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It was always Seongwu, Euigeon, and Jaehwan—always joking around together, always laughing together, always winning together, always losing together—, until it wasn’t.
“Friends until the end” was what they pinky swore to each other under the shining of the summer sun.
The end just came sooner rather than later.
One moment they were inseparable, attached at the hip like Seongwu’s mother used to say with this fond, almost curious look on her face, and then suddenly, without warning, they were worlds apart.
Jaehwan doesn’t know how years of movie nights, Saturdays camped out in Euigeon’s treehouse, shared boxes of cookies, and inside jokes couldn’t hold a candle to changing times—to different high schools and different dreams. He doesn’t remember how years of friendship suddenly faded into nothing more than an “oh, yeah, we used to be pretty close”, but he does unfortunately remember how much it hurt knowing that there was nothing he could do about it, that he couldn’t just slap a Spongebob bandage on the hurt, that time had jaded their friendship, and he would just have to move on.
They didn’t have a big fight or a nasty falling out. It was a clean break, one that was quick and final.
Jaehwan likes to think of it as the way the snow falls—fast, but slow; lazy, but incessant; comforting, but unnerving—, and it doesn’t hurt as much to think of it that way; as something the world had decided on at the start of the universe; as something that was written in the stars and carved into the side of the moon, as something he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to—and God knows how much he wanted to stop it, how he wanted nothing more than to have his friends back.
But the end was upon him, and Jaehwan would just have to learn how to start another story.
/
It’s funny how things turn out.
As the years passed, Jaehwan made other friends and found other things to want.
Jaehwan moved to Seoul after the summer of his second year of high school, and along with the swings of the neighborhood park and the boxes of cookies shared under the moonlight, Ong Seongwu and Kang Euigeon, and the hurt and betrayal that came with them, became nothing more than little spots at the back of his mind and a numbing, drowsy kind of nostalgia—the kind that sinks into his bones late at night, echoing in his ears until he falls under; the kind that is gone by morning, drowned out by the chirping of the robins outside his window.
Time is what makes Jaehwan’s heart full again.
/
Ha Sungwoon is tossed into Jaehwan’s orbit on a cloudy Saturday.
It’s a story that Jaehwan will tell his grandchildren, maybe.
Jaehwan had simply walked into the wrong place at the wrong time (Sungwoon would argue that it was the right place at the right time, though), and he ended up with a switchblade pressed to the skin below his chin.
It had happened like a flash of lightning, a single shot of electricity that splits the sky in two, planned and timed by the heavens, blink once and you’d miss it, but Jaehwan had his eyes trained on the gray clouds, and he wouldn’t have missed it if he wanted to.
One moment Jaehwan had his hands in his pockets, mumbling his grocery list to himself under his breath as he walked down the back alley to the right of the chicken shop—a short cut home—, and suddenly he got this odd, chilling feeling that something was going to happen, a kidnapping, or maybe someone was going to mug him, Jaehwan didn’t think murder was a possibility, but mugging? Mugging was possible. It was just his luck. It was right down his alley—Jaehwan snorted at the thought, cause he was in an alley, and getting mugged was right down his alley, and—
Oh.
Jaehwan’s arm is twisted behind his back and cold metal is pressed right up against the big vein in his neck.
“Move an inch or make a noise, and I will slit your throat open,” comes the stranger’s voice, hissed right into his ear as the hold on his wrist tightens.
Oh, this is lovely.
Swallowing around the dread pooling in his stomach and climbing up his throat, Jaehwan breathes out a shaky grunt, hands clenching and unclenching into fists at his side.
Think, Kim Jaehwan. Think.
Jaehwan looks from side to side, searching for a way out, any way out of the man’s death grip on his wrist—any way out of the life or death situation he’s found himself in—, but a voice in the back of his head whimpers, making his nightmares a reality.
There isn’t a way out.
“You’re scaring the kid, Sungwoon.” Another man comes around the corner, humming under his breath as he thumbs through the thick stack of money in his hands—it has to be a thousand dollars at the absolute least —, and Jaehwan tenses at the looping melody of the man’s song, eyes following the movements of his fingers, attention drawn by the almost hypnotic flutter of the dollars.
