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They meet on the first day of grade one, when Woojin gives a high-pitched pterodactyl shriek of excitement during break and whirls in a complete three-sixty with his arms outstretched, one of which promptly smacks Jihoon in the face and gives him a nosebleed.
Jihoon looks stunned, eyes huge and blinking rapidly in the face of this confusingly loud kid who has just enacted schoolyard violence on him. Instead, it is Woojin who takes one look at Jihoon’s rapidly-reddening nose and the droplet of dark red peeking out from one nostril, and immediately screams bloody murder.
“Help!” Woojin screeches, his voice holding all the terror an eight-year-old can muster as he tears off back to the school building like the monster under the bed is after him. Jihoon takes an aborted step after his fleeing assailant before stopping and wiping at his nose with his sleeve. It comes away crimson, and again, all he can do is blink stupidly at the tiny smear of red on the fabric, like he’s deciding whether or not to pull a Woojin and panic.
A teacher hurries up to him moments later, hounded by a small whirlwind who’s sobbing by now, convinced that he’s somehow killed one of his classmates on the very first day of school.
“I’m sorry,” Woojin sniffles over and over, his face blotchy and smeared with tears. “I didn’t know you were behind me.”
Juvenile fear aside, Jihoon is given the all-clear within minutes, and he shrugs at Woojin. “It’s okay,” he says, with a smile that suggests he’s all but forgotten the ill-timed smack. “I’ve never gotten a nosebleed before. It was pretty cool.”
Slowly, with just a trace of disbelief, Woojin beams, until his snaggletooth is no longer just peeking out but on full display. Jihoon watches him, the tilt of his lips softer and perhaps a tad more hesitant, but no less genuine.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Their grade’s resident wild child, rarely still and with an impossible penchant for dramatics, inseparable from their school’s newest student, freshly arrived from Masan and still finding his footing on what might as well be foreign soil.
Sometimes even they find it hard to remember what life used to be like before the Park duo was formed. It probably wasn’t much of anything, Woojin says with a laugh one day, or at least, nothing comparable to breezing through elementary school together, and then suffering through middle school side by side.
Jihoon is the responsible one, the one who laughs at Woojin’s unthinkable antics whilst soothing his quick temper with annoyingly sensible platitudes. The one who keeps them in the library, buried in their thick textbooks till dinnertime, because if they wait till high school to catch up, they’ll be doomed for sure. The one who flashes his smile and charms every adult in sight with his chubby cheeks and doe eyes.
And Woojin? Woojin is just the one who would do anything in the world for Park Jihoon.
It’s hardly uncommon to see Woojin galloping off on yet another wild adventure while dragging a laughing Jihoon along behind him, but Woojin has never been the leader of this unlikely pair, not since that day seven years ago when Park Jihoon smiled at him for the first time. That slow, thoughtful smile that appeared like the sun breaking free of the horizon, and that he couldn’t help smiling at in return.
“Hey, let’s make it to the same university, okay?” Jihoon says one day as they’re on their way home. “It’d be fun to study in Seoul.”
Woojin’s brows raise, his raucous laughter cutting through the quiet evening. “Seoul? Seriously?”
Jihoon hits him on the arm, and Woojin can already see the dangerous pout forming on his lips. “Seriously!” he insists. “If we work hard in high school, we’ll make it. Wherever we go, let’s go together.”
"We haven't even graduated. We haven't even started high school," Woojin points out, careless and amused, because he's always been more interested in the present than the future. "Stop worrying so much or you won't be cute anymore. Of course we'll be together – can you imagine anything else? If I don't do well, then I guess you'll just have to come with me to whatever university will take me in."
A half-scowl appears on Jihoon's face before it slips back into the shadow of an exasperated smile. "You're so annoying," he declares for what must be the umpteenth time, cheeks puffing out. "I can't believe I'm going to be stuck with you forever." He shoulders Woojin as he speaks, earning a hard nudge back in return before his water bottle is tugged out of his grip and Woojin goes pelting off down the road, hooting with far too much excitement as he waves his unfairly-earned prize in his hands.
A distant "Park Woojin!" floats on the wind as Jihoon dashes after his thief of a best friend, both of them shameless and giggling in the way of teenagers, just on the cusp of maturity but not quite there yet, not for a while more.
They are only two months away from graduation, but only four days away from the morning Woojin is greeted with the worst news he will ever receive in his life – Jihoon doesn’t wake up that morning, or any of the mornings after that.
Even years later, he will still remember the way his ears ring with deafening silence, the way his mother’s lips move mutely before his eyes, and his first thought, confused and disbelieving: What? It is a moment that drags on forever.
