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(if you want to be loved,)
Haknyeon never liked picking favorites.
He didn’t like choosing between his favorite things. It wasn’t an outright dislike. He just didn’t understand why he had to choose, to begin with. Why he couldn’t just lay his claim over the things he liked and have it be enough.
Like in Year 6, when Mr Kim asked them to pick a favorite color for the crayon they would have to use for their color-themed drawing that week. Haknyeon hesitated for so long, he ended up going with orange just because it was the one that had the most pieces left, the other kids flocking to pink, blue, and red instantly. He liked orange. But he also liked pink, and green, and purple. It was really not fair to say orange was his favorite, but it wasn’t wrong, either. It was incomplete information, that’s all.
He ended up doing many other works in orange. It was easier than arguing with himself and with others about what color he really liked best.
In Year 11, he was asked about a best friend. The mousy girl who asked this wasn’t someone he was close with—she was in Mrs Yeo class—, but when you’re a kid, everyone is a friend. So Haknyeon explained, as self-assured as most 11 year-olds are, that he didn’t have one. Mousy Girl looked confused. How can you not have one? Everyone has a best friend, she said. Haknyeon shook his head. Every friend was his best friend. It would be really unfair of him to pick just one.
That was not far from the truth. He had friends, many of them, in more than just his class. He knew he had an easy time making friends, and he liked to make himself as approachable as possible to the kids who weren’t as socially inclined as he was, too, so he could puff his chest out and say that everyone was his friend.
He didn’t have one best friend because he had dozens of them. Or at least, that’s how it looked like in his head.
That changed somewhat in Year 13.
Sunwoo was a kid with big eyes and an even bigger head. They first met during physical education class, when they were out in the soccer field and Haknyeon took a football to the head in Year 7.
He wasn’t the best goalkeeper in the world, Haknyeon decided as he flopped ungraciously onto the grass and felt the world off its axis for a very scary second. It lasted only a second because soon the kid who had sent the ball in his direction was there, helping him up and apologizing with tearful, terrified eyes.
Haknyeon assured him he was fine. Miss Ahn still asked him to see the nurse, just to be sure, and Sunwoo asked to accompany him. From there on, they forged a friendship that wasn’t much different from Haknyeon’s other friendships, even if they didn’t really have many chances to see each other aside from their shared period of physical education.
Maybe that was why Haknyeon never saw it coming. He wasn’t there to see Sunwoo’s anger most of the time, and when word of it did reach him, he was hard-pressed to believe it.
Sunwoo was gentle, and kind, and his favorite thing in the world was to go outside and find a ladybug and concoct its life story, something Haknyeon found really sweet even if he didn’t understand why a ladybug would ever have an office job.
But by Year 13 Sunwoo was gone. Transferred, their teachers would say, to another school. What school? The kids would ask, wide-eyed. The only name they had ever learned was Hanlim, after all, their home and the only place that ever seemed to really exist despite the places they learned about in the books. The teachers refused to say which school Sunwoo had been transferred to, repeating only that it was a place that would help him be his best self and achieve greater results.
That had been a shock to many. Hanlim was supposed to be that place, wasn’t it? Haknyeon himself didn’t understand, so he asked people from Sunwoo’s class, from his dorm floor, anyone who could answer his questions. He eventually found Sunwoo’s roommate, who explained after a bit of coaxing and convincing, through tearful eyes and a running nose, that Sunwoo had a terrible incident. He had been angry one day to find his cherished music tape gone, and had trashed their room in response. Youngjae hadn’t seen him since, and then the next day his things were gone, and that was it.
It didn’t make sense. Not just the fact that Haknyeon couldn’t imagine why that would warrant a transfer to another school (Hanlim was the best school! They could certainly help him more than any other place in the world!), but because he couldn’t understand why Sunwoo would behave like that. What would make someone so angry they would destroy their own belongings? No one did that. No kid in Hanlim did that. It was unheard of, and weird, and Haknyeon couldn’t quite believe that Sunwoo had been the one to do something like that. Haknyeon knew him. He was his friend. It was incredibly unsettling to imagine that someone he trusted so much could hide such a destructive force inside of him.
It also felt awful.
Haknyeon didn’t know how he could have prevented that, but at the same time he blamed himself for not doing something. Would it have made a difference if he had been around more? Could he have helped Sunwoo find his music tape? Should he have asked if Sunwoo wanted to talk more, instead of letting their friendship be an on-and-off thing that came and went depending on their chance encounters?
Because of that, Year 13 changed him.
And that, in turn, changed the course of his life because that was when he got closer to Younghoon.
Younghoon was a quiet kid.
He usually sat in the back, by the window, and kept his desk neat. He didn’t talk in class unless asked to. Haknyeon knew that because they had been in a few classes together over the years. In Year 13, they shared two periods: World Geography and Painting.
Maybe because he was so quiet, so gentle, hurrying to help whenever Miss Jung needed to fix the world map to the tall blackboard and walking back to his desk in silence, it was easy to not think about him much. At least for Haknyeon it was: Younghoon was a classmate, a friend!, but he wasn’t one of the loudest kids and therefore he wasn’t always in the forefront of his mind.
But Year 13 was different. Haknyeon was paying attention now, to everything and everyone. He couldn’t help himself.
He first noticed Younghoon holding back tears around the last week of spring.