The man, still doing nothing to pry his partner off of Jaehwan, pockets the notes into his pocket.
“Good.” The voice that hisses into his ears is low and dangerous, mocking in its tone, and the cold blade against his skin presses closer, one wrong move, and it would draw blood. “He should know not to come around this part of the city at night.”
Drug money.
Something in Jaehwan just knows that it’s drug money.
“That’s not the way you should treat a potential buyer.” At the withering glare that’s pointed at him (the back of his head, really), Jaehwan knows he’s fucked up big time. The man counting through the thick stack of money snorts, and Jaehwan laughs to hide the horror clawing at him from the inside out, forcing a smile onto his face, “I’m an economics major. I know this.”
(Jaehwan is not an economics major, and he absolutely knows nothing about drugs).
He expects a lot of things really, for one, he expects the blade pressing dangerously close to his skin to draw blood, he also expects the man behind him to annihilate him, and he also expects the other man to turn cold and join the other in putting Jaehwan out like a flame.
What he doesn’t expect though, is for the both of them to burst into laughter, the switchblade that was digging into his skin falling to the cold pavement with a clang.
“Hyung, I want to keep him.” Low, dangerous voice now high pitched and drowned in laughter. “Can we keep him?”
Jaehwan arches a brow, “No?”
“You’re coming home with us, come on now, little one.” is what he’s told, hand closing around his as he’s dragged off in the opposite direction of his house. “I’m Sungwoon by the way.”
The other man—who Jaehwan will later come to know as Taehyun—, catching up to the shorter and Jaehwan, shoots Jaehwan an apologetic look, “He’s just a little firecracker, isn’t he?”
Jaehwan goes on his first drug run the following Thursday.
/
Friendship is an odd thing, Jaehwan has learned.
Sometimes friendships last a lifetime, standing tall against different high schools and different dreams, sometimes they last a year, the conditional friends in your class that you only talk to because it’s convenient, and sometimes they last hours, like the time Jaehwan made a friend on the long flight to the States.
Sometimes friendship is an anchor, and sometimes friendship is what makes the stars collide and the sky pour.
Jaehwan thinks that maybe he was always fated to make odd friends.
Sungwoon becomes something a little more than a friend though. Jaehwan likes to think Sungwoon is a bit more like a brother, a really, really bad influence of a big brother, and the others that come with him—Taehyun, Sewoon, Youngmin, and Donghyun—, are family.
Maybe friendship can’t stand against the force of nature and the fate drawn by the universe, but sometimes, just sometimes, if you’re lucky, family can.
/
But what is Jaehwan supposed to do when nature turns on its head and the universe changes his fate?
What is Jaehwan supposed to do if old friends come back and suddenly things are back to 15 years ago while still being so, so different?
He hasn’t found an answer yet, and he doesn’t know what he would do, or what he’s supposed to do, but Jaehwan decides it’s something he’ll worry about another day.
Jaehwan has other things to worry about—like the gun barrel pressed against his forehead, for example.
He doesn’t know how he ended up in this predicament again (yes, again ), but he’s one wrong move away from death, and the stranger’s cold eyes on him is sending a shiver down his spine, chilling him to the bone and the voice in the back of his head is screaming at him to run away , because of course, trying to run away while a gun is pointed at his head is what he should do.
Absolutely.
Jaehwan forces himself to breathe. In, out, in out.
He works his way back in his head: he had gone on a drug run for Jisung, and it was an easy job, really, just a short trip to the other side of the city, and it was a safe route, one that he’s traveled a hundred times, and he was on his way back, wondering if he should stop by a convenience store and shove a cup of ramen down his throat, when cold metal ghosted on the bare skin of his nape.
Jaehwan winced as the sound of a gun cocking echoed in the quiet of the night.
“Walk.”
Jaehwan’s body had frozen up, blood rushing to his ears and heart pounding.
He walked, movements slow and calculated, buying himself as much time as possible.
But he was scared to death, and he could hardly walk straight, let alone think straight, and he found himself cornered by two tall strangers, clothed in black and faces covered with a mask just like his. One, a hulk of a man, had his gun cocked and pressed to Jaehwan’s temple, and the other, the more passive one, thinner and more elegant, had his arms crossed, watching from his spot on top of the dumpster, long legs crossed as his eyes stayed pinned on Jaehwan.
