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The world ends at home. Sonically, it is rather unimpressive.
Mark always assumed the soundtrack to the end of the world would resemble unending chaos, a cacophony with the dissonant notes of death and destruction. Instead, it is gentle chatter wafting from the living room, the rested laughs of his bandmates decorating jokes that have been repeated for years.
It’s a privilege, Mark thinks, to be able to spend the end of the world in a moment of rest. After endless touring, a successful solo album, comeback after comeback after comeback – professionally, Mark thinks he’s managed to hit all the goals he’s ever wanted for himself in the short life he’s lived so far. They were supposed to start preparing for yet another comeback soon, having wrapped up a tour not too long ago. Mark had been making brand trips occasionally, but he spent most of his time at his apartment, cosplaying a normal guy who played video games with his friends on the weekend and cooked his own meals. As the years ticked by, these moments had come to mean more and more to him.
And then they told them the world was ending.
An asteroid? Like the one that killed the dinosaurs? When Chenle asked the question during the meeting, there was an incredulous laugh following it, like it was the summary of a badly-written sci-fi novel that made a lazy writing choice to bring back an old villain.
It all comes to a stop overnight.
They couldn’t go back home. Jisung was the most broken up about it, crying on the phone with his mother for a good hour for each day that had passed since they were informed. Mark’s parents had been remarkably accepting of it – they told Mark they were proud of him, shutting him down immediately when he began apologizing for never calling that much.
Mark hasn’t really sorted out all his feelings about it. He wonders why things seem to mean even lesser than they did before he found out. Don’t you care more about living when you know you’re going to die soon? Is it because they know the date and time that the asteroid will make contact? Does mortality only drive meaning in life when it is accompanied by mystery?
Mark can barely seem to figure out what he should be feeling. The entire world has turned to an outpouring of emotion, gratefulness and love keeping afloat in a sea of regret and disbelief. Objectively, Mark has nothing he should complain about – he lived out his dreams, shattered records, accumulated fame and respect and love from every corner of the earth, all for the small price of half his childhood, and even though he enjoyed it, it took so much out of him, from the aches in his bones caused by endless choreography and a perennial feeling of inadequacy and insecurity that stemmed from growing up in front of a camera lens.
There were so many things that Mark had put aside for a later that had now become too late.
Then again, when he looks back, he doesn’t think he regrets anything. When he looks over his shoulder, Jaemin has his head thrown back, laughing at something Jisung said while Chenle gesticulates wildly to try and butt into the empathic point that Jisung is making. They’re all drenched in warm golden lighting, drizzled over them by the pretty lamp that Mark bought when he went out to buy furniture soon after buying his apartment. Renjun had picked it out after a near hour of scrutinizing all the different lighting options.
“What are you up to out here, pondering?”
Maybe Mark regrets one thing.
Donghyuck looks unimpressed as Mark nods. “It’s all the more dramatic when you look at the stars and do it, you see.”
“Yeah, well, one of those stars has come loose and is going to kill us in about half an hour, so…”
“An asteroid is not a star, Hyuck, oh my god—”
“I know, yeah, yeah, whatever,” says Donghyuck flippantly, leaning on the edge of the balcony next to Mark. His eyes are bright, and there’s something tense about him that Mark can’t put his finger on. He pulls his hand up, thrusting it out to Mark, a red tulip in his grip. Jeno brought a bouquet of them over, a homegrown gift from his mom, the very last batch of blooms.
A confused smile diffuses across Mark’s face. “What’s this about?”
“I just thought…you should know.” Donghyuck presses his lips together, rocking on the balls of his feet. Mark has never seen him so perturbed, so nervous, like the personification of bitten-up nails. “You know.”
Mark doesn’t. There’s a foggy idea beginning to come together at the back of his head, but there’s no way. Those feelings had been neatly placed in a box, locked inside a safe, and thrown into an ocean at periodic intervals, since they never seemed to stop spawning and the possibility of them ever being addressed were negligible. “What?”
Donghyuck takes a deep breath. “I like you.”
Negligible never meant a zero percent chance. “Like me?”
“I love you.” The words rush out of Donghyuck’s mouth like they’ve been pushed from the bottom of his ribcage.
It feels more like a tragedy than a relief.
Mark looks from the tulip in his hand to Donghyuck’s expectant face, voice quiet as he says, “Why are you telling me this now?” The hope on Donghyuck’s cheeks crumples. “Is it because the world is ending?”
Donghyuck shrugs, straightening his posture defensively. “I guess? I mean, we’ve always had something different, I just thought one of us should say someth—”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Mark feels like a shaken soda can that someone has violently wrenched open, all the feelings that he’s kept inside for years bubbling over, acidic and corrosive. “You just said it, you knew we had something different. I wasn’t even aware of that, I thought you didn’t even think of me like that.”
“Well, somehow that’s even worse then, isn’t it?” asks Donghyuck, tone rising even as the volume of his voice drops. “Besides, why did I have to say it? Why couldn’t you have?”
“You had to know, it was so obvious.” The words feel so stupid in Mark’s mouth, but they’re true. “I thought if you liked me, you would have said something.”
“It isn’t like I was hiding it either, how is it my fault? And we weren’t exactly in the best environment to even say anything, were we? The stakes were too high if we did something about it,” points out Donghyuck, and there’s no way Mark can argue with that, even though he desperately wants to.
“We didn’t have to,” says Mark, shaking his head. “I would have just wanted to know. I—we wouldn’t have had to hide our feelings like that from each other at least.”
“Pick a side, Mark, were you being obvious or were you hiding it?” Donghyuck sounds angrier with each word, evidently not having expected the conversation to go this way. “Why are you so mad about this, anyway? I just didn’t want us to go out with any regrets.”
