Archive of Our Own ^beta

There are questions Soobin doesn’t let himself ask anymore.

They hover in the hollow spaces—haunting the minutes between blinking cursor and shallow breath, the lull between the soft hum of fluorescent light and the way the world feels like it’s inching too close. Like the ceiling might cave in. Like the air itself is pressing in, one sigh at a time.

They’re quiet questions. But persistent.

Why do people stay, even when it hurts?

Why did he stay?

Why didn’t he say no?

Why did he say please, don’t go?

Once, he clung to the idea that naive perseverance was strength. That endurance meant maturity. That accepting the past as immovable—what happened, what ended, what he let break—meant he’d grown.

But lately, in moments like this—dawn bleeding pale through the window blinds, mind too loud to rest, heart too stubborn to sleep—it doesn’t feel like peace.

It feels like grief. Dull and sedimented and ancient. Something closer to regret.

The apartment is still.

Still in the kind of way that feels wrong. Not peaceful, not safe. Just the kind of stillness that makes the refrigerator buzz feel like thunder, the wind outside scratch like nails against glass.

The glow of Soobin's laptop spills into the dark, illuminating the battlefield he calls a desk—lecture slides, empty cans of energy drink, chocolate wrappers with corners bitten off but never finished. It’s a strange kind of survival.

Feed the mind, starve the rest.

He hasn’t blinked in a while. His eyes sting from the strain, throat tight with dehydration. Or maybe it’s something else.

Soobin doesn’t know what time it is.

Only that the light is wrong again—too grey, too dim, like the morning is still deciding whether to rise. Which means it’s either too late to sleep or too early to start the day. His body clock stopped keeping track weeks ago. He lives in a rhythm of collapse and caffeine. Of missed meals and overdue check-ins.

The overhead light’s been on since last night, turning everything sterile and washed-out, like he’s in a waiting room and forgot what he’s waiting for.

Then, the soft click of a door. The padding of socked feet across hardwood.

“You’re already up?”

Taehyun’s voice is hoarse with sleep, grounded in a kind of calm Soobin has long since forgotten how to feel.

Soobin doesn’t look up. Just blinks at the blinking cursor on his screen. Wonders if he imagined the voice. Wonders if he ever really fell asleep. Wonders if he’s even awake now.

“I don’t think I slept,” he says, voice frayed at the edges like a worn-out shirt.

Taehyun steps further into the room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Jesus,” he sighs. “Hyung, seriously?”

"Beats me," Soobin sighs, removing his glasses and rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye socket until his vision flares white, "I don't think I've gotten up from my fucking revisions the past ten hours. Didn’t mean to stay up this long.”

“You never mean to,” Taehyun’s tone is flat, but not unkind. Just familiar. This argument’s older than most of their furniture. “But you do. Every week. Again and again. You act shocked every time like it’s not a pattern now.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m trying.”

The weight of those words hangs in the air. Not defiant. Not defeated. Just tired.

Taehyun groans and flops onto the couch, “you need a break. Your hair looks like it’s gaining sentience. And that coffee mug on your desk has started its own civilization.”

Soobin glances at the mug. It’s not even his. He doesn’t know how it got there. Doesn’t know when he stopped noticing the mess.

“I’ve been studying.”

“You’ve been spiraling,” Taehyun corrects, flatly. No hesitation.

Soobin lets out a short breath. Shrugs, half-hearted. “Same thing.”

“That can’t be healthy. And to think you’re going to be a doctor soon.”

“We,” Soobin corrects, with a tired smile. “We’ll be doctors. If we pass, when we pass.”

Taehyun snorts. “Oh, right. Unhealthier after the white coat. The irony of medicine.”

There’s a lull.

Soobin finally looks around his desk like he’s seeing it for the first time. The debris of a week’s worth of all-nighters litters the surface—instant noodle cups stacked like offerings, crumpled candy wrappers, torn-out notebook pages scrawled with symptoms, treatments, drug names he’s too numb to recall. He reaches for a trash bag from the kitchen drawer and starts cleaning mechanically. Muscle memory. Survive, clean, cram, survive.

Outside, the city is waking up. Somewhere in the distance, a bus engine revs, honking down narrow lanes. Light seeps in slowly, softening the hard edges of concrete buildings and steel beams.

Taehyun stretches like a cat, yawns. Then, casually, “wanna get wasted tonight?”

Soobin blinks at him. “Do I look like someone capable of being wasted right now?”

Taehyun just raises a brow. “Is that a no?”

“I can't even remember the last time I ate something that wasn’t vacuum-sealed, Hyun,” Soobin replies, tossing the trash bag to the side. “Or slept. Or spoke to anyone besides you.”

