Work Text:
Eunwoo stared blankly at the screen of his phone. He has been scrolling up and down on something, precisely a gallery full of photos. They are photos of him and...Jinwoo, his ex.
How did he end up looking at old memories that's almost a year old? Well, somehow he just found out his phone has a feature that automatically compiles pictures in his gallery into some albums, and an album particularly stick out the most;
"Memories"
It's filled with his selfies with Jinwoo, a lot of which are selfies before they dated. Eunwoo has thousands of photos and selcas in his gallery, so guess some of the old photos got buried and he didn't bother to search and delete the old photos he has with Jinwoo. Now he kinda regretted that he didn't.
One particular photo was different from the others, it was actually a photo of Jinwoo with Moonbin instead. His heart suddenly drops a beat when he remembers about this photo. Yes, that's the photo where he saw Jinwoo for the first time, and fell in love at first sight. Moonbin sent him a selca trying to tell him that he's currently busy with his dancing school, and Jinwoo was coincidentally next to him when he took it.
It wasn't hard to beg Moonbin to set him up with Jinwoo. He remembered how the boy looked at him with a big gasp and widened eyes, then shook Moonbin while whispering loudly "You were serious about hanging out with THAT Eunwoo!?" and suddenly fixed his hair and tidied up his outfit. He remembered how adorably awkward he was.
At first Eunwoo only wanted to be friends with him, he was being careful and all obviously since they're both guys and he wants to know more about Jinwoo first.
Well, his hunch was right. Jinwoo was the cutest and sweetest boy he had ever met. Eunwoo loved how kind and caring he actually is, his hamster smile that always makes him smile too, and Eunwoo loved it the most when he saw Jinwoo being speechless and a stuttering mess when Eunwoo confessed to him.
Jinwoo was the perfect boyfriend Eunwoo has always been wishing for. How he was really understanding, how he would always listen to his problems and support him, how his presence was always comforting…
How could he hurt such an angel?
He now remembered a painful memory he had tried to bury deep in the darkness. A day where suddenly Moonbin chatted him with a link to a news site with a caption "I think you guys should be more careful".
Inside the link was an article about speculations that Eunwoo has an affair with a man. Eunwoo's heart suddenly dropped, along with his glass of coffee that shattered to the ground.
It was a relief that they didn't mention anything about Jinwoo, and when he searched the rumour, he didn't find any other news site mentioning it. Though, it is a fact that the photo in that site was indeed him with Jinwoo.
It might just be a senseless article, people might not believe it that much, but it still scared him a lot. He absolutely doesn't want anything to happen to Jinwoo. It might just be one article for now but what if there would be more? What if there would be people tracking down Jinwoo and ruin his life? He should not let this happen again.
"Hyung, sorry, but we need to stop meeting each other"
"Why?"
"I don't want to put in you in danger"
Though, now that he thinks about it, maybe it's also just his ego of how he doesn't want to lose his rising popularity and career as a model.
"Please Dongmin, we can work this out. If we're careful they will just think that we're best friends"
"Hyung, you don't understand, if we keep this up I'm scared of what might happen to you"
Maybe Jinwoo was right.
"If this is all for my sake, then you shouldn't be this paranoid. They don't even know who I am and it was just a single news article with a blurry photo"
He didn't break up for Jinwoo's sake, it was for his own sake.
"Dongmin, I know you treasure your career a lot, but please… "
"I'm sorry… "
Ah, now he remembered the face Jinwoo made that time. He looked down and bit his lower lips, he tried to hold down his tears but to no avail, the tears still escaped and rolled down his cheeks when he looked up at him.
"Fine, I understand, let's break up then"
Jinwoo's voice cracked and hiccups started right afterwards. Eunwoo reached out his hands to wipe his tears but Jinwoo weakly slapped his hand away and left his house with a slam on the door.
That was the last time Eunwoo ever saw Jinwoo again.
Eunwoo snapped out from his train of thoughts when he saw a drop of water on his phone screen. He blinked and more tears fell out of his eyelids. He doesn't bother to wipe them off and gripped harder on his phone while closing his eyes shut.
He miss Jinwoo. He really miss him. Piles of work just distracted him from the fact that he miss him a lot. He wants to meet him, but he's not sure if it's still possible since Moonbin said he quit dance school. His social media is not active anymore and Eunwoo isn't sure if the phone number is still active or not.
"I want to meet you, Jinwoo hyung"
Eunwoo dropped his body to the bed with a heavy sigh. He really loved Jinwoo, and letting go of that angel is the biggest regret he ever had.