“I didn’t have any regrets,” says Mark harshly. “But now I do, because it seems like we could have led more peaceful lives if we had—”
“Don’t say we,” says Donghyuck, putting his hand out. “You would have found it easier to live with yourself if one of us—no, if I’d said something earlier. I chose not to say anything because of the circumstances, not because I was afraid of admitting to my own feelings, so don’t rope me in with you on this.” He clicks his tongue with exasperation. “You know what? I can’t believe you would be selfish enough to pick a fight at the end of the fucking world, when all I wanted you to know that…you know, the thing I said, but you know what? You can forget I even said it at all, if you would prefer to have never heard it.”
Mark’s heart lies in shattered glass shards, his ribs acting as a futile container to keep their pain from seeping into the rest of his worn-out body. He’s unwittingly crumpled the tulip in his fist, collateral damage to that phenomenal train wreck of a confession, hot ire and catastrophic, concentrated regret spreading beneath his skin. “I think that would be better for both of us.”
1
The world ends over a cup of coffee. It feels more like a relief than a tragedy.
The break room that they are in adequately sets the scene with the competence of an underfunded theatre department, a patched-together imitation of a space that once sustained raucous scientific discussion. The wallpaper is patterned with red petunias, rust seeping through in patches. Mark thinks about how a structure renovated this recently should not be exhibiting such severe signs of corrosion damage already, and Donghyuck pokes Mark’s head like he can read his mind.
“It’s probably doing that ugly wallpaper a favour by covering it up anyway,” chuckles Donghyuck, cups of warm instant coffee in both hands, one for himself and one for Mark. He tilts his head towards the other end of the kitchen, making to walk towards the olive-green couches where the others are scattered around hot beverages and cookies.
All seven of them had gathered after the news had made the rounds in the underground circuit. The weight of the last few years sits heavy on their features. Time has not been good to any of them, lives lived under enough pressure to turn them to coal overnight, struggling to keep their head above water between diminishing funding, a dying belief in science, and exponentially increasing societal unrest.
Mark feels like Jisung might break in his arms if he hugs him just a little too tight. Jeno’s hair has greyed and Jaemin’s cheeks have hollowed out. The smiles on all of their faces haven’t changed though, and as they sit in the same abandoned department building where they first met, Mark thinks that if they had some cheap convenience store chips and procrastinated assignments, it would be as close a recreation of their college days as they could get to right now.
Donghyuck sits by Mark’s side, arm loosely over Mark’s shoulders, watching the scene in front of them with almost parental affection. Jaemin leans on Jeno, not even attempting to break up the bickering. Jisung doodles in his notebook, eyes skimming the scene in the room as he draws practiced lines, a final attempt to immortalize them, even more meaningful in its futility. Chenle talks about some silly nursery rhyme that he learnt as a child while Renjun argues with him over the lyrics.
The words are light, conversation easy, like it is any other Tuesday. (Mark thinks it’s rather anticlimactic of the world to end on a Tuesday. It feels like more of a late Saturday event, so at least people wouldn’t be worrying about needing to go to work the next day.)
There are no discussions on what was the highlight of your life? What will you miss most about being alive? Who is the greatest love of your life? What is your biggest regret?
Mark had wanted to have those conversations initially, that night when they discovered the asteroid, a conversation opening encouraged by a can of beer and a late night at the telescope, but Donghyuck had answered with stupid jokes and placeholder responses until the subject changed, like refusing to entertain the possibility of the end of the world would diminish its odds from one in thirty to zero.
It took a week after that to realize that their initial calculations of a one in thirty chance were completely wrong, and that there was no doubt that this asteroid would cause an extinction level event. They did try to get the news out to the public, even though they knew what that entailed. (Mark seemed to have some faith that one final plea towards re-directing all the selfishness that had rotted most norms in the face of the end of humanity could be pulled off, but Donghyuck never had a shred of that same faith in humanity to begin with.)
They went on a podcast or two (most of the platforms they contacted didn’t even reply), but predictably, it was quickly dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory and a hoax by the small subsection of people who heard it at all. Yet, Mark couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being monitored somehow, and ended up moving into Donghyuck’s apartment just so they would both have backup.
In the midst of the insurmountable effort it seemed to take to get from one day to the next, there wasn’t much opportunity for the conversations they missed out on, and mundane normalcy became a weapon in its own right, a final frontier against forces outside of their control as the clock ran down.
The ground starts to rumble beneath their feet. Mark can feel Donghyuck’s hand scrunch in the material of his shirt. He reaches over to take Donghyuck’s other hand, giving it a little squeeze, turning to give him a small smile. (Donghyuck had never been one for physical affection, but since they found themselves in the same delicately unique situation, it has felt more and more like Donghyuck has been trying to shrink down the space he takes up by folding and twisting and tangling his limbs in ways that trap them between Mark’s own.)
Donghyuck releases his grip on Mark’s shirt, reaching over for the last peanut butter cookie on the little platter they’ve assembled, extracting his hand from Mark’s and placing the cookie in Mark’s palm instead. There’s no way Mark would have taken it himself even though he was very subtly eyeing it. They’re his favourite, he can’t help himself.
Mark looks from Donghyuck to the cookie, then back to Donghyuck with a slow head tilt that could come off as comical if not for the fact that there is something in Donghyuck’s eyes that Mark can’t read, something soft and broken behind Donghyuck’s usual sharp gaze that Mark can’t seem to read.
“Gay,” giggles Renjun, disguising the word behind a cough, and Donghyuck whips his head around at the comment, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly.
But it has already thrown Mark off kilter, a chill running down his whole body that reverberates with something between premonition and déjà vu, like a fleeting glance into what would have happened if Mark had honestly answered those questions that night, and told Donghyuck that the answers for what was the highlight of your life?, what will you miss most about being alive?, and who is the greatest love of your life? were all the same, and sitting in front of him.
