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Sungwoon takes a deep breath.
He’s been here multiple times before. He’s already walked through its halls several time, seen its kitchens, bathrooms, taken in the sites of the low ceilings and the elevator with worn carpet and dirty buttons, and even tasted the food that came off of the stove on the third floor’s east wing.
That doesn’t deter it from looking unfamiliar to him, however. The hand of his that’s on the handle of his suitcase is sweaty, and he rubs it on the thigh of his jeans. There’re students walking up and down the sidewalk he stands on, swerving around him as he’s the only one standing still, staring straight ahead of him.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he jumps. Taking it out, he glances at the new notification.
Junhyuk: I’ll see you later tonight at orientation. You okay?
Sungwoon smiles. He’s definitely okay, just a little nervous. He types a quick reply to his friend before tucking his phone back into his pocket, taking another deep breath, and walking forward, pushing the double doors open.
Room 207, he mentally reminds himself. Second floor, west wing. He’s already got his whole route planned in his head with images to accompany it. The only thing he doesn’t know is who his roommate is going to be. The freshman committee didn’t even bother to consider the fact that students would want to pick their roommates, or at the very least know who they are. Sungwoon had scoffed when Junhyuk had told him about the ordeal, because Junhyuk didn’t get to pick his roommate or know who they were for his freshman year either.
Sungwoon just hopes and prays that he doesn’t get someone insufferable, or else he swears that’s going to be the final straw for him and he’ll just go ahead and pursue his dreams of becoming an isolated shepherd deep within the Icelandic tundra. Junhyuk is always complaining he’s cold, so Sungwoon will send him lots of sweaters he makes from the wool produced by his herd. Everyone benefits, right?
As he steps into the elevator and walks down the hall, his stomach flutters because everything is just so unfamiliar, even though he’s been in this exact hallway before. The difference this time is that he’s the student – he’s going to live here, this’ll be his new home, the other students here will be his neighbors, and he’s not just that little senior in high school that trails uneasily down the hallway trying to find his college buddy’s dorm room, then nervously asks a passing student where to find room 220, only for it to be pointed out that he’s literally standing right in front of it.
Sungwoon sighs, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. His head swivels back and forth, looking for a 207, and when he finds it, he’s surprised to see that the door is already ajar.
Wait, should he be surprised? It shouldn’t be a shocking thing that his roommate arrived earlier than him.
He takes a breath, inwardly speaking one last prayer, and pushes the door open.
Inside, there’s another boy smoothing out the sheets on his bed. His back is facing Sungwoon, but the way he’s hunched over, the stature of his body, his pitch-black hair at the back of his head that is somehow sticking up in all directions as if he’d just woken up, yet simultaneously looks like it’s styled to be that way – somehow, this guy becomes the first thing of this new stage of Sungwoon’s life that’s familiar.
Maybe he’s one of Junhyuk’s friends Sungwoon might’ve met?
At the sound of Sungwoon’s footsteps and the drag of his suitcase’s wheels against the carpet, the boy turns around.
Okay, Sungwoon has definitely seen him before. That's now established that as a fact. However, where Sungwoon’s seen this guy is entirely unknown. In the span of a second, he quickly runs over all of Junhyuk’s friends he's met. Moongyu? No. Sangsoo? No. Hyanggi? No.
“Hi there,” the guy says, and Sungwoon blinks back to reality. “I’m assuming you’re my new roommate?”
He doesn’t smile when he speaks. He appears to be entirely serious, but Sungwoon thinks it quite fits his image. His eyes are large, but they're not bug-eyed, and instead his lids fall a little heavily onto his eyes, making him look calm and collected.
“Yeah, I am,” Sungwoon replies, with a polite smile, and holds out his hand. “I’m Ha Sungwoon.”
The guy smiles. Oh, so he does smile, Sungwoon thinks.
“Nice to meet ya,” the guy replies, taking Sungwoon’s hand. “I’m Noh Taehyun.”
Sungwoon’s eyes widen. Oh shit, he immediately thinks, now I know where I’ve met this guy.
[“Hi.”
Sungwoon glances over at occupant of the seat next to his. “Hi,” he says back.
“I’m Noh Taehyun,” the boy introduces. He nods, as if to reassure himself of his name. A wide grin spreads on his lips.
“I’m Ha Sungwoon,” Sungwoon replies, blinking.
Taehyun looks down at his pant pocket. He reaches inside and pulls out a packet of gum. “Have you eaten gum before?” he asks, looking at Sungwoon, the same grin still plastered on his lips.
Sungwoon’s eyes widen. “No,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “I don’t want to swallow it. My sister told me that if you swallow gum, it’ll stay in your stomach for seven years.”
“Then don’t swallow it,” Taehyun simply replies. He takes a piece out of the package and sticks it in his mouth. “See?” he asks, a few seconds later. He bares his teeth, showing off a neon green wad stuck between his top and bottom teeth.
Sungwoon scrunches his eyebrows. He thinks Taehyun is kind of stupid. Sungwoon’s mama told him he’s not allowed to chew gum because the sugar will make him stop growing, yet Taehyun is chewing gum.
But Sungwoon takes a piece from Taehyun’s open palm anyways. He just won’t tell his mama or his sister.]
Sungwoon learns that Taehyun is a physics major and a freshman too. Taehyun learns that Sungwoon is studying architecture.
Physics, huh? Sungwoon thinks. That doesn’t sound like Taehyun at all.
But then again, Taehyun has always been unexpected – if this Taehyun is even the same Taehyun Sungwoon is thinking about.
It has to be him, doesn’t it? Same name. Same pitch-black hair. And now that Sungwoon looks at the Taehyun sitting across the room from him and the Taehyun in his memory, he sees similarities.
