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Taesan meets Leehan for the first time on a cold, autumn afternoon—mostly by accident, but maybe just the littlest bit by fate, too.
Taesan’s never been one to really believe in things like that, but he finds that it comes surprisingly easier with age. More than anything, it simply begins to become a little too burdensome to believe that any one person has the capacity to do everything all the time; it’s just much more freeing to believe that every once in a while, the universe will do its own work, too. That Taesan can walk freely down the busy streets of an unfamiliar neighborhood, and a good thing can happen to him even when he’s dead to the world—headphones in and service smile turned off—all because he happens to glance to his right at just the right time, the smoky scent of grilled food filling his nostrils and making him feel extra toasty underneath his university jacket.
His footsteps slow down as he approaches the little street food stand, smoke blowing forth in white-gray puffs, drawing attention even from in between all the stands selling fruit or seafood or warm pastries at one of the streets outside of Mangwon Market. Taesan’s stomach rumbles in anticipation as the scent of charcoal and oil and savory salt grows stronger—he hasn’t really eaten much beyond a sandwich for breakfast today—and so he lets himself be enticed by the prospect of hot food, walking towards the stall with curious eyes.
“Hello!” says the woman at the stall, glancing up and smiling at him briefly, before flipping the skewers on the grill with some tongs. There’s a boy sitting down next to her with similar features and wearing the same, navy blue apron, focused on something he’s drawing in what looks like a small sketchbook. The woman draws Taesan’s attention back when she asks, “What can I get for you? Fishcakes? Twigim? Tteokbokki? There’s lots to choose from.”
“Oh, um…” Taesan utters nervously, moving one side of his headphones from off of his ear when he realizes he can barely even hear himself. “I was just looking around.”
“Here, I’ll give you one of these for free!” she says, persistent, putting down her tongs to pick up what looks to be a piece of fried shrimp between her fingers, put it into a paper cup, drizzle a brownish sauce onto it with surprising control, and then hand it to Taesan with a kind smile. “It’s getting colder these days, you should be eating something hot.”
Taesan holds out both of his hands to accept the cup as it’s being offered to him, bowing shallowly as he does. “Oh, um… thank you, miss.”
“My name’s Hana, by the way,” she says, picking up her tongs again and turning away to poke around in one of the deep fryers. Taesan gets started on the food he’d been given, gingerly lifting the shrimp by the tail to bring it up high enough for him to take a bite out of—and Taesan is either just really fucking hungry, or the street food at this place is just unbelievably fucking delicious.
“You should get some more.”
Taesan turns toward the new voice abruptly when he hears it, low and melodic and coming from the boy sitting down in a chair with his sketchpad, who’s smiling up at him now, too. Taesan chuckles bashfully, “I’m thinking about it.”
“Hongik University?” Hana says when she turns back to look at Taesan, gesturing at his jacket with her tongs. She turns to look at the other boy before Taesan can even answer, and says, “Dongsaeng-ah, maybe you two know each other!”
Taesan looks back and forth between them upon receiving the new information, putting the dots together as to why the two of them look so alike. The dialect that Hana speaks to her brother in is a little different from the Seoul accent that both of them used to talk with Taesan, too.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” is what the boy says, looking right into Taesan’s eyes with a contemplative pout.
Taesan tilts his head, trying to figure it out, furrowing his brow in confusion at the sketckbook in the other boy’s hands. “That’s weird. Are you in the Fine Arts Department, too?”
“Biology,” Hana answers for him, flipping skewers on the grill again. “That’s my brother, Leehan. He’s in his third year.”
“Oh? Same,” Taesan answers, intrigued.
Leehan stands up from his chair to reach over the food, offering his hand to shake. “I’m Kim Donghyun, junior, Department of Biology.”
Taesan chuckles as he shakes his hand, confused. “Okay, so which one is it? Leehan or Donghyun?”
“Both are fine?” Leehan shrugs, sitting back down. “Noona gave me the nickname ‘cause everyone always said I looked exactly like her, and I guess it just stuck.”
“That’s ‘cause it suits you,” Hana turns to Leehan to say, laughing amusedly. “And you? What’s your name?”
“Oh. It’s Han Dongmin,” Taesan answers politely, looking at Leehan when he adds, “You can call me Taesan.”
Leehan laughs. “Did you come up with that on the spot?”
“Hey, other people can have nicknames, too,” Taesan teases, sticking his tongue out. “I’ve never seen you on campus, but I guess I’ve never had to go to the Science buildings. I was wondering how I could have missed you if you were in Arts.”
“Oh, ‘cause of this?” Leehan raises up his sketchpad, eyes wide. “We have to draw a bunch of stuff for our classes, too. You know, diagrams and stuff.”