Taehyun shrugs like that’s not a real excuse, “your lack of a decent schedule does not dictate my right to alcohol.”

“You study more than me.”

“But I have a system,” Taehyun says smugly, as if that settles it.

Soobin tunes out the rest. Taehyun’s sermon on weekly resets and Pomodoro timers and how discipline is a love language. He’s heard it all before—six years and counting. Taehyun’s holy grail of balance. Study plans. Weekly resets. Optimized burnout.

And then—

“That's why,” Taehyun finishes brightly, “we’re going out tonight.”

“You’re insane.”

“Shots. Beer. A cheap bar. Loud music. Zero thoughts, only vibes.”

“You sound like Beomgyu.”

Taehyun nods, “he is the one who invited us.”

That lands.

“He’s in town?” Soobin asks slowly. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

Taehyun rolls a shoulder. “Didn’t want to bother you, I guess. He messaged me last night, said everyone was coming.”

Everyone.

The word hangs there like a warning.

Soobin’s gaze drops to his lap. “And?”

There’s a pause. Just long enough.

He looks up. Sees the answer on Taehyun’s face before the words even come.

“Of course,” he whispers. “Of course, it’s him.”

Taehyun’s voice softens, “you don’t have to see him.”

But it’s too late. The name is already echoing in his head, low and sharp like a blade dragged across stone.

Choi Yeonjun.

Three syllables. Years of residue.

“Maybe I should,” Soobin murmurs. His pulse stutters in his wrist, too fast. His throat feels dry, his vision buzzes around the edges. “It’s fine. It’s been a year.”

“You don’t sound fine.”

Soobin huffs out a laugh. It catches on something in his chest, “yeah, well, I don’t feel like lying about it today.”

“Wake up, Soobinie.”

Soft lips brush against his cheek. The room is cold, toes poking out from the blanket, but the voice—warm, too familiar—pulls him into waking. 

Sunlight. Filtered through half-closed blinds, warm across tangled sheets. The kind of morning that makes the world feel far away—like there’s only this room, this bed, this boy.

Soobin groans and hides his face in the pillow. “Five more minutes.”

“You’ve got an exam in an hour,” Yeonjun says, amused. “Don’t make me throw you in the shower.”

“Then let me die here, like this.”

Yeonjun laughs. It’s not loud—it’s not the kind of laugh that echoes—but it lingers. A sound like honey. 

Soobin cracks one eye open.

Hazel eyes. Ear piercings catching light. A sweatshirt half-zipped down bare skin. Everything about Yeonjun is glowing and golden and maddeningly gentle.

Soobin wraps cold arms around Yeonjun’s waist and buries his face into his chest, “good morning, angel.”

“You’re disgusting,” Yeonjun murmurs, kissing his temple. “I love you, too.”

Soobin pushes his head more into Yeonjun's chest, “if you’re not the first thing I see, I don’t want to wake up.”

“Such a sap.”

But Yeonjun stays there a while longer. Just holding him. Letting him breathe. Letting him feel like the world won’t cave in just yet.

Soobin jolts upright.

Exam.

Shit.

“I didn’t study the last chapter—”

“You did,” Yeonjun says, tugging him back. “We covered it. Remember? Last night. I quizzed you.”

Right. That’s right.

Yeonjun had stayed up with him until 4 AM, guiding him through cardiac pharmacology like it was the only thing keeping Soobin from falling apart.

Soobin exhales, slumping against him again. “I love you.”

“I know, and I love you,” Yeonjun whispers. He presses a mug into Soobin's hands, “go get ready. But first, drink.”

The coffee is too hot. Too bitter. But Soobin drinks anyway, because Yeonjun made it. Because mornings like this felt infinite back then. Because he thought they had time.

“Med school’s tough, isn't it?”

“You make it easier.”

Back then, he meant every word.

Now, he wishes he didn’t remember them so clearly.

Now, Soobin stands by the sink, holding a cup he can’t remember making.

It’s cold.

He tips it out. Watches it swirl down the drain like something that once mattered.

“Do you think he changed?” he asks suddenly, not looking at Taehyun.

Taehyun doesn’t ask who he is.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I think you did.”

Soobin nods once. Slowly.

“That’s the scariest part.”

“This is a bad idea.”

Soobin had already changed twice.

He stood in front of the mirror, staring at the third shirt—black, oversized, safe. Not because he wanted to look good. No, not for that. But because it wouldn’t wrinkle when he inevitably folds in on himself like a paper crane. He rubbed his tired eyes, already puffy from sleeplessness and something deeper—grief, maybe. Memory rot. All that.

“Why am I even going?” he muttered to no one.