The room was getting warmer each passing day, and they had started turning on the ceiling fans during classes, but they couldn’t do that during Painting, otherwise the thick sheets of watercolor paper would fly all over and make a mess of their hard work. So the windows were wide open, the birds chirping outside noisily as the students worked on their assignments.
For most of class, Haknyeon focused on his painting. He wasn’t sure if he liked his interpretation of the fruits and vegetables theme Miss Jung had given them, his pear looking a little wonky, but it would have to suffice for now. He wasn’t sure if he could make a passionfruit look like a passionfruit, anyway.
But when he looked around, curious to peek at what his friends were doing and starting to sweat from hunching over his desk, he caught sight of Younghoon, frowning down at his paper, chewing on the tip of his paintbrush. He didn’t look happy—that was Haknyeon’s first, and most concerning, impression.
Haknyeon couldn’t see the top of his desk from where he was, but still he watched as Younghoon chewed and chewed and chewed, visibly frustrated. He put down the brush after a couple of minutes and lowered his head, hair covering his face. One hand came up to brush at his eyes and Haknyeon’s stomach dropped as he realized Younghoon was upset, likely crying.
Haknyeon didn’t know what to do, so he did nothing. After all, he didn’t want to worsen things. He definitely didn’t want to make a fuss about it and draw any unwanted attention to Younghoon, hidden from curious eyes in the last row, all the way back.
When class was over, Younghoon quietly collected his things and left. Haknyeon thought about approaching him, but he still felt apprehensive about it; he really didn’t want to ambush someone like that, asking questions that probably wouldn’t help.
So he waited.
Younghoon seemed fine outside of Painting class. Haknyeon kept an eye on him during meals, and whenever he spotted him, Younghoon seemed to be doing ok, hanging out with the same two kids from his year. He looked bored during the two periods of World Geography they had together that week, but fine otherwise.
Then came Painting class again.
Haknyeon knew what to expect, but he was still anguished to see Younghoon visibly holding back tears and staring down at his sketchbook, lips jutting out in a pout. Haknyeon’s own assignment wasn’t his best work this time. He was too distracted, too worried to focus on his still life.
But by the end of class, he had made a decision. He walked over to Younghoon’s desk, well aware that most of their peers were still around, and put on his most friendly smile.
“Hi.”
Younghoon, still gathering his things, looked up at him with curious, big (and still a little red around the corners) eyes.
“Hi.”
“What are you doing now?”
The boy hesitated for a second. “I was going to read for a bit before dinnertime…”
“Cool. Can I join you?”
Younghoon nodded. He didn’t seem to think it was too weird. Or if he did, he didn’t let it show. He let Haknyeon accompany him to the garden on the east wing, where he claimed to have found the best reading spot for late afternoon hours. As he read his book, Haknyeon fished a book out of his own backpack, and sat next to him to read, too, or at least try to.
Truth be told, Haknyeon preferred to read in bed, or at least when he was alone and didn’t have anyone to talk to. But for the first of what would be many times, he found Younghoon’s quiet presence surprisingly comforting. It let him relax and not think for a moment, focused on his book. He didn’t mind the long stretch of silence as they took advantage of the last rays of sunlight, or the way Younghoon didn’t try to fill the silence with conversation, as Haknyeon, a conversationalist at heart, usually would.
And when conversation did happen, as they headed to dinner together, Haknyeon was happy to see Younghoon was open to it. He wasn’t as shy as Haknyeon had thought him to be, and his laugh rang high and clear when Haknyeon made a joke at the table where they sat with Younghoon’s friends.
Befriending Younghoon, then, proved to be much easier than Haknyeon’s anxious heart thought it would be. At 13, Haknyeon was just happy that his decision to approach him had proven to be the right one; he was proud of himself for finding Younghoon in the first place, a new friend that would have mostly been in the background had Haknyeon not been paying attention, and content with the new friendship he was sure they would be forging from then on.
He couldn’t have known then how important that friendship would prove to be a few years down the road.
The reason for Younghoon’s distress during Painting class, Haknyeon would learn the following days, was his own ineptitude for it.
“I just don’t know how to do it,” Younghoon told him one day. “I can’t make art like everyone else. Nothing I make is any good.”
“I don’t think art is supposed to be good, though,” Haknyeon said. Younghoon widened his eyes in surprise. “That’s not the point of it. Art is just supposed to make you feel good. Everything else is consequence.”
Younghoon didn’t argue with that.
Change wasn’t always a noticeable thing at Hanlim.
That wasn’t the case for most things. When routine was so clear-cut, and when you saw the same faces over and over again, day after day, you could pick up on things easily. Like when a classmate had a different haircut, or when Mr Yeo got new reading glasses.
But at the same time, routine could make you not notice the subtlest of changes.
Like the fact that Haknyeon found a best friend, despite claiming for so long that he could not choose one out of all of his friends.
It didn’t really register on him that Younghoon had become a permanent fixture in his life. They usually met for dinner, regardless of whether they had classes together that day or not, and they created an habit out of spending weekends together, too, listening to Haknyeon’s tiny radio in his room and fantasizing about the world they could not see from his window or lazing about outside, under the shade of the big oak tree where Younghoon liked to read his infinite collection of books.
It wasn’t until Year 14, after one of Younghoon’s bad days in Painting class, as they sat in the dark listening to one of the unnamed songs coming out of Haknyeon’s radio, that Younghoon said the words that would surprise Haknyeon more than anything had so far.
“Thank you for being my best friend, Hak.”