There’s a name for it, in fact. Slow motion perception, something about the way time seems to slow down in stressful situations, like in a car accident, or finding out your best friend is dead. Woojin reads about it in an assigned article for a university module, and finds with a distinct lack of surprise that he can still recount that exact moment four years ago as if it were just yesterday.
An undiscovered heart condition, he finds out a little later, not because anyone tells him specifically, but because he hears the adults talking before the funeral. Not that it matters to him either way, because it still doesn’t make a jot of sense why Jihoon is even lying in that coffin at all, when he should be by Woojin’s side, planning all the disasters they are going to cause once school is out.
Embarrassment seizes him when he abruptly bursts into tears in the middle of the service, because Jihoon will never let him live this down, except then he remembers that Jihoon won’t ever laugh at him again, no matter how loudly he screeches or how stupid his stunts. Jihoon would probably have cried first if they were at a funeral anyway, but Woojin supposes he’ll never really know now.
It’s strange, how much his life can revolve around one person, but Woojin can’t imagine turning to anyone else when one of his absurd ideas strike, or when he fails a Chemistry test that he actually studied for, or when he walks into a glass door and needs someone to laugh with about the rapidly-forming bruise on his face.
Woojin still remembers that moment when time crawled to a halt, when he learnt that Jihoon would never again run up to his doorway, yelling Park Woojin! in a voice bubbling with genuine excitement, and he doesn’t understand how the seconds can still flow by in a universe where Park Jihoon no longer breathes.
He loses the actual chat sometime over the years, because the process of changing phones is always a mess, but Woojin still has a screenshot of the last message Jihoon ever sends to him. A happy-sounding hey i feel like eating chicken tmr!!! It is Jihoon to a tee, from the effervescent tone to the irrepressible love of chicken, and seven words have never hurt Woojin so much.
Right below it is his reply, a simple sure sounds good. There is a double grey tick beside it and a timestamp of 1:04am, a message that will never be read.
When Woojin gets on the bus to Seoul, with the unknown chasm of university life looming before him, he does it with a smile on his face. We did it, he thinks, and a sort of wistful pride edges his thoughts. Seoul was always Jihoon’s dream, not his.
He adapts anyway, and he lives, and he drinks in everything Jihoon wanted to see but will never get to. He doesn’t think that he will ever have a best friend like that again, not in this lifetime, but that doesn’t stop him from making the best of it and forming a couple of pretty decent friendships along the way anyway.
Friendships that, on occasion, he comes to regret with all the intensity of a dying star, especially when they result in Kim Jaehwan sprawled all over his bed, moaning about an assignment due in three days that he hasn’t started.
“Ten pages, seriously. How am I supposed to finish a ten-page paper in three days?” Jaehwan demands, with a righteous anger in his voice that is completely unwarranted, considering Woojin has been listening to Jaehwan whine about this assignment since weeks ago.
“Well, it’s definitely not going to get done if you keep hanging around in my room,” Woojin says dryly from where he is seated at his desk, watching a choreography video because he doesn’t have anything pressing due within the week.
Sometimes Woojin wonders why his luck is such that he somehow managed to get paired with possibly the laziest junior in the entire university for his peer mentoring programme. Granted, Jaehwan did a fine job of getting him settled into this new and strange environment in his first semester, but now all the older boy does is take over his tiny dorm room like he doesn’t have his own just one floor up.
“I don’t suppose you’d be up for helping me write my paper if I paid you,” Jaehwan sighs dully, with the air of a man who knows he’s doomed anyway.
Woojin snorts. “Hyung, firstly, I’m a freshman. I’ve barely learnt anything yet. Secondly, we don’t even take the same major. I know shit about composition or whatever it is you do.” He pauses, cocking his head slightly as he eyes Jaehwan, a devious smirk widening on his face. “Or should I just call Daniel hyung over? I’m sure he’ll be able to help.”
Jaehwan’s head whips around so fast that Woojin actually startles. “You wouldn’t. Daniel doesn’t even take music either, you brat,” Jaehwan grumbles, but he’s already sitting up with a disgruntled expression, the mere mention of Daniel enough to whip him into reluctant action.
It’s kind of hilarious really, how vulnerable Jaehwan is to the expectations of his best friend, most of which consist of him not flunking any courses or dropping out of university all together. Woojin doesn’t get it sometimes, how Jaehwan is even pals with one of the most recognisable guys in Yonsei, with a killer smile and an even more killer look of disappointment that strikes fear into Jaehwan’s heart.
“Just go and start your damn essay, hyung,” Woojin sighs heavily. “You know you’re going to get around to it at some point, so it might as well be now, when you still have more than forty-eight hours to bullshit your way through it.”
Jaehwan levels a betrayed glare at him, but he bundles himself and his guitar out of Woojin’s room anyway, accompanied by some mumbled epithets about ungrateful children that leave Woojin chuckling at his laptop screen.