The apartment was quiet again, Taehyun out picking up snacks before pre-game. Soobin sat on the edge of the bed, phone face down, knowing the screen would only betray him. He’d muted Beomgyu’s stories days ago, not because he didn’t care, but because seeing the blurred outlines of people who used to love him only made it worse.

He opened his drawer, hand brushing against the corner of a familiar photo. The one he didn’t throw away. Not yet.

It was taken on a film camera. Warm lighting, Yeonjun in the background laughing, Soobin in front pretending to scowl but clearly mid-laugh too. A dumb moment at some retreat.

They had argued thirty minutes after this was taken. Over something stupid—Soobin forgetting to bring a specific jacket of Yeonjun’s. But the fight spiraled into a full-blown silent treatment that lasted until check-out. That was their cycle: tenderness, tension, explosion, regret, repeat.

He shoved the photo back and slammed the drawer shut.

The air was thick with anticipation long before they even stepped inside.

The cab ride over was mostly silent. Just the low hum of the city slipping by through the rain-speckled windows, Taehyun scrolling mindlessly through his phone, and Soobin pressing his forehead against the cold glass as the neon signs of Itaewon bled into each other in streaks of red and gold.

It was a Friday night, so naturally the city was alive—too alive. And for the first time in a long time, Soobin didn’t want to be awake for it.

By the time they arrived, the bar’s already half-packed, spilling with that particular brand of hip city kids who look like they were born with film cameras and trauma-induced eyeliner.

Inside, warm yellow bulbs hang low from tangled wires, casting soft glows over chipped wooden counters and glossy bottles of liquor in neat rows. A low beat pulses from the speakers—something bass-heavy and lazy, seductive in its rhythm but not loud enough to drown out conversation.

Soobin’s hands are buried deep in the pockets of his coat, fists clenched around his own hesitation.

“This place looks expensive,” he mutters to Taehyun.

Taehyun doesn’t even blink, “maybe, but I’m told we’re not paying anything. Beomgyu got the hookup.”

Beomgyu. Right.

That name alone should’ve sent a rush of comfort—old memories, loud laughter, the smell of fried chicken and cheap takeout in dorm rooms—but now, it coils like anxiety in Soobin’s chest. Because where Beomgyu is, he will be too.

He follows Taehyun in through the side entrance, barely registering the greetings from the bouncer or the brief wave of recognition from someone they vaguely know from med school. He’s too busy rehearsing disaster.

He’s seen before he sees them.

“Choi Soobin!” Beomgyu practically shouted, knocking over a shot glass to get up and reach him. His hair was longer, bleached at some ends like he didn’t care anymore. His smile still had that lopsided edge of boyish mischief, but Soobin could tell something in him had grown up. Or maybe Soobin had just aged differently.

And there, sitting in the booth, Soobin sees him.

Choi Yeonjun.

Still heartbreakingly beautiful. Still exactly how Soobin remembers him—easy, posture relaxed but careful, like he knew the world watched him and couldn’t decide whether he wanted it to. His hair was dyed a messy blonde now, growing out, his rings catching the light as he lifted a drink to his lips.

He's already looking at Soobin.

Not that Soobin was in any condition to be seen.

He’s wearing black—of course—and the kind of lazy confidence that Soobin always hated himself for finding sexy. Their eyes linger.

A second. Two.

And then Yeonjun’s mouth curves upward into a small, polite smile. Familiar and distant at the same time.

Soobin swallows and looks away, letting Beomgyu pull him into a hug.

“You’re skinnier than I remember,” he jokes, giving him a once-over. “Don’t tell me review for board’s eating you alive.”

“I’d have to be alive for that,” Soobin deadpans. The group laughs. Even Yeonjun.

Taehyun slips into the booth easily, like he’s done it a hundred times. Soobin hovers awkwardly before Beomgyu grabs him and pulls him down into the spot beside him, which just so happens to be across from Yeonjun. Of course.

“Hyung,” Beomgyu asked gently, “you okay?”

No. Absolutely not. “Yeah,” Soobin lied instead.

The conversation picks up quickly—old stories resurface, like they always do in rooms like this. That night they all ran from campus security during freshman year. The time Beomgyu cried watching a Studio Ghibli movie while drunk. The group chat that hasn’t been active in over a year but still somehow lives on in inside jokes and nicknames.

Yeji passes Soobin a glass filled with something sweet and fizzy. “You need to loosen up,” she teases.

He nods, downs it too fast. It burns on the way down. Ryujin beside him laughs at his face, teases him something about medicine killing the strong drinker in Soobin.

Across the table, Yeonjun’s watching him.

Soobin doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he keeps them under the table. Fingers twitching. Wrists pressed tight together. There’s too much noise in his head, too many memories clawing their way out.