Ten whole years of tamping his feelings down and never saying anything, even at the end of the world, because Mark was so sure that Donghyuck would not feel the same way, that if he had then he would have said something. The cookie sits heavily in his palm, and Mark thinks about how Donghyuck can’t stand peanut butter cookies, how they had a perpetual place on his grocery list anyway, and how if Mark asked him right now, they would probably have the same answer to what is your biggest regret?
Mark presses his lips together and diverts his gaze away from Donghyuck’s face, a flood of emotion released in his stomach – the realization of reciprocation should bring ecstasy but the hot, acidic feeling climbing up his oesophagus feels a lot more like anger. His neck feels too warm and his hands feel too cold, and Mark is entrapped in his own re-evaluation of the last decade, wondering how he missed it, wondering how Donghyuck managed to never say anything. To think that Mark has been nothing but homesick for death, and yet, in this moment, he can’t help but beg the universe to hang on for just a minute more.
Then there is a flood of heat and light, the ground gives way beneath them, and the world ends.
2
The world ends over a card game. Mark can swear this has happened before.
There’s an itch at the back of his brain as he stands by Donghyuck cooking over a pot that is almost too small for the volume of food simmering in it. Jaemin sits on the counter and entertains them by playing both sides of a hypothetical conversation between him and Sailor Moon. Jeno is playing the ukulele on the couch while Renjun sings along, Jisung and Chenle goofily dancing in the soft light of the inordinately large lava lamp by the TV.
Mark’s gaze keeps shifting to the window, to the ball of light in the sky that is much closer than it was a week ago. It’s supposed to make contact with the surface of the earth past midnight, and it feels like Mark still hasn’t fully processed the news, despite it being the only thing anyone has been talking about for weeks at this point.
Or maybe he just processed it way faster than anyone else. A sense of doomed acceptance seemed to envelope him when it was broadcasted on the news, like he had almost seen it coming. Even now, he can tell how much Jisung is holding back his tears, how much Jaemin is overcompensating with his light-heartedness to diffuse the taut anticipation in the room, how Donghyuck stares directly into the pot and hasn’t been able to look at anyone directly all evening, but Mark doesn’t feel like he’s holding back in any way. It was never in any of their hands anyway, but while he would like to say that he’s just a little philosophically advanced, there’s something about it that has been bothering him nonstop, something he cannot seem to put his finger on.
They’d made the decision to spend the last few days together, since they were all far away from their families and all transportation channels had screeched to a halt, with no one wanting to spend their last few days of existence working to run flights and public transport.
“If this was supposed to be our last life on this planet, I’m glad I’m spending it with you guys,” says Renjun as he lays bowls and chopsticks out on their table, a statement that immediately punches through any dam that Jisung was building to hold back his tears, head leaned on Jaemin’s shoulder as he cries silently.
“Wow, Jwin, always making children cry,” sighs Donghyuck, dodging the swipe that Renjun aims at his face. “You would have been the best teacher ever.” Renjun drops his hand to his side and rolls his eyes, even if the softness in his expression completely undercuts it.
Mark watches the interaction with his bottom lip sucked between his teeth. Sure, Donghyuck and Renjun dated for a week in their first year of college and that was a complete bust, but a trace of the stomach-ache that Mark had that whole week never really went away. At this point, it’s less suspicion that there may still be anything there and more just jealousy that Renjun managed to do the one thing Mark couldn’t: ask Lee Donghyuck out on a date.
There’s a part of Mark that wants to bitch and moan about the world ending in a way that makes it seem like an inconvenience to his romantic life more than anything – there was a movie theatre that was supposed to open right next to campus next month (now an abandoned pile of rusting rebars and mounds of sand). Maybe Mark could have asked Donghyuck to go with him to a movie when it opened, like on a date.
(Truth be told, they would have ended up going for a movie together anyway. They did pretty much everything together.
But it wouldn’t have been a date.)
Mark had met Donghyuck on the first day of high school, liked him since the third day of high school, and held himself back from saying as much every single day after that. Besides, if Donghyuck liked Mark, he would have just told him. Donghyuck doesn’t know how to hold any of his thoughts or feelings back, it’s gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion, doubly so since sarcasm comes to him as a kneejerk reaction.
Donghyuck ends up next to Mark at the table, partly out of force of habit and partly because everyone else around them always arranges themselves under that assumption, reinforcing the same habit.
“Do you think we’ll all find each other in the next life?” asks Mark, the warmth of the bowl of ramen leaching into his hands.
“What next life?” asks Donghyuck, picking up a piece of kimchi with his chopsticks. “The world is ending, no one’s getting a next life.”
“I just…” Mark takes a deep breath as he turns the words over in his head. “I can’t seem to shake the idea that things aren’t ending here.”
“It’s called denial, Minhyungie,” nods Donghyuck, bumping his shoulder against Mark’s. “It’s a great stage of grief to get stuck on, I think. The world ending while you’re on anger or depression sounds like it would be much worse.” There’s a laugh that catches on Donghyuck’s lips as he turns his face to take in Mark’s unflinching gaze, fixing his expression to something a little more grounded when he realizes that a joke isn’t what Mark was setting him up for. “But I suppose that while the chances of that may be – for all scientific and statistical purposes – vanishingly small, there are probably universes where we’d all find each other.”
“I’m sure Hyuck would find you, at least,” snickers Jaemin.
There’s gravity to the statement that suddenly draws Mark in, like all his breath has suddenly frozen in his lungs. He blinks – once, twice, thrice – trying to decide if what he heard can be interpreted in the way that he wants it to be, and the implications of that. “Why?”
“Because you still owe me for the ticket to the museum last month,” says Donghyuck, words slipping off his tongue too easily, messy and rushed.