For some Busan kid who would much rather have spent his days playing in the dirt than studying, he really is enjoying university life far more than he would have expected.
Woojin heads down to the library the following week just to get away from his bed, because his proximity to said item of furniture directly and negatively correlates to his productivity levels, and he has readings he seriously needs to get done before his classes.
It’s only when he’s trying to leave for lunch, with his bag stowed on his seat so he still has a spot to return to later, that he runs into some guy holding way too many thick books in his arms to even see where he’s going. Admittedly, Woojin had been texting away on his phone at the same time, but still.
“Ow,” he mutters to himself, when one of the hardcovers bounces off his foot and onto the carpeted flooring, probably leaving him with a nice bruise in its place. He sinks to his knees anyway, because his first instinct is still to help the hapless dude gather up all these oversized tomes scattered around them. Anyone needing to do that much research needs all the help they can get.
“Watch where you’re going, man,” comes the decidedly hostile-sounding response from opposite Woojin, and he looks up with a half-frown, ready to snap back at the next sign of provocation.
He absolutely does not expect to come face-to-face with his dead best friend while kneeling in the middle of the school library, with a blooming ache in his foot.
Not-Jihoon isn’t even looking at Woojin. Instead, he’s frantically stacking all his books in one pile beside him with his brows furrowed in annoyance, muttering unpleasantries under his breath that sound far less friendly than Jaehwan’s. When he finally glances up, his stare meeting Woojin’s head-on, it happens again.
Woojin’s stomach lurches strangely, and he sees with terrifying detail the way not-Jihoon’s lips part in a faint sneer, the way the corners of his eyes wing gently outwards ever so slightly, the way his brown curls are almost falling into his eyes and brushing his lashes.
He’s not Woojin’s Jihoon, but he could be. He could be Jihoon four years older than the last time Woojin saw him, a little more solid, a little less scrawny, his eyes harder but no less shiny than before, his voice reaching unfamiliar depths that make the hairs on Woojin’s arm prickle. A Jihoon who looks at Woojin like he’s a bug that deserves to be squashed underfoot.
Woojin sees all that in a single moment, as if the universe is holding its breath just for him, and then he blinks and time resumes its inexorable passing. His heart feels like it’s about to pound clean out of his chest, and he feels a little light-headed as not-Jihoon gathers up all his books again with a grunt of effort before walking off without a backwards glance.
Woojin stares at the stranger’s retreating back, and for the first time in a long while he feels that aching emptiness where Jihoon’s presence once resided, that Jihoon-shaped space inside him that he’s learnt not to think about all that much nowadays.
“Jihoon.” It comes out of his mouth without him even realising it, plaintive and just a little terrified.
Not-Jihoon stops and turns, almost glaring down at where Woojin is still crouched on the floor. “What?” he says, sounding annoyed, but there’s the faintest hint of uncertainty in his gaze as well. He’s thrown off, Woojin realises, by the fact that Woojin knows his name at all, and so is Woojin, by the fact that he can read this boy just as well as his own Jihoon.
“I just – I’m sorry,” Woojin says haltingly. “For knocking into you. Good luck with your, uh, stuff.” He stands slowly and gestures towards the pile of books, unsure what else he can say without completely losing it and breaking down.
The boy blinks, a flash of distrust crossing his face, but he nods anyway. “Whatever,” he says, in the same tone that someone else might have used to say ‘it’s okay’.
This time, Woojin lets him go.
He doesn’t understand why this is happening, after he’s managed to make his peace with Jihoon being gone, now that he’s actually able to think about their shared memories with nothing more dramatic than a fond smile. The way the world works – he’ll never understand it, will he?
All he wants is to hear the sound of home in his mother’s voice, but he doesn’t want to worry her either. She’ll be able to hear it in his tone within seconds if he calls her, exactly how close he is to crumbling.
Instead, Woojin hides out in his room without having lunch and tries to finish his readings, only giving up after realising he’s been reading the same paragraph over and over without understanding a single word. It’s mid-afternoon, and he thinks about barging into Jaehwan’s room for some company, except he can’t remember if the older boy has a class at this time of day – but then he realises that if anyone is likely to know a Jihoon in Yonsei, it’s none other than Kang Daniel.
He shoots off a text that asks as much – hey do you know a jihoon – before deciding quite abruptly that it’s high time for a short nap. He is, after all, already curled up on his bed in prime position for sleep, not to mention emotionally exhausted and more than a little grumpy.
Woojin has never been much of a dreamer, but this time he sees a brown-haired boy who disappears over the horizon, and who he can never catch up to no matter how hard he runs. The sun swallows the boy up whole, and Woojin wakes parched and sweaty.