Younghoon was a sweet guy who laughed harder than anyone else at Haknyeon’s jokes. It wasn’t hard to like him, to begin with, but more than that, Haknyeon wasn’t wrong that first day about how comforting his presence could be. Knowing he had someone like Younghoon by his side—someone reliable, more patient than most, and always willing to listen—made Haknyeon feel like he was the one who had lucked out, after all. He had been willing to be that person to Younghoon in the first place but he couldn’t have imagined Younghoon would come to mean so much to him, too.
Haknyeon wondered how that had happened.
Then he decided that it didn’t matter.
“Thank you for being mine, hyung.”
They first heard about completion from Chanhee, a guy from Haknyeon’s year and someone Younghoon seemed to have an unlimited amount of affection for.
“She actually cried,” Chanhee told them, a haunted look in his eyes, head resting on Younghoon’s shoulder. “She kept going on and on about it, about how unfair it was that we would ‘complete’ so soon.”
“I can’t imagine Ms Seo crying,” Haknyeon said.
He couldn’t. She taught math, and for those in Year 17 she taught Budgeting & Expenses too, and she always seemed to have a smile on her face. Haknyeon couldn’t picture her crying, much less in class, of all places. No teacher ever cried at Hanlim.
No teacher did anything but smile, and encourage them, and tell them to open their books to page so-and-so.
“She must’ve been really sad,” Younghoon offered. “Did she explain what she meant by that?”
Younghoon was looking down at him, but Chanhee couldn’t see his face from his position. So he met Haknyeon’s eyes when he said (eerily, hauntingly), “Changmin thinks it means death. Completion means death.”
Ms Seo never mentioned her episode or the word “completion” again, and whenever someone tried to bring it up, the teachers would change topics and not address it in any way or form. Soon it was old news, and most people seemed to forget about it.
But not Chanhee.
Haknyeon had just begun Year 16 when he found himself hugging an inconsolable Younghoon to his chest, who couldn’t stop crying long enough to explain what had happened. It wasn’t until minutes later when he finally explained, through the tears, that Chanhee, by then his boyfriend, had left.
“What do you mean, ‘left’?”
“He ran away,” Younghoon explained in the lowest of voices, almost as if afraid someone could be listening. “Last night. He tried to convince me to go with them but I said I was scared, and I couldn’t just—I couldn’t just l-leave… Hak, I couldn’t—”
He started sobbing again, and Haknyeon hugged him tighter, feeling his heart break with the way Younghoon was shaking in his arms.
“I can’t just leave, this is—” Younghoon pulled back to look Haknyeon in the eyes, despair written in every tear, every wet eyelash. “What would we even do outside? What is out there? I don’t think we really—But I should’ve gone with them because what if they get caught? What if they get caught and they get punished for it? We don’t know what’s gonna happen to—to them…”
His voice broke again. And Haknyeon’s heart broke again as well, realizing this was his worst fear come to life. Younghoon, incoherent through the tears, crying harder than Haknyeon had ever seen him do.
Their friendship had started from Haknyeon wanting to help him stop the quiet tears rolling down his cheeks at the back of class, years ago. Now, as he wiped Younghoon’s cheeks and kissed his forehead, he thought about favorites again, and about Younghoon’s smile, and how much he would give to see it back.
“They won’t get caught,” he said, hoping with all his heart that it wasn’t a lie. “They will be fine. If there’s anyone that can do this, it’s Chanhee.”
Younghoon watched his face, big watery eyes searching for something Haknyeon wasn’t sure he would find. Haknyeon felt scared, too, because running away from Hanlim just didn’t seem possible. It felt absurd, a dangerous fantasy with a dark twist at the end, but he had to have hope. If not for his friends—because he knew that by them Younghoon must’ve meant Chanhee and Changmin—then at least for Youngoon, because the thought of Chanhee coming into harm’s way was too much for him to bear.
They were teetering on the edge of something, and they could feel it.
“They’ll be fine,” Haknyeon repeated, then added, “We’ll be fine. I promise you.”
Promises had weight, but Haknyeon meant every word.
Younghoon moved to the Cottages first, one year before Haknyeon.
It was weird, particularly after the Chanhee incident. Younghoon had been a little less bright-eyed, a lot more withdrawn after Chanhee left, which was understandable. They talked a lot about it, wondering in low voices when they knew it was just the two of them where Chanhee and Changmin might be. If they had jobs, if they had cars. If they would ever see them again.
None of the other students knew anything about it. They knew two students from Year 16 were gone, but when asked about it, the teachers treated it as a transfer to a different school. Much like when Haknyeon had lost his friend in Year 13, the excuse was the same: Chanhee and Changmin were at a different school now, where they couldbe their best selves and achieve greater results.
It was odd, but to Haknyeon, who remembered very clearly the same words being used so many years ago, it felt ominous, too.
Hanlim could be many great things, but it wasn’t an honest place.
So when Younghoon left for the Cottages as he reached Year 18, they agreed they would do everything to meet again. There was no way to know where the Cottages were, because that wasn’t public knowledge, but they would find a way. They came up with detailed plans to find each other on particular dates at specific places if they ended up being sent to different locations. There was no guarantee any of those plans would work, and sometimes Haknyeon thought them silly, but having them was as reassuring as anything could be at that point.
It wasn’t the same without Younghoon, but Haknyeon did his best to enjoy his last year at Hanlim as much as he could. His friends, the ones who didn’t seem to worry too much about the future, or completion, or whether or not the place they called home had their best interest at heart, were ecstatic to be moving on to a new phase of their lives. Haknyeon tried to do the same, tried to find the same enthusiasm within himself, despite the nagging suspicion that he could never be that happily clueless again.
