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The thing with childhood crushes and puppy love is that they are supposed to disappear by the time one gets lost amidst the whirlwind that is college, forever doomed to lay forgotten inside a rusty drawer right beside the fond memories of silly children's games and high school.
This truth, Choi Seungcheol once believed to be universal. Already well into his fourth year after graduation, he sometimes finds himself struggling to even remember what really happened during certain periods of time while he was still pursuing his Business degree at university. It goes without saying, then, that despite the way the mention of it still brings over a nostalgic feeling that makes his chest clench, school happened so long ago now that it has become a mostly blank space inside Seungcheol’s always busy mind.
As it is, Seungcheol’s brain has decided to wipe his memory clean from most of the bittersweet memories of that past for the sake of efficiency; and thus, he no longer has any vivid memories of the hundred games of tags he played with his friends in kindergarten, no longer remembers the overly dramatic feuds the different groups in his class had going between each other, and no longer bears any ill feeling towards the teachers that once threatened to make graduating high school a struggle.
But surprisingly, and against all the laws that rule over the universal—or so he once thought—experience that is maturing and growing up, it turns out Seungechol’s brain forgot to get rid of the cheesiest, fluffiest, most embarrassing and flustering part of his teen years: which is, undoubtedly, his six years long crush on Yoon Jeonghan.
It’s not like Jeonghan could have ever been easy to forget, though. Having spent the majority of his teen years stealing subtle glances at the one he considered to be the prettiest, most charming guy in the entire school, Seungcheol guesses he shouldn’t be surprised that he can still perfectly recall every single time his gaze met Jeonghan’s.
Indeed, the warm sunlight reflecting on his long, blond hair as it filtered through the window of their class during their last year of high school still warms Seungcheol’s dreams sometimes—for it is an imagery he spent one too many hours staring at from his own desk back then, mesmerized by the ethereal aura that seemed to surround the boy his closest friends would call an angel, awestruck by the gentleness with which the sunrays caressed his honey skin.
Apart from that one very specific image and all the fuzzy feelings that the sound of his name still brings to his chest, there are two other vivid memories that come to Seungcheol’s mind when he thinks about Jeonghan:
In the first one, Jeonghan’s almond-like eyes are shiny as he listens to the speech his best friend gives up on the stage on the night of their high school graduation. Standing right behind him by mere chance as he was, Seungcheol is able to witness the trail that Jeonghan’s tears leave on his cheeks when they fall, brimming with pride and emotion and a kind of nostalgia that cannot be explained but is instead only felt.
In this memory, Seungcheol is a mere spectator: he does not reach over to wipe Jeonghan’s face, he does not place his fingertips on the curve of his jaw to soothe him, he does not make himself known at all.
Instead, what Seungcheol does is wonder: if Jeonghan knows there is no one inside the hall that could ever dream of being half as beautiful when he cries as he is, if his own heart has any right to be breaking at the picture displayed right in front of him when he can count with the fingers of a hand the amount of times he and Jeonghan have actually spoken outside class, if this is what being in love with someone you can never touch feels like.
In Seungcheol’s second memory, also from that very same graduation night, things go a little differently.
There’s a game of truth of dare being played among a big group inside the ballroom where the party is being held, soft drinks sloshing inside paper cups and laughter echoing across the walls. There’s Jeonghan’s long, blond hair held up in a ponytail, and a soft pink gloss on his lips, and the curve of his jaw casting shadows under the dim lights of the room. There’s Seungcheol himself, standing in the circle surrounded by his friends once again perplexed by Jeonghan’s beauty, and there’s a dare thrown not at him but at Jeonghan that goes something along the lines of,
“Give a kiss on the lips to the hottest guy in here!”
In his memory, there’s Jeonghan’s fingers brushing the back of Seungcheol’s neck, and a nervous giggle being exhaled right in front of his face, and a soft mumble of, “Okay, here goes nothing.”
In his memory, there’s the strawberry sweet taste of Jeonghan’s lipstick as it meets Seungcheol’s mouth, and hands that still mid-air in confusion, and cherry red cheeks when they part and Jeonghan returns to his original spot in the circle just to go home not too late after that.
In his memory, Seungcheol thinks it might as well be his only chance, and makes up his mind to ask Jeonghan out on a date through text morning come.
It’s a shame he didn’t know, back then, that Jeonghan would never answer but instead move out of the country for college, and that their paths would most likely never cross again—angels and humans belonging to different realms, always one step too far from reach.
Indeed, and as he is perfectly aware of, Seungcheol’s brain has a funny way of dealing with his past. Some memories come and go, some others decide to stay and make his life a little harder, but overall time goes by just like it does for everyone—and so the clock keeps ticking, and Seungcheol ends up with a finance job at a tech company he is not yet sure how he managed to score, and the past remains past until one fateful day six months ago when he found himself wandering into the marketing side of the office to discuss a budget, only to come face to face with Yoon Jeonghan himself.
“Woah— Choi Seungcheol?” Jeonghan asked that day, and his eyebrows shot up into his now jet black fringe in surprise.
