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There’s this thing about Haknyeon that Sunwoo can’t quite explain.
Sometimes he thinks it’s his smile. Effortlessly pretty, easily endearing. Just perfect white teeth and lips that you would find described in old poetry written centuries ago. Sunwoo has tried to describe it himself a few times, but it all felt too cheesy, too cheap.
All he can say for sure is that Haknyeon’s smile is often in his mind, between one lost thought and the next.
But it’s not his smile. The thing that Sunwoo wishes he could put into words.
It’s something else. He thinks about it constantly these days, daydreams and observes and finds that he knows enough words to fill a dictionary, probably, but nothing that fits.
“You’re doing it again,” Haknyeon says. He’s smiling with his lips and with his eyes. “Staring.”
Sunwoo looks away, laughing at his own embarrassment at being caught.
“I’m tired,” he says, as if that’s any excuse.
He has missed half the scene unfolding on the screen now. He tries to get back into the episode, even though he knows he’s long past caring about any of the characters at this point.
How can he care about these fictionalized people when he can tell, with the corner of his eyes, that Haknyeon is still looking at him?
“Now you’re doing it,” he says. Unable to stop the grin on his face, unable to detach himself from this parallel universe they have found themselves in.
He knows it’s a combination of the late hour, the drawn curtains, and that one beer, this thinking that this is anything but real. This is as close to painfully real as it gets, and yet.
Sunwoo thinks he may have stumbled on his own version of paradise on his road to hell.
“You have a nice face,” Haknyeon says, knowing too well which buttons to push with him.
And as Sunwoo tries not to smile too hard, tries to play it cool, pretend like the inane dialogue on TV is much more interesting than Haknyeon reading him like a worn out book, he still can’t figure it out.
What it is about Haknyeon that makes him so easy to love.
The crazy thing is, Sunwoo notes with wonder, they haven’t known each other for three full months.
Time is a weirdly malleable thing these days. It stretches on and on until Sunwoo thinks there are no ends to weeks, no passing of time, no changing of seasons. It’s in part the fact that he’s locked inside, getting acquainted with his new apartment in a way he didn’t allow himself to for the first six months there.
But it’s also the fact that the world seems to have come to a standstill. Things have slowed down, there are no weekends anymore, no reason to come into work when he can work just fine from the paradoxical comfort of his own room.
Weeks are starting to lose meaning, but that doesn’t explain how easy it was to let Haknyeon into his life.
They meet on a Thursday, with Sunwoo sitting on the cold floor of the hallway, back against his door. Haknyeon walks out of his apartment, the one right next to Sunwoo’s, and gives him a surprised but warm hello that Sunwoo imagines must come with a warm smile behind the mask, if the smile in his eyes is anything to go by.
Until then, Sunwoo hadn’t met any of his neighbors. A born and raised apartment kid, that doesn’t feel odd to him. Never talking to his neighbors is what he considers the norm.
Ju Haknyeon, from apartment 312, seems to think otherwise.
“Locked out?”
Sunwoo nods. He has pushed his mask up and over his nose again when Haknyeon opened the door, so he knows there’s no point in giving the stranger a polite smile. He has to use words for that.
“Yeah, left my keys in my friend’s car. He’s bringing it over.”
And Sunwoo doesn’t need to say anything else. Haknyeon sees him, sees the phone in his hand, probably reads too much in Sunwoo’s eyes for a complete stranger, and slips back into his apartment. When he comes back, he hands Sunwoo a portable battery.
“Sorry, I need to be somewhere, otherwise I’d invite you in…”
“It’s fine,” Sunwoo says, a little surprised at the sudden gesture. “Don’t worry.”
Haknyeon smiles again, with his eyes, and bows his head politely on his way to the elevators, leaving Sunwoo to stare at the small rectangle in wonder. He asks himself if Haknyeon somehow knew he had 8% battery left or if that was just a happy coincidence born out of kindness.
Thoughtfulness. That’s one of the things Sunwoo has learned about Haknyeon.
It’s in the way he asks for Sunwoo’s name when Sunwoo knocks on his door the next day to return the battery. The way he enunciates his own name—Haknyeon—perfectly, because, he explains, he knows people tend to trip on the pronunciation sometimes.
