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When they walked in, the shop met them with a sweet tinkle of a wind chime. Hyunjin almost knocked it with his forehead.
“Welcome to Loose Screw!” a voice from somewhere inside the shop greeted them, “I’ll be out in a minute. Don’t hesitate to look around!”
Loose screw, huh.
“I still don’t understand why we’re here,” Hyunjin muttered quietly.
Jisung rolled his eyes, stepping in further with a certain air of determination about him. “We’ve discussed it like six times already, I need a courting gift.”
“And you’re getting it here?” Hyunjin whispered pointedly, looking around. “We’ve all known each other for almost five years, and you and Minho have been together for three, don’t you think it’s…a bit overdue?”
“Hyunjin, I swear to god,” his friend hissed with no real heat there.
Hyunjin let his eyes wander. The place was large, a cross between an antiquary emporium and a mechatronic workshop. Some displays gleamed with a warm sheen of well-oiled metal inventions, others had a distinct softness of the times past. The slow thrum of mechanical knick-knacks and the rhythmic ticking were rather familiar.
“You know his family is traditional, come on. If he wants courting, I’ll give him courting! Oh, I like this one!” Jisung chattered, smiling, and pointed out one of the small automatons on the shelf closest to them. It reminded Hyunjin of a clockwork cat he’d seen at Seungmin’s once. After examining it closer, however, Jisung seemed to have lost his interest, so he continued, “By the way, you’re just bitter that your own love life is nonexistent. Still holding out a torch for Felix?”
That was a low blow, and Jisung knew it.
Because, when you boiled it down, Felix, Minho’s younger brother, was not a match for Hyunjin. Or, more precisely, and what really stung: Hwang Hyunjin was not a match for Lee Felix.
The Lee brothers were the talk of the town. Their father, a successful industrialist, came from old money, and their mother had been an internationally famous opera singer back in the day. So it was only natural for them to move in influential circles. They had the best education, a very comfortable life, the crème de la crème. Both brothers were pleasant people as well; and not pleasant in the way high society ball-goers usually were, but actually nice behind the curtain.
In contrast, although Hyunjin did well for himself, he was not upper class and he’d only moved to the capital for an apprenticeship a handful of years ago. And, yes, it was one of the best decisions he had ever made, because, apart from meeting Jisung, it had led Hyunjin to moving up enough to own a half of the atelier he had started at, but... He wasn’t truly wealthy, not yet. Even though, regardless of his origin, his talents and merits were well-appreciated in the capital, he was just Hyunjin; a budding artist with not all that much to show for himself.
In theory, the differences between the two shouldn’t have been an obstacle. As traditional as the Lees appeared, they were ahead of their times in many aspects, he knew that. It shouldn’t be a worry especially now, when Jisung, who was not much higher on the social ladder than Hyunjin, had dragged him here to buy a courting gift. But he was not Jisung, and neither was he one of the industrial heirs.
He would love to imagine someone more advantageous than himself for Felix. God knew there was no shortage of suitors anyway.
The shopkeeper appeared shortly and unknowingly relieved Hyunjin from having to reply to Jisung. The man looked like one would have pictured an owner of a store of this variety: a burlap apron was tied over his clothes, a pair of protective glasses around his neck, and a friendly smile that graced his expression as he took off his thick leather gloves.
After a brief and courteous introduction, the owner and creator of the clockwork items for sale, Chan, shook both of their hands. Hyunjin absentmindedly noted that his hands were much rougher than his own.
“So, gentlemen, how may I help you?”
Jisung talked to the owner, and Hyunjin occupied himself by looking at the tiny animatronic chick that was displayed in one of the cases. The device pattered cutely and looked every bit the bird it was modelled after, even if it was mostly metallic. The ingenuity of such whimsical inventions never failed to make him awed.
After some time, Hyunjin heard the click of the till that brought his attention back to Jisung. His friend had opted for a bejewelled pocket watch, it seemed. He thanked the shopkeeper and, grinning at the purchase, made his way to the front door, waving Hyunjin to follow.
“Hyunjin, wait,” Chan called him.
The wind chime in the background tinkled again, telling him that Jisung had stepped out of the shop. Hyunjin paused, beginning to tense.
Had he told Chan his name?
But he walked to the counter. “Yes?”
“I’ve got something I would like you to have,” the shopkeeper said.
Chan showed him an ornate monocular, then wrapped it in a piece of paper and held it out for Hyunjin to take without saying a word.
He tried to refuse the monocular, saying he didn’t have this purchase in his budget, he tried to refuse it when Chan said it was a gift, he tried to refuse it again, just saying that he’s not a fine creations connoisseur (which wasn’t entirely true, but that argument didn't work either).
“Allow me this eccentricity, please,” Chan gently insisted.