The thin one is the first to make a sound, talking more to himself than to his partner or Jaehwan, and Jaehwan startles at his voice, chilling though calm and monotonous, “Doesn’t he look familiar?”
The other groans, and Jaehwan almost has the urge to snort at the exasperation drowning his words, voice low and raspy. “Don’t say you made me do this cause you think he looks familiar .”
Jaehwan stares at the one on the dumpster, cocking his head to the side.
“I’m just saying he looks a lot like someone I used to know.” The thin one mumbles, and Jaehwan thinks he would have missed it if the alley wasn’t dead silent, the night quiet and the world asleep. “Someone we used to know.”
“Who?” The one to Jaehwan’s side snorts, exasperation tilting his voice. A moment of silence passes, then a moment of thought, and a moment of understanding. “Oh.”
The thin one snorts, and he mocks the other, dropping his voice to match the other’s, “ Oh .”
The two of them—Jaehwan had noticed long ago that the other, the Hulk, was just as confused as he was—watch as the thin one hops down from his spot, walking to stand in front of Jaehwan and staring at him in silence, dark eyes pinned on his face.
As if under a trance, Jaehwan feels like he’s watching the scene unfold from a different place, from a different time, maybe, watching as his own body stays unmoving and the stranger comes closer to him.
Jaehwan doesn’t move an inch when the stranger lifts a hand, mind not processing that he’s reaching for Jaehwan’s face , and he doesn’t flinch or fight back when the stranger takes off his mask.
The stranger’s touch is familiar, too familiar, really, and in this odd way, Jaehwan finds it inexplicably comforting—as if he knows it, as if he recognizes it.
Jaehwan closes his eyes and sucks in a harsh breath when his face is bared, no longer protected under his mask, and his hands shake from the rush of adrenaline that flows through his veins like electricity—it’s thrilling, Jaehwan thinks, the feeling of this , whatever this is.
He holds his breath for a moment, grounding himself, and he opens his eyes.
“Kim Jaehwan?” The stranger lowers his voice, tone soothing and infinitely more gentle, a hint of something in the rises and dips of his voice, something almost nostalgic, so different from what it sounded like seconds ago, and Jaehwan would probably have thought about it for a long time if he wasn’t suffocating, breaths cut short by shock.
How does he know his name?
Jaehwan stares into the other’s eyes, drawn by something so familiar in the pools of dark brown.
Does he know this man?
The man’s hand drops from Jaehwan’s face and the black cloth of Jaehwan’s mask falls to the cold pavement. “Jaehwan, is that you?”
Jaehwan tenses.
He knows that voice.
He knows those eyes.
(“I’m Ong Seongwu!” the kid laughs, bright eyed and grinning like a fool as he holds out a lollipop to Jaehwan. “Can we be friends?”)
Something falls into place and Jaehwan breathes out a quiet mumble of: “Seongwu hyung?”
The one to his right drops his hand, gun hanging by his thighs.
Jaehwan tears his eyes away from Seongwu to stare at the other, at the softness around his eyes, and something clicks.
(“I moved from Busan yesterday,” the chubby kid smiles, and Jaehwan thinks that he’s a bit like the sun, round and bright. “My mom said you’re the same age as me!”)
“Euigeonie?”
And so nature turns on its head and the universe changes his fate.
Jaehwan has always had a knack for jinxing himself.
/
The world has an odd way of bringing people together.
Back together is what Jaehwan’s mind reminds him.
It was them against the world at one point, years ago, and then it was really them against the world—the friendship of 3 boys against the laws of nature and the forces of the universe.
And now, it’s the 3 of them against gang codes and the food chain of Seoul’s drug circle.
(“Did something happen tonight?” Sungwoon asks as Jaehwan walks through the door, a questioning, suspicious look in his eyes. “Why are you so late?”
Jaehwan looks Sungwoon in the eye, and for the first time since he’s known the older man, Jaehwan lies to him, “No. I just stopped by a convenience store for some ramen.”)
