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Minho only ever thinks about Sundays when he’s drunk.
Not just tipsy, not buzzed—no. Drunk enough. Past the point of sweet denial and into the haze. The kind of drunk where time isn’t real and your body just feels like a thing you used to know how to carry.
Whiskey’s the usual, but he’ll take whatever’s in the cabinet. Beer if it’s cold. Soju if someone’s left it behind. Shochu once, and he woke up on the floor with a nosebleed. That was a Tuesday. He doesn’t drink on Tuesdays anymore.
One drink in, he remembers how Sundays were endings. A breath held too long. The backwash of a week already gone. As a kid, he used to sit cross-legged in front of the TV dreading Monday. The last commercial break of the weekend always made his chest hurt, though he didn’t have words for it then.
Two drinks in, he remembers doing laundry on Sundays. A small routine detergent spilled across his wrists, quarters clinking in a plastic cup, the hum of machines like lullabies for the tired. The laundromat always smelled like steel and cheap soap. Jisung once called it “the heartbreak of the working class,” and Minho had laughed, maybe too much.
Three drinks in, he remembers that the lights in convenience stores go soft around 10 p.m. on Sundays. Even the city agrees that the day is strange. Doors close earlier. Signage dims like someone is pulling the week shut by its zipper. It reminds him of eyes going dull mid-conversation.
Four drinks in, he remembers Jisung didn’t work Sundays. Said they were his to keep. “My day of silence,” he once joked, mouth curved around the lip of a soda can, eyes glassy from the late afternoon light.
Minho used to hate Sundays.
But when Jisung was in them, really in them they weren’t so bad.
It wasn’t the day that softened. It was the boy.
And five drinks in, Minho remembers how Jisung smiled back then. Like it was worth it. Like the skipped lunches and missed calls and stained laundry and broken neon signs were all just necessary costs for the chance to exist beside someone.
That’s usually when the guilt sets in.
He remembers what he said. Or what he didn’t say. The way his voice failed when it mattered, how it folded in on itself like paper soaked through.
Six drinks in, and everything unravels.
That’s when someone pulls him upright. usually Felix, sometimes Seungmin muttering “Hyung, come on,” while their hands find his shoulders. Not like Jisung’s hands. Not warm. Not familiar. Just necessary.
“You can’t keep doing this,” someone always says, but Minho’s already halfway to sleep.
And he thinks, every time:
Yes, I can.
Because apparently there are a lot of things he can do that he never thought possible. Like breaking a heart without raising his voice. Like surviving it. Like waking up again on Monday.
Like forgetting what Jisung’s laughter sounded like.
But some things you can’t forget.
Some things always come back.
Like the tattoo on Jisung’s chest.Minho once asked what they meant, and Jisung had just blinked at him with that half-laugh and said, “Not everything means something, you know?”
But that was a lie.
Everything meant something.
Most days, Minho doesn’t get drunk enough to think about any of it.
He’s just a night-shift cashier now, and sometimes he teaches dance on weekends when he can make it work. He listens to the same playlist on repeat until it turns into background noise. His cats still think he’s perfect. That’s something.
He watches old movies with Felix and Seungmin. Felix laughs at every bad line. Seungmin throws popcorn at them both and acts like he’s not smiling.
“Why is she still spinning?” Felix wheezes through laughter, doubling over.
“It’s not funny!” Seungmin yells, halfway throwing a pillow. “She’s going to die in space!”
Minho doesn’t laugh. But he doesn’t cry either. He just watches them and thinks about how ordinary the world can be when you don’t look too closely. How people can move on. How nothing stays broken forever, except maybe lightbulbs.
“Is Seungmin here?”
Minho doesn’t look up from the coffee he’s pouring. “In the other room.”
“Are you drunk?”
He sighs. “No.”
Changbin stands in the doorway, arms crossed, looking unimpressed. It’s not even Sunday. That’s what Minho imagines he’s thinking. It’s not even Sunday, and you’re already fucked up again.
He’s not wrong. But it still stings.
Changbin isn’t here for Minho. He’s here for Seungmin. He always is. Every time he shows up at the apartment, it’s just to pick him up or drop him off, always with a glance too sharp and a tone too clipped.
Minho used to think they were friends. Now he knows better.
They nod at each other when they have to. That’s about it.
Still, he offers coffee.
Changbin doesn’t take it.
The light above the ice chest in the convenience store has been broken for almost a year.
Minho watches it sometimes. Watches the bugs flicker around the cracked bulb like ghosts too stubborn to leave.