Sungwoon is studying architecture. He’s got a good visual memory. He’s been taught to look at lines, to look at shapes, to look at shadows and put them together in his head and create something innovative. He’s been taught to take boring things–lines and dots—and build them together in order to make something that’s much more complex, much more interesting, something that people don’t realize is made out of the two most basic forms in the world.
Even though Taehyun has matured and his face has changed, Sungwoon can still pick apart the lines and dots of the face of the Taehyun in his memory and compare them to the lines and dots of the face of the Taehyun sitting across the room from him and see similarities.
Their noses, for example. Both of them have a very straight diagonal slope for a bridge with a steep curve at the tip. Their eyes, they are similar too. The top and bottom lines that create both Taehyuns’ eyes are closer to straight than curved, but they curve together gracefully at the corners. Almost like how the lines on a cat’s eyes connect, but not quite.
And, their smiles. The corners of the Taehyun in Sungwoon’s memory’s lips lifted up more when he smiled, but his smile was still wide and relaxed, just like the smile of the Taehyun sitting across the room from Sungwoon. Both of their lips would begin in a shape closer to a circle with their normal faces, but they would stretch into smooth ellipse whenever they grinned.
They have to be the same person, Sungwoon thinks. There’s just so many similarities that it’d be one hell of a coincidence if they were two different people.
However, this Taehyun acts like he and Sungwoon are complete strangers. Sungwoon knows that he himself didn’t immediately recognize Taehyun, but he definitely did immediately recognize that there was something about him that seemed so familiar. Wouldn’t Taehyun think the same thing about Sungwoon?
How long has it even been?
Sungwoon leans back on his new bed and closes his eyes. He mentally counts. It has to have been at least ten years. When was the last time he saw Taehyun?
When Sungwoon asks himself that question, he takes a deep breath as the memory comes back to him.
Right, he can’t even remember when was the last time he saw Taehyun, because he didn’t know it’d be the last time he’d see his childhood friend. He didn’t know Taehyun’s home situation had been that bad, he didn’t know Taehyun’s family was splitting apart. He didn’t know Taehyun was caught in the middle, and all he wanted back then was to be happy. He didn’t know Taehyun would promptly be leaving right smack in the middle of the school year, leaving a young Sungwoon lost, lonely, bewildered, bitter, and betrayed.
It’s difficult to squash the bile rising in Sungwoon’s throat at the throbbing of those emotions that come back to him, but he swallows and does so anyways, reminding himself that he doesn’t even know for sure if this Taehyun is the same person as then-Taehyun.
Sungwoon cracks an eye open and stares at Taehyun, who’s sitting at his desk and writing something in a notebook.
How in the world would Sungwoon approach this? “Hey, are you my best friend from maybe ten years ago that just upped and left one day and basically broke my poor little kid heart into two pieces?”
Sungwoon sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. He’ll just see where this goes.
Sungwoon just doesn’t know what to do. Junhyuk would probably tell him he’s being a dumbass and he should just approach Taehyun upfront.
But there’s the awkward freshman part of Sungwoon that doesn’t want to create some kind of uncomfortable environment between him and Taehyun, because for one, they have to live together, and two, is he overstepping some boundary?
So, what does an awkward freshman do?
He prays and hopes it solves itself.
Well, not only that, but whenever Sungwoon finally hypes himself up enough to do something about it, Taehyun’s not at the dorms.
The thing about science majors, especially in a field of science like physics, is that they’re always at the lab. Yeah, lab classes usually run late into the night, but sometimes data processing and analyzing requires students to stay at the lab overnight in order to watch over their experiments.
Taehyun leaves before Sungwoon and comes back later than Sungwoon, often later than ten at night. Either that, or he returns early next morning and Sungwoon finds him collapsed on his bed face-down. Taehyun also rarely does anything remotely dumb college student-like, Sungwoon thinks. He doesn’t go to parties or join Friday game nights in the commons or spend a whole weekend on the internet with a bowl of chips in his lap. When Sungwoon thought Taehyun would be serious, he was right. Taehyun rarely says more than he needs to, and he’s not one of those guys that prances around the hallways with a smile on his face, socializing with everybody.
That was the persona of the then-Taehyun (Taehyun approaching Sungwoon was kind of how they became friends), and Sungwoon is now perpetually confused.
Then-Taehyun was a lot of things, Sungwoon thinks. One of the memories Sungwoon has kept most vividly of him is that one time where Taehyun stole his pencil pouch. Taehyun had teasingly said, “Chase me,” before promptly taking down the hallway. Now, the boy had been a small and nimble little thing, just like a mouse, and he scurried as fast as a mouse too. Sungwoon had had a terribly difficult time trying to chase him because he wasn’t a particularly fast runner. And when a teacher found him running down the hallway, he’d tried to point out Taehyun up ahead, but the boy had disappeared into some empty classroom before the teacher’s head could turn and see him. Sungwoon was the only one that got in trouble that day.
Now-Taehyun looks like he’d never do that.
Whenever Taehyun returns home, no matter how late it is, Sungwoon will always be awake.
Yes, the lights are off, he’s tucked under his blanket, his eyes are closed, but that doesn’t mean that he is sleeping.
He’s just lying in bed, his ears perked.
He’ll hear the click as a key is inserted into the lock, the handle turning. And then there’ll be a large ray of light filtering into the room briefly before the door is shut with a snap. He’ll hear heavy, somber footsteps, and he’ll hear the whoosh of a lab coat being shrugged off. He’ll imagine that Taehyun is draping it over the chair at his desk, just as he always does, and then approach his own bed. He’ll hear the creak in the frame as Taehyun sits down. He’ll imagine Taehyun untying his sneakers and taking them off, and then he’ll hear two consecutive thuds as they’re dropped off to the side. And then the bed will creak again as Taehyun slides under his blankets and closes his eyes. Sungwoon will follow suit and be asleep several minutes later.
Except for one night. One night nearly a month into the school year.