Mark scoffs, chest stinging like it’s been rubbed raw. He looks down at the bowl in his hand, its exterior patterned with pale red carnations, each one hand-painted on by Donghyuck. Mark remembers the day he made it – he’d gone for a ceramic painting workshop on a whim, created what he claimed was one of the most beautiful things known to mankind, a piece that he was so incredibly vocally proud of, and then collected it three weeks later to come straight back home and gift it to Mark, for no occasion whatsoever.
Mark would probably hold a longer grudge if the world wasn’t ending. Mark could probably hold a longer grudge if he wasn’t eating his last meal in that bowl. There really isn’t much stock in being mad at his best friend when every minute feels heavier than the last.
Three hours tick down too fast and too slow at the same time. Jisung has fallen asleep with his head on Chenle’s lap, having made the decision not to let an inconvenience like the end of the world get in the way of his bedtime. The rest of them are on their fourth game on Uno, Mark’s hand filled with cards after Jeno has not held back on the +2s, the sky lightening shade by shade in the window.
Mark realizes that that the prickly feeling over his cheek has been Donghyuck’s eyes on him for the last couple hours, the same gaze that Mark has been working overtime to not meet too many times, but he falls victim to his own weaknesses (Donghyuck) as he always does, turning to catch something inexplicably gentle in Donghyuck’s eyes – an expression that he has never noticed before draped over Donghyuck’s features, as familiar and as haunting as a glimpse of a past life.
The word what? fills Mark’s mouth on instinct, having spent all his years questioning that boy’s lines of thinking and shapes of affection, taking painstaking effort to understand someone who could not be more different from him, but what bothers him most is that he isn’t searching for an explanation right now because he doesn’t need one.
Oh no. Oh no. There’s no way.
The room sways dangerously around them, the temperature unbearably hot. Donghyuck reaches for Mark’s hand, turning to dust before they make contact.
3
The world ends over brunch. No one sees it coming except Mark.
He’s been having dreams, fragments of space and catastrophe, flashes of the world ending in minerals and fire. They’re oddly specific, and they all seem to revolve his roommate-slash-best-friend-slash-personalized-annoyance-provider(-slash-secret-crush), Lee Donghyuck, even if the others in his friend group are generally involved as well.
He’s an engineer for some reason in some of these dreams, studying law in others. He thinks they may be manifestations of universes where his parents were probably a little prouder of him, even though that’s a high bar to cross considering how many questions his mother asks him just to make sure that she can brag accurately about his degree in English literature. Mark can’t seem to put any of the storylines together.
They’re at their usual first-Sunday-of-the-month brunch. Donghyuck is dressed to go to the gym later, and Renjun has predictably chewed him out for not dressing for the occasion. Mark is in a thin-striped button-down and ironed pants, feeling like he’s being choked by his collar, feeling like he may be generating electricity with the way the fabric brushes against his skin. Concealer sits heavy under his eyes, his sleep particularly lacking this week with the frequency and vividness of dreams.
Something terrible is going to happen, Mark can feel it in his stomach. The eggs feel like rubber in his mouth, and he can’t seem to focus on Chenle outlining the plot of his latest BronSteph story. In fairness, Chenle doesn’t change the tropes of his stories much, they’re mostly romcoms that lean heavy on basketball metaphors, but still, he does add his own twist to it every time and oh god, the last conversation Mark is ever going to have is about BronSteph fanfiction.
Mark takes a deep breath, trying to focus on the bunch of red roses arranged in the vase at the centre of the table, trying to focus on the way Jisung’s long fingers are playing a piano composition on a napkin absentmindedly with the hand that he isn’t eating oatmeal with, trying to focus on anything that isn’t the running drumbeat in his head that is counting down to an event that Mark has no information on.
A hand enters his field of view, reaching for his plate, and Mark’s instincts kick in as he sharply swats at the hand. “I told you to order the full breakfast, you’re not stealing any of mine.”
“I’m not stealing, I’m relieving your taste buds from the French toast,” scowls Donghyuck, plucking the bread off Mark’s plate, leaving Mark wrestling with the choice of sticking to his guns on not allowing stealing and conceding that soggy egg bread was among the foods that made his mouth quite unwelcoming to its intrusion. “And it’s an exchange, you can have my fruit salad.” Donghyuck shakes it enticingly. “It’s even got fresh watermelon, Markie, you know you want it.”
“Yeah, but it has—”
“I removed all the pieces of kiwi and left in all the watermelon, come on,” says Donghyuck with a self-satisfied grin.
“You know me so well.” The words bubble on Mark’s tongue like soda as he takes the bowl. “It’s like we’re best friends or something.”
“It’s like you’re in love or something,” chuckles Chenle, looking between the two of them with a saccharine hand held to his heart.
Mark’s cheeks flame up with heat, ears going red as he tries to stutter together a comeback that consists mostly of scoffs of disbeliefs.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Donghyuck quickly, far steadier than Mark as he quickly diverts the conversation back to its original subject.
It would have ripped Mark down the middle like a sheet of paper if it wasn’t for the fact that Donghyuck’s ears are the same shade as his. He doesn’t manage to fully process that before the earth rips instead, collision of flaming space rock to earth, roof giving way over their heads.
9
The world ends over makeshift karaoke. Mark doesn’t even flinch this time.
They have Jeno playing the guitar, Jaemin scribbling down lyrics on a blackboard as fast as he can while the singer fights back laughter to win points (declared by Chenle). They’re gathered in Renjun’s tiny dorm room, shoulder to shoulder in the limited space, empty beer and soju bottles arranged neatly in the corner. They’ve decided to go out having a good time, as they generally do in the universes where they know the world is going to end before it does.