Once you see something, it’s really hard not to see it again, he realized. You can’t just close your eyes.
Still, he tried to make the best of it. He found a loud and rambunctious friend in Youngjae, the guy who used to room with Sunwoo back in the day, and was happy to hang out with Dayoung and her friends on the weekends he felt too tired to do much else.
But when Year 18 finally came and Haknyeon looked over his shoulder one last time at the place he had called home for his entire life, he found he wasn’t sad to leave it behind.
Haknyeon didn’t need to follow any of their emergency plans, because when he and his group were dropped off at the Cottages, Younghoon was there.
He greeted Haknyeon with a hug so tight that Haknyeon had to let go of his backpack to hug him back. Younghoon smelled different—something sweeter, his hair with a bit more shine, his cheeks fuller. He looked good, healthier than he had been at Hanlim. When Haknyeon pointed that out, he laughed and said that they cooked their own food with the things they grew there, which made everything taste much better, in his opinion.
The Cottages, Haknyeon would come to learn, were for all intents and purposes, a farm with several small cottages where they were grouped as they saw fit. It was freedom of a kind he had never seen before. They were free to eat, bathe, sleep whenever they wanted, which was a stark contrast to Hanlim’s rigid schedules.
Younghoon showed him around, smiling so wide that Haknyeon forgot for a moment all about his fears. He let Younghoon introduce him to the animals in the farm, voice pitching high with excitement. Haknyeon had missed him so much, he found himself smiling just as wide, petting a horse with awe and finding the same awe reflected in Younghoon’s eyes.
“Jacob didn’t come here,” Younghoon explained later, sitting in his bed, as Haknyeon unpacked his bag on the bed next to his.
They would share the same room, which felt right. Younghoon had talked his previous roommate into changing to a different room so Haknyeon could move in.
“I haven’t seen him since my last day at Hanlim,” he continued. “But Jaehyun is here too! He went into town today, though, you probably didn’t see him. And Sangyeon hyung is here too, do you remember him? He was in Gunmin hyung’s year.”
“I do... But wait, go back, you said Jaehyun hyung went ‘into town’?”
Younghoon nodded. He noticed the surprise in Haknyeon’s face. “We’re free to go to the next town over if we’d like.”
That was unexpected. “We can go anywhere?”
“No one has suggested going anywhere else but into town ever since I got here.” Younghoon said, cautiously. “The older kids are the only ones who can drive the truck, anyway. The town is where we buy supplies, and sometimes we catch a movie, too, if there’s anything new on.”
Haknyeon thought it over, chewing on his bottom lip. It felt almost too good to be true, that much freedom.
Before he could worry himself over it, however, Younghoon brought him back to the present with a soft, “I’m glad you’re here, Hak. I missed you a lot.”
Haknyeon smiled at him, certain of that one thing, if nothing else.
“I missed you too, hyung.”
Living at the Cottages was an experience much more rewarding than Haknyeon was expecting it to be.
The freedom was the biggest part of it. Going at his own pace, choosing to do things on his own, and having free periods of time to do whatever he pleased was new, and exciting, and something he didn’t think he could grow tired of.
With freedom came responsibility, of course. He had many more chores now, and the work on the farm could tire him out before the sun was even down, but he welcomed that part, too. For the first time, he actually felt like the grown-ups in the books he read as a kid, even if he still felt nothing like the teachers at Hanlim for some reason. He looked more and more like them, spoke like them, but he wasn’t them. And he knew that.
He had a feeling all of the students living at the Cottages knew that about themselves, too.
Going into town for grocery runs never grew boring, either. The townsfolk were not the most friendly, but as soon as Haknyeon learned that, he chose to ignore it. He did his best to be polite and smile at everyone he came across, even if it wasn’t reciprocated. It was enough to be able to be among them, experiencing what living in a community was supposed to be like. The town was small, but that didn’t matter, either—it was larger than Hanlim, so it was larger than anything Haknyeon had ever seen.
He grew to love the farm and the animals, while Younghoon took a liking to cooking and driving, asking the older kids to teach him in their spare time. It felt, at times, like this was it. This was their life, and Haknyeon felt a pang to his chest whenever he reminded himself—because he did it, constantly, despite his better judgement—that this wasn’t gonna last. They would run out of time, eventually, and leave the Cottages to make space for the kids who would be arriving soon, and that would be it.
It was a depressing thought, but one he couldn’t shake off no matter how hard he tried. And he did try.
Alcohol was another thing in Haknyeon’s ever-growing list of new experiences. It tasted awful and it threw him into a coughing fit that burned him up all the way to his nose the first time he tried it, but he eventually grew to enjoy it, if anything for the sporadic nights of mindless fun it gave him.
Most of the kids didn’t drink, and the ones who did took it easy, more often than not because they weren’t used to it. Younghoon himself was a light drinker who always had one beer and called it quits, while Haknyeon could handle a couple more but got insufferably louder with each bottle, so his usual self-imposed limit was also one single beer.
One night, as they walked back from the main house still holding onto their beers, Haknyeon spotted someone sitting alone on the back of the truck parked by the barn. The sky was cloudless enough that the moonlight shone bright on Sangyeon’s lone figure, drinking from a bottle of something clear and definitely stronger than what they were having.