Sungwoon is expecting to hear the two thuds from Taehyun taking off his shoes.
Yet, this time, that doesn’t happen. There’s another creak of the bed, and Sungwoon doesn’t know what just happened. He’s entirely caught off-guard.
But as he concentrates, he can hear the subtle, almost-silent sound of footsteps shuffling against the carpet.
Sungwoon counts. The shuffling stops after three or four steps. There’s absolute silence that greets him afterwards.
His limbs are itching. What is Taehyun doing?
A few more moments, and Sungwoon can’t take it any longer. He turns over – that’s a totally natural thing for sleeping people to do, right? He keeps his eyes closed, but opens them ever-so-slightly, just so he barely make out the lines of objects shrouded in the darkness of the room.
He registers a pair of legs right in front of him.
It’s Taehyun, standing there.
As if Taehyun realizes Sungwoon is watching him, he immediately turns and walks back to his bed. Sungwoon sees him sit back down and hears the bed creak. Taehyun takes a deep breath and sighs, running a hand through his hair. He rests his elbows on his knees, staring down at the the floor for several long seconds.
And then, the next moment, he raises his head and stares directly at Sungwoon, as if he knows that Sungwoon is not sleeping. If anything, it seems like Taehyun is staring immediately at Sungwoon’s eyes, as if he’s known all along that Sungwoon never sleeps before he returns.
But he sighs again, shaking his head, and proceeds to take off his shoes.
Sungwoon rolls over. He doesn’t fall asleep until long after Taehyun has begun snoring.
It begins with a single sticky note.
Sungwoon gets the idea because he remembers that in his sophomore year of high school, some girl had been sliding sticky notes into his locker. Sungwoon had been utterly shocked, because he was one of those kids that tended to fade into the background. He (sometimes literally) skipped down the hallways during lunch to see if a new slip of blue paper adorned with black sharpie and a heart sticker had appeared in his locker.
Well, that went on for a few months until the girl figured out that it was Sungwoon she’d been talking to, not Seongwoo, who had the locker next to him.
Sungwoon pats his chest. The pain is still vividly fresh, and Junhyuk’s howling laughter is still ringing in his ears.
Hopefully Taehyun won’t take this the wrong way.
He dots the period in the question mark he’s written. There. Perfect. He stands up and approaches the other side of his room. There’s one of Taehyun’s textbooks sitting on his desk. Sungwoon presses down the sticky note onto the book’s cover, smoothing it out with a palm before he stares critically at it. It’s a little crooked, he notices, and he reaches to re-paste it until he realizes that the more he re-pastes it, the less tacky the sticky part will become. What if it falls off? That’d be awkward.
But he shakes his head the next second. He’s overthinking this. It’s fine, Taehyun won’t judge him for pasting the sticky note crookedly, right?
Sungwoon gives it one last glance before he turns around and walks back to his bed.
[“Look, look!” Taehyun cries. He points at the group of boys in front of them. One of them, with his hair dyed a vivid magenta, is setting down a boombox on the sidewalk. Sungwoon and Taehyun are crouched at the corner of the street, hidden behind a wall as they watch the other boys curiously.
“Why does he have purple hair?” Sungwoon asks, scrunching his nose. “My mama said that if you dye your hair, it damages the—“
Taehyun rolls his eyes. “Who cares?” he interrupts, sticking his nose up. “I think it’s cool. Don’t you think so too?”
“I guess,” Sungwoon replies softly. He purses his lips and quietly continues eyeing the group of boys.
“Just watch them,” Taehyun instructs.
Sungwoon silently nods. Up ahead, the group of boys are now stretching. There’s a total of four of them. Two are very tall while the other two are short. Sungwoon thinks they are old. Not as old as his mama and papa, but they are not as young as him and Taehyun. Probably high schoolers. A little bit scary, but Sungwoon is nonetheless curious.
One of the short boys slides down slowly into center splits. Sungwoon’s eyes widen. How is that possible on pavement? The next moment, the boy slides up from his splits just as meticulously as he’d gone down in them.
The tall boy with the purple hair says something. Sungwoon isn’t close enough to hear him, but the other boys in the group all nod. The boy leans down to his boombox, fiddling with a few buttons. The next moment, music begins playing. At the repeated press of another button, the volume increases quickly until Sungwoon can clearly hear the song playing.
It’s some kind of sleek synth-pop, notes that drag out seductively with a sound similar to a chime accented in the music. The short boy that’d gone into the splits earlier begins dancing, and the other boys in the group form a staggering ring around him.
The short boy begins rolling his body, curving his torso and sliding his feet on the ground in perfect time to the music. He cranes his neck, his limbs moving smoothly, as if flowing with the current in the air. He pops his shoulders and his hips. It’s an erratic movement compared to the rest of his moves, but the action is melded fluently into his dance, as when his joints move, the energy ebbs through the rest of his body like a tide.
Sungwoon is entranced. He stares, his eyes wide. He’s never seen anybody move like that.
The other boys in the group cheer, clap, and whistle. One of them even tries to mimic the short boy’s movements. He’s barely successful, but his friends still ooh and ah and whistle at him too.
“I’m going to join them one day,” Taehyun states, throwing Sungwoon out of his stupor.
Sungwoon turns to look at his friend. Taehyun’s staring straight ahead at the group of boys, his eyes large and glassy.
“Really?” Sungwoon murmurs, glancing back at the boys.
“Yes,” Taehyun replies, nodding his head firmly. “I want to be just like them one day.” ]
Do you dance?
Sungwoon wakes up the next morning to the sunlight filtering in from the window next to his bed. He glances over at the other side of the room. Taehyun is gone, as expected. His bed is a mess, the sheets and his blanket piled high at the foot.
Sungwoon’s field of vision switches to his nightstand.
And right there, on top of his phone, is a sticky note.