Taesan nods in interest, lips forming into an ‘o’ when Leehan turns the pad around to show Taesan what he’s been working on: an anatomical diagram of some kind of fish, different angles and cross sections labeled neatly with science-y sounding words that Taesan only vaguely understands. He leans forward to take a closer look, intrigued by the fine details of it all; Taesan himself doesn’t venture all that much into this style despite being an Art major, preferring his more chaotic and colorful pieces and techniques, and he’s always fascinated to see this level of skill from anyone, and much more from people like Leehan who haven’t exactly made it into their entire life.
“You’re really good,” Taesan remarks casually, nodding in approval. “Ever consider moving departments?”
Leehan laughs, shaking his head with his eyes closed—and Taesan, for some reason, just finds it strangely adorable . “Nope. Even if I did, it’s too late now.”
“Never too late for anything,” Taesan replies on instinct, despite himself. He usually tries not to say corny, overused one-liners like that, and hates hearing them, too—but there’s just something about the atmosphere of this place, this time of day, these people— that makes him want to keep talking, even if it’s all just sounds and nonsense. “Either way, you’re good. You like fish, or do you do plants and things, too?”
“Don’t even get me started,” Hana rolls her eyes.
Leehan just smiles. “I like a little bit of everything.”
“Can I see?” Taesan leans over a little bit more. “There’s oil splatters all over the pages, Leehan-ah—”
“Yah, Dongmin-ah,” Hana interrupts, snapping her tongs in Taesan’s direction to call his attention. “I’m glad you two are friends now, and all, but I would really love it if you bought something.”
“I think the oil splatters give it character,” Leehan answers regardless, and now Taesan finds himself having two conversations at once.
“Hold on, Hana-ssi, sorry, I don’t actually know if I have cash on me…” Taesan goes to open the zipper on his bag, struggling with the other things he’s still holding or are hung on his arm. Leehan stands up to take the paper cup from Taesan’s hand, and Taesan hands it to him gratefully. “Okay, what can I get for ₩10,000?”
“How do you show up to a traditional market without cash on you?” Hana laughs, pointing at the food anyway. “Tteokbokki’s ₩3,000, skewers and fried stuff are ₩1,000 each. I’ll throw in a cheese ball for free if you spend that whole bill.”
“Noona,” Leehan rolls his eyes.
Taesan chuckles. “It’s fine. Honestly, I came here completely by accident, I just wanted to look at this little shop I saw on Instagram and ended up coming this way on the way back to the subway station.”
“The one on the second floor of that bank that’s never open?” Leehan asks, eyes wide in interest and a finger pointed at the paper bag hanging on Taesan’s arm. “Yeah! It’s that one, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Taesan chuckles, raising the bag up a little bit into Leehan’s view while he hands Hana the bill with his other hands. “I’ll have some tteokbokki, then. And then you can choose the rest, Hana-ssi.”
“You can call me noona, you know,” Hana pouts, and then grins after swiping the bill from Taesan’s hand. “You’re acting all chummy with my brother and then treating me like some streetfood random ahjumma?”
“Ah, sorry, noona…”
Leehan rolls his eyes. “Shut up. She doesn’t mean it, Taesan.”
“Tch,” Hana shakes her head, scooping some tteokbokki into a paper bowl, the red sauce dripping from the spoon in her hand. “Can I put the fishcakes in here, too, or do you want it separate?”
“Same one’s okay, noona.”
“He learns quick, noona ,” Leehan teases.
“I like you. You should come by more often with more cash,” Hana quips, smiling wide as she plops the complimentary cheese ball into the paper bowl, and then hands Taesan his food. “You’ll drop by again, right?”
Taesan smiles, takes his bowl with a sheepish bow. Hana is waiting on his answer, and so is Leehan—and Taesan almost feels like the main character in some movie, standing face to face with choice now that fate has done its part.
“I think about it,” Taesan answers, playing hard-to-get even if, in his heart, he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer. He takes one of the fishcake skewers and swirls it around in the tteokbokki sauce in place of standing around in awkward silence, and then he bites a piece off while the two in front of him watch. “Oh, wow, this is good, too.”
“Tteokbokki sauce was Hannie’s recipe. You won’t find it anywhere else,” Hana makes a show of leaning forward and whispering like it’s some trade secret, ever the saleswoman. “Come by again soon, yeah?”
Leehan adds, “You should. And it’s way prettier at night. Especially in the winter.”
“I might see you around campus, who knows?” Taesan shrugs, digging into the bowl to stick his now-empty skewer into a piece of rice cake.
“How unromantic of you,” Leehan laughs, teasing. His sister doesn’t react with any more than a shake of her head, back to focusing on the food now that Taesan had stepped off to the side to be more in Leehan’s line of sight. He hadn’t even noticed until now. “Besides, we’ve been going to that school for almost three years without seeing each other. Meeting at the marketplace is a much better story to tell.”
