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Winter has settled into everyone’s demeanors. Hyojin wakes to a pitch black room and comes back to the tiny city apartment he shares with four others when the sun has drained out of the sky. At night he dreams of home—four hours away by train where someone waits for him at the station, proud of him for living a dream he is unsure that he wants.
He keeps dancing.
When the sun comes up on his walk to work, he watches the city that is already awake breathe. He spends his early hours in a studio, pushing, bending, trying not to break, and then finds breakfast somewhere cheap. Yuto trails after him with bold reminders. “You can’t always live on bran flakes and black coffee, hyung.”
“Do you have someone you love?” Hyojin asks one day. The snow has blocked the streets, coated the cars in thick white. They sit at the counter of a diner, surrounded by other early risers trying to make the most out of their day. They don’t seem like the glass-half-full kind of people. He’s not thinking about Yuto—just the cost of a train ticket.
Yuto levels him with a stare, that ageless expression he wears that makes Hyojin feel like the kid is far older than him, knows far more than he ever will.
He’s strange, Hyojin decides, and he likes it. Talented in all sorts of things, unafraid as he maneuvers through his life his own way. He’s unique, but not the desperate kind.
“I left Japan when I was sixteen.”
Hyojin laughs, and Yuto cracks a smile along with it. It’s easy, they’re easy. There’s a common understanding between them that goes unsaid. They act as each other’s anchors—it’s hard when you drift alone in the city.
“What are you thinking about?”
“I want to go home.”
He caves and buys the ticket. Leaves his pointe shoes with Yuto and a promise that he’ll be back by Monday. The younger man just shakes his head.
“Don’t be late.”
Four hours.
He sleeps for two of them, bundled in his coat as his eyes slip shut to the scene of more snow in the trees. Another is spent reading a novel he had meant to finish eight months ago, abandoned to the rigid structure of the work week. Bran flakes and black coffee.
He orders something sweet.
The station is busy, it’s Thursday. All the letters he didn’t write are flooding to the front of his mind. Apologies, I miss you. His heart is beating in anticipation. He wants time to slow and speed up, where are you?
“Hyojin!”
He closes his eyes. Savors the last moments just a little longer before he’s smothered in those familiar arms.
Seungjun.
“There’s snow in your hair,” Hyojin murmurs, taking him in, but his heartbeat is erratic, electric, he’s here. Seungjun’s smile is wide, and his cheeks are so round as he cups them it makes Hyojin laugh, just a little. He kisses his forehead and closes his eyes.
“God. It’s been too long, I’m sorry.”
It’s okay, Seungjun says, because it always is. He’d love Yuto, would fawn over him the way he does over Minseok. Noisy and bright.
Hyojin laces their fingers together and feels the chill of the air through Seungjun’s palm. Tells him his dream isn’t what he thought it would be. Tells him his dream is really back home.