He leans over and picks it up. It’s the same sticky note he’d used to write a question for Taehyun, but this time around, there’s a single character written right beneath his question.
Yes.
Sungwoon’s vision all of a sudden feels strange.
This has to be his Taehyun. There’s no way that these coincidences could align all at once, right?
Yet, there’s still a small inkling of doubt in Sungwoon’s mind. Does Taehyun not recognize him? Why would he not say anything? Maybe this is his Taehyun and he actually doesn’t remember Sungwoon. Who knows?
Sungwoon folds the sticky note into a small little square and sets it back on his nightstand. He climbs out of bed and sighs, rubbing his face.
[“Did you know,” Taehyun begins. He turns around, leaning down and plucking something from the grass. When he turns back, Sungwoon sees what’s held in his hand and raises an eyebrow. “If you hold a buttercup underneath your chin and yellow appears on your skin, then that means you like butter,” Taehyun states.
“How does that work?” Sungwoon asks. He frowns.
“Just try,” Taehyun hums, holding out the single flower to Sungwoon.
Sungwoon reluctantly takes it. He holds the stem with a fist, the bright gold petals sitting beneath his chin. “What color is my chin?” he asks.
“It’s yellow!” Taehyun states. “Do you like butter?”
Sungwoon shrugs. “I guess it’s okay,” he says. He holds the flower back out to Taehyun. “You try.”
Taehyun takes back the buttercup and proceeds to stick it under his chin. He accidentally smashes the petals against his jaw in the process, and Sungwoon laughs. Taehyun frowns, but he still holds the flower there. “What color is my chin?” he asks.
“I see yellow!” Sungwoon exclaims. “So, do you like butter?”
Taehyun smiles. “Yes, I actually do!”
“Then does that mean this works?” Sungwoon asks. “That’s so weird.”
“I don’t know how it works,” Taehyun replies, “but I guess it works for us!” ]
Sungwoon writes on a new sticky note later that night.
Do you like butter?
In the morning, he receives a single-character reply again.
Yes.
It’s basically impossible that this Taehyun is not Sungwoon’s Taehyun.
However, Sungwoon still keeps up with the sticky notes. He’ll just see where this goes. He glances around the room. What should be his next question? Liking butter and dancing are two things that are terribly common. Maybe he should try something more specific.
His eyes land on a bag of barbecue chips sitting on Taehyun’s desk.
[“Why are you doing that?” Sungwoon asks, frowning.
Taehyun sticks his chopsticks back into the bag. “I don’t want to get my hands greasy,” he replies.
“That’s weird,” Sungwoon states.
Taehyun sticks his tongue out at him.]
Do you eat chips with chopsticks?
Yes.
Sungwoon snorts. How many people in this world eat chips with chopsticks?
Later in the evening, when Sungwoon returns from his last class, he’s surprised to see that Taehyun is peacefully snoring away in his bed. Sungwoon takes care to remain quiet as he unpacks his notebooks and laptop and begins typing away at homework.
When he stands up to take a quick break, he notices that the bag of chips that’d been sitting on Taehyun’s desk is now open, facing away from him. Carefully, he shuffles over to Taehyun’s desk. Leaning his head down, he glances inside the bag of chips.
Sure enough, just as he’d expected, there’s a pair of chopsticks sitting against the metallic interior.
Sungwoon goes to find a chip bag clip and sets it down next to the bag of chips.
[“I think it tastes gross,” Sungwoon states, scrunching up his nose.
“Really?” Taehyun asks, raising his eyebrows. He takes a sip out of the mug.
“Well, if there’s a lot of sugar, then it tastes okay,” Sungwoon adds, humming.
“I didn’t add sugar.”
“What? Why?” ]
Do you like your coffee black?
Yes.
It’s almost nine in the morning when Sungwoon is done getting ready for his classes. He runs through Taehyun’s schedule in his head. Taehyun would be in his maths lecture now, wouldn’t he?
Sungwoon smiles. He’s heading the same way, anyways.
Half an hour later, he opens the door to the auditorium. He makes such a grand entrance, really, because the entire room full of more than a hundred students is silent except for the professor at the front speaking through a microphone. The metal push plate on the door makes a noise that echoes throughout the room, seemingly vibrating the walls when Sungwoon enters. Heads all over turn to glance up at the room’s new occupant, all except for the professor at the front who is still rambling onwards.
Sungwoon pauses. He scans all the students in the room. Where’s the one he’s looking for?
A minute later, he smiles. He begins to walk down the steps, and when he gets to the row of bodies he’s heading for, he winds through the seats, muttering “excuse me” several times to get to the one seat with the occupant who he’s looking for.
Without saying a single word, he sets down the cup of coffee in his hand in front of Taehyun. Without even offering his roommate a glance or a chance to say anything, he hurriedly shuffles out of the aisle the moment after, nearly tripping over someone’s backpack on the way out. But he makes it through, quickly climbing up the steps and taking his grand exit.
Once Sungwoon is behind the double doors, he sighs, taking in a deep breath.
["You burnt it!” Taehyun cries. He looks positively distraught, and it’s not because Sungwoon nearly burnt himself trying to extract the remains from the toaster.
“Sorry,” Sungwoon mutters, blowing on his fingers. They’re raw and red. He reaches for a fork to try to pry the bits and pieces out of the machine, but Taehyun grabs his wrist.
“Don’t!” Taehyun exclaims. “Papa told me that if you touch metal to an electric current, you’re going to shock yourself and you might die!”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Sungwoon asks, retracting his hand from Taehyun’s grip. “Your parents will be mad at us if they find out!”
Taehyun pauses, thinking for a moment. The next second, he grabs the toaster, his palms flat and pressed against the sides, and tilts it upside down, beginning to vigorously shake it.
Sungwoon sighs. He doesn’t think that’ll work.]
Do you like your bagels toasted?