He’s thought about calling someone to fix it, but he doesn’t want to make the call. Doesn’t want to explain that it’s not about the light it’s about what’s under it.
Jisung used to stand there. Every other week, like clockwork, buying allergy meds. Blonde hair bleached to straw, hoodie sleeves too long, his eyes always just a little tired.
Minho used to tell himself Jisung stopped coming because of the lights. Or the bugs. Or the way the shelves got rearranged one winter and everything felt wrong.
But he knows better.
People don’t leave because of lightbulbs.
They leave because of you.
Once upon a time, when they were all younger, it used to be different.
Minho remembers it like a dream. All of them piled into Chan’s apartment on a weeknight, half eaten takeout containers on the floor, someone’s bare feet on the coffee table, a CRT television flashing colors no one paid attention to. Hyunjin always made a big show of choosing his character in Smash, and Felix would groan every time he lost. Seungmin would shove chips into his mouth and judge them all.
Jisung used to sit right beside Chan on the floor, legs crossed, knees bumping. Sometimes he’d rest his hand on Chan’s ankle like it meant nothing. Like touching someone was easy.
Back then, everything looked golden.
Even Minho.
Even him.
Chan wore boots two sizes too big for him. Claimed they were a gift he couldn’t return, so he kept them. Felix once offered to buy him a new pair, but Chan just shook his head and said, “It’s not that serious.”
Minho never asked why he wore them anyway.
But Jisung always adjusted them when Chan took them off at the door. Lined them up neatly, like it mattered. Like symmetry could keep the world in place.
Minho saw that. Every time.
He never said anything.
Back then, Jisung had a habit of blinking slow when he was focused. That kind of concentration that made him look gentler than he was. Like he could’ve been soft, if the world let him. Like he already was, under everything.
Minho didn’t know what to do with that version of him.
He didn’t know what to do with himself either.
Now, Changbin leans in the doorway like a weight Minho can’t shake. He doesn’t take off his shoes. Doesn’t meet Minho’s eyes.
“I’m dyeing Seungmin’s hair,” he says. “We’re going lighter.”
Minho nods like that doesn’t hit him somewhere between the ribs. “You need anything?”
“No.”
They don’t talk about Jisung. No one ever does, unless it’s accidental. A song. A smell. A joke too old to be funny.
Sometimes Minho wants to ask: was it better before me? Was Chan enough for him? Did he start breaking after—or because?
He doesn’t ask. He won’t.
Instead, he takes a long sip of coffee that tastes like burnt paper and tries not to think about blonde hair dye. About Sundays. About the way Jisung used to roll his sleeves up when he was concentrating.
It’s not like that, he tells himself. It’s not about him anymore.
But it always is.
Tuesdays are Minho’s favorite shift at the store.
No one comes in after six. The city gets too quiet too fast. He likes it. It gives him space to forget things. Or at least pretend he already has.
He’ll stare up at the broken light above the ice chest and imagine what it would take to fix it. Not just the tools he could get those but the motivation. The willingness to climb a ladder and unscrew something that’s been dead for over a year.
It’s easier not to.
Besides, the bugs are still trapped in there. Wings crisped into the plastic cover like pressed flowers.
He wonders if they knew they couldn’t get out. If they flew toward the light anyway.
He smokes again.
He told himself he wouldn’t, but it’s hard to care when your insides already feel like ashes. The cigarettes are expensive. He buys the good kind anyway. If he’s going to ruin himself, he might as well do it with class.
The smoke reminds him of Chan.
Chan never smoked. Hated it, actually. Always waved it off with a scrunched nose and a joke. But his hoodies always smelled like it anyway because of Jisung.
Back when Jisung used to borrow everything.
Back when Jisung still showed up.
Minho hasn’t seen him in almost two years.
That number gets harder to believe every time he says it. He tries not to say it at all.
Jisung used to come into the store late at night hood up, mouth dry, eyes wide like he was always in a rush to leave. He always bought the same thing: white bottled allergy meds, a cold soda, sometimes gum.
Minho would ring him up in silence. They never said much. But Jisung would nod when he left. Always. A little bow, a little look over his shoulder.
That stopped one night. Just stopped.
And now it’s just silence.
Minho likes to tell himself it’s the lights. Or the bugs. Or the way fifty-five ceiling tiles is an uneven number.
It’s not.
He knows why Jisung stopped coming.
He just wishes he didn’t.
That night, Felix sends him a video from Hyunjin’s show.
The camera is shaky, but Minho recognizes the bar. Hyunjin’s up front, singing something too smooth for the mic he’s using. The lights flicker. The crowd sways.