There was a peculiar quality to his tone and such a boyish sparkle in his eyes that Hyunjin finally obliged. He did a half-bow, perplexed, and hurried after Jisung.
Outside, he put the package into his courier bag and turned to look at Loose Screw one more time.
The shopkeeper winked at him.
What a bizarre man.
***
The courting gift was so much to Minho’s liking that the happy couple had almost immediately excused themselves from the informal luncheon for four. Their quick departure had left Hyunjin in the sunroom with Felix.
One on one.
Jisung’s words from the shop were still floating in his mind. He wasn’t sure how to act around the object of his—apparently badly—concealed affections. Should he ask more questions or just finish his tea in a slightly awkward, companionable silence? Should he compliment how lovely Felix looked on this day, did friends do that? Should he tell him an anecdote or two? And, more importantly, had Hyunjin himself always been this prone to overthinking?
He tried his best not to watch him untowardly while they were making small talk, but the task was proving to be a hard one. Felix looked so…just so lovely. He was airy and warm like a balmy spring night. To Hyunjin, Felix, with his beauty and quirks and opinions, was utterly real, but just as utterly unattainable.
(Seriously, it’s high time Hyunjin had grown a backbone and stopped letting Jisung drag him into business that didn’t particularly concern him.)
Felix, the angel that he was, saved him from plunging into panic headfirst. With a kind smile, he asked, “How is the atelier doing? I bet the workload has increased since you became a partner?”
This he could do, Hyunjin thought. Sharing stories of his everyday tasks and latest orders was quite enjoyable. Felix, on his part, had always been a splendid listener — he laughed and asked questions, scrunched his nose and raised his brows in all the right parts. Hyunjin finally felt almost at ease.
“Your work must take so much time and dedication!” Felix noted, visibly impressed. “I hope it doesn’t cause trouble at home,” he added, tucking his blonde hair behind his ear and looking at his teacup.
“Oh, I’m sure my dog misses me, but he is quite understanding.”
This beckoned another hearty chuckle from Felix. All in all, Hyunjin thought that he was doing great at this pleasant conversation thing, even if it was somewhat hard to get a read on the other.
“So, no spouse?” Felix asked, looking at Hyunjin with his head a little tilted, his expression ambiguous. People of their age were still expected to have a prospective partner if not a family.
“Not that I know of?” Hyunjin giggled, a bit nervous. “Oh, you know your family will be invited if I ever have a wedding. I would tell you even before that! But there is no one right now, no.”
Felix smiled with his lips slightly pursed.
“I am positive that you will find someone agreeable,” he said. A moment of silence. Then he shook his head (so subtly that Hyunjin almost missed it), and their chat continued.
Hyunjin hoped Felix didn’t judge him.
***
After the luncheon, Jisung and Hyunjin set off to deliver a commissioned art piece, then they treated themselves to a pint in one of their favourite pubs. He hadn’t thought about the strange gift from the shopkeeper until he was already clad in his sleepwear and tucked in.
When he did, though, he sprang out of bed. Almost tripping over his feet, Hyunjin took a few steps to his bag and rummaged through it in the relative darkness. Having located and taken the package out, he settled on his bed once more, turning the small electric light on.
The monocular was a peculiar thing. No bigger than his palm, all warm toned metal and leather, with vine-like ornaments covering it. Hyunjin twisted and turned it in his hands, looking at it closely. It seemed to have three moving parts, but other than that, it looked like an ordinary, if well-made, apparatus.
He lifted the monocular to his eye and gasped, he had been wrong, after all! He almost cooed in delight. It was not a magnifying monocular but a kaleidoscope! The colourful fragments within were unmoving as he watched them, so, chuckling lightly to himself, he tried one of the turning rings, and it moved with a click.
His breath caught in his throat: instead of revealing the shift in geometric patterns that he had expected, the picture spun into something completely different. It looked hazy and grey, like fog, so Hyunjin turned this ring further, but nothing seemed to have changed.
Intrigued and a little unsettled, he proceeded to try the second ring. The fog cleared out a little, and there was a figure now. It looked like a picture of a young man, his back turned towards Hyunjin so he couldn’t see his face. As he turned the ring further more, the picture and the figure itself changed like it was a slideshow.
A youth, standing in the middle of the capital’s main street. Click. That young man, older now, sitting in front of an easel. Click. The youth, now a fully grown man, standing among well-dressed faceless people, his head slightly turned towards a lighter silhouette in the crowd. Click. The man (Hyunjin could see his all too familiar profile) was watching the light silhouette from afar. Click. Two men facing each other: one was no longer trying to hide, the other, the one with warm constellations pressed onto his face, was smiling at the flower that they held between them. Click. Two bodies bare in half-shadows, intertwined, pressed into each other, skin flushed and marked, lips parted, eyes wild; a moment that felt too intimate to witness, too honest to ignore. Click. The men now looked older, hair grey but eyes bright, arms linked as they gazed upon blooming gardens (he could feel they loved each other dearly even from this unmoving snippet, his soul ached). Click. Click. Click.