It’s in the way he makes sure to tell Sunwoo he’s glad they’re neighbors, because now more than ever he appreciates having a friendly face around.
“Or half a face, anyway,” Sunwoo quips back before he can think better of it.
The laugh he gets out of Haknyeon makes him wonder what his smile looks like underneath the mask.
Niceness may have become sort of an empty concept, used way too many times to cover for the not-so-nice underneath the coat of false pleasantries, but Sunwoo can’t help but think that Haknyeon is, in the most truthful sense of the word, a nice person. He knew that from the moment he handed him that portable battery, but every moment after that seems to only prove his first impression right.
Haknyeon makes him wish nice was still a good enough compliment, an accurate way to describe people who have thoughtfulness as a default setting, like Haknyeon himself.
haknyeon apt 312:
hey neighbor!
i’m going on a grocery run
need anything? :)
sunwoo:
i don’t think so… but thank you!
that came out super dry
sorry
i just don’t cook a whole lot, so
haknyeon apt 312:
how do you eat
don’t tell me.....
sunwoo:
delivery..
haknyeon apt 312:
you live off delivery???
man that’s sad
can i invite you over for dinner
sunwoo:
you can
but don’t feel obliged to?
i swear i’m not starving myself
haknyeon apt 312:
might as well if you’re living off mcdonalds!!!
sunwoo:
more of a burger king guy actually
haknyeon apt 312:
better BUT NOT ENOUGH!!
8pm tomorrow
you free?
sunwoo:
yeah
haknyeon apt 312:
it’s a date then
not really
but there will be food!!
REAL food
Haknyeon’s apartment is almost an exact replica of his, except for the balcony that only corner units get in this building. The similarities end with the floor plan, however. Haknyeon’s furniture actually matches in color for the most part, and there’s far more personality in the framed posters and packed bookshelves than the mostly empty space Sunwoo calls an apartment.
He has grown fond of the place in the months since that first dinner. Not that it’s hard to, when Haknyeon seems to have the whole living alone for the first time thing completely figured out.
“My sister helped a lot,” Haknyeon explains that first night, between bites, when Sunwoo points it out. “My older sister, I mean. She moved out first so she knows a thing or two.”
“Does she also cook like this?”
“She knows her way around the kitchen, yeah,” Haknyeon grins. “Why? Want her number?”
“I have yours, I’m good,” Sunwoo says, distracted stacking things on his lettuce wrap.
Haknyeon laughs, loud and bright, but it’s not until much later that Sunwoo realizes how that must’ve sounded. He’s not embarrassed by it, nor does he regret his choice of words. If he’s a little too honest around Haknyeon, he could always blame it on loneliness brought on by a weird period in time. Not that he wants to.
No, it’s just easy to be honest around Haknyeon in particular, for reasons Sunwoo can’t begin to explain.
Seems like there’s quite many things he can’t explain when it comes to Haknyeon.
That occurs to him again when Haknyeon rests his head on his shoulder, done with the teasing. Sunwoo’s heart takes a leap in his chest, the kind that makes him hyper aware of his breathing.
He tries to focus on the TV, he really does. It’s a fun drama, this one. He’s heard nothing but stellar things about it, and all of his friends seem to be into it.
Still, he glances down at Haknyeon. Watches his face, the curve of his lashes, the bridge of his nose.
When Haknyeon looks up at him, Sunwoo’s heart takes another traitorous leap.
Maybe it’s his eyes.
Haknyeon’s eyes were the first thing about him that Sunwoo noticed because they were the only part of his face he could really see. But he imagines that would’ve been the case anyway, had things been any different.
They’re big, inquisitive. Whatever emotion Haknyeon is showing will overflow from his eyes first. It’s pretty obvious when he’s excited about something, more so when he’s worried.
And you’d think they wouldn’t have many opportunities to see each other worried the first few times they share a meal, and the subsequent moments they end up sharing together, but Haknyeon doesn’t seem interested in putting on a face. So Sunwoo allows him the same courtesy.
“I like your eyes,” Haknyeon says one day, out of nowhere.