Taesan scoffs, shaking his head in amusement before putting two pieces of rice cake in his mouth, the spice of the sauce bringing heat up into his cheeks. “Smooth talker.”
“Couldn’t you tell by now that we’d say anything to get you to come back?” Leehan asks, dead serious—but the glint of mischief in his eyes is unmistakable, matched perfectly with his low voice and subtle smirk. “You better go now. People don’t stop by if they see someone else still at the stall.”
Taesan scoffs, cheeks puffed out with food when he pouts. “Alright, fine,” he says, chewing his food a bit more before swallowing. “It was nice meeting you, noona,” he says with a bow and a small wave, and with one last glance in Leehan’s direction, he adds, “And I’ll see you around.”
“Nice meeting you, too, Han Dongmin,” Leehan winks, and Taesan’s eyes widen. He didn’t even think that the guy would remember his name. “Taesan-ah.”
Taesan shoots one last nod in their direction before turning to walk away, the smoking heat of the food in his hand enough to combat the autumn chill as the sun begins to set. Taesan puts his headphones back in place, soft music fills his ears, and when he notices the unusual way that the corners of his lips are upturned, he’s too content to bring himself to put them back down.
Taesan finds himself back around Mangwon Market about three weeks later, when most of the autumn leaves have fallen to the ground and everyone waits with bated breath for snow to take their place.
This time around, whenever Taesan exhales, his breaths make white clouds in the air before him, a reminder of the colder nights and changing seasons. It’s just another one of those nights again, when Taesan had spent most of the evening studying in the library, trying to pass the time until his body tells him it’s time to go to sleep—which sometimes just doesn’t happen, and leads him into random, late night escapades like this.
He lets his feet take him where he knows his heart wants him to go. The universe has done its share of the work, and Taesan has been stalling on his, passively hoping to run into the boy who’s been occupying his thoughts on their university campus instead of bringing himself to wander near Mangwon-dong like he’d promised-not-promised the last time he was here. Maybe it’s the insomnia getting to his head, making Taesan bite the bullet instead of just shuffling his feet on the same ground all the time, making him forget about how comical it is that fate made him run into Leehan by chance, and now it’s up to Taesan to turn up at the unlikeliest of places to run into him by choice.
When he’s nearing the street food stall—the smoke wafting from the grills and fryers unmistakable even when Taesan can’t yet see its façade—he’s far enough away that he can see a couple standing together in front of it, with a small, white dog between them, held on a leash on one of the girls’ arm. The corners of Taesan’s mouth turn up only slightly when he catches a glimpse of Leehan when he leans forward, handing two paper bowls of a food with a polite smile before he goes back behind the counter, his face obscured once more. Taesan takes a few more steps forward to properly see him, even from afar. When he does, he sees Leehan counting change to hand to the girls before they walk away, and Taesan exhales another cloud into their air as he watches idly, some tension already leaving his shoulders just from seeing Leehan’s easy movements, the effortless way that he smiles.
Taesan only approaches once the two girls have walked away, chewing on spicy rice cakes with their puppy at their heels.
“You were right, Leehan-ah,” Taesan says without warning, walking up to the street food stall with a slight smile. “People don’t come to the stall when they see that someone’s still there.”
“Ah. There you are, Han Dongmin,” is what Leehan says in response, a knowing smile on his face while he works expertly with his tongs, only glancing at Taesan for a brief second. Hana is nowehere to be found. “Trying to hold up our sales?”
Taesan rolls his eyes and shrugs. “Yeah. We didn’t end up seeing each other on campus, after all.”
“Yeah, guess we didn’t,” Leehan pouts, resting the tongs down off to the side. The sound of sizzling meat fills the sileces not occupied by their words. “What did I tell you?”
Taesan laughs as he looks down at the ground. “Were you there today?”
“On campus? Yeah,” Leehan says with a shrug. “I had a couple of classes.”
“If our buildings weren’t so far apart, I’d think you were avoiding me.”
There’s a stretch of silence where Leehan doesn’t respond, simply humming quietly as he checks on the deep fryers. Taesan shuffles on his feet while he watches, his deep exhales forming clouds in between them again, mixing with the smoke, fragrant with salt and oil.
“I’m telling you, this is more romantic anyway,” Leehan interjects after a few more seconds, breaking the silence. He looks at Taesan through his eyelashes to ask, “What brings you to Mangwon-dong, then?”
Taesan exhales again, looks up in thought. It’s either fate or his own two feet, or a mix of both, ushered along by sleep’s refusal to find him despite his tired bones.
“I don’t know. Couldn’t sleep,” is what he settles with, before returning the question with a teasing lilt to his voice. “You?”
“Me, neither,” Leehan answers, playing along. “Told you it was better ar night, though, didn’t I?”