Daniel’s reply sits conspicuously on his lockscreen when he reaches over to check the time. The preview says jihoon? as in park jihoon?? heard he’s… and Woojin’s stomach drops so hard that he has to close his eyes for a moment to regain his bearings.
Jihoon as in Park Jihoon? Well, maybe so, but not his Park Jihoon. He doesn’t know why it’s suddenly so difficult to remember that.
Slowly, lips pressed together tensely like he’s expecting to be attacked at any moment, Woojin swipes the notification to the right and types in his passcode with stiff fingers. His message screen pops up at once with a cheerful enthusiasm that he certainly doesn’t feel.
jihoon? as in park jihoon?? heard he’s pretty popular for his pretty face lol but idk him personally. why??
Woojin feels inexplicably disappointed. Daniel’s message doesn’t explain anything at all – who this Park Jihoon is, and why exactly his face is too familiar for comfort. Or maybe, Woojin tells himself, he’s just seeing things, taking a passing resemblance for more than it really is, like a twisted form of wishful thinking.
He tries to leave it as that, as a waking hallucination or some bizarre construct of his distracted mind, but he’s on tenterhooks every time he ventures out of the classroom anyway, darting nervous glances at every face he passes. In fact, it gets bad enough for even the notoriously lackadaisical Kim Jaehwan to demand what the hell is wrong with him.
“Nothing,” Woojin insists vehemently and increasingly defensively, until Jaehwan stalks off in a huff of hurt feelings, leaving him feeling even worse than before.
He doesn’t actually see new-Jihoon again for another two weeks anyway, mostly because Woojin does his utmost best to avoid his previous location of trauma, while Park Jihoon probably sleeps and eats in the library, if the fact that Woojin spots said boy two minutes after stepping into the library again is anything to go by.
Jihoon is sitting by one of the windows, a different stack of books beside him this time, glaring at his laptop as his fingers move feverishly across the keys. He looks tired and frazzled, and Woojin glances down at the untouched cup of juice in his hand, condensation collecting on his cold fingers as he dithers.
Finally, dragging his leaden feet over to Jihoon’s table with an impending sense of doom dawning upon him, Woojin starts off with a quiet “Hey.” His voice cracks in the middle of that single syllable, and he hastily clears his throat before trying again. “Hey. Uh, all the other tables are taken, so do you mind if I –”
Jihoon nods without even looking up, jerking his chin rather more violently than necessary at the empty seat opposite him. He looks vaguely irked, and Woojin can’t quite tell if it’s because of his presence or because this Jihoon’s default setting is just pissed off in general. It’s actually more amusing than frightening, not to mention a little disorienting, because Woojin is far more accustomed to seeing smiles on that face rather than scowls.
“Do you want some juice?” he asks before he can chicken out, pushing the cup forward and leaving a trail of damp on the surface of the table.
Jihoon finally glances up at him, mouth twisting in a mixture of bewilderment and distaste. “No thanks,” he says coolly, which Woojin thinks pretty much puts an end to any further conversation between the two of them.
Not that that stops him from returning to the library the next day, or the day after, or the weeks following.
Over time, Woojin learns that Jihoon is usually in the library in the afternoons, strolling in just before lunchtime, except on Wednesdays, when he doesn’t come in at all. He’s around on Saturdays but not on Sundays. He doesn’t seem to have many friends, although by choice if the frown that forms on his face anytime someone comes within three feet of him is to believed.
And finally, he is always, always working terribly seriously on some school-related work or other.
Some of this information Woojin obtains by observation, others not so much, like the time Jihoon looks at him for a moment before sighing in an extremely put-upon manner, “Just so you know, I won’t be around tomorrow.” That day is a Tuesday.
Every day – except Wednesday and Sunday – Woojin either walks in, places two cups of fresh juice on the table before Jihoon, and takes his seat, or takes his seat with the two cups of juice in front of him and waits for Jihoon to arrive with his distinctive grumble of general discontent. He isn’t quite sure if Jihoon doesn’t chase him away out of pure confusion or the fact that he’s getting a free drink out of Woojin’s unexplained presence, but either way, he’s not about to complain.
Most of the time, they don’t talk, not unless Woojin is in the mood to get his head verbally snapped off by a perpetually-stressed Park Jihoon, but he doesn’t mind all that much. He spends much of the first week not getting much done, choosing instead to peek surreptitiously at Jihoon every two minutes until Jihoon shoots him a glare so ferocious he lets out an actual squeak of fear.
Woojin suspects it might be Jihoon’s horrendously irredeemable temper that helps him get over his hang-up about the other boy’s looks, if only because his best friend had the temper of an angel, but this boy is clearly a bit more devilish, if the devil were always cranky.
Still, he finds himself coming back again and again, endlessly fascinated by the way such an innocent exterior can be so at odds with Jihoon’s prickly personality. Besides, Jihoon isn’t all bad – probably.