Haknyeon stopped Younghoon with a hand to his wrist, pulling him in the direction of the truck. Sangyeon didn’t seem bothered to have been caught drinking by himself in the dark. He looked worried, eyes vacant and a little moist. He nodded when Haknyeon asked if they could sit with him.
“Hyung?” Younghoon called gently after they had sat down. “What happened?”
Sangyeon smiled, a sad little thing that looked nothing like his usual beautiful, kind smile.
“It’s… stupid, really. I’m being stupid. A friend of mine completed,” he said, then chuckled. “He was here until last year, so I thought he would have more time than that... He should’ve had, at least.”
He took a swig of his drink as Haknyeon met Younghoon’s eyes. It was the first time someone spoke of completion in years, and the first time someone seemed to know exactly what they meant, too.
“Hyung… What does that word mean, exactly?”
Sangyeon stared at Haknyeon with a frown. He looked drunker than Haknyeon had thought at first, even though there were no empty bottles next to him.
“You really don’t know?”
“We know it means he died,” Younghoon said, voice barely above a whisper.
“Mm. I guess you wouldn’t know. I didn’t hear about it until I left, uhm...” Sangyeon trailed off, staring into the distance as if lost in thought.
“Hanlim,” Haknyeon finished for him.
Sangyeon nodded. “Yeah. They don’t tell us the whole truth.”
“Which is?” Haknyeon pushed, curiosity and fear mixed into one in the pit of his stomach. “Hyung, what’s the truth?”
The night got quieter for a second as the wind whooshed against their ears. He felt nervous waiting as Sangyeon licked his lips, still staring into the distance as if they weren’t even there.
His voice came out hollow, lifeless as he said, “We're not the real deal, Haknyeonie. The original thing. We're the copies. And we'll serve our purpose, donating, and donating, and donating, until we—” A deep breath. “Until we're too broken to be fixed anymore. Until we complete.”
Haknyeon felt his stomach tie into knots, anxiety coiling inside of him to the point where he feared he would get nauseous. He could tell where Sangyeon was going with it, maybe because he had already been suspecting it for a long time.
So when Younghoon asked him to explain, Haknyeon knew what was coming.
In a dizzying, horrifying moment of clarity, he knew exactly what the truth was.
“Do you think it hurts?”
Younghoon was wrapped around Haknyeon’s torso, breath tickling the side of his neck. They were in Haknyeon’s bed, long past the time they usually went to sleep.
The day had been a busy one, at least for Haknyeon, who woke up early to work at the barn. He liked coming to the end of a busy day like this; with how sore his limbs felt, he knew he had accomplished a lot. The work itself was rewarding because he enjoyed being around the animals, but the sense of pride he felt at night was a bonus, for sure.
It also helped him not think about what they had learned. Their fate. (What a stupid word.) Their nature. (Was it even natural, to be the copy of a living thing?) Their purpose. (Not that different from the one of a piggy bank.)
Younghoon, who wasn’t so keen on farm work, had more time to worry.
“What part?” Haknyeon asked.
“Completing.”
His voice was small, muffled against Haknyeon. He sounded young again, like when he would come out of Painting class still rubbing at his eyes, speaking through a pout that he swore wasn’t there.
It shouldn’t be happening again. Haknyeon had been so sure that once they were out of Hanlim things would get easier that it was weird to think they were back to where they started, harboring fears and insecurities much larger than themselves.
“I don’t think so,” he said. He was carding his fingers through Younghoon’s hair, watching the moonlight bounce off the dark strands. “We shouldn’t think about that.”
“What else is there to think about?”
“Life,” Haknyeon said. “The present. And the future. That can’t be our only choice.”
“But it is.”
“It’s not. It can’t be, hyung. We’ll figure something out.”
Younghoon’s arms grew tighter around him. Haknyeon’s heart grew tight, too, in his chest, when he thought about how unfair it was to get here only to learn they weren’t going anywhere else.
All the places he had read about in books, all the experiences, everything was so out of Haknyeon's reach, it might as well not exist.
(Haknyeon and Younghoon themselves might as well not exist, too.)
Haknyeon thought of the songs he was constantly listening to on his radio, of his dreams to experience those songs one day at a concert, in a sea of beating hearts.
It felt wrong that they would be denied a life. Painfully so.
“Look at me,” he said. When Younghoon pulled back to look up at him, Haknyeon wiped at the corner of his eyes, staring right into them as he said, “I promised we’d be fine. And we will be. Ok? We’ll figure it out.”
Younghoon nodded, but didn’t say anything. Haknyeon couldn’t tell if he believed him.
Haknyeon couldn’t tell if he believed himself, either.
In the uncertainty that followed their every move, it only made sense that they would always go back to each other for solid ground.
Haknyeon knew that for most of the other kids at the farm, it looked like they were an item. They were usually together when they weren’t working, and it was evident they didn’t need much more than each other’s company to be entertained.
Ever since moving in, Haknyeon had noticed the couples, because of course he had. Some of them acted as if being together meant they were somehow more mature, more knowledgeable about life than the ones who remained single. And while there were plenty of opportunities to experience love and sex at the Cottages, that didn’t mean any of them really knew what they were doing, or what any of it meant.
All Haknyeon knew was that getting into a relationship wasn’t going to help in the long run, especially when they didn’t know where they were going to be sent to after the farm. They could be sent anywhere, and then how would being in love with someone help?
And yet.
The first time he kissed Younghoon, they had both had something to drink.