Taesan looks up at the sky when Leehan gestures up with his tongs, and he can’t help but agree. There are strings of light above the street, bulbs of warm orange lit up under the cloudy, starless sky. There are fewer stalls open—mostly people selling hot food, pastries or little novelties—and a lot less people than when Taesan had come here in the afternoon for the first time. The air is underscored by a warmer buzz than the afternoon’s bustling noise, busy but peaceful. The street had already been beautiful when Taesan had seen it first at sunset; it’s somehow worlds better now late at night, a pocket of warmth in the winter chill.
It’s only made better by the boy that’s still in front of him, eyes still sparkling as he looks up at the lights, seemingly oblivious to the way that Taesan is watching him now, instead.
“Yeah,” Taesan answers under his breath, the sound a small puff of white in the cold. “It’s beautiful.”
Leehan only looks back at him after, and Taesan darts his eyes away immediately.
“It’s quieter, too,” Leehan comments. “Less crowded. Is that why you don’t have your headphones on today?”
“Ah, that.” Taesan instictively brings a hand up to his ear, feeling aimlessly at the pierced lobe. “I guess so. But mostly, it seemed rude to have them on and show up here without talking to you, so…”
Leehan chuckles. “You showed up to talk to me, not to buy any food? Ah, you really did come here to slow down sales. Noona’s gonna be disappointed.”
Taesan feels heat starting to rush into his cheeks.“No, that’s not—”
“Ah, right, I remembered something,” Leehan interrupts him excitedly all of a sudden, quelling Taesan’s shyness before it can grow into something bigger. Taesan’s thankful for it, in a way, even if he’d never admit that out loud. Leehan sets down his cooking utensils again, dries his hands down on his blue apron. “I wanna show you what I’ve been drawing.”
Taesan barely gets to stutter out an answer before Leehan turns away, jogging somewhere into the back area of their store. He isn’t ever really out of view, just rummaging for something on a table nearby, and Taesan takes the time to take in the spread of food before him again, mostly the same as last time except for the addition of some bungeoppang, sitting off to the side away from the more savory stuff. Taesan does feel a little guilty not gettig anything, even if he isn’t quite in the mood for anything to eat right now, and it does feel rude to ask Leehan if he can just get a drink that he could literally pay for with a single coin. Taesan chews on his lip while he thinks, still not having settled on anything even as Leehan starts walking back toward him with what looks to be a sketchbook in hand, a little bit smaller than the one he’d been drawing in on the day they first met.
“Here, look,” Leehan utters with an excited smile as he flips through the pages, almost bouncing in his place while he looks for the right one, “And… here!”
Leehan hands him the sketchbook over the food with an anticipating smile—and nothing could have ever prepared Taesan for what he sees inside.
“You’ve been drawing… me?” Taesan asks in shock, eyes wide as he scans them over the page.
There’s a bunch of sketches of Taesan’s face from different angles, mostly rough and unshaded, but they’re all clearly of him. Taesan recognizes the collar of the coat he’d been wearing on that day they first met, the one side of his headphones positioned away from his ear. Taesan has the brief thought that it’s not unlike the sketches of fish that Leehan had been doing that day, wonders why Leehan wouldn’t have labeled the parts of Taesan, too.
Leehan shrugs while he watches Taesan go through the drawings one by one, answering his question with a simple, “I draw what comes to mind.”
Taesan scoffs, runs his finger over one of the bigger pictures in the middle, the biggest and most detailed, a rendition of his face with that weird, toothy smile that he doesn’t really like. “I come to mind?”
“You can’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about me, either,” Leehan answers, all nonchalant, while Taesan is almost sure he flushes a deeper red behind the sketchbook. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I mean, Leehan—” Taesan laughs nervously, doding the question, “Did you really have to draw me with this weird smile on my face?”
Leehan pouts. “You don’t like it?”
“No, it’s— I— You’re good, definitely. Better than me, honestly,” Taesan shrugs sheepishly, staring at the drawings again. He only notices the standalone drawings of his teeth now—that same, lopsided smile. “God, seriously? I smile weird.”
“Really? I think it makes you look handsome,” he answers, casual as ever, and Taesan is too flustered to even begin to cringe at the words. “You show your gums and all. It’s cute!”
Taesan shakes his head, still nervous. “Are you flirting with me right now? Cut it out!”
“What? I’m just telling the truth,” Leehan laughs, softening his tone. “Anyway, I guess I’ll take the compliment, though I doubt I’m better than an art major.”
“Well, I don’t really do this style,” Taesan explains, handing the sketchbook back to Leehan over the food. There’s a part of him that wants to look at them longer, soak in the fascination of seeing how he looks through Leehan’s eyes, under his hands—but he thinks maybe that would take lifetimes, or at the very least, hours and hours more than how much longer he plans to stay here, just spending his own and Leehan’s time. “I do abstract stuff, or still life at best. Faces are hard.”