Wake up, Soobinie.

The memory flashes unwanted, uninvited. Yeonjun’s voice soft and warm in the morning light. The smell of fabric softener and expensive cologne. The weight of someone who felt like home before home became a battlefield.

He shakes it off with another drink.

Beomgyu’s rambling about something—some director he’s obsessed with lately—and Soobin half-listens, half-scans the crowd behind Yeonjun, hoping maybe he’ll disappear if he doesn’t look directly at him. But Yeonjun keeps being there. Smiling when others talk. Nodding along. Laughing at jokes. So effortlessly integrated into this life Soobin’s been trying to forget.

The moment Yeonjun turned to face him, it was like time slowed. His eyes caught Soobin’s—and it was a full three seconds before either of them reacted.

Then Yeonjun smiled. Like nothing happened. Like they weren’t each other’s collateral damage.

“Hey,” he said simply, walking around the table to sit beside him. Casual. Cruel.  

Soobin blinks. He didn’t expect the direct address. It’s the first time Yeonjun’s spoken to him all night.

“Hey.”

Yeonjun just sat there for a second, glancing around like he wasn’t sure what came next. 

“So,” Yeonjun began, trying for lightness, “been keeping busy?”

Soobin blinked again. “Review for licensure. You know. Burnout and ramen dinners.”

Yeonjun chuckled. “Sounds familiar.”

Silence.

“Still set on pediatrics?” Yeonjun asks at one point, voice low, smooth like aged whiskey.

He nods, trying to keep his expression neutral. “Still there.”

Yeonjun smiles, “knew you’d stick with it. You’ve always had the patience.”

Soobin doesn’t answer. Doesn’t want to. The compliment tastes like rust in his mouth.

He felt like he was underwater, all the voices of their friends buzzing in a frequency he couldn’t quite parse. All he could focus on was Yeonjun’s thigh nearly brushing his. The way Yeonjun smelled exactly the same—bergamot and mint and heartbreak.

“You cut your hair,” Yeonjun said suddenly.

“You dyed yours,” Soobin countered. “You used to say you’d never go blonde again.”

Yeonjun smiled, small and broken. “Guess we both stopped keeping promises.”

That did it.

Soobin stood, muttered something about air, and left the table before the noise of his heart cracking leaked out his mouth.

He found the edge of the rooftop and sank into the silence like it might save him.

The night stretched out before him—Seoul flickering in fragments, all neon blinks and headlight streaks, a city too alive for how still he felt inside.

The wind tugged at the edges of his shirt, cool against the fever of his skin, and for a second, he leaned into the railing and imagined what it would be like to just let go—not of his life, not like that—but of the ache. The pressure. The tightness in his chest that had been coiled there for years and had started to throb the moment he walked back into the room.

He exhaled, long and unsteady, fogging up the breath between him and the skyline.

“Just breathe,” he whispered into the night, into the wind, into the electric hum of the city that didn’t care if he shattered right here. “You’re okay.”

But he wasn’t. God, he wasn’t.

Okay would mean breathing didn’t feel like dragging glass through his lungs. Okay would mean his heartbeat wasn’t skipping like it was caught between panic and hope. Okay would mean he didn’t want to scream until his voice cracked, didn’t want to rip a hole in the night sky and climb through it—backward to the past or forward to a time where none of this mattered anymore.

He pressed his fingers to his eyes and saw stars. Behind them, memories. Too bright, too close, too cruel.

He remembered Yeonjun’s voice—low and urgent, arms around him, aftermath of another argument softening into apology.

I’ll always choose you, Yeonjun had said, the words shaped like a promise, like shelter.

Soobin had believed him.

And Yeonjun had left anyway.

Or maybe, they both did.

It was inevitable anyway. Their relationship was becoming a slow, suffocating predicament. A door closing. A space where love used to live.

And now—now, he was back. Like a ghost with the audacity to smile. Still beautiful. Still familiar. Still dangerous in the way gravity is dangerous—you think it’s grounding you, and then you fall.

Soobin scrubbed at his face with the edge of his sleeve, trying to erase the shine from his cheeks before anyone noticed. Before anyone could look at him too closely and see that he was breaking.

But the rooftop door creaked open anyway.

He didn’t turn. Didn’t need to. He knew the quiet cadence of Taehyun’s steps—measured, gentle, like someone approaching a wounded thing.

“You want to leave?” Taehyun’s voice was soft, careful. As if the question might knock Soobin over if asked too hard.

Soobin inhaled through his nose, held it, released. His throat burned from the effort. “No,” he said finally, voice sanded down and raw. “Not yet.”

Because some stupid, stubborn part of him—tired, cracked open, still soft in the places Yeonjun had once touched—was waiting.