As it turns out, Seongwu and Euigeon— Daniel —found each other again years before they found Jaehwan, back in Daniel’s first year of university, and the world continued to spin, slowly and without wavering, and in the odd way that things play out, Daniel started selling drugs (“I was a broke college student! Sue me!”), and with him came Seongwu.
(“It’s not fair, really. I started this, but Seongwu hyung is the boss.” Daniel complains, a teasing glimmer in his eyes as he crosses his arms over his chest, hanging off of the couch as Jaehwan and Seongwu eat breakfast. “Why can’t I be the kingpin?”
Seongwu hums, and he grins at Daniel over the rim of his glass, “You’re too nice to be the big, bad mafia boss.”
“Yeah, right. You can’t fool us, hyung.” Daniel rolls his eyes, laughter falling from his lips as easily as anything, “Jaehwan and I both know that you have sunshine and rainbows coming from your ass. You’re hardly dangerous.”)
But sometimes, it’s as though they’re children again, innocent and free spirited. Sometimes it’s like they’re back to the times when they could run around the pond behind Seongwu’s house and sleep in a tent in the middle of Jaehwan’s living room.
And that scares Jaehwan more than anything.
/
It takes time to learn about Seongwu and Daniel again; it takes a lot of it, really, and patience too, to learn that Seongwu doesn’t like Oreos anymore, to learn that Daniel changed his name because it was hard for others to pronounce, to learn that things aren’t the same as they used to be, to learn that it’s okay that things are different.
Jaehwan is different too, after all. Seongwu and Daniel know it too.
But it doesn’t take Jaehwan long to learn the most important change of all.
Jaehwan drops the bomb on a rainy Tuesday night.
He’s in a hospital room, hands folded in his lap as he ignores the rigid plastic of the room’s single chair.
Daniel—what looks like Daniel, but isn’t. Daniel can’t sit still for long, but the body on the hospital bed hasn’t moved for hours—rests on the bed, hooked up to monitors and an IV drip, eyes closed and lips chapped and pale.
At one point, the blanket covering Daniel’s body slips, and Jaehwan thinks he’s going to be sick.
A big bandage wraps around Daniel’s ribs, and a splotch of red sinks through the pristine white.
(“Jaehwan?” comes a broken mumble, and Jaehwan’s blood runs cold. Seongwu’s voice shakes on the other side of the line, and Jaehwan stands up, running to the door and ignoring Taehyun’s look of curiosity. “Nielie’s in the hospital. I-I think someone stabbed him? I don’t know, but can you come? Please?”
“I’m coming.” is what Jaehwan promises, and he stays on the line with Seongwu until he finds him in a ball at the glass doors of the operation room.)
Seongwu sits on the edge of the bed, a hoodie Jaehwan recognizes as Daniel’s drowning his body, and he holds onto Daniel’s hand like a lifeline, pressing a kiss to the back of his hand and simply watching him.
“You love him, don’t you?”
Jaehwan knows that Seongwu likes his privacy, and he knows that this is a question that Seongwu wouldn’t just answer if a stranger asked, but he also knows that he and Seongwu are different—Jaehwan knows that to Seongwu, he’s a lot more than just a stranger.
Seongwu doesn’t turn around, but Jaehwan doesn’t miss the way his hold on Daniel’s hand tightens by just a fraction.
“Yeah.” Seongwu nods, and his voice is barely above a whisper, almost lost in the beeping of the monitors, but Jaehwan hears him loud and clear. Seongwu is sure about it, about loving Daniel, Jaehwan can hear it in his voice, the confidence, and Jaehwan smiles at the sound of it. “I do.”
Jaehwan’s eyes wander from Seongwu to the rise and fall of Daniel’s heart monitor.
He hums, “He loves you too, you know.”
And Jaehwan learned this too. It was one of the first things he learned, maybe.
It’s in the way Daniel looks at Seongwu, the adoration in his eyes, the happy tilt of his smile, and Jaehwan almost laughs at how absolutely smitten Daniel is for Seongwu.
If he’s sure about one thing, it’s that Seongwu loves Daniel, and Daniel loves Seongwu—and maybe, if he allows himself to acknowledge it, Jaehwan is sure that he loves the both of them.
(And maybe, if he thought about it for just a moment longer, maybe he’d allow himself to wonder if they love him too).