But all Minho sees is a flash of blue in the corner.
Jisung.
Hair lighter than he remembers, almost silver under the spotlight. Eyes closed. Drink in hand.
He watches it three times.
Four.
Jisung turns to say something to someone beside him, probably Changbin, maybe Seungmin. His smile is crooked but soft. Minho pauses the video at 1:23 and stares at the outline of Jisung’s face, frozen in a moment he wasn’t meant to witness.
You look better, he thinks. Healthier.
Then immediately hates himself for it.
Because he shouldn’t be thinking that.
Because Jisung’s not his anymore.
Because maybe he never was.
Seungmin leans against the counter one morning, face puffy with sleep, hoodie sleeves halfway over his hands. He sips Minho’s bitter coffee without asking.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he mutters.
Minho doesn’t answer. He’s never been good at lying to Seungmin. The kid sees right through him.
“Did you watch that video?” Seungmin asks.
Minho nods.
“He looked good,” Seungmin says quietly. “Jisung.”
Minho nods again.
And because Seungmin is cruel in the way only people who love you can be, he adds, “He asked about you.”
Minho’s breath stalls. Just a moment. Just enough.
“What did you say?”
“I said you were probably asleep.”
That’s kinder than the truth. He could’ve said drunk. He could’ve said gone. He could’ve said nothing at all.
Minho lifts the coffee to his lips. It burns.
Some nights, Minho dreams about him.
Not about their fights. Not about Chan’s funeral. Not about the fallout. No he dreams about quiet things.
A vending machine light. The shadow of Jisung’s hands. The sound of a song neither of them liked, playing in a café they went to once.
In the dreams, Minho never touches him. He just watches. Like he’s afraid even his sleep could shatter what little he has left.
The broken light above the ice chest keeps flickering.
He doesn’t even bother looking up anymore.
Somewhere between remembering and forgetting, Minho’s stopped marking time by the calendar and started counting only shifts, cigarettes, and hours of sleep.
Felix tells him he needs to “get back into something.” Seungmin suggests dance classes again. Changbin says nothing just shows up at the door and doesn’t make eye contact.
They all think he’s healing in his own way.
They don’t know he’s stuck.
It’s a Sunday night when it happens.
The air is damp, the sky colorless. The store’s empty. Minho’s halfway through inventory, clicking his pen too hard against the counter.
And then—
The bell above the door chimes.
He doesn’t look up immediately. Just says, “Give me a second.”
There’s no answer.
Then he hears it: the quiet scrape of sneakers on tile. A throat clearing. The soft thunk of something landing on the counter.
He looks up.
And everything stops.
White allergy bottle. blue hair peeking from beneath a green hoodie.
Jisung.
Minho’s heart stutters like a skipped beat on old vinyl.
He doesn’t speak.
Doesn’t move.
Just stares.
Jisung doesn’t look the same.
He’s too bright. Too real.
Eyes unreadable, mouth neutral. His posture is calm, but there’s a coiled tension underneath. Minho recognizes it. He’s worn it himself.
He scans the bottle.
Fingers the receipt.
Hands it over.
And still, no one says anything.
Then Jisung nods barely and turns.
Each step away is a crack in the floor.
By the time the bell chimes again, Minho’s body has already moved without him realizing. He’s out from behind the counter, halfway to the door, breath caught in his chest like a stone.
Jisung is there on the sidewalk, hood pulled up again, bottle in hand.
He’s facing him.
He doesn’t look surprised.
He looks tired.
Minho opens his mouth.
Closes it.
Then finally: “Why are you here?”
Jisung’s voice is quiet. “I don’t know.”
But he steps closer.
And says, “I guess I was hoping you wouldn’t be.”
Minho wants to laugh. He doesn’t.
“I work Sundays.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
Minho’s mouth goes dry. He studies the curve of Jisung’s jaw, the slight indent in his cheek. His nose is pink from the cold.
“You look—”
“Don’t,” Jisung cuts him off. “Please don’t.”
Silence. Long. Heavy.
Then Jisung leans forward. Just a little.
And says:
“Do you still think about dying?”
He leaves after that.
Minho stays standing in the same spot, staring after him until the sound of his footsteps disappears completely.
Do you still think about dying?
The words sit inside him like rot.
Because he doesn’t have an answer.
Or maybe he does.
Maybe the answer is: yes.
Maybe it’s always been yes.
Later that night, Seungmin comes home and says nothing. Just drops a plastic bag of pastries on the table and walks into the bathroom.
Minho stares at the coffee table. The floor. His own hands.
They’re shaking.
Do you still think about dying?