It was late at night. They could hear some of the kids still singing and being loud around the bonfire outside, but Haknyeon had somehow, inexplicably, desperately found his way into Younghoon’s arms that night.
The bonfire was part of the goodbye party for the kids who would be leaving the next day, Sangyeon included. It was meant to symbolize a new year; the start of Haknyeon’s second year and Younghoon’s last year at the Cottages.
They were worried about it. They didn’t need to talk about it because one look at Younghoon’s face told him everything he needed to know—Younghoon was thinking about them, and where they would be one year from now, when it would be Younghoon saying goodbye instead of Sangyeon.
It felt like finally releasing something that had been locked away far too long behind the crushing walls of his fears. Haknyeon kissed Younghoon and felt breathless when his gentle, always gentle fingers touched his face; his hair smelled of strawberry shampoo, his lips tasted like beer.
Haknyeon knew Younghoon, and Younghoon knew him. They didn’t need to explain themselves, rationalize this. Haknyeon could see it in Younghoon’s eyes, just the same as he imagined Younghoon could see it in his. They needed each other. Now, more than ever.
Now, before it turned into never.
Days turned into weeks that turned into months.
Haknyeon never stopped thinking about it. Obsessing about it, really. What could they do? What were their choices? As much as Younghoon had a point when he said that they didn’t really have any other choices—because they didn’t, not if they stayed there—Haknyeon refused to accept it.
There was something they could do. It had been done before, after all.
The stakes were high, and Haknyeon didn’t know what would be the price if they screwed it up. He had no way to know because they just never heard of the people who went away ever again. He couldn’t even say for sure that Chanhee was alive, but he had to hope he was. Even if no one had heard of him again after he ran away, and even if Haknyeon couldn’t find his name in all the dozens, hundreds of papers and phone books he looked through, no matter how hard he tried to find a clue, a lead, anything, he had to have hope.
He had nothing but hope at this point, and his gut telling him to keep going.
Miraculously, it worked. Hope found him wearing sunglasses and a tourist hat.
“Excuse me, could you help me find the northern exit? I can’t figure out this map...”
Haknyeon had been going through the paper he had just bought outside the drugstore, eyes skimming through the ads even though he knew he would pour into it with care once he got back home. Yuna and Eunbi were still in the drugstore, though, so he didn’t have anything else to do while he waited for them.
He looked up at the stranger, ready to apologize because he didn’t know the roads all that well, but the words got caught in his throat once he met Changmin’s eyes behind the sunglasses.
“Look at the map, act like you don’t know me,” Changmin whispered, barely moving his lips. He showed Haknyeon the map, speaking up again, “We’re here, right? Or did I get this wrong? Because I need to go north, you see, I’m trying to get to Gimcheon, and so I want to take the highway—”
Only Haknyeon’s sheer force of will made him register the words. His heart was hammering against his ribcage, blood pumping loud against his ears as he processed the fact that Changmin was alive. And there.
Changmin was there, right next to him, alive and well.
“Yeah,” Haknyeon pointed at the map, like he knew what he was talking about. “That’s—That’s right, we’re here. That’s us.”
Before he had even finished talking, Changmin was whispering again. “Nine o’clock, the shack by the lakeshore south of here.” Then his voice came out louder, “Oh, thanks man! I think I got it now. Thanks a lot.”
He was gone before Haknyeon could understand what had just happened, still holding the paper open in front of him. His lips felt dry, heart still speaking thunder into his ribs.
Yuna and Eunbi came out of the drugstore not a minute later, climbing into the truck as Haknyeon tried his best not to look like he had just seen a ghost.
“Are you sure it was him?”
Younghoon had asked him that already, but Haknyeon didn’t mind repeating himself. It sounded ludicrous even to his own ears.
“Yes. I’m sure. What time is it?”
Younghoon glanced at his wristwatch, angling it so he could see the hands in the semi-darkness. “We still have ten minutes.”
They had made good time from the farm to the lake, their anxious legs taking them there much faster than they had anticipated. Haknyeon could see the shack even before they had left the line of the trees, a decrypt-looking thing that had seen better days maybe decades before.
He was about to leave the line of trees and step into the shoreline when Younghoon held his wrist. Haknyeon looked back at him, at his scared eyes.
“What if it’s a trap?”
“It’s Changmin.”
“I know. I know, but—” Younghoon took a shuddering breath. “We can’t know for sure.”
“You don’t think we can trust him?”
Younghoon looked so anguished hearing those words. He shook his head. “I—I don’t know. I trust him, the Changmin I knew. But what if they did something to him? What if he’s not there anymore, what if—”
“Hyung,” Haknyeon took his hand and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Don’t go there. Don’t start with the what-ifs. We have to trust him.”
They couldn’t afford the luxury of overthinking this. Younghoon seemed to understand that, because he nodded, minutely, and let Haknyeon lead him out of the trees and towards the shack.
As soon as they were close enough to see the dark interior of the construction, a figure stepped out of the shadows behind it, startling them. Haknyeon stepped in front of Younghoon on instinct just as Younghoon grabbed his wrist to pull him closer, but a familiar voice said, “It’s alright, it’s just me.”
Changmin didn’t look much different than when he was 16 and still at Hanlim. His eyes were still big and alert, his figure still lithe. His lips curved into a familiar smile, too.
“It’s been a while, hyung.”
“Is that really you?” Younghoon said, in awe.
Changmin’s smile grew bigger, and he welcomed Younghoon’s hug with open arms.