When Sungwoon wakes up, there’s something blocking the middle of his vision. He goes cross-eyed trying to figure out what it is, until he realizes that there’s probably something on his face. Something crunches beneath his palm when he slaps his hand over his forehead.
It’s a piece of paper, he realizes. And when he plucks it off of his face, he notices that it’s not just any paper – it’s a sticky note.
You embarrassed me yesterday.
A wide grin spreads on Sungwoon’s lips. This is the first response Taehyun has given him that’s not a single character, and of all things, it’s such a candid statement. He couldn’t even bother to thank Sungwoon for the coffee, and he stuck the note on Sungwoon’s face of all places. How sneaky, Sungwoon thinks.
He snickers, setting the sticky note on his nightstand. There’s still another one stuck to the back of his phone with Taehyun’s characteristic Yes.
Later in the day, Sungwoon returns a little earlier than usual for lunch. He walks down the hall, poking his head into the shared kitchen. He smiles when he sees what he’s looking for. Thankfully, there’s no other students in the area.
Sungwoon scuttles over, unplugging the device from the electrical socket and wrapping the cord around the machine. He slips it underneath his jacket, pressing it right up against the side of his torso, and casually walks out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and back into his room. There’s one kid that passed him as he made his way back down the hall, but his face had been too engrossed in something on his phone to notice Sungwoon cradling a giant lump underneath his windbreaker.
He closes the door behind him and walks over and sets the machine down on Taehyun’s desk. Luckily enough, there’s an extra electrical socket available nearby, so Sungwoon plugs the machine in.
Later in the evening, he leaves two sticky notes on Taehyun’s textbook.
[Sungwoon purses his lips together. “U-Um,” he begins, hesitantly, as the waiter stares at him with his pencil poised above his little notepad.
“Don’t be shy,” Taehyun’s papa says, smiling, “you can order anything you want, it’s okay.”
“Come on, Sungwoon!” Taehyun says, nudging Sungwoon’s arm impatiently, “I’m hungry!”
“Tae, don’t rush him,” Taehyun’s papa scolds, but Taehyun still sticks up his nose and grabs onto Sungwoon’s arm.
“Uh,” Sungwoon begins. He bites his bottom lip, looking up at the waiter. “Can I have a slice with pineapple and ham, please?”
Taehyun coos.
Sungwoon hurriedly glances over at his friend, expecting him to be astounded and maybe even hound Sungwoon for his choice in toppings. But instead, Taehyun exclaims, his eyes gleaming, “I want ham and pineapple too!” ]
Do you like pineapple on your pizza?
Yes.
Sungwoon wakes up with the middle of his vision blocked again. Another sticky note from Taehyun. Briefly, Sungwoon wonders, Why does Taehyun have to leave these things on my face? He grumbles as he plucks the piece of paper off of his forehead, but his frown is quickly replaced by a smile.
I like my bagels toasted, but not burnt. You should probably return that thing. If you’d like to do me a favor, please replace Professor Hwang’s toaster in his office with it.
Sungwoon coughs in sudden laughter. Professor Hwang is the Calculus 201 teacher, and Junhyuk had complained plenty about him as well. Sungwoon will think about it – he doesn’t have Professor Hwang for calculus, but that also means that the professor won’t recognize him if he tries to sneak into his office.
Later in the evening, Sungwoon takes a detour on his way walking back to the dorms. He hums happily as he strides into the dorm building with a box of pizza balanced in his right hand. A minute or so later, and he’s trotting down the hallway to his dorm room when Sanghyuk, one of his neighbors, appears beside him.
“Ooh,” Sanghyuk hums, “pizza?” His strides fall in time with Sungwoon’s as Sungwoon walks.
“Yeah.” Sungwoon nods. “Thought I’d treat Taehyun and myself.”
“Which toppings?” Sanghyuk asks.
“Pineapple and ham,” Sungwoon replies nonchalantly.
Sanghyuk gasps, placing a hand over his heart. “Oh my god!” he cries.
Sungwoon rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up,” he mutters, barking out a laugh at Sanghyuk’s overly exaggerated reaction.
“You’re an abomination!” Sanghyuk exclaims, his eyes wide and his hand still over his heart. “Who puts pineapple on pizza? That’s a crime against humanity!” But Sanghyuk still trots next to Sungwoon, and a moment later, he stops Sungwoon in his tracks.
Sungwoon raises an eyebrow. “What?”
And without saying anything, Sanghyuk lifts the lid of the box and begins to reach his hand inside.
Well, that is until Sungwoon raises a leg and kicks him in the stomach with the flat of his foot. “You go ahead and insult me and my pizza and now you try to steal my pizza?!” Sungwoon cries. “Buy your own damn pizza!”
Coincidentally, Sanghyuk had stopped him right in front of an open door. Sungwoon reaches over and grabs onto the knob of the door, quickly closing it with a slam.
He snickers, because he just kicked Sanghyuk into the waiting arms of a grinning Hojung – ala Sanghyuk’s worst nightmare.
["What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“A singer.”
“Cool! I’ll be a dancer, and then maybe we can open up our own agency once we get famous enough!”
Sungwoon giggles, his fingers curling over his lips as he sits with Taehyun under the shade of a large oak tree. The shadows of the leaves speckle the ground in front of him, and he watches those patterns move and shake along with the wind.
“Let’s stay together,” Taehyun suggests, “so our dream will actually end up happening!”
Sungwoon hums in agreement, his knees tucked up to his chest. He stares at the waving grass in front of him. He feels Taehyun’s eyes on him.
There’s silence for the next few minutes. Taehyun digs his fingers into the grass, pulling up dirt and shreds, the sound of plants ripping apart resounding through the air every several seconds.
“I hope we stay together,” Sungwoon murmurs, resting his chin on his knees.
“I know a way to make sure that happens!” Taehyun exclaims.
Sungwoon looks over at his friend. “What?” he asks.