“I know.” Seongwu turns to look at Jaehwan now, and there’s this glimmer of happiness in his eyes, along with a kind of hesitance that makes Jaehwan’s smile falter just the slightest. Seongwu continues to hold Daniel’s hand in his lap, thumb tracing lazy circles into the back of his hand, and Jaehwan follows the motions with his eyes.
“I have known for a long time. Maybe before he himself figured it out.” Seongwu glances back at the youngest, and he snorts, face lighting up as he mumbles more to himself than to Jaehwan, “He’s like an open book.”
Jaehwan grins, “He is.”
“I’m going to confess after he wakes up, I think.”
A feeling of pride pools in the bottom of Jaehwan’s stomach, and maybe he shouldn’t be as happy as he is, maybe he should be more selfish, but Jaehwan is happy for them, truly.
Jaehwan doesn’t bother to say anything, but he knows his smile conveys his message just fine, if Seongwu’s blinding smile is anything to go by.
The room falls silent after that, the two of them simply existing in each other’s company, counting Daniel’s breaths and silently praying for him to wake up soon.
“I think he loves you too, Jaehwan ah.”
Jaehwan’s heart slams to a stop.
He coughs, “Really?”
“Yeah.” Seongwu smiles, grin soft around the edges and it holds Jaehwan captive, suffocating him in its intimacy. Something about the way Seongwu smiles at him—something about how its warmth and radiance makes Jaehwan fall just a little more—makes Jaehwan’s head spin. “I know him, and I know he does.”
Seongwu doesn’t say it, but something in his eyes makes Jaehwan’s heart race, and for one split second, Jaehwan allows himself to read in between the lines.
Questions hang in the air, words are left unsaid, and the both of them fall silent, but Jaehwan knows that Seongwu talks with his eyes, and he understands it like he understands that the world works in odd ways.
I think I love you too.
/
Daniel wakes after 2 days, and the first thing he sees is Seongwu with a big bouquet of flowers in his hands.
“Um,” Seongwu looks back at Jaehwan with a grimace, a big fat cry of help in his eyes, and Jaehwan holds back his laughter, mouthing ‘you can do it’. Seongwu clears his throat and holds the flowers in Daniel’s face, “I hope you’re not allergic to roses.”
Daniel laughs, loud and goofy, and the sound warms Jaehwan from the core of his heart to the tips of his fingers.
“So you’re finally confessing to me, huh?”
Seongwu rolls his eyes, but the smile that plays on his lips is blinding, “One of us had to grow a pair. It just happened to be me.”
From his place on the same rigid chair, Jaehwan smiles at the scene, “And that is why Seongwu is the boss and you aren’t.”
/
It takes some practice, but the 3 of them manage to fit in Daniel’s bed, legs tangled and hearts racing as one.
Daniel got out of the hospital a month ago, and Seongwu forced the younger to move in with him, and Jaehwan introduced the both of them to his friends in the morning
(Sungwoon looks from Jaehwan, to Seongwu, to Daniel, and back to Jaehwan, finger accusatory as he squints at Jaehwan, “So what you’re saying is that you have not one, but two hot boyfriends.”
“They’re not my boyfriends.”
Daniel snorts, “Yet.”)
“So,” Daniel starts, carding a hand through Jaehwan’s hair. “This is a thing now?”
“If you want it to be.” is what Jaehwan mumbles, eyes falling closed, Seongwu’s voice soothing him to a slow, heavy sleep.
“I do.” is the last thing that Jaehwan catches before he slips under.
/
It was always Seongwu, Daniel, and Jaehwan—always joking around together, always laughing together, always winning together, always losing together—, and maybe, if the world is kind to them, it will always be Seongwu, Daniel, and Jaehwan.
“Friends until the end” was what they pinky swore to each other under the shining of the summer sun.
Jaehwan thinks that maybe, the end isn’t an end at all.
Sometimes it’s an and.
“I will love you for a long, long time” is what they say to each other under the winking of the stars—it’s not a promise, for promises always find a way to be broken, but it’s something, and for now, that is enough.
(Jaehwan smiles at Seongwu and Daniel, “Pinky swear on it.”)