There’s a pink blush over Donghyuck’s cheeks, the worn-out neckline of his shirt slipping slightly off his shoulder as he falls over laughing, exposing the line of pale red carnations along his collarbone. Mark is warm all over, somehow bothered even though he’s gone years seeing Donghyuck practically naked in football locker rooms. It gets worse when he goes up to sing, and he chooses a sickeningly sappy love song that he enthusiastically performs in Jisung’s direction, making the younger one hide his face in his hands, a choice that only makes Donghyuck double down on his shenanigans.
It’s so incredibly annoying, waiting for the clock to run down like this. It’s been one of Mark’s least favourite parts so far. His memories of previous universes have been getting stronger as they go by, but he can’t seem to figure out inconsistencies that could explain why he’s remembering anything at all.
There aren’t enough data-points in the sample space to make any adequate judgements yet. Mark seems to just be some guy in most universes – generally competent, decent social circle, enough joyful moments to make hardships seem bearable. In some universes, someone discovers that the world is going to end, in others it just happens. There are a couple common threads, though. He always seems to end up in the exact same friend group, sometimes in circumstances laced with extraordinary coincidence unperceivable to a mind that hasn’t retained memory of the same people for seven universes so far.
Renjun, Jeno, Jaemin, Jisung, Chenle, and…Donghyuck. Donghyuck, Donghyuck, Donghyuck. Mark’s first theory was that he made the mistake of messing with a minor god and he’s paying for it by falling in love with a manifestation of him in every universe. Donghyuck is always the one he ends up spending the most time with – their friendship is the root of the friend group, and everyone else gets arranged around them. So far, they’ve been different versions of roommates, family friends, classmates, neighbors – the least coincidental of meetings and the highest potential for regular interaction.
It isn’t like Mark is trying to fall in love with Donghyuck, it’s just a consequence of proximity. They bicker, then they back each other up in every fight where they aren’t up against each other. Yawns, grins, exclamations of pain, loaded glances – familiarity is a hell of an aphrodisiac.
It never seems to come to fruition, though. Donghyuck doesn’t quite seem to return his feelings in the same way, which really reinforces the possibility of all this being a curse from a minor god (after all, Mark’s seen Donghyuck’s eyes in the sunlight, the best word to describe him would be nothing short of divine). Mark tends to enter the universes unblemished and unburdened, at least until Donghyuck re-enters his life, kickstarting Mark’s timeworn memories that polish their images slowly over the course of time with the beat of Mark’s lovelorn heart that goes bump-bump-bump to the tune of Donghyuck’s laugh in the background.
Besides all the Donghyuck stuff, of course, there’s this other minor thing – the end of the fucking world.
Mark would rather die than confess first, especially being so sure that Donghyuck absolutely doesn’t return his feelings. Donghyuck just likes doing things for people, so he does things for Mark. Donghyuck just likes bothering people, so he bothers Mark. Donghyuck would absolutely confess first if he felt the same way, but he never does, so the natural conclusion is that he doesn’t like Mark, who ends up holding in his feelings until he thinks they may kill him before the asteroid does.
Donghyuck seizes Chenle’s hand as a low rumbling starts building in the distance, a sure sign that they’re on their last couple minutes. Jisung peels Donghyuck’s hand off his own and places it on Mark’s instead, and Mark doesn’t even blink before flipping his palm and intertwining his fingers with Donghyuck’s. There’s that look on Donghyuck’s face, naked and devoted, blanketed with regret, turning a knife of wasted time directly into Mark’s chest.
Onto the next. Mark will remember everything but that final look.
17
The world is scheduled to end in the middle of a wedding.
In the middle of the first dance, no less, because if there’s one thing the universe is known for, it’s good timing. In the least morbid way, there’s something oddly sweet knowing that when the human race re-evolves billions of years later, if they ever happen to stumble upon their bones, Jeno and Jaemin will still be holding each other.
This universe is really testing Mark, though. He’s starting making changes to see how the final outcome may change, but nothing has seemed to shift the balance at all so far, and Mark has a little voice at the back of his head that’s telling him that is all tied to Donghyuck, it has to be, and that Mark’s way out of this time-loop (universe-thread?) would be to overcome his fear of rejection and just say something.
Saying something has never been Mark’s forte unfortunately – well, that’s not entirely true, really, Mark knows how to compliment people and talk about interesting things with wide-eyed fondness and curiosity that he has never been able to suppress, but with the more difficult conversations, he’ll beat around the bush and phrase things in the gentlest of manners or simply justify every other person’s perspective in his own head to talk himself out of addressing things. The lack of confrontational skills is simply something Mark was born with, along with hair that never seems to sit flat and seasonal allergies. It doesn’t help that he needs statistics on his side – Mark would be comfortable saying things if he knew the situation would work out in his favour.
Renjun can lecture him all he wants about giving in to the occasional impulse and “living a little”, just to make things interesting, but that’s not the way Mark works at all. It isn’t like he’s happy about it – he’s just grown to accept that there are parts of himself that simply just are, and that’s okay.
The universe probably doesn’t share that opinion though, and sixteen universes in, Mark is edging towards desperation at making his way out. He hasn’t gotten to anything drastic yet – he doesn’t exactly want to experiment with killing himself in any way, mostly out of the fear that he may not be successful enough in those endeavours, and partly because every universe has its own version of Groundhog Day that tells him that it’s a tried and tested method known to not work.
Mark lets his eyes wander to Donghyuck, an action that is second-nature to him at this point. They haven’t really been in the same country for a year, which has been a difficult change considering they were in close proximity for the seven years before that, neighbouring desks at the same paper company. Having Donghyuck back for Jeno’s and Jaemin’s wedding is even worse, because not only has absence made the heart grow fonder, the atmosphere being packed to the particle with romance gives Mark not a second to breathe his way out of his thoughts.