They couldn’t stay for long, Changmin explained. It was already too risky talking like this, in the open; they couldn’t know for certain that they hadn’t been followed. Still, he explained in hushed whispers and as straight to the point as he could, he was there to help them escape. He said that even if they weren’t thinking of it, that he would beg them if he had to. He had promised Chanhee as much.
“Where is he?” Haknyeon asked, scared of the answer.
“He’s fine, don’t worry,” Changmin said. “He’s somewhere safe. We had some trouble last year... He’s lying low for now, because we can’t risk him being tracked again.”
Again. The word sent a shiver down Haknyeon’s spine.
“But he made me promise I’d convince you this time,” he said, looking them in the eye to emphasize just how much he meant it. “Both of you. You can’t stay. Younghoon hyung, Haknyeonie, you can’t. Not if you want to live.”
“We know,” Younghoon told him. “We want out.”
He looked at Haknyeon, who nodded, swallowing dry. “We do. We weren’t sure if it’d work, but we were willing to try, anyway.”
“You didn’t know if Chanhee and I had made it out alive,” Changmin concluded from his words. Haknyeon nodded again. “We did. And you will, too. I’ll make sure of that.”
The plan seemed to hinge too much on chance, but they didn’t have any other choice.
Changmin told them to carry it out on the second morning after that encounter. He wouldn’t see them—he would leave beforehand, avoid attracting any more attention than he already had as an outsider. If things worked out, they would meet again in a different city, outside the county lines.
That morning, as they woke up before sunrise and grabbed their backpacks with everything they would need for the two-day trip and nothing else, Haknyeon kissed Younghoon’s frown away.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. A promise. The same one he had been carrying in his heart for years now.
Younghoon’s smile was hopeful, if a little worried. “We will.”
The trek south was long and tiring, and by the time they reached the point Changmin had instructed them to wait at, Haknyeon’s calves were aching and the sun had started to peek from behind the mountains. They didn’t talk much, but that was a good thing.
Haknyeon was reminded of the very first time they hung out together and Haknyeon found he didn’t dislike the silence as much as he thought he would. The peace of mind that it brought him now was not only welcomed, but very much needed.
The truck came down the road around 11, just as Changmin had promised it would. It slowed down enough that Haknyeon and Younghoon could climb into the back, helping each other up and sitting down between boxes and crates that smelled like rotten vegetables but that would conceal them from curious eyes.
They were in the truck for the good part of three hours. When the vehicle finally stopped, they waited until the driver had gotten out and slammed the door shut before they risked climbing out. It was another long trek down a side dirt road before they would reach the second meeting point, but the adrenaline coursing through their veins didn’t let them worry about their numb legs for long.
Another truck, another two or so hours of unpaved roads and one highway, then finally, the town where Changmin promised to meet them. By then, Haknyeon felt exhausted, but they couldn’t stop. Younghoon offered to carry his bag, and Haknyeon let him, even though he knew Younghoon must've been tired, too.
Just a little longer, he kept telling himself.
“Just a bit more,” Younghoon said, as if reading his mind.
The meeting place was an abandoned train station a walk away from the road. The overgrown weed and the image of something long forgotten gave the construction a strange, creepy feeling to it, but Haknyeon didn’t let it get to his head. He followed Younghoon to a corner where they could sit hidden from the sun, groaning in relief as they got off their feet.
“How long?”
Younghoon checked his watch. “It’s just past 5. He said he’d come after sundown.”
“That could be any time,” Haknyeon said.
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall behind him. Just for a while, he told himself. Just a little rest, and then he’d go right back to looking over his shoulder and making sure they weren’t being followed, or watched, or—
His eyes snapped open as he heard rustling to their left. His hand flew to his bag to pull out the knife he had taken from the kitchen at the Cottages.
A dog walked out of the bushes, tongue lolling out and tail wiggling.
Younghoon, with a clear smile in his voice, said, “It’s just a puppy.”
“It could’ve been something else,” Haknyeon defended himself weakly.
He put away the knife, not without catching Younghoon’s questioning eyes first.
“It’s a precaution.”
“I’m not judging,” Younghoon said.
As if to prove his point, he pulled something out of the breast pocket of his jacket: a pocket knife that he brandished with practiced ease, smirking.
“That’s Sangyeon hyung’s,” Haknyeon said, surprised.
“He gave me just before he left,” Younghoon explained. He gave it one last flick of his wrist before he closed it and hid it away again. “I think he knew I would need it.”
The dog made them company for the four hours it took Changmin to come. The sky had gone completely dark before they heard the truck trudging down the dirt road behind the station, headlights off.
“Sorry, it took longer than I was expecting,” Changmin explained as they piled up into the front seat.
He didn’t explain whose truck that was, and they didn’t ask.
Haknyeon felt every bone of his body ache with sheer exhaustion. They couldn’t muster the energy to ask Changmin where they were going, what was the next step in their journey. They just sat there, aware of Changmin’s tense shoulders as he drove them further and further south, keeping their eyes open for any and every vehicle that drove a bit too close to theirs.
Reaching Yeosu an hour later, they left the truck behind and boarded a ferry. Haknyeon didn’t know when he had done it, but he had taken Younghoon’s hand in his somewhere between the car and the ferry, and he was still holding it as they watched the ferry drive away from the mainland.
It was all he could do to focus on that one point of contact; on Younghoon’s fingers against his, the pad of his thumb rubbing circles on Haknyeon’s skin. That took all of his energy, and he let himself be lulled into the sense of security that came with having Younghoon there, by his side, holding onto him.