He does.
But tonight, he also thinks about blue hair, and green hoodies, and voices that still make his knees weak.
And the light above the ice chest, still flickering like it wants to be fixed.
Minho dreams of butterflies again.
Not the dead kind. Not this time.
This one is moving—barely. Wings translucent and trembling. It hovers in the space between flight and falling.
Then it speaks.
In Jisung’s voice.
“Don’t keep me just because I used to move.”
Minho jerks awake with the taste of old sugar in his mouth.
It’s bitter. Not sweet
The thing about dead butterflies is they don’t decay fast.
They just fade.
Like memory. Like almosts.
It’s what Minho thinks about when he lights his first cigarette of the morning and watches the smoke hang heavy in the kitchen.
The dream lingers like something unfinished.
He can’t get Jisung’s voice out of his ears.
At the store, the light above the ice chest flutters.
It almost goes out completely then buzzes back to life like a stubborn ghost.
Minho stares at it.
He hasn’t seen Jisung since that night. Since the sidewalk. Since the question he still hasn’t answered out loud.
Do you still think about dying?
He thinks about answering it now. Whispering to the light. To the bugs caught behind the plastic cover. To the shape Jisung left in the air.
Yes.
Felix shows up during his break with two canned coffees and a scarf that’s too long for the weather.
“You look like you’ve been hexed,” Felix says, offering one of the cans. “Did you piss off an old woman?”
Minho raises an eyebrow. “You think I’d survive that?”
“No,” Felix agrees. “You’d crumple. Like wet paper.”
They sit on the curb outside the store. It’s dusk. The sky’s pink like bruised skin. Cars hum past without slowing down.
“Did you see him again?” Felix asks eventually.
Minho doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.
He just nods.
Felix breathes in like he’s about to say something complicated, then exhales instead. “How did it feel?”
Minho considers it.
Like biting into something that looks soft but isn’t. Like almost remembering a song. Like the exact second before a wound starts to bleed.
“I didn’t,” he says. “It didn’t feel.”
Felix doesn’t buy that, but he doesn’t argue. He just says, “Seungmin’s been worried.”
Minho hums.
“You gonna talk to him?” Felix asks. “Jisung, I mean.”
Minho shrugs. “What would I even say?”
Felix takes a long sip of coffee and squints into the horizon. “I don’t know. Maybe not everything. Just… enough.”
That night, Minho lays on his mattress and watches the ceiling like it might say something back.
He doesn’t sleep.
He doesn’t even try.
Instead, he pulls out one of his old sketchbooks. Not the ones from after Jisung left. Not the ones full of smudged lines and unfinished corners.
No—this one’s older. Pre-Chan. Pre-everything.
He flips to the page he’s already thinking about.
The one with the moth.
Everyone always thought it was a butterfly. Too clean, too symmetrical.
But Minho remembers what he meant. He remembers the dust on the wings, the dull pattern.
He remembers Jisung staring at it once, tilting his head, saying, “It’s pretty.”
Minho didn’t correct him.
He didn’t want to explain that some things look delicate even when they’re already dying.
The next time he dreams, there’s no butterfly.
Just Jisung.
But not the one from now—not the green hoodie, fluffy-cheek version.
This is the version from their early days. Seventeen. A hoodie too big for his frame. Dark hair sticking to his temple. Cheeks full of something close to light.
He’s crouched in front of Minho’s bed, scribbling on a napkin.
“Stop looking,” he says without looking up. “It’s not done yet.”
Minho watches the way his hand moves—quick, decisive. Like he knows what he’s doing.
“You’re gonna mess it up,” Jisung says, half-laughing. “You always do this. You stare too long and then I start overthinking.”
Minho blinks.
And Jisung’s gone.
The napkin’s still there, though. Folded on the floor.
When he picks it up, there’s nothing on it.
Not a single mark.
Minho wakes up with the sun stabbing through the blinds and his heart beating wrong.
There’s no metaphor this time.
Just silence.
Just the absence of something he almost remembered.
Minho keeps seeing him where he’s not.
The corner booth at Felix’s favorite ramen shop. The escalator at the train station. The bike rack outside the university art building. Black hood up, or hair down, or sometimes neither just a shape, a feeling.
Like a memory walking too fast.
He never calls out.
He’s not sure he wants to be right.
He teaches a beginner dance class on Thursday night.
The kids are noisy. It’s good.
They keep him grounded. Give him something to count that isn’t ceiling tiles or months since or the number of cigarettes he promised not to smoke this week.
A girl with pigtails asks why he always wears black.