“I get that.” Leehan takes the sketchbook back, brushing his fingers against Taesan’s even if he doesn’t need to. Taesan darts his eyes off to the side, tries to laugh it off. “Took me a while to draw something other than fish, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Noona made me start with bungeoppang, before” Leehan laughs, gesturing down at the fish-shaped pastry off to the side. “Baby steps, I guess.”
Taesan nods, listening intently. “Have you guys been here long? Selling street food, I mean.”
“A little bit.” Leehan tilts his head from side to side, humming as he thinks. “It makes more money than you’d think.”
“Hey, I didn’t say anything,”
“I know you didn’t. I just don’t want you thinking my sister’s trying to wrangle your pockets into out of cash until you’re bankrupt,” Leehan giggles. “Wouldn’t wanna scare you off.”
Taesan smiles a bit wider at that remark, lips parting in fascination as he ogles the sparkle of light reflected in Leehan’s eyes.
“There’s that smile,” Leehan utters quietly, his voice low enough for just Taesan to hear. Taesan blinks rapidly, a nervous lap escaping his lips when he looks down, nothing in his hands this time to hide from Leehan’s crinkled eyes.
“Is there something you wanna eat, Leehan-ah?” Taesan asks, sidestepping Leehan’s flirting yet again. “I’m actually… Sorry, I’m not really that hungry right now.”
Taesan shakes his head and chuckles at himself, realizing that maybe, just maybe, he really did come here just for Leehan. But Leehan doesn’t seem to mind, thankfully enough—and the next words out of his mouth are accompanied by a soft, patient smile.
“I’m not that hungry, either,” he starts, “but it’s okay, Dongmin-ah. I was joking about the food. There’s no pressure.” Leehan sends him a subtle wink when he adds, “This can be our little secret.”
Taesan laughs more freely when Leehan does the same, the light in his expression contagious in its own, special way. He feels a little self-conscious now of the gumminess of his smile, and the thought sends a strange, fluttery feeling of warmth into his chest, knowing that there’s anything about himself that Leehan thinks is worth remembering. The feeling only worsens when the sound of Leehan’s voice echoes again in his ear, low and gentle when he says his name. Dongmin-ah. Dongmin-ah.
“Alright,” Taesan nods, shuffling awkwardly again when he comes up empty, no longer knowing what else to say—not to mention, he’s probably already taken up enough of Leehan’s time. “Um… anyway, thanks for the chat. I’ll see you around, Donghyun.”
Taesan is about to walk away, one foot already going to turn him on his heel—but he’s stopped in his tracks by Leehan’s voice, sprung to action by the sound of his name.
“Wait,” Leehan says with poorly-veiled urgency, and Taesan turns back around and finds him scrambling to take something out of the pocket of his apron. “Hey, um, listen… I do usually handle the night shifts, and Hana-noona’s usually here to help out, but—but it’s just that she’s on a date tonight, so I can’t really leave the stall to hang out, but I swear, if it was any other day, I would,” he explains, eyes filled with a new emotion. Hope, maybe. Or maybe it’s Taesan that’s hoping, too. “There’s this nice little cafe down the street that I like that I was thinking I could take you to. Any chance there’ll be a next time?”
Taesan can’t help but smile wider at Leehan’s spirited question, his lips jutted out in this adorable pout. There’s nothing he can do except nod, overjoyed at the proposition in his own little way. “Sure. I can’t sleep most nights these days, anyway.”
Leehan’s pout only deepens further, and Taesan’s smile shouldn’t widen at that, but it does. “Don’t make me worry, Han Dongmin. I’m serious.”
“I’ll do my best,” Taesan says, placating. “I’ll try.”
“Okay. Here.” Leehan nods as he hands Taesan the thing he’d pulled out of his apron: a single hand warmer, a lighter shade of blue than the pocket it had come from. “If you aren’t feeling sleepy yet, you should walk down the street a bit more. You might find something you like.”
Not as much as you, Taesan’s mind supplies automatically. His heart beats loud in his chest as he takes what Leehan offers with a nod. “Thank you. I’ll come back to give this back later.”
“Keep it,” Leehan insists, his voice carrying an air of finality as he waves his hands in front of his face. “Our little secret, mm?”
So Taesan does. He takes out his wireless earbuds after reluctantly walking away, Leehan waving to him all the while. Taesan shakes his head once he looks away, hands warm as he walks down the street, the softer music he’s been listening to these days tinging the frigid winter chill with something cozy and calm.
Next time comes a few more weeks later, already well into December, the tip of Taesan’s nose and ears red and his hair dusted lightly with snow.