They might not be safe yet, but they were far, far away from Hanlim and everything it entailed. That counted for something.
The place Changmin took them to at last was small and hidden away from the main road by a thick line of trees. A two-story house, bland and nondescript, with the porch lights on. It was as secluded as they could have imagined something to be, and as Haknyeon helped Younghoon climb out of the truck—one that he figured must be Changmin’s this time—they heard the front door open behind them.
Chanhee looked taller. His hair was now a dirty brown instead of the black it used to be, and much curlier too, but he was still the same Chanhee they remembered. Haknyeon almost couldn’t believe his eyes.
“You made it,” he said, tiredness making him spill the first thing that came to his mind.
Chanhee reached them with a smile. “I did. And now you did, too.”
He couldn’t get another word out before Younghoon tackled him in a hug. Chanhee laughed, holding his ground despite the fact that Younghoon had probably thrown his entire weight on him.
Haknyeon felt odd, not having considered until now that what he was witnessing was the reunion of two people who had once been together and who had been driven apart by circumstance and nothing else. He knew that survival had been his priority until this point, his and Younghoon’s, but now he couldn’t help but worry and wonder where that would leave him. Where that would leave them.
But as Younghoon let Chanhee go, he turned around with a smile and extended a hand to him, and Haknyeon knew then that it was pointless to worry.
The future might be holding the unexpected for them now, full of choices that didn’t exist before, but it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be together through it all. Like they had always been.
Haknyeon hugged Chanhee, too, so relieved to see with his own two eyes that Chanhee not only had made it out of Hanlim so many years ago, but was still there, alive, and healthy, and in one piece, hugging him back.
Relief, gratitude, and exhaustion made for a strange combination. Haknyeon felt his eyes well up with tears as he saw Changmin approach them with both of their bags over his shoulders.
“Haknyeonie? What’s wrong?”
The dam just broke.
He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t have words to explain it. After holding it in for so long, trying to keep himself together, trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel, he was here.
They were both here.
“Hey,” Younghoon hugged him tight, let him sob against his shoulder, body sagging with relief. “It’s ok. We’re ok.”
For the first time, their roles were reversed. Younghoon was the one wiping his cheeks this time, his own eyes filling with tears that he didn’t try to hide. He never did anymore.
When Haknyeon could find his voice again, he said, “I promised we’d be fine, didn’t I?”
Younghoon smiled, as big as the sky above them. Then he pressed a soft, sweet kiss to his lips.
“Yes. Yes, you did, Hak.”
As usual, Haknyeon lost track of time around lunchtime.
He left his boots outside and stopped at the entryway for a moment, listening in for any signs of life. The house was quiet. “Hyung?”
“Downstairs!” Came Younghoon’s distant answer.
Haknyeon found him in the basement, which wasn’t a surprise. The darkroom door was ajar, but Younghoon was at the big table placed squarely in the center of the room, right under the main lightbulb. He walked over and leaned against Younghoon’s side, cheek to his shoulder, watching him arrange a stack of photos into an album, sliding each one carefully into the plastic sleeve.
“These are beautiful,” he noted.
They were. Younghoon was getting better with his camera, although Haknyeon couldn’t say he had ever been bad with it, really.
“Aren’t they?” Younghoon smiled, happy with the compliment and with himself. “How did your visit go?”
“They still haven’t found him,” Haknyeon said in a low voice. “They’ll try somewhere else, get more people on the job. Jacob hyung thinks he can help with that.”
Younghoon nodded, swallowed dry. Haknyeon could tell the news weren’t the ones he was expecting, and he knew why, too. They were all worried about the time it was taking them to track down some of their close friends from Hanlim, especially the ones who had left the Cottages already.
“They’ll find him,” Younghoon said after a second. “They always do.”
“True,” Haknyeon was the one nodding this time, rubbing his cheek against the soft cotton of Younghoon’s sweater. “When are you going to take pics of Ilse?”
That had the intended effect to steer the conversation away and make Younghoon laugh, “Not this again!”
“You took pictures of Youngjae.”
“Are you implying your horse is more important than Youngjae?”
“I’m not implying anything, I’m saying it,” Haknyeon smiled with the loud, high-pitched laugh he got out of Younghoon for that. “Seriously, just say the word and I’ll have him brushed and gorgeous and ready to go.”
“Ugh, fine,” Younghoon joked, all flair and drama, sliding the last of the pictures into the sleeve with as much care as the others. “Sometimes I think you want me to be jealous of the horses.”
And usually, Haknyeon would’ve played along. He would’ve made a joke, made Younghoon laugh again. But the not-so-good news had taken a toll on him, too. It was hard to ignore the fact that they were lucky to be here, alive, still holding onto each other despite the ever-growing fear that any day now the circle would close in on them, on their friends, on all they had achieved in the year since their new beginning.
“Don’t worry,” Haknyeon said, in the present. He looked up, met Younghoon’s eyes. “You’re my favorite.”
Younghoon could hear it in his voice, and probably see it in his eyes as well. He leaned in, pressing a soft, loving, understanding kiss to his lips, “That sounds important.”
“That’s because it is.”
Picking favorites, Haknyeon thought, didn’t feel like a silly, childish thing anymore. Now, it felt like acknowledging what was essential to him—crucial, really—despite everything else.
Now, it felt like survival.
(then love.)