“Do you ever stop working?” Woojin can’t help wondering out loud, because it’s already eight at night in a mostly-deserted library and he really doesn’t know why he’s still sitting opposite Jihoon, except that he feels like the other boy could probably use the company.
Jihoon sighs in response, but it sounds more tired than annoyed. “I’m almost done,” he grumbles, his typing seeming to increase impossibly in speed. “Ten minutes.”
It’s more like twenty minutes, if Woojin is honest, but Jihoon looks marginally more relaxed when he finally shuts his laptop with a click. “My last assignment of the sem,” he exhales, which explains everything. They’re nearing the end of the second semester by now, and life has been a lot tougher than Woojin had ever imagined university to be.
“You have a lot of assignments,” Woojin says with a chuckle, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder as he stands.
Stuffing the last of his notes into his laptop case, Jihoon gives Woojin a rather odd look. “Yeah, well, I’m taking a double degree,” he says, brushing past Woojin on the way out.
“Oh,” Woojin says blankly, because again, that explains everything. “Double degree in what?”
“Political Science and Communication,” Jihoon mutters, a little like a rather fond curse, and if Woojin thinks it’s ironic that Park Jihoon, a consummate professional of avoiding communication, is majoring in Communication, he wisely keeps that opinion to himself.
They’re passing through the gantries barring entrance to the library when Jihoon speaks up suddenly, like the thought has suddenly occurred to him. “Are you hungry? I think I’m going to grab a bite.” The way he looks over at Woojin is decidedly neutral, like it really doesn’t matter to him whether or not Woojin comes along, but he thinks that Jihoon wouldn’t have offered if he didn’t care even a little bit.
Besides, he’s starving.
“Sure! What are we eating?” Woojin agrees with so much enthusiasm that Jihoon’s eyes narrow, a flash of regretful resignation passing across his face as he realises what he’s doomed himself to. For some reason, the expression sends a surge of affection through Woojin’s chest. It’s probably twisted, but so many things about this boy remind him of his Jihoon, and it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.
“Chicken.” Jihoon sighs loudly and scurries off with a quick patter of footsteps, as if he’s hoping to shake Woojin off somewhere along the way.
Woojin echoes the word slowly, a little shakily, before following after the other boy, a slow shiver crawling its way down his arms. He wants so badly to befriend this Jihoon, but sometimes he can’t tell if it’s even for the right reasons.
Their supper session is strangely – easy. It’s the first time Woojin is actually seeing Jihoon outside of the library, he suddenly realises, as he watches Jihoon smirk at him from across the table, his cheeks flushed pink from the empty beer cans littering the space between them. Jihoon seems looser, happier off school grounds, and he even laughs once, hand jumping up to cover his mouth as his eyes crinkle, like the sound somehow manages to startle even himself.
“So,” Jihoon starts out of nowhere, pausing to swallow his mouthful of chicken before continuing, “what’s with your weird obsession over me anyway?”
Woojin blinks for a moment at that, a dull pang of hurt compressing his lungs. He supposes Jihoon must really be tipsy to say something like that, because this Jihoon may be blunt and brusque, but Woojin has never sensed cruelty in him – although perhaps it stings more to realise that Jihoon has always thought so lowly of Woojin all along.
His pause probably drags on too long for Jihoon’s liking, because the other boy soon moves on without waiting for an answer. “I guess I should be thanking you though. You’re pretty much my first friend here, you know.” Jihoon hums, sipping delicately at his drink. “I just – it’s hard for me to make friends with people quickly, and now our classmates change every semester, and I have so much work to do I hardly have time to socialise anyway.”
“I –” Woojin starts, and then breaks off abruptly when he realises that he has no idea what he was about to say anyway.
Jihoon cocks his head at Woojin, still clear-eyed despite his rambling. “What?” he pushes, lips pressing together in a little moue of curiosity. “You what?”
Woojin ends up going for the truth, because he’s always been a troublemaker, but he’s never been able to lie his way out of the consequences. “You remind me of a friend, back in Busan,” he says, and it surprises him a little that it doesn’t hurt to admit that, given how much he’s been thinking of his Jihoon over the past few weeks.
Jihoon nods thoughtfully. “Fair enough,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve just been wondering for ages about you, you know. I didn’t even know your name for two whole weeks, but you wouldn’t stop hanging around.”
Woojin’s lips quirk upwards in an amused grin. “I’ve been told I can be stubborn.”
“So I’ve observed,” Jihoon retorts dryly, and Woojin feels something click into place as he laughs, that one moment where he realises that this person is probably going to be his friend for a very long time.
It was a smile that sealed it for him back then, and it is a smile again now.
They’re on the way back to their dorms, walking along dimly-lit paths with the bustle of the late-night crowd some distance away, when Jihoon finally asks, “So this friend that I remind you of – what is he like?”