Waiting to see if Yeonjun would follow.

Waiting to see if he ever would’ve.

They were lying on the floor.

Not because the couch was uncomfortable, or the bed was unmade—but because the sun had set just right through the wide windows of the apartment, bathing the hardwood floor in honey gold. Soobin had dropped down first, said something about chasing warmth like a cat. Yeonjun joined a moment later, because of course he did.

They lay shoulder to shoulder, limbs tangled loosely, like puzzle pieces worn smooth with time. The only sound in the room was a lazy playlist echoing off the walls—low-fi beats, some indie band Yeonjun swore was about to blow up, and the occasional murmur of the city just beyond the glass.

Soobin’s hand was in Yeonjun’s hair, threading gently, thoughtlessly. Yeonjun’s head rested against Soobin’s shoulder, his cheek squished slightly, a little pink from where Soobin had kissed it earlier. Neither of them had moved in a while. They didn’t need to.

“You ever think about where we’ll end up?” Soobin murmured.

Yeonjun blinked slowly. “What, like ten years from now?”

“Or five,” Soobin said. “Or even next year. You’re graduating soon, I go next. The others are going to end up scattering when they do, too.”

Yeonjun made a soft noise. Rolled closer. “I don’t really care where we end up,” he said into the cotton of Soobin’s hoodie. “Seoul, Busan, fuckin’… countryside.”

Soobin laughed.

“No, seriously,” Yeonjun tilted his head up. His smile was soft, crooked. His eyes were full of that dangerous kind of certainty—the kind that turned words into promises. “I’ll probably follow you. Wherever you go.”

“Jun,” Soobin whispered, a little breathless.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’ll be okay anywhere. As long as I’m with you.”

The sun had dipped lower then, throwing their silhouettes long across the floor. 

Soobin remembered it so vividly—how time slowed in that moment, how his chest ached from how full it felt, how Yeonjun’s hand reached up to cup his cheek like he was something sacred.

He believed him. Of course he did.

And that was the cruelest part.

Because in the end, Yeonjun was the one who left first.

Later, someone suggests moving to a quieter bar a few blocks down, and the group begins to gather their things. The Seoul night greets them with a breeze cool enough to chase the sweat off his skin, Soobin behind the group as he checks his phone for the timetable of the upcoming week in the review center they're enrolled in.

He hears footsteps coming up to him.

Then, Yeonjun’s voice. “Soobin.”

And just like that, his chest pulls tight again.

He doesn’t look. Not yet. Just stands there, staring at the way the streetlights paint the pavement in broken gold.

“You didn’t have to come,” Yeonjun says softly.

“I know.”

A pause. A silence that stretches.

“I didn’t expect to see you either,” Yeonjun admits. “Beomgyu didn’t tell me.”

Soobin finally turns, slow, guarded. “Would you have come if you knew?”

Yeonjun’s eyes flicker, “I don’t know.”

Honest. That was always the worst part. Yeonjun never lied, not when it mattered. But somehow, that hurt more than anything.

Soobin shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. We’re here now.”

“Yeah.”

Another pause.

“It’s nice seeing you again,” Yeonjun says, voice so gentle it almost breaks him.

Soobin huffs a breath—half laugh, half ache. “That makes one of us.”

He walks ahead before Yeonjun can answer.

That's the thing, isn't it? Of dating someone in your circle. They become unavoidable, even if you want nothing but to never see them again.

Most of their friends called it a night, leaving only the four of them to arrive at the second bar. It was quieter—set deeper into a side street, tucked between a closed tailor shop and an ancient-looking PC café. The sign was barely lit, and the door was painted a muted navy, easy to miss unless you already knew where to look.

Inside, the noise dulled to a gentle murmur, warm and low. Jazz hummed from hidden speakers. The lighting was soft and golden, flickering slightly against dark wood and cracked leather booths. There was a dartboard in the back that no one seemed to be using and a bar counter that smelled faintly of oranges and clove, like someone had spilled mulled wine once and it had soaked into the grain.

Soobin exhaled the second he stepped in.

This felt better. Manageable.

Less like standing on a landmine.

“Here,” Beomgyu gestured grandly to a corner booth, already half-filled with empty glasses and a bowl of fries no one had touched. “Our next home for the evening. Do not be fooled by the ambiance. The vodka tonics here are strong enough to revive the dead.”

Soobin slid into the booth across from Yeonjun, careful not to let their knees bump. Not that it would’ve mattered. But the air still felt… tender. Raw at the edges.

Yeonjun offered a quiet smile, one that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “This place hasn’t changed at all.”

“Because you dragged us here every finals season,” Taehyun muttered, settling beside Soobin. “Your coping mechanism was always jazz and gin.”