He tells her it’s easier than matching colors.
She tells him that’s boring.
He tells her she’s probably right.
It almost makes him smile.
After class, he finds a drawing tucked into his bag.
A pencil sketch on notebook paper—rough, a little smudged. It’s a moth. Or maybe a butterfly. It’s hard to tell.
It’s not signed.
Minho stares at it longer than he means to.
When he gets home, he tapes it above his bed.
It feels like a dare.
He dreams of Chan that night.
Not the day of the funeral. Not the wake. Not the cold hands or the altar candles or the way Hyunjin couldn’t look anyone in the eye.
No—he dreams of Sydney .
The first group trip. Back when the worst thing they had to worry about was train delays and splitting the bill. They were all packed into a rented room too small for seven people, and someone probably Hyunjin had spilled ramen on the floor. Jisung was shouting about copyrighting his future mixtape name, and Felix was trying to climb out the window for no reason.
Chan had handed Minho a drink and said, “You’re too quiet, you know that?”
Minho had blinked. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Chan just smiled. “Yeah. You do.”
Then he sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder, calm like he’d always belonged there.
“You don’t have to talk all the time,” he added. “But you don’t have to disappear either.”
Minho remembers that moment clearer than most things.
Because it was the first time someone older hadn’t tried to fix him just seen him and stayed.
When he wakes up, the moth drawing is crooked on the wall.
He doesn’t fix it.
On Sunday, Seungmin pulls him aside.
“You’ve been off,” he says, not unkindly.
Minho shrugs.
“I know it’s him.”
Still, Minho doesn’t say anything.
Seungmin’s voice softens. “You don’t have to explain yourself. But you can’t live like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re still waiting for the worst part.”
The worst part was never the silence.
It was what came before it.
The night Minho said something he shouldn’t have. Or maybe he said nothing when Jisung needed him to say anything at all.
They were in his apartment. Rain against the windows. Jisung’s head on his shoulder, body slack like he was made of water.
Minho had said, “I think we’re just two people who were grieving the same person and mistook it for love.”
And Jisung had gone very still.
Then, without a word, he’d gotten up, put on his hoodie, and left.
He never came back.
Minho didn’t chase him.
At the time, it felt noble. Honest. Like he was sparing them both.
Now it just feels like cowardice.
The broken light in the store dies completely on a Monday.
No flicker. No buzz.
Just darkness in the corner.
He doesn’t tell anyone. Doesn’t fill out the maintenance form. Doesn’t move the ice chest.
It’s a grave now.
He sees Jisung again five days later.
Not up close—across the street, slipping into a café with Changbin. Hoodie down, hair messier than before. Laughing.
Laughing.
Minho stops walking.
A woman brushes past him and mutters something under her breath, but he doesn’t move.
He watches through the café window as Jisung presses a hand to Changbin’s shoulder, head tilted back in amusement.
He looks like someone Minho used to know. Someone he once made coffee for at 3 a.m. Someone who used to tap out rhythms on Minho’s knee when he couldn’t sleep.
That person is gone.
This Jisung is sharper. Sleeker. Untouchable.
A butterfly that outlived its own metaphor.
Minho walks home slowly.
When he gets there, Felix is sprawled on the couch watching something terrible. Seungmin’s at the table eating cereal from a mug.
Neither of them asks why his eyes are red.
The bell above the store door rings at 11:42 p.m.
Minho doesn’t look up at first. He’s halfway through restocking gum, crouched behind the counter, brain fogged from too much caffeine and not enough food.
Then he hears it.
The silence.
That particular stillness that only comes with Jisung.
He straightens slowly.
And there he is.
Same green hoodie. Same eyes, unreadable. Hair a little flatter than usual, like he’s walked through fog. He’s holding nothing. Just standing in the middle of the store like he forgot why he came.
“Hey,” Jisung says.
Minho says nothing. His chest is too full of dust to speak.
Jisung takes a slow breath. “I wasn’t gonna come in.”
Minho lifts one eyebrow.
Jisung shrugs. “But the light was off.”
Minho glances toward the corner. Ice chest. Broken bulb. The bugs are gone now. All that’s left is the dim reflection of the past.
“It’s been out for a week,” Minho says.
Jisung nods, like that means something.
It probably does.
They don’t speak for a while. Just stand there in the fluorescence, not quite looking at each other.
Minho realizes his hands are clenched.
Jisung notices.
“Relax,” he murmurs. “I’m not here to blow anything up.”
“You’re not really the one who does the blowing up,” Minho replies.