He has his earphones in today, the wired ones that he only really uses on days like these when headphones would be too weighty on his neck along with a scarf and wireless earbuds run the risk of falling out of his ears on the subway or the street. Taesan’s phone plays a jazzy tune, all soft piano and melodic words. It’s a nice complement to the lit-up streets of Mangwon-dong in the winter, snowflakes catching the glow of all the lamplight.
Taesan doesn’t say anything this time as he walks up to the familiar street food stall. He merely stands off to the side as a small group of friends point at what they want from the generous spread in front of them, watching the person he’d come here for from afar, just for a while.
Leehan has that usual, effortless smile on his face, almost lazy but clearly still sincere. Hana is there today, too, hair pinned up behind her as she fans the smoke away from the grill. Taesan walks closer when the other market-goers hand over their money and begin to trot away, the music playing in his ears a dreamy backdrop to the image of Leehan getting closer, closer, closer to being within his reach.
When Taesan arrives, Leehan’s eyes light up with unbridled sparkle—and he hears Leehan’s low voice even over the backdrop of the song in his ears, loud and clear: “There you are, Min.”
Taesan blinks rapidly at the sound of the new endearment in his ears; it isn’t something he’s never heard before, but he certainly isn’t used to hearing it that often from anyone, these days. He doesn’t really get a chance to respond, though, before Hana takes the words right out of his mouth.
“Min?” she echoes with a raised eyebrow, thought her lips remain in a knowing smirk. Taesan feels his own heart beating louder in his chest, and he’s frozen in place even if he realizes he hasn’t even said a single word. “When did you two get so close, hm?”
Not really ever, Taesan’s brain supplies—and yet it doesn’t really feel quite right, so he keeps his mouth shut.
It seems that Leehan echoes his sentiments, choosing not to dignify his sister’s teasing with an answer; instead, he looks at Taesan with a reassuring nod, before grabbing a towel from the side and wiping his hands with it, and then taking off his apron and folding it haphazardly to throw onto a table behind him.
“Give me a second, then we can hang out,” Leehan says directly to him, and then he turns to Hana beside him. “Noona, I can go for a bit, right?”
Leehan doesn’t really wait for an answer before he’s going to exit from behind the counter, but Hana rolls her eyes and laughs anyway. “Yeah, go, whatever. Have fun, Dongmin-ah.”
“Ah— Thanks, noona,” Taesan answers awkwardly, trying his best at a smile. “I’ll come back and get some bungeoppang, later.”
Not even a second later, Taesan is startled when Leehan suddenly just pops up at his side, poking him in the shoulder and then giggling when Taesan turns to glare. “I’ll just take him down the street, noona. Won’t go too far!”
Hana doesn’t respond with anything more than a few approving waves, but Taesan is comforted by the kind—maybe almost fond—look on her face as she continues to tend to their little stall, watching Taesan walk away with Leehan in tow.
“Taesan-ah, wait for me!” Leehan calls out as he jogs up behind him, and Taesan looks back to smile just as Leehan makes his way to his side.
Next thing he knows, Leehan’s plucking out the earbud in Taesan’s left ear to put it in his own, and Taesan flusters at the realization that he’d been too busy ogling Leehan earlier to even take them out.
“Yah, you should take the one on the other side, you know?” Taesan scolds weakly. “Do you not share wired earphones anymore? Thought you were a romantic.”
“There’s an easy solution to that,” Leehan shrugs, nonchalant—and then he makes a show of turning on his heel to move to Taesan’s right side instead, walking backwards so the earbud is still in his ear.
Taesan scoffs. “Kim Donghyun, you can’t be serious.”
“What? I get to listen to your music, and look at you at the same time,” Leehan counters with a lazy smirk. “Isn’t that the most romantic of all?”
“Tch,” Taesak simply shakes his head, not really knowing what more to say.
They continue walking down the brightly-lit street, Leehan with his back to where they’re going while they listen to Taesan’s music. Taesan doesn’t even really know where they’re going, or what Leehan means by the easygoing expression on his face as he nods along to the slow beat of the song, but the more they walk, the less Taesan cares. Taesan barely knows him, but there’s just something about him that’s always been comfortable, something that could fill even the emptiest of spaces with sound and laughter and light. Taesan wonders if it would be different if they’d ever met elsewhere. If either of them would have even stopped to take a second look.
“Are you just gonna keep walking backwards, Leehan?” Taesan raises an eyebrow, to which Leehan tilts his head. “You’ll bump into something.”
Leehan scrunches his nose. “I know this street pretty well.”
“Yeah? You do?” Taesan chuckles, rolling his eyes. “Then talk to me, at least?”
Leehan chuckles back. “Sure. What do you wanna talk about?”
“Whatever,” Taesan shrugs. “Where are you even taking me?”
“A nice café I like. Don’t worry about it.” Leehan adjusts the earbud in his ear, still nodding along to the rhythm of it. “This is a nice song.”
