CRAIGSLIST THERAPIST | hyunho ✔

.13

The sunlight maximizes Minho's every detail. Each unkempt hair strand, each facial blemish, and each loose thread in his clothes. Hyunjin focuses on these details as a getaway from acknowledging his own butchered hair that, although having Felix drag him into a hair salon and get it partially repaired, has been cut into half its length, unevenly, just long enough to not spike above his head. Only twin blond strands cling to his face like sideburns, and a beiging white beanie mantles the rest out of sight, and thus (hopefully) out of mind.

Walking side by side, hands in pockets, perfect mirrors to each other, Hyunjin waits for Minho's first word that never comes.

"So," he says to break the silence. "Did you really go to Psych school?"

"I did," Minho says, easy, just like that.

"Why aren't you in an office," Hyujin says, "you know, with a big bookshelf and a diploma pinned to the wall?"

"I never said I finished it."

That stalls him off his steps, coming too close to tripping over his feet. "You didn't graduate?"

Minho doesn't flinch. "No."

He regrets opening his mouth. It's not Felix by his side, the familiar presence of assured, non-judging company. He still had to dissect Minho and his personality — or is it the other way around? Should he even bother to decode this stranger, when their relationship, so strict and professional, is fleeting and conditional?

A pair of teens pass by, steps speedier than their leisure walk. As they cross their path, they laugh, and their laughs sound mean-spirited. Are they laughing at him or at each other? How does one exist in public, a sentient mass for analysis to strangers, and not assume every giggle, every snicker, every annoyed sigh, refers to them?

"Then what happened to me?" Minho snaps him out of trance.

"What?"

"What happened to me to abandon school and end up like this, it's what you're asking."

"No." Yes. He's curious. Has been for some time.

"Yes," Minho insists, cutting Hyunjin's pace as he trods in front of him, walking backwards, facing him. Minho plucks his hands out of his pockets and extends his arms long and wide. "Because I want it all Hyunjin. I want it all, every single part of it. Just like you."

"Like me?" Hyunjin lifts an eyebrow, forehead wrinkling under the confines of the beanie.

"You don't want anything that doesn't fit into your ideal," he says. Could it be? Could it be that, with only short bursts of banter, hushed words under the glaring movie theater screen, and a few text messages, Minho was able to disentangle Hyunjin's knotted brain? "You want what you want. I wanted too much, too. Realized I needed too little."

In a flash, his hands are back in his pockets. They don't stay for long. With a clanky, awkward pull, Minho fishes out of his coat pockets fistfuls of dry cat food at the same time apprehensive meows pervade the park.

For such a powerful choir, Hyunjin expected to see a hoard of cats. But instead, only three are perched on the lonely bench. They're big and small, black and orange, all tabbies, and they paw the air near Minho and let out newborn-like cries.

Only when Minho throws dry food on the ground do they cease their chant. Like pigeons to breadcrumbs, they dive into it. Their collective colours remind Hyunjin of his previous attempt at hair dying.

They don't stand there for too long, and soon Hyunjin is solely focused on the way he walks as they pass by a hugging couple. Are they watching the way Hyunjin's trenchcoat clings in between his legs from the force of the wind?

"What do you need, Hyunjin-ah?" Minho's question comes suddenly and unwarranted, like Hyunjin's own heart holding onto a defunct, imaginary relationship.

He opens his mouth to... What? What should he say to that impromptu, improvised, spontaneous question? He's never taken those types of acting lessons, either.

But Minho holds a finger near his lips. It smells like cat food. "Ah, ah," he says. "Homework. See you tomorrow."