“Marry me,” Taehyun states, the expression on his face serious.
Sungwoon blinks. “Okay,” he immediately responds, without even thinking. Taehyun laughs the moment after, and Sungwoon briefly begins to panic, because Taehyun might’ve been joking and therefore Sungwoon might as well just bury his face in the grass from the embarrassment and as an attempt to cool the heat in his cheeks.
But when Taehyun’s laughter calms, he grins. “So it’s a promise?” he asks, his smile gleaming.
Sungwoon nods. “It’s a promise.” ]
Sungwoon wakes up with no extra sticky note on his face. He’s mildly disappointed, but the feeling subsides when he sees that there’s still a note pasted to the back of his phone anyways.
He takes a deep breath. It’s been exactly one week since he began asking Taehyun questions. All the answers he’s gotten align perfectly with the characteristics of his Taehyun. It’s impossible that Taehyun wouldn’t at least have recognized by now that he’s known Sungwoon before college – after all, what random person starts sending you questions written on sticky notes, and questions that are startling specific at that?
The newest question Sungwoon has written has his heart pounding in his chest and his hands shaking as he lifts up the note.
Do you remember me?
Yes.
Sungwoon sucks in air. All of a sudden, his chest feels heavy.
This is his Taehyun. He knew it all along.
There’s an overwhelming feeling of melancholy spreading through his body, all way to his toes and fingertips, but it’s warmed by some sense of fulfillment the moment after.
Sungwoon closes his eyes.
What does he do now?
A week passes and Sungwoon has stopped writing notes. Basically, he’s come to a stalemate. Nothing’s happening. His awkward freshman self is reappearing and inwardly freaking out that Taehyun thinks he’s too clingy and maybe a little bit creepy.
But when his design professor hands him a flyer, the first person he thinks of is Taehyun. The second thing he thinks of is sticky notes.
Would you like to go to an exhibition with me on Saturday?
Sungwoon receives an answer on Friday morning.
Yes.
That Saturday, Taehyun meets him outside the entrance of the university’s Museum of Architecture.
“Hi,” Sungwoon says, quietly.
“Hi,” Taehyun returns. A quiet smile appears on his face.
Sungwoon freezes. “Uh,” he begins, shakily, and his lips make a bunch of odd shapes, but his voice won’t work, because for some reason the connection between his brain and his voice box just broke. He croaks, and then promptly shuts his mouth afterwards.
Taehyun laughs at him. Sungwoon cringes, his face contorting into a visible look of discomfort, and Taehyun says, “Let’s go, then?” with a hearty grin on his face. Sungwoon thinks he looks just as benevolent when he smiles now as he did back then, even with now-Taehyun’s change in demeanor.
The two walk together through the double doors, and Sungwoon intakes a breath of air freshener, plastic, metal, and a little bit of glue. He glances around, and there’s various photos of building designs lined up on the wall in front of him, illuminated by the modernized fluorescent lamps hanging up ahead.
“You’re an architecture student, right?” Taehyun hums.
“Yeah,” Sungwoon replies.
“Is your work showcased here?”
Sungwoon chuckles softly. “Nah,” he murmurs, “they don’t let first years do this kind of stuff.”
“Ah, right,” Taehyun replies, before the air between them fades into silence. Sungwoon doesn’t know what to say, even though he feels like there’s something he should say. The only thing he can do to make up for his ineptitude and perpetual awkward inward cringe is follow Taehyun around like a puppy, even though Taehyun persistently asks that they go to a display that Sungwoon wants to see.
But Sungwoon just shakes his head. He’ll be able to see this stuff later when Professor Yoon puts it all in a PowerPoint and spends an entire class gushing over how good his upperclassmen and graduate students are and how the freshmen and sophomores are just inadequate.
And besides, Taehyun seems truly fascinated. It’s not every day that one gets to see models of cities and buildings and bridges and furnaces designed in the craziest, most expensive, and possibly dangerous ways possible. He sees the lamp-like pier shaped like one of those domes on the top of St. Petersburg’s Church on Spilled Blood balanced precariously on a lollipop stick—it’s even colored like a lollipop—and points it out. “What is that supposed to be?” he asks.
“I think it’s supposed to be a redesigned Space Needle,” Sungwoon replies, peering closely at it, “although I don’t think this is a viable design at all.” He glances at the placard next to the model. Oh, he recognizes that name. He knows that student – Kang Daniel, who can’t design for shit but somehow he’s still passing. The next moment, Sungwoon breaks out in raucous laughter, bending over as he holds his stomach.
“Uh,” Taehyun begins, and then he grabs the collar of Sungwoon’s jacket and hoists him up.
Sungwoon nearly chokes. “C-Christ,” he begins, coughing, and now he’s not holding onto his stomach, but he’s holding onto his neck.
“Oh god—s-sorry! It’s just—it just looked like you were about to knock over the…” Taehyun’s voice fades off, and he immediately lets go, only to begin to furiously pound Sungwoon’s back with a fist, which just makes everything so much worse and now there’s pain in Sungwoon’s stomach, his throat, and his back. “Are you okay?” Taehyun hurriedly asks.
“I w-will be,” Sungwoon chokes out, his face hot and red, and Taehyun awkwardly holds him up with his hands. Sungwoon grips onto his jacket sleeve as he tries to recover from his hacking, and he doesn’t even realize how terribly regretful Taehyun looks.
Several seconds later, he clears his throat roughly. “I’m okay,” he mutters, “I’m back from the brink of death.” He glances over at Taehyun, who has a very awkward smile on his face, a smile that kind of looks like it’s not his, as if someone cut out the smile of someone else and pasted it over his lips.
Sungwoon starts to giggle the moment after, and he places his palms on Taehyun’s shoulders. “I’m okay,” he affirms, and Taehyun relaxes, his lips returning back to their normal shape. “Just give me a warning next time,” Sungwoon says, and with a relieved smile, Taehyun replies, “Okay.”
