CRAIGSLIST THERAPIST | hyunho ✔

.19

Minho points his chopsticks at him like the intention is to pinch. The tips are brown from the sauce.

"So you have trust issues, now," he says it like a wave of hand. Goes back to his paper plate.

"Yep," Hyunjin coughs around the mouth of a soju bottle. "As one does after the love of your life runs out of town with all your savings."

In between them, the styrofoam box has a dent where Minho unlodged it open. Hyunjin's fingers clench to touch it. He'll keep the box, wash the remnants of meat and brown sauce, and hide it in his drawer. To put the things he's hidden inside the drawer. To put them inside the box to put inside the drawer. The beef scent would still cling to its walls, but it'd only be a sweet reminder. Hyunjin scrapes the bottom for the leftover meat.

Kkami trots over to lick the edge of the box. Hyunjin shoves him away. "No, you don't, Mister."

"Was that recent?" Minho asks. He sports a new stain on his shirt — fresh, acquired in real-time.

"A year ago," Hyunjin dramatizes with a sigh.

Minho frowns as he wipes the chopsticks with his pursed lips. "Weird," he says, "bleaching your hair should've done the trick."

Then, renewed with determination, Minho wiggles closer to Hyujin's mattress.

"Do you wanna know something that happened to me a year ago? That I completely moved on from?"

It's like he's acting in a sitcom. Hyunjin glances at one wall. Then at the other. "Yeah?"

Minho's hand finds Kkami, unknowingly stopping his attempt to carve the styrofoam with his sharp little teeth. "So, last Christmas, I won the jackpot of waitering. Families with drunk adults and running kids. I served the food and entertained everyone. Sing another carol, Mr. Waiter! they asked, and spinning a plate of beef tartare I would sing to them. I'm a good singer. And with that, tips galore, Hyunjin. Drowning in pennies."

His grip on Kkami loosens to open his bottle of soju. Kkami leaps towards the box.

"No!" Hyunjin scolds him, holding his canine form above his head. Air jail. Hyunjin needs that box intact. "It's bad for you."

"My shift ended past midnight. I was famished. Thirsty. But I wanted something fancy. Fancier than beef tartare. Fancier than foie gras. Meat couldn't quench my thirst! So I strode to this hot chocolate place. Very Avant-Garde. They served me this Mexican hot chocolate in a mason jar tumbler. So delicious. So hunger-sating, so thirst-quenching. I sat by a bench in a busy monumental center and enjoyed the traffic, the people moving, the larger-than-life Christmas tree winking every color in the rainbow. Then..." Minho grins, amused. Kkami jiggles in Hyunjin's hands. When he struggles left, Hyunjin goes left. When he struggles right, Hyunjin knocks his buzzy head on the nightstand. "A suited-up man in a hurry dropped a coin in my mason jar tumbler. Can you believe it? It sunk right through. It clinked at the bottom. That hot chocolate cost more than that penny."

"What did you do?" Kkami kicks Hyunjin in the face.

Minho shrugs. "I drank it all. It tasted like coins."

"That's horrible!" Hyunjin lets Kkami go, so flabbergasted. "Why didn't you go after the guy?"

"It was Christmas." Minho stretches until he's occupying half of the mattress. With a hand supporting his face, he looks at Hyunjin. "When I drank all the chocolate, the penny was there, a circle perfectly placed inside a bigger circle."

Silence. Kkami runs around in peevishness. Hyunjin's supposed to take something away from this. This is therapy.

"Should I be the penny?" he tries. "The mason jar? The businessman?"

Minho hiccups. Maybe he's drunk. "I don't know. It's just a funny story, really." He looks at Hyunjin. "Not everything needs to have Earth-shattering meaning, Hyunjin-ah."

Kkami dashes in between them like a mini-hurricane.

"I can't help it." A pout. He holds the bottle. "The alcohol can't help it."

Minho smiles, feeding his own mouth with the similar bottle.

"Really, I haven't gotten drunk in many years." Hyunjin tries to catch Kkami mid-run, but misses. "Whoa!"

Hyunjin collapses right, right next to the nightstand. It spits a drawer. Papers fly off...

The heat is unbearable. Minho whisks them off the floor and Hyunjin wishes the glass wall were made of windows so he could open them and stick his flaming ears out, seeking refreshment. Instead, he presses the cool soju bottle on his face.

In his front, Minho analyzes the drawings. He opens and closes his mouth. Then opens and closes it. Then opens— Almost talks. Looks at Hyunjin. Like in slow-motion, he drawls: "It's my face. On your guy."

Hyunjin waits with great suspense for an Earthquake, but even Kkami is sat still, grave is the moment. What's next? What'll Hyunjin do? What'll Minho do? Cancellation. Forever. He can't leave him like this! Not after he bought bulgogi and soju with Felix's money! He can't—

Minho taps the drawings until they're evenly stacked, puts them in the drawer, and pushes it into the nightstand.

To Hyunjin, he just says, "You should get bangs."