“I—” Seungcheol gaped, because there had been nothing else he could have really done, and felt like a complete and utter idiot as he babbled, “Yoon Jeonghan? Is it really you?”
And so, just like that, the past became present, and Seungcheol’s life took a spin that still has him feeling a little bit motion sick.
☁️
If there’s anything that Seungcheol does ceremoniously as a part of his daily routine, it is try.
What he tries to do, though, is not so clear anymore.
There are some days—Mondays, usually, when he sits down on his desk at the office feeling abnormally fresh after a weekend of fun and rest shared with his friends—where Seungcheol sets getting over his stupid, supposedly childish, past crush on Yoon Jeonghan as his goal for the week.
And really, Seungcheol does try to accomplish it.
He tries to convince himself that the way his heart flutters helplessly at the sight of Jeonghan’s smile when he arrives with a charmingly chirpy chant of “Good morning” comes from simple camaraderie and appreciation for the positive mood he brings into the office, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he’s spent an unhealthy amount of time wondering what being the reason behind that smile must feel like during the past few months.
Seungcheol tries, by means of pushing in his earbuds and immersing himself in borderline unhealthy loads of work, not to get distracted by the breathtaking picture that Jeonghan makes scribbling on a notebook sitting at his desk by the window, where the Sun filters in just like it used to in high school to highlight his now way more mature features.
He tries, in a desperate attempt at dismissing the magnitude of his feelings, to blame the office site’s manager for changing the layout and getting the Marketing team to sit right next to the Finance team’s island, for they make the area way louder than it was before—for it means that there’s no way Seungcheol can avoid listening to Jeonghan’s endless rants about nothing and everything at all, his captivating way with words allowing him to have the whole department and Seungcheol himself wrapped around his pinky finger.
And he tells himself, time after time again, that he and Jeonghan are close workmates at most, that high school happened a lifetime ago and is now something Jeonghan has forgotten, and that their relationship is not all that different from the one Jeonghan shares with the rest of the employees at the office—even though he’s never seen him hang around anyone else’s desk as much as he does around Seungcheol’s, even though they’ve started to spend their morning breaks sharing coffee alone in the staff room over the pretense of discussing company goals in conversations that often tend to stray towards more trivial, personal matters.
Seungcheol tries, both for the sake of his professional integrity as well as for that of his own mental health, to convince himself that what he is doing is simply holding onto a thread of the past to bring some excitement into his dull work routine, and that he’s no longer infatuated by Jeonghan—sweet, gentle, witty Jeonghan, who makes everyone laugh with his trickery and gasp with the sharpness of his mind.
So, really, Seungcheol does try.
But, ultimately, there is just so much a weak man like himself can take—and so, in come the days where Seungcheol finds himself chasing after a dream in which he, after years of distance and months of helpless pining, finally gets to seduce Jeonghan into going out on a date with him.
☁️
Seungcheol wishes he could say he’s not at fault for being unable to tear his eyes away from Jeonghan when he laughs.
It’s something he’s been trying to do ever since fate led them to cross paths once again six months ago now, managing to stop his head from turning every time he hears one of Jeonghan’s signature chuckles echoing across the walls of the office. But Jeonghan’s laughter mirrors a siren’s song in the way it wraps around Seungcheol’s brain and makes him feel all fuzzy, erasing all and every coherent thought from his mind and leaving behind something that can only be described as pure adoration.
It’s a truth Seungcheol can no longer deny—how no one ever has made him feel the way Jeonghan does when he flashes one of his cheeky, captivating smiles towards him whenever he inevitably catches him staring in the close distance. The sight ignites a warmth that spreads from the center of his chest towards his limbs and ends up stealing his breath away, brighter than the Sun itself and gentler than the touch of an angel could ever dream to be.
Seungcheol sometimes feels dumb for the thoughts that cross his mind on days like these, when the prospect of getting over his obvious crush on Yoon Jeonghan sounds so far-fetched that even pretending like he’s trying feels stupid enough for him to give up.
On days like these, when the sound of Jeonghan’s voice has his mind succumbing to the hopeless desires of his lovesick heart, Seungcheol finds himself wishing for Jeonghan’s happiness over everything else—finds himself wondering if there will ever come a day when Seungcheol himself can proudly say he’s the one ensuring that Jeonghan only knows kindness and gentleness, when he can admit to being the reason behind the slope of his smile.
And it’s on days like these, too, that Seungcheol finds himself getting over the paralysis the fear for rejection tends to spread all over his body just to sit by Jeonghan at his desk to discuss projects that could have easily been solved through email—that Seungcheol feels overcome by bravery as he keeps dropping the name of new cafés and restaurants in town in hopes that Jeonghan will take the hint and go out with him.
He’s yet to succeed in his quest, though, for Jeonghan never seems to grasp the true extent of Seungcheol’s intentions.
Indeed, all that Jeonghan does in times like those is flash one of his irresistible, precious smiles that seem to hide a hint of shyness, and change the topic back to the original in a way that has Seungcheol wondering if there’s something he’s done wrong—that has him thinking whether there’s something he can do to get Jeonghan to look at him the same way he did on their high school graduation night, when he taught Seungcheol what his mouth tastes like and ignited a thirsty kind of fire inside his soul that Seungcheol, eight years away from then, is yet to quench.