Pictures were spinning in circles.
Hyunjin lowered the kaleidoscope. It felt too heavy. Clutching it with his anxious fingers, he wiped a hot tear off his cheek with the back of his hand. He pinched his skin for good measure.
How? What was this? Some elaborate joke? Magic? He bitterly laughed at his last guess. A gentleman should know better than to be prone to flights of fancy. But he didn’t know what other explanation there could be.
What was this kaleidoscope? It showed Hyunjin— A dream. A fantasy, maybe. His rational side had got suspicious the moment the colours had turned into fog, but his heart had dared to be hopeful.
Who—what was Chan? Everything about the shopkeeper now seemed if not dangerous then highly offbeat. It’s one thing to create clockwork curiosities and a completely different one to give something like this to a random man.
And the pictures themselves! Even if at the start Hyunjin could have reckoned that Jisung, for example, was the mastermind behind a ruse like that, the stills with Felix were entirely too far for a joke. Too real, too incredible and, frankly, too cruel.
Sighing deeply, Hyunjin looked at the kaleidoscope again. It gleamed with a reflection of his electric light, as if mocking him. There was a third ring he hadn’t tried to turn yet.
After thinking it over, he made a decision. In all likelihood, there was hardly anything the monocular could show that would surprise him much more. He had to know, at the very least, he had to see it in full lest he came to wrong conclusions.
This time, each movement and click of the ring changed the pictures wholly; some of them were strange to the point of being incomprehensible. The only constant was Hyunjin and Felix, together.
There, behind the gentle click of the ring, were Hyunjin and Felix, embracing under the moonlight in some ancient room.
There, with another soft motion, Hyunjin—looking fairer, his ears peculiarly pointed—was holding a simple wooden bow, covering Felix’s back, while the latter was running through the greens of a forest.
There, Felix riding a weird-looking bicycle, Hyunjin pressed into him from behind, arms firmly wrapped around the other’s torso, both delightfully at ease.
There, causing Hyunjin to blush from the scene, was everything in red-tinted smoke, half-dark and just barely half-decent. A version of him sat at Felix’s feet, unclad and collared, chained by either devotion or the leash that Felix firmly held in his hand, grounded by the weight of his lover’s (and there was no doubting what they were to each other) burning gaze and the sole of his boot pressed into Hyunjin’s aching flesh.
Click.
Hyunjin went on, even if his heart felt like it could give out any moment.
He saw a myriad of different versions of himself with Felix: younger, older, belonging to different eras, maybe even different worlds, them as humans, mythical creatures, even as fancy mechanisms. He saw it all.
They laughed, they cried, they kissed and bickered, they had children in some of the visions, they had passion; they had each other through it all. They loved.
Although he had never denied it, per se, seeing Felix in dozens of different settings and versions had made Hyunjin realise that what he felt about him was rooted much deeper than fleeting interest. He craved what he saw, he longed for this type of unyielding affection and happiness. He yearned for this love, even if he wasn’t too sure whether he was deserving of it. Still, he looked and looked, till his head began to spin like the kaleidoscope pictures.
At some point, finally, he saw eight men standing on some kind of a stage in the sea of lights, elated. He figured out, despite his tired eyes, that two of them were Felix and himself, hand in hand, beaming ear to ear. He recognised Jisung, Minho, Changbin, Seungmin, even his own young cousin Jeongin, and Chan himself.
Hyunjin lowered the monocular with a trembling hand once more. His heart was beating a staccato in his chest, loud and powerful enough for it to drown any other thought.
He then breathed. Then he pondered. Then he wondered.
His gaze eventually glued back to the kaleidoscope, he stayed up till shy rays of sunlight coloured his room. He got dressed then, in the morning, his mind set.
Hyunjin knew that he had to talk to Chan before he went through a nervous breakdown.
***
The thing was, when Hyunjin came to the shop, the entrance had already been boarded up. It looked like there was no such thing as a Loose Screw shop less than twenty four hours ago. What a fitting name it had been, Hyunjin thought then almost hysterically. But the device, the monocular that he had got on someone else’s whim, was still in his hand, as real a weight as it could be. He wasn’t losing his marbles. Or maybe he was, but not about the ordeal.
Nonetheless, later, Hyunjin buried his head in his work, he didn’t know if or how to discuss this with anyone. He woke up, he went to the atelier, he evaded his friends’ questions, not sure how to look them in the eye, he came home and watched the kaleidoscope till he would fall asleep. His mind felt fuzzy.
This simple routine went on for several days and it would have carried on for longer, Hyunjin was sure. But then he dreamt of Felix, not some otherworldly version of him but his real Felix, he knew that the charade would have to be up.