“And look how well I turned out,” Yeonjun said dryly.

Beomgyu snorted. “That’s debatable.”

They fell into the rhythm of old jokes, old habits, like the years hadn’t stretched them into different shapes. Like distance hadn’t shifted their axes. It was strange—how memory could knit itself into the seams of a place, how you could sit across from someone you hadn’t seen in years and still remember the way they took their drinks, the tilt of their laugh.

Soobin watched the condensation trail down the side of his glass. Vodka tonic, light ice. He didn’t remember ordering it, but Beomgyu had always remembered for him.

“We were just talking about Kai before you got here,” Yeonjun said, voice quiet enough to almost miss under the lazy saxophone drifting through the room.

“Oh?” Soobin tried to keep his tone even. Neutral. Safe.

Beomgyu jumped in. “Yeah, he sent a photo a few hours ago. Bastard’s still in Maui. Surfing like it’s a religion. His hair’s gone full sun-kissed-blond, too. Looks like he belongs in a shampoo commercial.”

Taehyun raised a brow, “he's been there since graduation, right? Said he’ll only stay a bit for his family, but never gave a clue if he’s coming back. What’s he even doing out there?”

“Working at a beachside café. Teaching kids how not to drown,” Beomgyu grinned. “Living the dream.”

Soobin chuckled, the sound small but genuine. “He always said he wanted to disappear somewhere warm. Guess he meant it.”

“I miss him,” Yeonjun said softly, eyes distant for a moment. “Group chats aren’t the same without his unhinged selfies.”

“He said he might come back next year,” Beomgyu offered. “If he saves up enough. Or gets bored. Or if one of us guilt-trips him hard enough.”

“Taehyun has the best shot,” Soobin murmured. “He always had a soft spot for you.”

Taehyun made a face, “that’s because I was the only one who studied with him and didn’t bully him during org meetings.”

“Correction,” Beomgyu said, raising a finger, “you were the only one he let bully him.”

That earned a round of laughter. Brief, bright, almost startling in its warmth.

For a second, it felt easy again.

Normal.

Like the years between hadn’t left bruises.

Like the ache hadn’t been there at all.

But then Soobin looked up, and Yeonjun was already watching him.

Not smiling. Not speaking. Just watching.

And in that glance, something heavy stirred. Something unnamed and sharp that curled low in Soobin’s chest and refused to loosen its grip.

He looked away. Reached for his drink. No words exchanged between them.

Because talking to Yeonjun felt like a thread he wasn’t ready to pull.

Not yet.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

By the time the fourth round rolled in, Beomgyu had declared himself king of the booth and was halfway into composing a toast on top of the table.

“I just think,” he said solemnly, clutching a half-empty shot glass with both hands like a sacred artifact, “that the four of us… no, wait. The five—five? Five, including Kai, okay, yes—deserve a reunion trip. Like, a real one. None of this weekend crap. I’m talking—Maldives. Or even just Jeju. Somewhere with a hot tub.”

“Who’s paying for this?” Taehyun asked dryly, not looking up from his phone as he nursed a neat whiskey.

Beomgyu turned to him with tragic eyes. “You are. You’re gonna be a rich doctor.”

“I’m going into public health,” Taehyun deadpanned. “I’ll be lucky if I can afford rent.”

Beomgyu waved a dismissive hand, “then, Soobin hyung will pay. He’s the favorite child. His parents will fund our escapism out of guilt and pride.”

“I think I need to get my license first,” Soobin murmured, smiling faintly into his glass.

Beomgyu ignored him. “I’m serious. We need to mark the end of our twenties. With a beach. And matching bracelets.”

“We’re twenty-five,” Yeonjun reminded him.

“We’re hurtling,” Beomgyu corrected, slurring slightly. “Hurtling toward irreversible knee pain. And excuse me, you’re twenty-five.”

Yeonjun playfully snaps at him, Taehyun teasing him and siding with Beomgyu. 

Soobin watched them all with a strange sense of quiet fondness. The way Taehyun kept slipping cherry stems into Yeonjun’s glass just to annoy him. The way Yeonjun didn’t say anything, just flicked them back with lazy precision. The way Beomgyu leaned on everyone like gravity had given up trying to hold him steady.

This… this was what he missed most.

Not the chaos or the noise or even the reckless nights crammed into twenty-four-hour diners with exam notes and french fries—but this soft core of familiarity. This easy camaraderie shaped by years of late-night calls, inside jokes, and shared deadlines. The kind of closeness you didn’t build in weeks or months, but in between class dismissals and org events, in cheap food court dinners and tired subway rides home.

He had thought, once, that losing Yeonjun would mean losing this too.

Maybe it had. For a while.