A voice that sounds suspiciously like his best friend’s echoes inside Seungcheol’s head with a tale that goes something along the lines of, “It’s not really worth it, you really need to move on and score an actual date before stress gets you bald”. But Seungcheol—proud, dedicated, unconsciously greedy Seungcheol—, after being given a second chance by destiny itself with the one he would say was his, albeit unrequited, first love, is not going to give up without firing his last shot. Not when he’s discovered, by means of trial and error, that it’s simply not possible for him to get over Jeonghan, for there’s no one in the world that Seungcheol can compare to him.
☁️
If he were to take every single step that has led up to this very moment, Seungcheol would say that he’s the only one to blame for the way in which, today, he ends up finding himself standing right in front of Jeonghan’s desk, feeling absolutely dumbstruck as he tries to find his way around with words when Jeonghan keeps laughing and sending all of Seungcheol’s common sense flying out the window.
“Okay, Jeonghan, I totally get your point but,” Seungcheol manages to say, exasperated at the way Jeonghan seems to refuse to just listen when he needs him to the most, “what I’m saying is that allocating that much budget to that project is going to require an argument a little bit more convincing than ‘Please, Cheollie?’! That’s all!”
Jeonghan’s lips, alluringly pink from the chapstick he keeps reapplying without a care for what the gesture does to Seungcheol’s sanity, jut out in a way that has no right being as cute as it is.
“But I think that’s a pretty solid argument,” he actually pouts, and Seungcheol fears himself to be three seconds away from cardiac arrest, “Aren’t you the one with the final say in stuff like this? Who else would I have to ask for this little favor?”
“You know I don’t have a final say in anything, I just—” A deep sigh escapes from the depths of Seungcheol’s chest, and he thinks to himself that, if Jeonghan wasn’t Jeonghan, he would have already flipped him off. “Look, why don’t you just try to, I don’t know— Give me a more specific, accurate report on the potential expenses? That way I could—”
“And if I gave you that report over dinner at the restaurant you mentioned yesterday?” Jeonghan cuts him off suddenly, big, round, almond eyes sweeter than honey when they stare up at Seungcheol from where he sits, “Would that be convincing enough?”
To say Seungcheol’s brain short-circuits would be an understatement.
The moment those seemingly innocent, harmless words leave Jeonghan’s pink-stained mouth, Seungcheol’s hands become clammy where he’d had them hovering in mid-air, white noise ringing in his ears as he tries to take in the meaning behind them.
Because sure, he’s actually been subtly trying to get Jeonghan to go out with him for weeks on end now, and it is true that he did put special emphasis on how badly he wants to try the new Italian restaurant two blocks down from the office when he was having coffee with Jeonghan yesterday—but like this, completely unprompted and so smoothly integrated into a professional conversation, Seungcheol finds himself being hit by the certainty that Jeonghan does not mean it, at least not in the way Seungcheol wants him to.
In fact, he is so convinced that Jeonghan cannot actually have said what he’s just said, that Seungcheol refuses to take the offer seriously.
“Jeonghan,” he tries to sound serious, this time round, his heart feeling heavy behind the walls of his ribcage, “C’mon, don’t—”
“No, seriously,” Jeonghan insists, his voice lower than Seungcheol has ever heard it before, and when Seungcheol manages to finally redirect his gaze towards Jeonghan’s face, he notices that there’s a faint red blush tinting the bridge of his nose as he speaks, “Let’s meet downstairs at seven? If you’d like?”
And if the sound of Jeonghan’s laughter rivals the song of a siren, the sight of him blushing is enough to rival that of any paintings hanging on the walls of a museum. His cheeks flush the slightest of pinks when Seungcheol allows his eyes to take in the look Jeonghan is giving him, and when he blinks, his eyelashes kiss over them so featherly that Seungcheol is nothing but envious of them.
And really, Seungcheol has spent the last six months trying, because angels and humans belong to different realms no matter how badly he wants to be granted divine absolution—but when their eyes finally meet, all that he sees behind Jeonghan’s perfectly carved confident façade is honesty disguised as cheekiness, and a sort of want that he rarely allows to show past the walls of his craft.
So there’s no use, Seungcheol will realize when he thinks back to this exact moment later, in trying to stop his mouth from asking,
“Are you serious about that? Would you like to?”, painfully honest in the way his heart is punching out beats against his chest—
—Because all that Jeonghan has to do is smile, show Seungcheol that confident, charming, perfect smile of his, to have him crumpling at his every wish; and when Jeonghan answers with a wink and a teasing, and yet incredibly vulnerable,
“I think I owe you a date after all this time, don’t I?”,
Seungcheol knows that he’s always been doomed, for there is one universal truth that not even he will ever be able to deny: that no one has ever made him feel the way Jeonghan does when he smiles, and that for him, there’s no one in the world who compares to the fire Yoon Jeonghan awakens inside his soul.