Several more minutes of wandering around together, and Taehyun points to a model of a city. “That looks pretty awesome,” he notes.
Sungwoon agrees. All the buildings are a pure white, accented with different metallic cut-outs of polygons and lines. The structure of them rises high into the air, morphing into swirls of all rotational directions and angles – Sungwoon imagines that if the design were implemented, the tips of the skyscrapers might as well be piercing through the galaxy.
“It doesn’t seem really feasible, does it?” Taehyun asks.
“Well, actually,” Sungwoon begins, “it depends on how it’s constructed. Spirals are one of the most stable designs available, not only because of the distribution of weight, but also because they make mathematical sense—Fibonacci’s spiral, you know—and maintain stability relatively well as long as the construction is done evenly and correctly. Spirals are also one of those designs that are found naturally occurring in nature, like snail shells, vines, roly-polies—“
“Unicorn horns,” Taehyun interrupts, his face and voice entirely serious.
Sungwoon snorts. “Yes, unicorn horns,” he replies. Taehyun still looks like he’s not joking, and Sungwoon is all of a sudden worried.
“If you made one of these buildings,” Taehyun begins, “what would you choose?”
Sungwoon pauses. “…I don’t know,” he murmurs, “that’s a lot to think about. Maybe I’ll design my buildings after unicorn horns.” Although I bet someone’s already done that, like Kang Daniel, he adds silently.
Taehyun hums in agreement. The two wander around for the next hour. Sungwoon giddily spills all of his design and architecture nonsense whenever Taehyun points out something he likes, and in turn Taehyun readily absorbs the information even though Sungwoon is quite sure that he’s boring the hell out of his roommate.
As they are exiting the museum, Taehyun softly says, “I’m learning to become one of those people that smash atomic particles together in hopes that they create subatomic particles that I don’t know exist, but at the same time I’m told that they do exist. I know nothing about art and design.” He looks over at Sungwoon, who’s stuttered in his step at Taehyun’s confession. “Can I watch you design one day? Or whatever it is you do,” Taehyun asks.
A slow smile spreads on Sungwoon’s lips. “Of course,” he replies, immediately.
Taehyun purses his lips together, almost a little bit nervously, Sungwoon thinks. They’re standing there awkwardly, their stances frozen in an odd half-stride position, staring at each other, waiting for the other to say something or just walk.
Taehyun opens his mouth. “I remember you disliked drawing and coloring,” he states, his voice hardly audible. The very next moment, he resumes walking.
Sungwoon stands there for a few seconds, dumbfounded. He shakes his head. “Time changes things, I guess,” he murmurs to no one, not even himself.
On a Sunday, Sungwoon brings himself, his sketchbook, a pencil pouch, and Taehyun to the rooftop of a building.
They sit down on the concrete. Taehyun stares ahead of himself while Sungwoon opens up his sketchbook.
“What will you draw?” Taehyun asks.
“I thought you wanted to see me draw buildings,” Sungwoon replies, blinking.
Taehyun looks away momentarily. “Oh, right,” he murmurs, with a sheepish laugh.
Sungwoon smiles, grabbing a pencil. “Talk,” he says, as he draws a line down the center of a page.
Taehyun frowns. “Uh, what about?”
“Anything,” Sungwoon replies, simply. He likes the sound of Taehyun’s voice.
Taehyun begins to ramble as Sungwoon draws what he sees in front of him. He begins to ramble about his classes, about his friends, about how Professor Hwang gives way too much homework and how his teaching assistant Jonghyun needs to stop kissing his already lipstick-covered ass.
Sungwoon hums happily in his head. Taehyun’s words meld with his thoughts fluidly, as if his voice is the dye and Sungwoon’s head is the hot water. This line goes here, Sungwoon thinks, just as Taehyun is talking about how the lunch lines at the cafeteria are way too damn long. Sungwoon sketches a line, then places a squiggle on top of it, mimicking the way the slight fog distorts the skyline.
“Hey,” Sungwoon begins, interrupting Taehyun’s rambling.
“Huh?” Taehyun replies, looking over.
“Can I draw you?”
“Oh…”
“If you’re not—“
“Yeah, okay, go ahead.”
Sungwoon shifts in his spot, turning so he faces Taehyun. “Thanks,” he says happily, smiling. “Just keep looking ahead,” he instructs, and Taehyun nods, his eyes focused on an object far away. He looks like he’s watching the whole world unfold beneath his hands, quiet and contemplative and fascinated. There’s no visible emotion in his facial muscles, but Sungwoon sees it all in his eyes.
He begins with Taehyun’s chin. A stroke there, a stroke here. It’s easy. His chin does not jut out far, but nor is it tucked. Sungwoon moves to his lips. Two curves. Taehyun’s lips are not like a sparrow’s mouth. Sungwoon imagines that if he were drawing Taehyun from the front, he would start with the shape of a circle and then contour in Taehyun’s cupid bow and bottom lip.
Taehyun’s nose. A diagonal slope for a bridge with a steep curve.
Sungwoon continues. He draws for the next hour, and Taehyun does not move a single centimeter. He stares ahead, as if he were staring into the future.
On a Friday evening two weeks later, Sungwoon is casually relaxing in his bed. He closes his eyes, and he’s almost asleep until his phone buzzes.
I hope you’re awake. Come outside. Come out to the maths building. By the way, this is, uh, Taehyun, if you forgot to save my number.
Sungwoon chuckles. He’d never forget.
The air is a little bitter. Sungwoon can see his puffs of breath floating away as he walks down the sidewalk. The tip of his nose and his ears are freezing, but he feels warmth in them when he sees Taehyun up ahead, standing at the entrance of the maths building.
“Hey,” Taehyun says, immediately smiling, when Sungwoon stands next to him.