Woojin’s breath catches slightly, but he can’t say he’s all that surprised really. He turns his head to look at Jihoon in the near-darkness, at the way Jihoon’s face is slightly upturned towards his, eyes dark and bright all at once, like the surface of deep, still water.
He can’t figure out how to start at first, because how can he possibly describe who Park Jihoon was with words alone? He was just himself, just Park Jihoon – is what he wants to say, but that would hardly make any sense.
“He was – happy,” Woojin says slowly, because that’s easy and true, and perhaps the most important thing to him. “He always had a smile on his face, and he was so optimistic that sometimes I thought it was dumb, because he was setting himself up for failure. He was disgustingly cute sometimes – not on purpose, but just the actions he did, and the way he spoke. He would literally curl his fingers up in front of his face when he was embarrassed, you know.”
He doesn’t realise that he’s stopped walking, that he’s staring at Jihoon but not quite seeing him as the words keep flowing, faster and easier with every syllable. “He was really hardworking, because he wanted to go to university in Seoul, but he said that I had to get in with him, so he made me study with him all the time. But he always had time to play with me, and once he cut class with me because my goldfish died and I was miserable. I got him into so much trouble, and I teased him a lot, but he would run to my house every morning to make sure I got up on time for school.”
It’s only when his voice abruptly cracks that Woojin realises he’s on the verge of tears. With a muffled, embarrassed laugh, he shakes his head, half-turning away from Jihoon as he tries desperately to blink back the sting of his watering eyes.
“Sorry,” he mutters, giving up and lowering his head after a few seconds, and resorting to wiping the tears as fast as they come instead. “I mean, you’re not really like him at all. I’m not trying to, you know, replace him or anything, but you do kind of look like him and that’s why I wanted to get to know you better. Sorry if that’s really creepy or whatever.”
“Hey,” Jihoon says quietly, and he puts a hand on Woojin’s arm. The move is so unexpected, so uncharacteristic, that Woojin startles and turns, his face still a damp mess of tearstains. With a soft exhalation at the sight, Jihoon steps forward and wraps his arms about Woojin’s waist, raising his chin to tuck it over Woojin’s shoulder.
Woojin all but falls forward into the embrace, and it’s kind of hard not to break down into embarrassing sniffles after that. His words are muffled when he finally calms down enough to mumble against Jihoon’s shoulder, “What was that for?”
Jihoon shrugs, pulling back and dipping his head to look Woojin in the eye, like he needs to check for himself that Woojin isn’t still a sobbing mess. “You looked like you needed a hug,” he replies, in the most blasé manner ever, and Woojin can’t help but laugh at that.
The remainder of their walk is quiet but companionable, both of them lost in their own thoughts, and at the end of it, Woojin asks quietly, “Library tomorrow?” to which Jihoon replies simply.
“Of course.”
Something fundamental shifts between the two of them that night, and Woojin, who has been lucky enough to spend his growing years with a best friend who was so in tune with him that he could finish Woojin’s sentences without even blinking, doesn’t take long to recognise it for what it is.
It’s not the same bond as before – far from it, because he is no longer the Woojin who, at twelve years old, ate so much candy that he ended up puking all night, nor is Jihoon even the same boy who cried out of anxiety by Woojin’s side as he emptied his stomach – but Woojin thinks that doesn’t really matter. This is a connection between a boy who was brave enough to bare his deepest hurt to an uncertain witness, and another boy who found enough compassion in himself to open his heart and share his new friend’s pain.
“So, you and Jihoon huh?” Jaehwan says, just a tad bit grouchily. Woojin suspects he’s just bummed that he can’t commandeer Woojin’s room for his own now, considering Woojin’s at the library most days.
“We just get along, I guess,” he says, looking over Jaehwan’s shoulder at the textbook he is very much not studying. “Isn’t your final tomorrow?”
Jaehwan glares at Woojin and hisses a very ferocious, “Shhh!” like maybe not saying it out loud will make that fact untrue.
Woojin lets out a snicker of amusement before leaving the older boy to it. He has a lunch appointment to keep, because that’s a thing they do now, him and Jihoon.
“Are you going back to Masan over the summer?” Woojin asks, because Masan isn’t really all that far from Busan, all things considered.
Jihoon shakes his head, brows slightly raised. “Nope. I’ll probably find a job around here or something,” he says with a shrug, meeting Woojin’s gaze with a pointed smirk. “I’m here on scholarship, dumbass. I’m not going to go home and laze around like you.”
Woojin rolls his eyes. “Thanks for that,” he grumbles. “Way to make me feel bad.”
“Come back and visit me then,” Jihoon challenges, with a bright spark of triumph in his eyes, like he knows that he’s just demanded the impossible.