Sunwoo pauses, hands also pausing mid-air. He has been gesticulating all through his explanation of what he thinks the plot actually is for the game they have paused on his PS4.
“What?”
“Your eyes,” Haknyeon repeats, resting his head on a hand, leaning against the couch. “You have nice eyes.”
“Thanks,” Sunwoo says on autopilot. “You too.”
Haknyeon chuckles. “You don’t have to say it back.”
“I know. But I mean it.” Sunwoo scrambles for the right words, ends up spilling too much. “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Haknyeon’s bright smile could easily break the glass around Sunwoo’s heart in case of emergency.
“Ok, Shakespeare, now back to the game. What were you saying about the map again?”
It’s hard to believe he hasn’t known Haknyeon all his life.
They couldn’t have. They went to school in different cities, they had different hobbies as teens, and nothing about their jobs now would have put them in the same room together.
Sunwoo doesn’t like to think of this other reality in which he wouldn’t have met Haknyeon. It feels wrong, now. To imagine going all his life without hearing Haknyeon explain in minute detail how his childhood dream was to be a spy because the James Bond films left that much of an impact on him.
“If I told you I’ve only seen one of those, how offended would you be?”
Sunwoo laughs when Haknyeon’s mouth forms a perfect O in shock. He ropes Sunwoo into a month-long weekly marathon of Bond films, which is how they start spending more time together aside from the occasional lunch and dinner.
The films are fun, Sunwoo is surprised to find, even though he’s usually more focused on the romance plot than whatever spy thing is going on. Haknyeon schools him on all the different Bonds, the Bond girls, and how he can’t wait to see where the franchise goes next. Sunwoo pays back for all the invaluable knowledge (Haknyeon’s words) by buying them dinner and letting Haknyeon make him laugh the hardest he’s laughed in months.
It’s a different kind of night than Sunwoo was used to pre-end of the world, but he doesn’t mind. At all, really.
It’s comfortable. So much so that after a month of their movie nights, Haknyeon’s place feels more like home than Sunwoo’s own apartment. He knows it’s not just the fact that company right now is a luxury; it’s Haknyeon himself, and the way he walked into his life and made a place in Sunwoo’s heart so quickly it feels as if he has always been there.
Sunwoo doesn’t like to use the word destiny unless he’s absolutely sure he means it. But he thinks he might, soon enough.
“What are you thinking about?”
Haknyeon is still looking up at him, watching his face with curious eyes.
Sunwoo wonders if he can see it in his eyes, too.
“A lot of things,” he says at first. Then, “You.”
The episode is still happening, but somewhere far away, irrelevant and inconsequential now. Sunwoo’s heart is beating so hard against his ribcage, he has to make a concentrated effort to keep his breathing even.
Especially when Haknyeon’s glaze flickers down to his lips briefly.
The first to say hello, the first to show kindness, the first to reach out, the first to draw Sunwoo out of his shell, Haknyeon is also the first to lean in.
It’s kissing him, while a million different things run through his mind at once and then nothing but how soft Haknyeon’s lips are, that Sunwoo realizes he has been wrong this whole time.
That something he couldn’t name—it’s not just one thing. Haknyeon’s everything makes him the easiest person to love that Sunwoo has ever met. It’s his soul, his laugh, his eyes, his voice, his unapologetic devotion to everything he loves that makes him who he is.
It’s a combination that is impossible to replicate, Sunwoo thinks to himself, cupping Haknyeon’s face and smiling before he can stop himself, an euphoric kind of joy taking over him with the realization that there’s just one Haknyeon in the world, and he’s right there, kissing Sunwoo with the same purpose he shows in everything he puts his mind to.
“I do need to write a review of this episode, you know,” Haknyeon says after a moment, laughing when Sunwoo makes this small, indignant noise. He lets Haknyeon’s laugh reverberate inside of him, filling every nook and cranny until Sunwoo imagines himself lighting up from inside out.
“Can it wait?”
“Yeah,” Haknyeon says, so sweet that when Sunwoo pulls back enough to meet his eyes, he finds a similar kind of euphoria in them alongside obvious, unmistakable fondness. “Yeah, I think everything else can wait right now.”