Taesan’s eyes widen, self-consciousness suddenly taking over. “Really? It’s not what I usually listen to.”
Leehan pouts, curious. “What do you usually listen to?”
“Rock?” Taesan says dumbly, all the knowledge stored in his brain suddenly melting into incomprehensible soup. “A lot of things, actually. I’ve been on an R&B kick lately, though, for some reason. And some jazz.”
“Changes with the seasons?”
“Maybe.” Taesan shrugs. He doesn’t really know. “It fits with the atmosphere around here.”
Leehan looks up above him, nods in agreement. He looks back into Taesan’s eyes with a gentler expression when he asks, “Another sleepless night tonight?”
Taesan smiles. In some ways, Leehan already seems to read him so well. “Sort of. Spent the whole day on campus working on stuff with a friend, and I just knew when I came home to my dorm that I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, so… I’m here, I guess.”
“Hm… I think it’s nice that you come looking for me when that happens,” Leehan says, and his smile is so bright that Taesan can’t even bring himself to protest. “What friend? Just if you don’t mind me asking. Maybe I know them.”
Taesan sighs. Leehan probably does, actually. “Myung Jaehyun.”
Leehan’s eyes widen, taken aback. “Like, the one with the semi-famous YouTube channel?!”
“That’s the one,” Taesan deadpans. “Do you seriously wanna talk about him?”
“No! No, I mean— I’m curious, I guess. How do you even know that guy?”
“Everyone knows that guy.”
“You know what I mean.”
Just then, Leehan grabs Taesan gently by the wrist over the fabric of his coat, and then pulls him over to the side of the road to let a car pass by that Taesan hadn’t even realized was trailing behind them the whole time.
“You okay?” Leehan asks when he sees the surprise that’s probably all over Taesan’s face—probably much more from their newfound proximity than anything to do with the car that just passed them.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Taesan gulps, trying and clearly failing to mask his emotions. “It was just a car, they’re not even allowed to go that fast here.”
“Then why are you holding my arm so hard?”
Taesan lets go immediately when he realizes that he was, in fact, holding onto Leehan’s arm with an iron grip, almost pulling the earbud out of Leehan’s ear when he turns his head to look away.
“Myung Jaehyun’s dating the guy I used to hook up with,” Taesan blurts out abruptly, desperate to change the subject and forget that any of that had just happened. “Don’t get the wrong idea, though, Leehan-ah, it was casual and all three of us were still friends and I’m not befriending him for some revenge plot. And I never had feelings for Sungho-hyung, even if people keep saying that I did.”
Leehan just stares at him, amused—and Taesan wants to be swallowed up into a hole in the ground.
Instead, what happens is Leehan slowly inches his hand toward Taesan’s again, not taking it until Taesan offers it himsef—which, for some reason, he does. They only start walking again when Leehan’s holding Taesan’s hand in his own, long fingers wrapped around the cold skin on the back of Taesan’s palm.
“I didn’t say anything,” Leehan teases, clearly amused. Taesan averts his gaze to somewhere on the floor. “Sounds like there’s lots of drama on your side of campus, huh?”
Taesan groans, shaking his head in embarrassment. “No. Jaehyun brings it with him, I just get caught up in it by association.”
Leehan laughs. “Alright, whatever you say!”
“Yah,” Taesan whines, pulling the earbud out of Leehan’s ear, the closest thing he can do to wiping the smug grin off of his face. “You know, it’s only fair that you tell me something about you, now. I already told you way too much and I never tell anyone anything.”
“Is that right?” Leehan asks, softening his tone. He squeezes Taesan’s hand between them, and Taesan only realizes now that neither of them have let go. “Sure, Min. What do you want to know?”
Taesan’s breath hitches upon hearing the same pet name again, and it’s unfair how Leehan seems to know just how to push his buttons, how it’s glaringly clear that he’s doing it on purpose, despite his clueless, nonchalant façade. Taesan squeezes his hand back in retaliation, though he’s not sure if it comes off as threatening at all. The only thing he can think to ask in the midst of his heartbeat beating too loud throughout his entire body is, “I don’t know— How long have you and your sister been at the market?”
Leehan nods at the question, looks up as he contemplates his answer. “Like… maybe nine years? Ten? Since I started middle school. We came here from Busan with our parents.”
“Ah,” Taesan nods in understanding. “So that’s what the accent was.”
Leehan smiles. “Yeah. It’s also why I love the ocean and stuff. I grew up around it.”
“That sounds… nice, actually,” Taesan smiles, strangely delighted to finally have something he knows about Leehan that’s more profound. More real. “Has Seoul grown on you, though? Or is Busan still better?”
“Well, nothing beats home, of course,” Leehan answers. He lets go of Taesan’s hand—but only for a second—to turn on his heel again and walk forward properly, before taking Taesan’s hand again to lock their fingers together in between them. “But I’ve learned to like it here. Mangwon-dong is a good neighborhood, too.”