Woojin lowers his head and mutters, “Shut up,” but all the while he can’t help thinking, Why not?
They part ways after finals end, with Woojin boarding a train back home the day after his last paper. Jihoon doesn’t see him off because he has an interview scheduled on that day, although he does text a simple see ya that Woojin receives minutes after finding his seat.
He ends up staying in Busan for only a month, because, he tells his mother, he has a friend who’s all by himself back in Seoul. His sister whines endlessly about his early departure, but Woojin is pretty sure his parents understand.
He visits Jihoon the day before he returns to Seoul, because no matter how far he goes or how long he leaves, this place – this grave – will always be a part of his life. “Did your soul get amnesia and accidentally wander into some poor guy’s body? Is that why he’s always so grumpy?” he asks with a laugh. “Seoul is really nice. You would’ve liked it. Keep watching over me, okay, Hoonie?” He leaves a hard candy on top of the stone when he goes.
The expression on Jihoon’s face when he gets back to his dorm room after work, only to see Woojin leaning against the wall right by the door, is utterly priceless. Woojin doesn’t get a hug this time, but he does earn a painful punch to the upper arm.
On weekends they hole themselves up in Jihoon’s dorm room and watch illegally downloaded movies on his laptop, but not before fighting over the flavour of popcorn they should prepare. They go shopping for new clothes after Jihoon gets his first pay check, because some of his shirts are getting rather threadbare, and end up fighting over Jihoon’s choice of shirt colours as well.
On weekdays, Woojin picks Jihoon up after work and they wander the streets in search of interesting café food for dinner. Other times, Woojin gets cravings for simple street food, and they traverse the shopping districts with sticks of rice cakes in hand. Sometimes they just pack chicken back, because all Jihoon really wants is to curl up on his bed and sleep till the next morning.
Once, Jihoon says, without really looking at Woojin, “It was pretty boring the first couple of weeks.” Woojin can’t help but smile, because coming from Jihoon, that’s as a good as an I’m glad you’re here.
As September nears, they start to discuss about their modules for the upcoming semester. “We have a couple of core mods we could bid for together,” Woojin points out, frowning down at his haphazardly-circled list of courses with his pen between his teeth.
“What, you haven’t seen enough of me these past two months?” Jihoon says drily, although he does lean over to peer at Woojin’s chicken scratch handwriting with a growing look of incomprehension on his face.
Woojin snorts at that and turns to glance at Jihoon, except Jihoon’s face is three inches away from his as he continues his attempt at deciphering Woojin’s scribbled letters, and Woojin lets out an inadvertent squeak of surprise at their proximity.
“What?” Jihoon snaps, drawing back and looking annoyed.
Woojin half-opens his mouth for a full second before saying slowly, “Nothing.”
Jihoon shoots him a very unimpressed look and settles for simply snatching the sheet of paper right off Woojin’s lap.
It’s been weeks, but Woojin is only just realising that it is no longer his childhood friend that he sees when he looks at Jihoon. He’s just realising that he no longer differentiates the two of them by labelling one as his, and one as not his. He’s just realising that this friendship is so vastly different from his first one that they may yet reach depths he’s never even dared to think about till now.
“Jihoon,” he says, a little blankly, with a questioning lilt to his voice.
Jihoon sighs. “What?” he repeats, but a tad more patiently this time, his head cocking to the side at the odd tone in Woojin’s voice.
Woojin looks at him, at the liquid softness of Jihoon’s eyes beneath the impatient tilt of his brows, and says as honestly as he can, “I’m really glad I met you.”
The very corners of Jihoon’s lips twitch, like he’s about to smile, even as he rolls his eyes and scoffs. “What’s gotten into you? I’m glad you met me too, idiot.”
And then he really does smile, his lips pink and glossy with the balm he applies religiously every few hours, and Woojin wonders if the pounding of his heart can still be labelled as merely friendship.
The start of their second year seems distinctly less hellish than Woojin remembers his first year being, and he’d like to think that it’s because he’s finally gotten this university schtick down pat, but Daniel laughs in his face and tells him kindly that the first weeks are always easy.
“Enjoy it while you can, kid. The mid-terms will be here before you know it, and then finals, and then you’ll be left wondering what the hell just happened,” Jaehwan agrees, looking tired at the thought alone.
Jihoon, who has slowly been inducted into Woojin’s little circle of closer friends, gives a very sardonic-sounding chuckle. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure Woojin doesn’t bomb any of his finals,” he says casually, to which Woojin immediately takes offense.
“Hey, I’ll have you know that I got into this school by studying my ass off on my own,” he protests, looking up so he can glare aggressively at Jihoon’s lowered head. To the side, he can hear Daniel laughing at something Jaehwan is whispering to him.