“Hey,” Sungwoon replies. “So, why am I here?”
“Sungwoon,” Taehyun begins. There’s a drop in his voice, and Sungwoon is not sure if he’s nervous or not.
“What?” Sungwoon hums.
“Sungwoon,” Taehyun repeats, “chase me.”
“…What?”
And then Taehyun breaks out in a wide grin. The second after, he begins to run, smashing himself into the double doors at the entrance of the building. The push handle makes a clacking noise as he flies inside.
“Wait!” Sungwoon cries, to one in particular, and he takes off sprinting the next moment.
Taehyun’s words ring through his head. Chase me. Sungwoon begins to hear the clacking of his shoes against a tile floor and the sound of Taehyun’s laughter carrying up ahead and see the fluorescent lighting of school lights glaring above him.
Sungwoon has never been fast enough to catch him, and that fact still holds true now. He’s just barely too slow, Taehyun is always in the distance in front of him, and Sungwoon’s chest heaves with the breaths he takes.
He runs after Taehyun, down the halls, weaving past the last straggling students, up several flights of stairs and through many double doors. His calves burn, his throat burns, the air he intakes scratches his throat like sandpaper against the side of a car.
Up ahead, Taehyun pushes through a single door, the thing closing with a slam behind him, only for it to be opened once again by Sungwoon. He heaves his entire body weight against the thing, because it’s taken up all of his strength, this pursuit, and when the door gives way, the bitter cold wind blasts him in the face, as if he just walked straight into a blizzard.
“You’ve lost a lot of your stamina,” Taehyun comments with a laugh.
Sungwoon falls to his hands and knees, his breath spent, the cold night air somehow sorely comforting to his nose and his throat. His lips were already dry and chapped, and they become even more painful with his panting. His chest hurts, his legs hurt, and his vision even hurts a bit. There’s a throbbing in his head, and he all of a sudden feels like he’s choking. It’s not only because of all this running, he realizes, but it’s because of Taehyun.
With just two words, Taehyun had managed to throw him into a whirlpool, where he feels like he’s being sucked in and drowning. Chase me, Sungwoon hears, and then he thinks, Haven’t I been chasing you my whole life?
Taehyun sees him collapsed on the ground, holding his chest, and when Sungwoon glances up and looks at him, he immediately understands.
He crouches down, and his breathing is all of a sudden labored too, from panic or worry or something else, Sungwoon doesn’t know, but Taehyun slides his palms onto Sungwoon’s cheeks, his grip soft and warm, hands rough. “I’m sorry,” is the first thing Taehyun whispers to him, and Sungwoon tries to reply, say there’s nothing he should be sorry for, but his voice croaks and he chokes.
“I’m so sorry,” Taehyun whispers again, and Sungwoon isn’t looking at his face, so he isn’t sure what Taehyun is feeling, but there’s uncertainty in his voice, some regret, and a whisper of a wish.
“I’m so sorry,” Taehyun begins, and the rest of it falls out of his lips like a stream. “I’m so sorry for leaving you like that, I’m so sorry for not telling you, I’m so sorry for abandoning you, I’m so sorry for making you worry about me—“ and then his voice stops, because Sungwoon has raised his head and placed his fingers on Taehyun’s lips.
“Stop,” Sungwoon rasps. “It’s okay,” he adds, with a muster of a smile.
Taehyun closes his mouth, pursing his lips. He glances down momentarily, but when he raises his gaze, he begins asking questions.
“Do you dance?”
Sungwoon smiles. “No.”
“Do you like butter?”
“I think it’s okay.”
“Do you eat your chips with chopsticks?”
“No.”
“Do you like your coffee black?”
“No.”
“Do you like your bagels toasted?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like pineapple on pizza?”
“Yes.”
Taehyun stops speaking, his mouth hanging ajar.
Sungwoon realizes it’s his seventh question.
Taehyun’s eyes are unfocused, as if he were staring somewhere over Sungwoon’s head. A few more moments of silence, and Sungwoon is about to speak himself, but he sees Taehyun’s gaze return to Sungwoon’s eyes.
The next words Taehyun says slip out of his lips like a waterfall, rushed and hurried as if he’s not sure which is the right one to ask, so he might as well ask them all and hope for the best, hope that one of them is the key that he’s searching for.
“Do you forgive me?”
Sungwoon tries to move his lips, but Taehyun interrupts him.
“Do you still feel happy with me? Do you still think of yourself as my friend? Do you still like me? Do you still want to stay with me?”
And then Taehyun pauses, biting his lip.
“Do you still love me?”
Sungwoon just opens his mouth and laughs, the strength in his arms and legs gone, and he spills forward, collapses into Taehyun, who catches him instantly, naturally, in his arms. He continues to laugh, his voice echoing in the bitter night air as he wraps his arms around Taehyun, reaching his hands up and threading them into those messy black strands at the back of Taehyun’s head, face tucked into the crook of Taehyun’s neck, holding him firmly and closely as if Taehyun could evaporate from his grip at any moment. And for a second, Sungwoon is afraid Taehyun will just disappear, because instead of Taehyun catching him in his arms, Sungwoon thinks that he’s finally caught Taehyun, and he’s not going to let him escape again.
Sungwoon lifts his head, his lips right next to Taehyun’s ears, and he whispers, “Yes,” the smile in his voice apparent. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” he repeats, five more times, once for each of Taehyun’s questions.
Taehyun just begins laughing too, throwing his head back into the skyline, and Sungwoon sees the colors of the night lights and the glowing outlines of buildings behind his head, and he thinks that Taehyun is glowing with them too.
The wind blows by, ruffling Taehyun’s hair in front of his face, and Taehyun just laughs harder, strands of hair being caught by his lips. But the hair and his laughter is gone when Sungwoon reaches his hands up, brushing across his face, and leans forward, pressing their lips together.
After all these years, their chase is over.