That gets a small, hollow laugh. It dies quickly.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Jisung says. “I don’t know if I wanted to see you, or if I just wanted to see if I could.”
“You can,” Minho says. “You did.”
“Yeah,” Jisung whispers. “I guess I did.”
Minho gestures toward the counter. “You want something?”
Jisung shakes his head. “I don’t think I want anything that comes in a plastic wrapper right now.”
Minho nods. Figures.
Silence again.
Then Jisung looks up. Really looks at him.
“You still think about it?”
Minho knows what “it” means.
Chan.
The funeral.
The apartment after.
Jisung’s voice cracking in the hallway when he said “I can’t be the only one keeping him alive.”
Minho’s silence in response.
“I think about it,” Minho says.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Minho swallows. His throat’s dry.
“Yes,” he says. “I still think about dying.”
Jisung nods slowly, like it’s not a surprise, but it still hurts to hear.
Minho takes a breath.
“But I also think about the moth drawing. And the laundromat. And your old hoodie with the bleach stain.”
Jisung’s expression flickers.
“I think about the songs you never finished. And the way you chewed pens. And how Chan used to fall asleep during movies with his mouth open.”
“That’s gross,” Jisung murmurs.
Minho smiles—small, faint, fleeting. “Yeah. But he did.”
They’re quiet again.
Then Jisung says, “I had a dream the other night.”
Minho’s heart stumbles.
“You were there,” Jisung says. “But not really. I was holding something dead and trying to pretend it was still warm.”
Minho flinches.
“Maybe it was me,” Jisung adds.
Minho doesn’t know what to say to that. So he says the only thing that feels true:
“I dreamed about a butterfly that came back to life. It spoke in your voice.”
Jisung’s lips part. He doesn’t speak.
“It said, ‘Don’t keep me just because I used to move.’”
Jisung looks like he might cry.
Instead, he says: “I didn’t think you’d remember things like that.”
“I remember everything,” Minho says softly. “That’s the problem.”
They don’t say goodbye.
Minho bags a bottle of water Jisung didn’t ask for and sets it on the counter. Jisung picks it up without a word.
He doesn’t drink it. Just holds it like it might turn into something else if he grips it long enough.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzz louder than usual.
Jisung turns to go.
Halfway to the door, he stops. Doesn’t look back.
Just says, “I’m not mad at you anymore.”
Minho’s throat burns.
“I don’t think I ever really was,” Jisung adds. “I just didn’t know how to stop being sad.”
And then he’s gone.
Minho doesn’t move for a long time.
Eventually, he walks over to the broken light above the ice chest.
It’s completely out now. No glow. No bugs.
Just a dusty bulb and a reflection of nothing.
He stares at it like it owes him something.
Then he turns off the rest of the store lights and sits on the floor behind the counter.
Everything’s quiet.
He closes his eyes and listens to his own breathing. It’s uneven, but real.
When he gets home, Seungmin’s asleep on the couch, half buried under an unfolded hoodie and the faint sound of a late night drama.
Felix is curled into the corner like a cat.
Minho walks past them without a sound.
In his room, he looks at the moth drawing on the wall.
Still crooked.
He leaves it that way.
Then he opens the window.
Lets the air in.
It’s cold.
It smells like rain.
Like the beginning of something.
Minho doesn’t wake up drowning.
It’s the first time in a long time.
The air is cold, but it doesn’t burn. The silence in the apartment doesn’t choke. He blinks at the ceiling like it’s new.
Something is different.
He doesn’t name it.
Just breathes.
In the kitchen, Seungmin is humming something tuneless while stabbing holes in a microwave meal.
Felix is still in bed, probably buried under four blankets and at least one regret.
Minho pours coffee. No one talks.
It’s comfortable.
Which is terrifying.
He walks to the store later just to check on the ice chest.
The light is still out.
But he doesn’t feel the weight of it anymore.
It just looks… empty.
Not haunted.
Just a thing that broke and stayed broken.
He’s halfway home when he sees it.
Not Jisung. Not yet.
Just the mural.
A newer one, splashed across the side of an old convenience store halfway down the block. It’s abstract, full of jagged lines and impossible colors, but something about it feels familiar.
At the bottom, in tiny block letters:
you can’t lose something that was never holding on
Minho stops walking.
He stares at it for a long time.
He doesn’t know who painted it.
But he knows what it means.
Later that night, Jisung messages him.
Just:
hey
Then nothing for three hours.
Then:
do you want to meet?
Minho doesn’t answer right away.
Not out of hesitation.
Just gravity.
Like he knows the second he says yes, the tide will change.
Finally, he types:
yeah
They meet at the river.