Donghyuck is wearing a white suit with an intricate red butterfly weed pattern along the collar, a little bit of glitter around his eyes. He appears by Mark’s side with two drinks that they clink together. The world is ending in a bare few minutes, Mark can feel the clock ticking down in his stomach.
“Do you want to go on a date?” he blurts out, hands slippery from a combination of the sweat from his hands and the condensation on the glass.
The smile on Donghyuck’s face stays up as he turns to Mark with raised eyebrows, the light dimming from his eyes. “What?”
Mark swallows thickly. “You know, you’re here for the rest of the weekend, and,” Mark clears his throat, prickles spreading over the back of his neck. He can’t even look Donghyuck in the eye. “And you know, I like you—”
“Mark,” says Donghyuck, tone cold as a knife to Mark’s throat. “Don’t—Just—you know that’s not—just don’t.”
“Yeah,” nods Mark, as though affirming to himself how bad an idea this was. Donghyuck doesn’t know about the world ending, Donghyuck only knows that they live too far apart to try and get a relationship off the ground. Donghyuck doesn’t know that Mark has been falling for him universe after universe, he probably thinks Mark just misses him and has realized his feelings too late. “Forget I said anything.”
Jeno and Jaemin complete their first dance before the other guests start finding their way onto the dance floor, the DJ melting the track into a song that Mark has heard enough times that he could recite it in his sleep, but it barely registers in the befuddlement caused by the fact that the world is still spinning on its axis. It should have stopped, but it didn’t.
Somewhere in the next few months, beneath all the layers of humiliation and crushing defeat that he peels back with vengeful fingers, Mark will realize he cracked the code, and that the satisfaction of it should eventually be enough.
Donghyuck never returns from Japan, they fall out of contact, and never patch things up all the way. Mark passes away fifty-three years later, of natural, non-asteroid causes.
18
The nasal tone of the brunette news reporter that Jisung has a mild crush on announces on TV that an asteroid is heading towards earth, the collision estimated to take place in three weeks. Jeno looks stricken, back straightening as he reads the words on the TV thrice more before turning his wide eyes to the rest of them.
Mark sits at the kitchen counter with his aching head in his hands, watching Donghyuck make chicken noodle soup and wondering why he still remembers it all.
The world ends on a Saturday night. Mark can’t even give it props for getting that right.
26
“I think there may be something wrong with my phone.”
Mark holds back a laugh. It’s the third time this month that Yeonjun has come in with some issue or the other. Mark can’t deny that he enjoys the conversations they have, even if a good chunk of it is taken up by Mark marvelling at the miniscule-probability routes that Yeonjun has managed to take to land himself in these situations.
“Well, you’re in luck, that’s literally the whole problem statement for my job,” says Mark, trying not to sound too sarcastic, even though he knows they’ve probably passed the need for his practised professionalism at this point. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It doesn’t have your number in it.”
Yeonjun has a tight smile on his face, like he’s physically barricading his own mortification from spilling all over his face and onto the wooden counter, and it takes Mark a full ten seconds to comprehend the words.
“You want—I should—in there?”
“No pressure! You really don’t have to. I just thought I’d ask, because I like talking to you and don’t have the budget to keep breaking electronics,” says Yeonjun quickly, wrist curving to gently pull his phone back before Mark reaches for it.
“No, yeah, no, absolutely,” rambles Mark, almost typing his own number incorrectly before he hands the phone back. Yeonjun smiles wide enough to seem like he’s testing the limits of the elasticity of his skin, and then promises to text Mark soon.
This is new.
In all the universes before this, there hadn’t been an alternate love interest introduced at any point – there were exes and crushes that pre-dated Donghyuck’s entry into his life, sure, but given that he fell for Donghyuck remarkably young in most universes, and there was just something about it that was so obvious to everyone (but Donghyuck) that took him off the market in everyone else’s eyes, Mark had resigned to thinking this was never an option. Maybe the minor god messing with him got bored, throwing in new characters to spice up the plot. Or maybe the whole lesson was to move on from Donghyuck, to take his fate into his own hands and step up to take love that was reciprocated into his own hands, and it just got tiring to see Mark fall into the same situations over and over and over again.
It looks like a potential new out.
It isn’t the only new development – in the last few universes, Donghyuck always seems to betray the fact that he likes Mark back right before the world ends, generally following a supposedly innocuous joke or tease from one of their friends. Whether it’s always been that way and Mark just never retained it, or it’s an entirely new development, he has no clue and no way to verify. The layers of emotional discomfort to it all feel like ski jackets in peak summer. It makes holding himself back from confessing even harder somehow, but one taste of those consequences has been enough to give Mark indigestion at the very thought.
Besides, the very realization only really seems to hit Donghyuck at the last minute anyway, because he seems entirely unperturbed by this whole Yeonjun situation when Mark tells him about it in the evening when Donghyuck comes to pick him up, with a touch more bluster than is necessary – it’s not a big deal after all (at least, not yet it’s not). It’s taco night, a tradition that they established back in high school, and they stop by the place that always has a meal deal on Thursday nights, clinking their tacos together like glasses, a joke that never seems to get old. Donghyuck asks for more details about Yeonjun’s electronic misadventures and throws out increasingly ridiculous suggestions for dates that turn Mark’s stomach, wondering if the introduction of a jealousy arc will actually make Donghyuck realize his feelings faster.
Thinking about it too much makes Mark’s head hurt, it makes him feel more out of control than he already does. He re-focuses, prodding butterflies in his stomach back to life when Yeonjun texts him later that night. He seems funny and nice, dorky enough to flirt badly but charming enough to pull it off.
It should be so easy to like him.