“Your parents are here with you, then?” Taesan asks, voice soft. His heart is still pulsing rapidly under his skin at their proximity. “It’s always you and Hana-noona at the stall.”
Leehan pouts, takes a little bit longer to answer this time around. Taesan is almost about to take it back, wondering if he’d crossed a line, read the atmosphere wrong about how much he was allowed to ask—but then Leehan answers as directly as ever, though there’s a more somber tone to his words. “They were here until about a few months ago. They went back to Busan to take care of some things with my grandparents, and… I guess a lot of things have been holding them up. My sister and I have been doing pretty okay, though, handling stuff here. So you don’t need to worry about that, if that’s where your mind’s going.”
“Hah… Why would I worry about that?” Taesan huffs, his voice small. It’s his best attempt at acting as unaffected as Leehan is, but something tells him that Leehan sees the meaning behind it, the unspoken understanding.
“Oh, hey. That’s the café,” Leehan says after a few more footsteps, using their interlocked hands to gesture at a little place on their left side, the outside area lit up with the same, warm-white bulbs that are hung all above the street, and warm light shining through the windows on the bright blue façade. Taesan can only see a few people—couples, mostly—at the tables outside, sitting in front of mugs filled with steaming liquid.
“Oh. It looks… cozy,” Taesan whispers, laughing softly into the air between them. “I think I passed by this place when I was walking here, that first time that we met.”
“Yeah?” Leehan smiles back, stopping them in their tracks to stand in front of Taesan, hands still held between them. “It’s a lucky thing you came down this way, wasn’t it?”
Taesan purses his lips, humming quietly. He looks into Leehan’s eyes with something he thinks is akin to affection, coursing back and forth between them through curious gazes and connected hands. It’s funny how Leehan makes it easy not to miss the presence of stars in the winter sky.
“You believe in stuff like that?” Taesan asks, chuckling absently at his own thoughts.
“Sure.” Leehan shrugs, and then he takes a step forward, just a little closer. “You don’t?”
Taesan shakes his head, his laugh nervous when he darts his eyes back down, way too obviously trying to avoid looking at Leehan head-on. “...I’m learning.”
Leehan must decide he’s not having it, because he lets go of Taesan’s hand to tilt his chin up gently with the bend of his index finger instead. “Well, as long as you’re finally smiling, then that’s okay with me.”
Taesan feels his adam’s apple bob in his throat as he looks back up, suddenly feeling so small despite the two of them being basically the same height. There are flashes in his mind of their old encounters: the way Leehan has looked at him, rough drawings of Taesan’s features in graphite on paper. And now, somehow, Leehan’s touch simultaneously soothes him and sets him on fire—and it’s then that Taesan knows he is so, absolutely fucked.
“Are you flirting with me, Leehan-ah?” Taesan asks to try and diffuse the tension, though it comes out strained enough to only thicken it further between them.
Luckily enough, Leehan doesn’t seem to mind.
“Well, listen—I knew the universe wasn’t gonna be the one that would get you to finally, eventually give me your number.” Leehan’s cheeks glow a deeper red now, too. “I was working up to it.”
“And this is how you ask?” Taesan scoffs again, though the smile never leaves his face. A smile seems to be permanently plastered on his lips for the night now, too, and he laughs at how silly they’re both being—how silly all of this has been, even for the short time and the few encounters over which they’ve even been in each other’s lives.
“Tell you what,” Leehan steps back again to keep a respectable distance between them, and then he tilts his head over to gesture at the café they’d just been standing across this whole time. “I’ll buy you your midnight cravings, and you tell me a bit more about why you’re always up so late, and I’ll try to listen but end up just drawing your face on the napkin.” Leehan giggles sheepishly, and Taesan rolls his eyes. “If you like spending time with me, give me your number so I can call you and we can do it more often. You know, take the leap of faith.”
“Donghyun.” Taesan calls his name out softly, testing the feel of it on his tongue. It’s his turn to step forward this time, and he links his arm with Leehan’s to bring him over to the café, Leehan stumbling backwards in the most adorable way. “I already took the leap of faith when I came back here the first time, you know.”
And Leehan giggles as Taesan pulls him toward the little coffee shop, and Taesan tries to hide the fact that he does the same, and those efforts prove futile when they walk in there and Leehan does end up asking the barista for a pencil to draw little versions of Taesan on the napkin, blushed cheeks and gummy smiles and snowflakes still dusted on top of his hair.
And the snow continues to fall outside, but small warmth fills up every crevice of Taesan’s body and soul. Maybe fate does do right by people sometimes. But no matter how the universe gave him Leehan on that one fateful, autumn afternoon, Taesan knows one thing for sure: he won’t be letting the universe take them away from each other, anytime soon.