Same spot they used to sit with Chan. Back when summer nights felt like something they could waste.
Jisung is already there when Minho arrives.
No hoodie this time.
Just a long-sleeved shirt, sleeves pushed up, eyes on the water.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” Minho replies.
They don’t hug. They don’t sit too close.
But they don’t look away either.
“You remember that night we walked home from Hyunjin’s show?” Jisung asks.
Minho nods. “You made fun of Chan’s boots.”
“They were ugly.”
“They were a gift.”
“They were still ugly.”
They both laugh—soft, careful.
Jisung looks down at his hands.
“That night,” he says, “Chan held my hand the whole way home.”
Minho’s chest tightens.
Jisung’s voice is gentle. “I think I knew it wasn’t going to last.”
Minho doesn’t ask if he means Chan, or them.
Maybe it was both.
“I hated you for a while,” Jisung says.
Minho nods. “I know.”
“I told myself it was because of what you said. The ‘grieving the same person’ thing. But really… I think it’s because you were right.”
Minho looks at him. Quiet. Waiting.
Jisung exhales. “At first, I loved Chan more than anything. But after he died, I kept trying to love him like he was still here.”
“You didn’t let yourself stop.”
“No,” Jisung agrees. “And you—”
He pauses. “You were a reminder of what came after.”
Minho’s breath catches.
“Of something else,” Jisung finishes. “Something real.”
The moon’s low. The water’s still.
Minho looks down at the grass.
“I loved you even when you were his.”
Jisung doesn’t flinch.
“I know,” he says. “I think… I think part of me did too. But I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
Jisung finally looks at him again.
“I wanted to.”
Minho’s hands curl into fists in his sleeves.
“I still do,” Jisung says, and the words fall like something he’s carried too long.
Neither of them moves.
Not yet.
But the air between them has changed shape.
It’s not sharp anymore.
Just waiting.
Minho doesn’t go home right away.
Jisung left first, with a quiet, “See you around,” like they hadn’t just folded something fragile between them.
Minho stays.
The air by the river smells like rust and memory.
He closes his eyes and lets it all come up: the apartment light flickering above Chan’s bed. The sound of Jisung laughing from the kitchen. The way they used to touch familiar, thoughtless.
Minho was always in the doorway.
Watching.
He loved Jisung before he had a name for it.
Before Chan did.
Before Jisung leaned into someone else’s side and stayed there.
That was the part that didn’t get talked about. The part that didn’t belong in eulogies or flashbacks or tearful group hugs.
It wasn’t just losing Chan.
It was never getting to have Jisung.
Not really.
He’d built his guilt like an altar around it.
Because how do you grieve someone who was already spoken for?
How do you survive the ache of almost, over and over, in every room they left behind?
Felix finds him in the kitchen the next morning, eating dry cereal from a measuring cup like he’s forgotten how to function.
“You look like someone took the life out of your eyes and forgot to return it,” Felix says, plopping down beside him.
Minho blinks. “That’s specific.”
Felix shrugs. “You’re a specific kind of tragic.”
He doesn’t press. That’s the thing Minho likes about Felix. He never digs where it hurts. He just keeps talking until the silence feels less like a threat.
Seungmin texts later:
he’s still in love with you, isn’t he?
Minho stares at the screen until it dims.
Then types back:
i don’t know. maybe. i think he always was.
but not in the same way. not then.
There’s a pause.
Then Seungmin replies:
you were in love with him while he was with chan.
you felt like dying because of it.
Minho doesn’t deny it.
There’s no point.
Instead, he sends:
yeah.
That night, he dreams of Chan.
Not the real Chan. Not the one he buried. Just the idea of him — sitting on the edge of a couch in the old apartment, elbows on his knees, face in shadow.
“You were never going to tell him, were you?” dream-Chan asks.
Minho doesn’t answer.
“You thought it made you noble,” Chan says. “But it just made you lonely.”
Minho wakes up with his pillow damp and the word lonely echoing behind his teeth.
He doesn’t go to work the next day.
Doesn’t text anyone.
He just walks.
Trains. Streets. Old routes he hasn’t taken since everything ended.
He finds himself in front of a building he hasn’t seen in over a year — Chan’s old place.
The buzzer’s been replaced. The plants are gone. Someone else lives there now. But for a moment, he sees it how it used to be: Jisung barefoot on the tile. Chan pouring coffee. Felix laughing from the balcony.
And himself — always slightly outside of it all.
Never quite inside the warmth.
Minho closes his eyes and thinks:
You were never mine.
Not then.
But maybe now.