They go on four dates. When Yeonjun gently turns down the suggestion of a fifth date, Mark feels a sense of failure clunkily descend upon his shoulders. It doesn’t feel a lot like heartbreak – Mark really wishes it did. For a task so easy, he was failing quite miserably. All his desperation to be in love seems to rush back into his bones at full speed when Donghyuck almost breaks down his door, a bag full of ice cream and other convenience store snacks clutched in his hands. The rest of the gang shows up in the next two hours, Chenle and Jisung chattering loudly about the movie playing on the TV while Jeno keeps flicking their heads to tell them to focus instead.
Renjun has his hand over Mark’s, eyes gentle and piteous as he says, “I know it hurts now, but it will pass, okay?”
It doesn’t hurt, Mark wants to say, but the heat that leaches into his skin where his shoulder is pressed to Donghyuck’s feels like it’s scalding him.
“Like a kidney stone,” adds Donghyuck, eyes bright like he’s waiting for Mark’s inevitable laughter. Mark indulges him with a half-smile, and Donghyuck pinches his cheek affectionately, making Mark’s whole chest collapse. Renjun looks like there’s a comment on the tip of his tongue, but he’s holding it back because he thinks it isn’t the time.
He’s wrong though. He’s right on time.
The world ends in the middle of a bad joke. Mark thinks that sounds about right.
41
The last world ended in the middle of a work shift. Mark has entirely resigned to his fate at this point.
Make no mistake, he’s still incredibly angry. He’s angry at every cosmic force putting him through this. He’s mad at the fucking asteroid that keeps coming back like a boomerang. He’s angry at astronomers in the universes where they miss detecting the asteroid and he’s angry at newscasters and conspiracy theorists in the universes in which they don’t.
He’s angry at himself for being completely unable to break himself out of this. He’s made a few more attempts at falling in love with other people. There was Daniel from ten universes ago, who could charm a piece of furniture if it was capable of being charmed, who Mark was so incredibly smitten by for a couple months before Donghyuck moved to the same city and Mark found his neck straining with the number of times he looked around to see if he could spot the familiar combination of chocolate brown hair and ratty jacket in every crowd he found himself in. There was Jimin from six universes ago, who taught Mark how to play basketball and how to kiss like he fucking meant it, who pulled away when Mark starts slowly warming up to the possibility that this could stick.
This universe had Kevin, who Mark was in a steady relationship with for five years. The bubble of hope in his chest was daring to consolidate once more. Mark had moved to Canada for work, and Kevin was a coworker from a different department who always ended up in the break room at the same time as Mark. Passing conversation over shitty instant coffee became eating lunches together in the park near their office building became making plans to meet after work for drinks became seeing each other first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
Mark had his fingers reached out to touch his mid-thirties, an age he hadn’t gotten to more than once before, when he opened his phone for an innocuous scroll in the middle of work and dropped his phone with a clatter when the first post he saw had the words asteroid and extinction in it.
It broke something fundamental in Mark, and he moves back home to discover that he isn’t the only one in the neighbourhood to move back, because of course he isn’t.
They run into each other at a dinner hosted by a family friend, and there’s an ache in Mark’s bones with the weight of all the years that they’ve been away from each other. Donghyuck has mellowed out a little over the years, a little more sweet than sour, though his wit remains sharper than ever. His cheeks have hollowed out, and he has an outfit on that looks like he put more than half a thought into it, something that he swore never to do for all of college.
Mark is the most angry at Donghyuck, just for being so easy to fall in love with.
It takes an hour. Maybe even lesser. They ditch the get-together after a socially acceptable amount of time and walk around the neighbourhood, catching up on the last five years. Donghyuck can tell when Mark starts getting tired, suggesting that they just sit in a park nearby instead.
He’s always been considerate. Donghyuck’s mother raised him with strict kindness, reinforced by the fact that he had to take care of two younger siblings. It’s one of a long list of things to love about him. Mark has had so much time to draft that list over forty universes, and it feels like he’s been so caught up fighting being in practically unrequited love that he hasn’t spent enough time digesting how lucky he is that the person he’s fallen in love with over and over is Donghyuck.
Donghyuck, who cut up watermelon into neat pieces to bring to Mark for every day that he was dying in the heat as a summer lifeguard, from thirty-four universes ago. Donghyuck, who stood up for Mark when those kids at school were bullying him about his accent, from twenty-six universes ago. Donghyuck, learnt Mark’s favorite songs on the keyboard pitched down so Mark could sing along, from seventeen universes ago. Donghyuck, who learnt how to fix bicycle chains because Mark’s secondhand cycle is barely holding together and he hasn’t earned enough money to buy a new one yet in the last universe.
Donghyuck, whose absence left such a irremediable hole in Mark's life the one time that they parted ways for good, a pain so palpable that it unconsciously made Mark realize that swallowing his feelings like bitter medicine was easier to do than take his chances on another universe without Donghyuck. He’s kind without expectation, loving from skin to bone at every age, with the energy to talk and listen endlessly to anyone who returns it. And he really makes it so easy to return it.
“It’s so nice to spend time like this again,” says Mark, trying not to let too much emotion spill over into his voice. “You’ve always been so fun to talk to.”
“As sappy as ever, I see.”
“I mean it!” says Mark defensively.
“I know you do,” smiles Donghyuck. “Saying sweet things is your whole deal, it’s why every aunty and uncle dote on you to this day. I’m in agreement with you, though, so don’t worry.”
Oh god. Oh god. Mark has been losing his mind wondering if there was any possibility that he could have been any more obvious, but words don’t work on Donghyuck. Donghyuck is deflection and enjoyable sarcasm and the art of managing to concoct the image of being completely blunt in every situation despite never practicing that in the ones where he actually has something important to say. Mark’s verbal hints were doomed from the start, they really had both been clueless all along.
Donghyuck points to the sky. “Is that a shooting star?”
It’s too large to be a shooting star.
“I think so,” says Mark, eyes fixated on the light in the sky with an odd sense of calm. It’s still so far away, but it feels like an old friend. “Make a wish, Hyuck.”