But now, sitting here, with laughter echoing off wood-paneled walls and Beomgyu starting to slur his vowels into song lyrics, Soobin let himself believe, just for a second, that some things survived. Bent, maybe. Weathered. But still standing.

“Hey,” Beomgyu whispered loudly, leaning into Soobin’s side like a conspirator. “You know what we haven’t done in forever?”

Soobin glanced at him. “What?”

“Drunk karaoke.”

“God, no,” Taehyun said instantly.

“Yes!” Beomgyu shouted, triumphant. “C’mon, Soobin hyung. You always sing that one sad ballad. The one that makes the bartender cry.”

“I think he just wanted us to leave,” Yeonjun muttered, but there was a smile tugging at his mouth.

Beomgyu threw his arms up, “I’m requesting it. Right now. I’m putting it on the goddamn queue.”

Soobin caught his wrist mid-air, “no, you’re not.”

Beomgyu squinted, “you’re stronger than I remember.”

“You’re drunker than I remember.”

“Same thing,” Beomgyu declared, and slumped fully into Soobin’s side, head bumping against his shoulder. “I missed this.”

Soobin hesitated. Then, softly, “me too.”

The silence that followed was gentle. Not awkward. Not empty. Just a moment left to settle between them, like dust in a sunbeam.

Then Yeonjun’s voice, low, almost amused. “Soobin still sings?”

Something in Soobin’s chest stilled.

He didn’t look up. Just shrugged, mouth half-crooked. “Only when guilt-tripped.”

“Still the same, then,” Yeonjun murmured.

Soobin didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

Because somewhere in the air—beneath the warmth of old friends and cheap alcohol and slow jazz—there was something delicate rethreading between them. Not forgiveness. Not even understanding. But proximity.

The ache of old gravity.

And for the first time in a long time, Soobin let it sit there. Unspoken.

But not unwelcome.

The night was cooler than before. Crisp in the way summer sometimes wasn’t, a breeze slicing through the humidity like a polite warning. They’d left the bar sometime after 3 AM, stumbling out in twos and threes, laughter still clinging to their clothes like smoke. Beomgyu had passed out in the backseat of an Uber, mumbling something about missing his pet bird, Toto. Taehyun, ever the caretaker, had volunteered to take him home.

Which left Soobin standing awkwardly by the curb, watching the taillights blur into the dark.

And Yeonjun.

Of course.

He was quiet beside him, hands in his pockets, head tilted back toward the sky like he was trying to count the stars Seoul never really let you see.

Soobin shoved his hands deeper into his coat. “You staying nearby?”

“Just a few blocks. Gyu’s cousin offered his apartment while he’s in the States.”

A pause stretched between them. Not uncomfortable, not exactly. But taut, like thread pulled tight.

“I’ll walk with you,” Soobin said, before he could stop himself.

Yeonjun looked at him, surprised. “Yeah?”

Soobin shrugged, eyes on the sidewalk, “I’m not ready to go home yet.”

They walked in silence for a while, shoes scuffing pavement, their shadows long and twin-like under the amber streetlights. The city around them had quieted into its after-hours version—storefronts shuttered, neon signs flickering tiredly, a convenience store clerk nodding off behind the counter.

“You and Taehyun still live in that same place?” Yeonjun asked, voice soft.

“Yeah, rents are hell. And I’m too sentimental for my own good.”

Yeonjun huffed a laugh, “you always were.”

Soobin glanced sideways. The edge of Yeonjun’s jaw glinted under the light. He looked the same, yet he looked different. His hair was shorter. His voice steadier. But his smile—that soft-cornered thing—was still the same one Soobin had memorized between kisses and coffee mugs.

“You planning to stay long?” he asked.

Yeonjun hesitated, “I don’t know yet.”

Soobin nodded like that answer didn’t gut him.

“After it ended, really ended,” Yeonjun said slowly, like the words were fragile things, “I tried to tell myself we made the right call. That we were better off not hurting each other anymore.”

Soobin didn’t stop walking. But he blinked, slow and tired. “Did it work?”

Yeonjun chuckled—bitter, almost. “Not really.”

Another block passed. A cat darted across the road, startled by their footsteps.

“I thought you’d be angry,” Yeonjun said. “Or cold. I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“I was,” Soobin said honestly. “I still am, sometimes.”

Yeonjun nodded once. “Fair.”

“But I’m also tired,” Soobin added. “Of pretending I don’t remember the good parts just because the ending sucked.”

That stopped Yeonjun in his tracks.

Soobin didn’t look at him. He kept walking.

“You’re still angry,” Yeonjun said quietly.

“Yeah.”

“But you still came.”

Soobin finally glanced back. “So did you.”