***
The next day, Hyunjin walked into Lee gardens without a certain plan, but with a goal. He would see Felix, he would show him the kaleidoscope. He was not sure what came after, but he had a conviction that doing this was better than isolating himself till he lost any and all grasp of reality.
He greeted Changbin, a friendly caretaker who informed him that master Felix was in the greenhouse again, “no doubt tinkering with those mechanical birds of his”. So he made his way through the estate.
The gardens were beautiful; plush, vibrant, full of plants and flowers Hyunjin positively ached to paint each time he stepped his foot in. On a lovely day like this, Felix would always wind his clockwork flocks and let them be out and free till the weather’d change and they’d have to fly back into the greenhouse.
Wonderful creations, really. Hyunjin watched them giddily as he walked.
Changbin had been right, Felix was in the glass greenhouse, a speck of soft light in the vibrance of leafery.
Hyunjin felt like all he had done with his spare time lately was studying different versions of Felix from the kaleidoscope. Almost obsessively. He thought he had memorised everything there was to know and love about him. But now, finally being in his presence again, he knew he was wrong. Pictures, no matter how many and how varied, could not make Felix any justice.
Hyunjin might’ve been a lovesick fool, but he just stood there, in the entrance of the greenhouse, for a while. Just watching him, absorbing every move.
“Hello,” he finally said, trying to sound calm and collected.
“I thought you were avoiding me,” Felix said in lieu of a proper greeting, matter-of-factly. He didn’t turn his head, he had probably known that the other was here the whole time.
Hyunjin hummed. “I guess I have been.”
“To what do I owe the pleasure, then?” Felix asked, facing him. His features were soft where the tone and expression were not.
With tools that he had brought to maintain the clockwork birds harshly discarded, Felix motioned for them to exit the greenhouse.
They walked to the bench, the one he knew Felix liked to read seated on.
“I wanted to see you,” said Hyunjin. The other just quirked his eyebrow at him. “Well, I wanted to show you something, too.”
“Go on then.”
Felix didn’t seem to have let his weird behaviour slide, but he was rather curious. Hyunjin took the kaleidoscope out of his bag and handed it to Felix.
“Look into it,” Hyunjin offered.
And it was a true testament to their relationship that Felix lifted the kaleidoscope to his eye without question. Hyunjin watched the gardens, not saying a word more and letting the now familiar clicking tone mix with sounds of leaves and mechanical birdsongs.
“What is this?” Felix asked after a while, uncharacteristically meek, the kaleidoscope set down next to him on the bench.
“I have no idea, actually,” he replied honestly. “It’s a curiosity I’ve been gifted. I don’t really know what it is. I—” he stopped for a moment, “I’d like to think it’s a device that shows peeks into things that are true.”
Felix stayed silent.
Then, still not saying a word, he slowly stood up, going back to the greenhouse. Hyunjin did not know if this was the end of their acquaintance, so he just sat. The clockwork birds were flying around, in and out of the glass shed.
Felix returned with a blossom and showed it to Hyunjin. “It looks close enough to the one we held in one of the pictures, doesn’t it?” he said, voice quiet as if his mind was elsewhere.
Hyunjin glanced at the flower, it was amazingly similar.
“It could be our future shown there, you know,” Felix said, sitting down next to Hyunjin.
“Are you not appalled?” he asks him after a beat, just to make sure.
“Hyunjin, for a bright man, sometimes, you are remarkably dim,” Felix said evenly, then huffed. “I don’t think you’d show me this if you weren’t hopeful. There’s always been more than comradery between us. There’s always been something more.”
Hyunjin knew that, of course he knew, otherwise he would not have suffered through years of Jisung lightly poking fun at him. But, realistically, he also knew that what the heart wanted was not always what society deemed acceptable.
“We’re not of an equal social status, it does not matter what—”
“Oh, come on, you know me better than this!” Felix interrupted him. “Status. Origins. Pedigree,” he mocked, “We’re not racing horses! I do not care, my parents do not care, and neither should you. We’re not that far apart on the ladder you keep prattling about. What my family has now will be enough for generations to come if you’re worried about that for some reason.”
“But you’d be marrying down,” Hyunjin muttered like a broken record on a gramophone, his face grimaced.
Felix sighed. “Look at me. I’m glad that you’re talking about marriage, of course, but… Do you truly see me as someone who would care?”
Hyunjin looked, unable to rebel against the other’s wish. He saw slight ire pinching at Felix’s expression and the wistfulness he had about him in the moment. This wasn’t a look that had any right to cast a shadow on Felix's light, he thought then.
“No,” he answered. “I see the most wonderful man I’ve ever laid eyes on. I see a man who I would love to make happy.”
“Then please do.”
And just like that, Felix threw away all notions of what people would’ve called “proper”, climbing closer to Hyunjin and kissing him blind.