Jihoon raises his head ever so slightly, just enough to meet Woojin’s eyes, and shoots him a mischievous wink. Woojin’s eyes widen, his lips parting ever so slightly as his jaw threatens to drop, and he has to look away before his face can heat up any further.
It’s only Jihoon, he tells himself, just Jihoon – but the fact is that Woojin is starting to realise that he likes Jihoon very, very much indeed.
It’s become customary for Woojin to finish his work or his readings before Jihoon most days, giving him ample time to stare at the other boy in the relative peace and quiet of the library. Sometimes he spends the minutes admiring the soft curls of Jihoon’s hair, or the straightness of his nose and the way he catches his bottom lip between his teeth when he’s deep in thought. Other times he tries to figure out if he should try to sound his feelings out to the other boy, or if there’s even any point to it, or how he should go about doing it at all.
It’s surprisingly easy to be in love with Jihoon. Woojin just slips quietly into it and never quite bothers to find his way out again.
They go out for chicken again one night, and Woojin thinks that this is it. He’ll say coolly, between one bite and the next, Hey, I like you, you know that? and that will be that. Whether it goes uphill or downhill from there, it’ll be out of his hands. A small part of him is excited, hopeful, anticipating; the rest of him is just a bundle of terrified nerves that can’t wait to down a few cans of beer to deaden the adrenaline coursing through him.
“Hey, you okay?”
Woojin jumps a little at Jihoon’s voice and whips around, startling the other boy, who takes a half-step back. They haven’t even reached the restaurant yet, but he probably shouldn’t be surprised that Jihoon has somehow managed to catch on that something isn’t quite right. Woojin’s never been the subtlest person after all.
To prove that point further, he blurts out in staccato syllables, “Yes! Well, no – but yes. Yes, I’m fine. Fine. Totally.”
Jihoon’s brows raise sceptically. “Totally fine, I’m sure,” he mutters under his breath, but loudly enough for Woojin to hear anyway.
Woojin can feel the pressure building in him under Jihoon’s expectant frown, and finally he decides to release what little self-control he’s been using to hold himself together with a loud, almost shouted, “Actually, Park Jihoon, I like you!”
The distant echo of his words seems to ring around them for a moment, followed by the deadest silence Woojin has ever had the displeasure of witnessing. He isn’t even sure if he’s still breathing, but he knows for sure that Jihoon is, because he can see the sudden rise of Jihoon’s chest as he sucks in an abrupt breath. The other boy’s eyes are as wide as saucers, and probably twice as shiny, his pupils reflecting the glow of the overhead streetlamp.
Finally, Jihoon exhales, long and slow, never once tearing his gaze from Woojin’s. “Since when?” he asks, and Woojin is almost insulted at how nonchalant Jihoon sounds, like the answer is a mere curiosity that he could well do without in his life.
He answers anyway, tremulous and more than a little panicked at this point. “Since, I don’t know, the beginning of this sem or something, I guess. Why? Is it important?”
Woojin feels his stomach give an unpleasant lurch at the slow formation of Jihoon’s signature amused smirk, and he thinks that maybe he would like to take back his confession after all, because all this stress is certainly not worth it, not with that impish look that Jihoon is giving him, like he is considering best how to stomp Woojin’s heart to pieces and have fun with it at the same time.
“Because,” Jihoon says, airy and unhurried, as he takes a step closer to Woojin, “that day you came back from Busan and waited outside my door for me to get back?”
Jihoon takes another step closer, and then another, until he’s close enough to catch one of Woojin’s hands with his.
“That’s the day I fell for you, dumbass.” He laces their fingers together slowly, delicately, his fingers closing softly over Woojin’s knuckles.
“Oh,” is all Woojin can say, dumbly, because this is not how he had expected anything to go. At all.
“Oh,” Jihoon mimics, fondly, with a roll of his eyes, and then he hums thoughtfully for a moment as he looks at Woojin, pressing forward until they’re all but nose-to-nose. Woojin still isn’t sure if he’s actually breathing, to be quite honest.
“So,” Jihoon murmurs after a moment, one brow cocked almost impudently, “can I kiss you, Park Woojin?”
Woojin opens his mouth to perhaps croak out a Yes or an Of course, but no sound escapes from his uncooperative throat, so he does the next best thing instead. He takes a deep breath, leans forward, and presses his lips firmly against Jihoon’s.
It’s strange, how time doesn’t deign to slow for an occasion as momentous as this, two boys sharing their first kiss in the middle of the night, in the middle of a footpath and under a streetlamp. Not that it matters, Woojin supposes, as he feels Jihoon’s fingers come to rest against his cheek, his breath hot against Woojin’s mouth.
He doesn’t think he’ll forget a single detail of this moment anyway, and besides, this might be their first kiss, but it certainly won’t be their last.