Maybe now you could be something.
If I let you.
If you let me.
Jisung doesn’t text.
He shows up.
Minho opens the door to find him standing there in a windbreaker, hair damp, no explanation in sight.
For a second, neither of them moves.
Then Jisung says, “I didn’t know where else to go.”
And Minho says, “You’re here.”
They don’t talk much.
Jisung steps inside like he remembers the shape of the room. Like the couch remembers him.
Felix is out. Seungmin is asleep.
Minho makes tea.
They sit in the half-dark kitchen, the only light coming from the stovetop indicator — dim, blue, alive in a way that feels almost holy.
Jisung runs his thumb along the edge of the mug.
“You still hate sugar in your drinks?” he asks.
Minho nods. “Still do.”
“You said it tastes like a lie.”
Minho hums. “It does.”
Jisung smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“You used to steal sips from mine anyway,” he says.
Minho doesn’t deny it.
There’s a pause.
Then Jisung asks, “Do you remember the last time we saw Chan?”
Minho looks down at the table.
“Yeah,” he says. “I remember.”
It was raining. Chan had been exhausted, but still smiling. He hugged everyone too tight and said, “Be good,” like it meant something.
Minho remembers Jisung leaning into him on the train home, too quiet.
He remembers wanting to say something — anything — and saying nothing.
“I felt like I owed him everything,” Jisung says now. “Even after he was gone.”
“You didn’t,” Minho says gently.
“I know. But I did.”
He takes a shaky breath.
“I think I tried to stay in love with him just so I wouldn’t forget.”
Minho doesn’t speak.
Because he knows that feeling too well.
Because he’s done it himself.
“You were always so quiet back then,” Jisung says. “I thought maybe you didn’t care.”
Minho finally looks at him.
“I cared too much.”
They sit in that for a while.
Not touching.
Just existing in the same breath.
Then Jisung sets down his mug.
And he reaches across the table.
Not to hold.
Not to take.
Just to let his fingers brush Minho’s — the lightest contact, like testing the temperature of a memory.
Minho doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t pull away.
Their hands rest there, barely touching.
And it says more than any apology could.
Jisung doesn’t stay the night.
He doesn’t have to.
Something already has.
The next time they see each other, it’s not planned.
Jisung’s standing in the convenience store aisle holding a bottle of water and a pack of gum, like nothing has changed. Like everything has.
Minho blinks.
“Twice in one week?” he says.
Jisung shrugs. “Couldn’t stay away.”
He steps up to the counter. Their eyes meet.
Minho doesn’t ask what he’s doing there.
He already knows.
After the shift ends, they sit on the curb outside.
No drinks. No conversation.
Just the moon overhead and the hum of traffic.
Finally, Jisung says, “I think I’ve been trying to write a song about you for three years.”
Minho breathes out. “Yeah?”
“It never works.”
“Maybe don’t write it, then.”
Jisung looks over. “Why not?”
“Because it’s still happening.”
The silence afterward feels full, not empty.
Like something blooming in the dark.
Jisung speaks again. “I used to think loving you meant betraying him.”
Minho doesn’t look away.
“It doesn’t,” Jisung adds. “I know that now.”
Minho says nothing.
He doesn’t have to.
Because the way Jisung is looking at him says everything else.
They don’t touch this time.
But when Jisung stands, he says, “Walk me home?”
Minho nods.
He follows.
Later that night, Minho doesn’t dream of butterflies or broken lights.
He dreams of Jisung’s fingers curled around his wrist. Not gripping — just there. A pulse where one ended and the other began.
When he wakes up, it’s not a dream.
Jisung’s next to him.
They never said anything not out loud. Just a slow look across the hallway, a silent invitation. Minho stepped aside. Jisung walked in.
Now, Jisung’s curled against his side, one leg hooked over Minho’s like he’s done it before. His breath is warm at the base of Minho’s throat. His hand rests on Minho’s chest like it belongs there.
It doesn’t feel like a first.
It feels like a return.
Minho shifts slightly, just enough to press his lips to Jisung’s hair.
“I thought you were asleep,” Jisung mumbles, barely audible.
“I was,” Minho says. “But you’re here.”
Jisung lifts his head, blinking slow.
There’s no hesitation.
Just the kiss — quiet, close, unhurried. Like forgiveness. Like a promise made with closed eyes and no need to say it out loud.
When they pull apart, they don’t speak.
Jisung only exhales and tucks his face into Minho’s neck, fingers tightening in the fabric of Minho’s shirt.
Minho lets himself hold him.
Like he’s allowed to.
Like he always was.