Mark can feel the warmth of Donghyuck’s gaze on him, but he can’t bring himself to turn to meet it. There’s something in his stomach that burns like shame, about how he’s holding the memories of forty universes and falls in love like it’s a burden, while Donghyuck only has the memories of Mark in the universe they’re in, and that’s somehow always enough to love him. Mark has spent so much time angry at Donghyuck for not realizing that he was in love sooner, for resenting the fact that he’s had to build dam after dam for his own feelings, for simply not saying it.
“What did you wish for?”
There’s a twinkle in Donghyuck’s eye. “For the secret recipe for your mum’s pasta.”
“Sure, you did,” scoffs Mark.
“I’m telling Aunty you don’t think that’s shooting star worthy,” threatens Donghyuck, shuffling closer to Mark on the bench. He bumps his shoulder against Mark’s teasingly. “You really want to know?” Mark nods and Donghyuck chuckles evilly. “I’m still not telling you, it’s more fun to see you burn with curiosity.”
Mark rolls his eyes. “You’re terrible.”
“Takes one to know one,” says Donghyuck flippantly, patting Mark’s crown with fake condescension.
For the first time, Mark feels like he finally hears him.
The world ends three weeks later, when Jeno pushes away a tipsy Donghyuck trying to kiss him onto Mark with the words wrong Lee!, but when Mark sees the curtains pull back on Donghyuck’s expression as they generally do, affection replaces anger as the last feeling beneath his skin.
42
The world is scheduled to end in the middle of album promotions.
The feeling drops into Mark’s stomach as he lies in bed, but it doesn’t get a single crumb of Mark’s attention, the bulk of which is currently being poured into pressing circles into Donghyuck’s temples, headache balm slathered on his fingers, both of them barely keeping their eyes open at the end of a long day.
Mark knows Donghyuck is going to say that he’ll get up and go to his own bed when Mark moves over to give him more space. Mark also knows that he’s going to wake up in the morning with Donghyuck’s limbs haphazardly over him. Mark has always been good at knowing Donghyuck – he’s only recently gotten good at understanding him, like a bunch of numbers that suddenly reveal the simplest linearity when graphed.
He's even been putting his new heightened perception to practice, not only paying more attention to Donghyuck’s actions, but also tailoring his own in ways that Donghyuck will understand him better as well. There’s an apology that lives perpetually between Mark’s teeth, but he doesn’t say the words. Like a language learner hesitantly stringing sentences together, Mark instead shuffles closer when there’s a gap between them sitting or lying down, splits any fruit that he peels or cuts into two, always comes up with new projects for them to work on together, and always stays late at the company so they can walk back to the dorm together. He can’t help that he still falls back on the words sometimes, when his encouragement walks the border of lovesick, and Donghyuck returns a little self-deprecating quip before his cheeks turn red and he’ll refuse to acknowledge it.
Mark has already made his peace with the fact that there would definitely not be any confessions in this universe, considering that they were idols once again, with barely a moment for themselves between their hectic schedules and an environment that did not view any kind of romance as favourable. It makes Mark chuckle under his breath to think of the earlier universes where he thought his most frustrated and suppressed feelings were all a consequence of proximity, only to have that belief tested backways and sidewards to end up back at a universe where they spend all their time together, and Mark is the most at peace he’s been.
That is until the next day, which doesn’t seem extraordinary in any way until the very last hour, when Mark drags his feet through the company hallways after a long studio session to fetch Donghyuck, who has stayed late to practice the new choreography.
“I knew you wouldn’t have eaten, so I bought you some snacks,” says Mark, putting his hand out for Donghyuck to take and pull himself up off the floor. Donghyuck groans appreciatively and slumps against Mark, burying his cold sweaty forehead in Mark’s shoulder. “I also brought the scooter so we’re not walking back to the dorm.”
“Oh my god, I love you,” mumbles Donghyuck into the fabric of Mark’s shirt.
“Me too,” says Mark instinctively, all of his insides seizing up when he realizes what he’s admitted to. He flinches, though luckily Donghyuck cannot see his face, already realizing he’s going to have to go along with it when Donghyuck treats it as a joke.
Donghyuck peels away from Mark, patting his cheek clumsily. “Good to confirm,” he says, leaning in to press his lips to Mark’s cheek before walking unsteadily to the door, leaving Mark rolling his eyes at Donghyuck forgetting where the lines between fanservice and reality blur.
They’re all having dinner together after a fansign the next week, where Mark and Donghyuck end up seated together, even though Mark sat down first and Donghyuck last, delayed from his excessively long shower. Chenle snickers as soon as Donghyuck takes his seat, like it was his evil plan all along.
Donghyuck’s hair is still damp, his face scrubbed of all makeup. Mark thinks he looks like the most beautiful person he’s ever seen in this universe or the one before or the one before (times forty-one). Realization ripples over Donghyuck’s face when he looks down at his plate and realizes that Mark has already saved a little of all his favourite side dishes for him, and he looks up at Mark, the look in his eyes mirroring Mark’s. They hold eye contact for just long enough for Jeno to give them a funny look, shaking his head as he turns his gaze back to his stew like this is exactly the type of bullshit he’s acclimatized to.
There’s no catastrophic dropping sensation in the pit of Mark’s stomach. There’s no vitriol to hit his bloodstream like pure oxygen. There’s no premonition or déjà vu. Mark isn’t chasing anymore, feet firmly planted in the moment, so when Donghyuck says the words you know I meant what I said that day, right?, in a small whisper when lying next to him in bed that night, Mark takes his moment to use his lips but not his words, kissing Donghyuck as an answer. The kiss seems to encompass space and time, like there could never be a set of four coordinates within which their love didn’t exist, stated or hidden.
The world keeps spinning on a new beginning.