Chapter Text
Nothing is louder than the silence between two people who were in love but stopped, not because they wanted to, but because they didn’t know how to stay.
The wind whistled through the tall windows of the music building, carrying with it the scent of rain and the ghosts of unfinished songs. Leaves, green and vibrant, danced like forgotten memories across the campus courtyard. The final year had come with a heavy stillness, like the pause between the last note of a song and the reluctant applause that follows.
Shinyu sat at the far end of the rehearsal room, where the light from the high glass panes spilled over the piano like honey. His fingers hovered above the keys, but he didn’t press them. Not yet. The silence between notes felt safer than the melody waiting to break it.
Across the room, Youngjae leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t said a word since he came to the room. He used to sing. He used to fill the empty spaces with hums and half-lyrics, fragments of melodies that only Shinyu understood. Now, he was just… quiet.
They used to fill this room with laughter, with harmonies so tight they felt like twin heartbeats. Back then, they were two sparks in the same flame, fiery, too young. They were reckless with their hearts and even more so with each other’s.
But time passed. Arguments left more silence than sound. Misunderstandings stacked like unread letters. And eventually, they stopped reaching for each other, hands clenched not in longing but in self defense.
Now, they sat ten feet apart and felt galaxies between them.
Shinyu finally pressed a key. A low, soft C. Then a G. He played slowly, hesitantly, like the melody might run away if he moved too fast.
Youngjae looked up, startled by the sound. It had been weeks since Shinyu had played anything in front of him.
“You remember that?” Youngjae asked quietly, the question too small for the cavernous space of the room.
Shinyu’s shoulders tensed, but he didn’t look away from the piano. “It’s the song we wrote last year. Before… before fall.”
Before everything broke.
Youngjae nodded. “I thought you forgot.”
“I didn’t,” Shinyu said, voice barely above a whisper. “I tried.”
That admission settled into the silence like snow on bare ground, quiet, but impossible to ignore.
They used to write lyrics pressed shoulder to shoulder on Shinyu’s bed, tangled in music sheets and late night snacks. Back then, their love wasn’t something they said, it lived in harmonized choruses and 2 a.m. recordings, in the way Youngjae always sang the last line softer, just for Shinyu, in how Shinyu always played slower when he knew Youngjae was losing his breath.
But love, when left unspoken, grows wild. It tangles around your ankles and makes you trip when you least expect it.
“You stopped talking to me,” Youngjae said. Not accusing. Just stating a truth.
“I didn’t know what to say,” Shinyu replied, still playing, letting the melody carry the weight of what words couldn’t.
Youngjae walked forward slowly, then sat on the edge of the platform where the piano stood. Not too close but not far, either. The kind of distance that says I don’t know if I’m welcome, but I want to be.
“I missed singing with you,” he said. His voice was soft, warm, a little cracked. Not from disuse, but from remembering.
Shinyu paused. “I missed hearing you.”
That silence between them shifted again, not gone, but softer now, like fog lifting over a familiar path.
“I haven’t really sung since this year started,” Youngjae confessed. “Not properly. Not with anyone.”
Shinyu looked up. Finally. “Why?”
Youngjae hesitated. Then: “Because it felt wrong without you playing.”
The piano’s low hum filled the gap between their words. Shinyu’s eyes lingered on Youngjae’s lips, not in longing, but in memory. Of how those lips had once carried everything they never said out loud.
“I can still be your accompanist,” Shinyu said, quietly.
Youngjae stood, slowly, and stepped closer. Not rehearsed, not dramatic, just a boy trying to step out of silence.
“Play it, then” he said. “Let me try.”
So Shinyu did.
He began the opening chord progression of their old duet. The one they’d written during a spring rainstorm, when the world felt like it belonged only to them. And then, as if pulled from the dust, Youngjae began to sing.
No microphone. No fancy equipment. Just his voice in the room that had once held their beginning.
It wasn’t perfect. It cracked on the high note. He hesitated once, unsure of the lyric.
But it was honest. It was him.
And Shinyu, he followed, each note on the piano like a bridge building its way back to something lost.
They didn’t finish the whole song. But they didn’t need to.
The last note hung in the air, trembling like a held breath. It faded into the golden silence, but neither of them moved to break it.
Youngjae’s voice lingered, even after the music stopped. Not in sound, but in presence. In the way it stirred something deep in Shinyu’s chest like waking up in the middle of a dream you didn’t want to end.
Shinyu turned slowly on the piano bench, eyes finding Youngjae’s with a quiet intensity. The room felt smaller now, intimate, like it had shrunk to hold just this moment. The air between them was heavy, but not with distance anymore. With everything unspoken.
“You always sang like you were telling me a secret,” Shinyu whispered.
Youngjae blinked, taken off guard by the softness in his voice.
“That’s because I was,” he replied, his voice barely there. “But I thought you stopped listening.”
Shinyu stood. One step. Then another.
Youngjae didn’t move, but his breath caught in his throat as Shinyu came closer close enough to see the flecks of brown in his dark eyes, the faint scar near his brow, the echo of every shared night they never named for what it was.
“I never stopped,” Shinyu said.
And then he kissed him.
Not rushed. Not hungry. It was a kiss full of all the pauses they had taken, all the ‘almosts’ they had ignored. It was the kind of kiss that felt like exhaling after holding your breath for too long. A kiss that said I’ve missed you and I’m sorry and I want you all at once.
Youngjae froze for a second, stunned. His hand instinctively rose to Shinyu’s chest, as if to push him away or maybe just to feel if his heart was racing too.
And it was.
He pulled back a fraction, lips still barely touching, his eyes fluttering open, uncertain.
But Shinyu’s hand was behind his head now, gentle yet unwavering, cradling him like something precious and fragile all at once.
It wasn’t forceful. It wasn’t desperate.
It was steady. Like Shinyu had finally decided he wasn’t going to run from this anymore.
So Youngjae let him.
He leaned in, not fully, not all at once, but enough to answer, enough to surrender.
The kiss deepened, slow and aching, like music that starts in a minor key but promises resolution. There was no rush. Just presence. Just breath shared between them, fingers curling into fabric, the faint scent of citrus shampoo and autumn dust in the folds of their shirts.
Outside, the wind brushed past the windows like a bow across strings. Inside, two voices silent for too long, finally began to speak in a language only they understood.
When they parted, foreheads pressed together, neither dared to speak right away.
Because this moment, this fragile, blooming thing between them was louder than words.