somewhat awkwardly, you explained your position to your supportive parents, who approved immediately—almost solely because of the annual salary, but approval regardless was relieving to you.

Now you had less than a month to go before you hopped on a plane and left your hometown forever. Though you'd left for college, a lack of work had brought you back right after those four years of freedom, and you'd spent several dismal months moping around the house while searching for a job until you landed the career of your dreams, which brought you to where you were now—sitting on your parents' old sun-bleached patio furniture in a pair of old jean cut-offs and a faded tank top that you'd found in the back of your closet whilst beginning to slowly pack up your life into a suitcase. You could practically smell the heat radiating off of the concrete of your patio, earthy and almost indescribable other than the idea that it was warm, too hot to lay your fingertips upon for more than a few seconds. The sound of your parents' old sprinkler chugging along and spitting out cold hose water echoed in your ears, and you could see what was happening without even opening your eyes. That old sprinkler had worked all throughout your childhood, showering your green lawn in droplets and bringing the dead winter grass back to life, and it wasn't hard to see the little spout spattering water all across the lawn.

Your eyes, though still closed, did not completely block out the sunlight, and you could see hues of red and orange pigments from your eyelids shining through instead of the welcome blindness that you so enjoyed when trying to nap. Your cheap sunglasses that you'd stolen from said friend who insulted your looks with them on were just that—cheap, and you wished you'd just spent more money to get a quality pair. If you'd known how much you'd be sunbathing this summer, you would have done so in a heartbeat, but how could you predict such a mundane month, full of nothing but homemade smoothies and lounging?

You turned over, starting to feel the tops of your thighs getting sensitive from being in the sun for too long, and kicked your feet up in the air, face propped up with your hands, elbows digging into the chair. You lowered your sunglasses to squint at your phone, only half reading the text from Beomgyu, who was demanding to know what you did with said sunglasses, before shutting off your phone with a satisfying click and laying your face down in your slightly sweaty palms, feeling the heat finally getting to you.

The phone rang.

"Hello?" you groaned, not even bothering to prop yourself back up.

"You asshole, give me back my sunglasses. I knew you had them," Beomgyu seethed, and you opened one eye to look at him on the video call. You could see the background of his apartment, cluttered but bright from all of the opened windows, and him right in the center of your screen, face blown up from the disturbing angle. You could see right up his nostrils, and the crusty orange corners of his lips from what you assumed were cheese puff dust.

"Why do you look so fucking gross?" you asked, finally sitting back up. You pushed the sunglasses up onto your head, pushing back the hair that was beginning to fall back into your face. "What's that all over your face, cheese dust?"

Beomgyu stared at the lower corner of his phone, finally realizing what he looked like, and wrinkled his nose. He used his thumb to scratch at the orange before examining it, then wrapping his chapped lips around the digit to suck off the residue. "God, that's disgusting. Can I hang up now?"

"Can you bring me back my sunglasses?" he countered, taking his thumb out of his mouth. You could see him wiping it on the front of his white t-shirt, leaving a long orange stain.

"You can come get them," you said, "I'm not moving from this spot."

"My car's broken," he whined, "I'm stuck in my apartment all weekend until Kai brings it back."

"If it's broken, why does Kai have it?"

"He's the one that broke it!" Beomgyu threw his free hand up in the air, as if he were mocking you for not knowing such an obvious fact about his stupid car. "He's paying for it and everything, so I don't really give a shit, but just come by. I'm bored."

You hoisted yourself up out of the chair, grimacing at how your thighs stuck to the chair and peeled off of it painfully. Beomgyu made an audible noise of disgust when he heard it. "Bring your skin with you, don't leave it on that chair," he gagged, "disgusting."

"It's hot and I'm sweaty, leave me alone," you snapped, "I don't have to return your glasses."

"You know I'm joking."

"Be there in twenty."

---

As always, you found it much too easy to waste the day away with Beomgyu, doing nothing but roll around in his apartment with no air conditioning, feeling as if you were about to melt into his hardwood floors. You watched as Beomgyu got up every thirty seconds to stick his head into the freezer and make obscene noises, sounding more like a freaky animal in heat than the best friend you knew and loved. By the time you stopped fucking around and picked yourself up off the floor to check the time, you realized it was much later than you thought, and you had to drive yourself back home for dinner, wondering what your mother made.

"I'm back," you called, swinging open the front door, the brass knob still hot to the touch from the sun, which had not yet set, "did I miss dinner?"

"No, you're just in time," your mother said, her voice echoing down the hallway, "come sit down!"

You trotted down the hallway merrily, knowing that you had to enjoy the home-cooked meals while you still could, and rounded the corner with a smile on your face, focused on the fully set table as you slid into your seat—and made eye contact with a strange man sitting across from you. "Who the hell are you?" you asked, so appalled at his shockingly handsome face that an obscenity slipped out from between your lips.

"Taehyun. Kang Taehyun," he said simply, and he flashed a smile so bright you wished you'd just kept Beomgyu's stupid cheap sunglasses.