They reached the apartment building a few minutes later—a six-story tucked between a laundromat and a late-night barbecue joint.

Yeonjun hesitated at the bottom step.

Soobin looked up at the narrow windows, the flicker of television light from someone else’s life behind thin curtains. He felt the weight of everything they hadn’t said pressing against his ribs like unshed water.

“Do you want to come up?” Yeonjun asked.

The question wasn’t a trap. Wasn’t even heavy. Just a leaf tossed out on a current.

Soobin’s mouth opened. Then closed.

“I should head home.”

Yeonjun nodded. “Okay.”

But neither of them moved.

“You know,” Soobin said, voice quiet, “when Kai texts, he still uses your old nickname.”

Yeonjun blinked. “Which one?”

“Jjunie hyung.”

That startled a real smile out of him. “Wow, I haven’t heard that in ages.”

“He said Hawaii’s great. But he’s homesick. Misses our crappy hotpot nights.”

“He still doing that conservation internship?”

“Yeah. Took it right after graduation. Said he couldn’t stomach office work yet.”

Yeonjun’s smile softened, “I’m glad. He always wanted to leave, said Seoul felt like a loop.”

“It kind of is.”

They both laughed, low and rueful.

Then, softly, “do you think he’ll come back?”

“Eventually,” Soobin said. “We all do.”

Yeonjun nodded, hands still in his pockets. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

Soobin met his gaze, even though it hurt.

“I didn’t know I had.”

And then, because it was easier than goodbye, he turned.

And left Yeonjun standing there, lit by the half-sleeping city, heart still suspended in the doorway of everything they used to be. 

The apartment was quiet when he got back—too quiet, like the walls had been holding their breath in his absence.

Soobin kicked off his shoes by the door with more force than necessary. They skidded across the floor of the entryway and hit the wall with a dull thud.

He didn’t turn on the lights. The glow from the hallway filtered in enough to make out the clutter of his life—papers stacked in uneven piles, a hoodie slung carelessly over the armrest, a cup noodle container still sitting on the coffee table from before the bar.

He stood in the entryway a moment too long, just breathing.

It was the kind of silence that invited ghosts—not the scary kind, but the soft, persistent ones. The kind that whispered in the creases of his furniture and curled up at the edge of his bed like they’d never left.

He dropped his keys into the dish by the door, the clink too loud in the stillness, and wandered into the kitchen like he was searching for something he couldn’t name.

The kettle was still half-full from earlier. He boiled it anyway. Poured himself coffee he wouldn’t drink. Something to hold. Something warm.

Steam rose in delicate curls from the mug, fogging his glasses as he leaned against the counter. He didn’t take them off. Just let the blur settle over everything, softening the edges of the night.

His phone buzzed once from his pocket. A text from Taehyun.

got gyu home. idiot’s already asleep. u ok?

He stared at it for a long while. The question shouldn’t have felt so complicated.

yeah. just waiting to see if i’d puke my guts out or not. sleep soon.

He didn’t press send.

Instead, he locked the screen, dropped the phone on the counter, and walked to the window. The blinds were still half-drawn, the city beyond them glowing in muted shades—cold blue light and steel and faint, flickering gold from some distant buildings.

He pressed his forehead against the glass. Cold. Grounding.

His reflection looked pale and a little bit lost. Hair rumpled. Shirt wrinkled. Eyes too tired for almost 4 AM, but too wired to sleep.

And inside his head, Yeonjun’s voice.

“Do you want to come up?”

The invitation was still there, echoing, clinging to the back of his mind like the tail end of a song he couldn’t stop humming.

He closed his eyes.

The night had been strange. Too normal and too surreal at once. Beomgyu getting drunk and declaring his undying love for someone’s dog. Taehyun pretending not to worry. The laughter. The clink of glasses. The way they all slid back into each other’s rhythms like no time had passed at all.

Except Soobin’s hands had shaken when Yeonjun laughed too close. Except the back of his neck still prickled from the heat of Yeonjun’s gaze across the table. Except he’d caught himself looking, again and again, like a fool with an open wound.

He exhaled shakily. Peeled himself from the window. The coffee had gone cold. He poured it down the sink.

In his room, he flicked on the desk lamp instead of the overhead light. The glow was warm, familiar, amber against his textbooks and the framed photo by the lamp—the one of all five of them on some rainy day in second year, huddled under one sad umbrella, laughing like life hadn’t taught them heartbreak yet.

Kai was in the middle. Soobin remembered that day—how Kai had run across the street without warning to jump into the frame, nearly knocking Beomgyu over. His hair was still dyed cherry blossom pink back then. He’d looked like a daydream, soaked to the bone and grinning like a fool.

Soobin wondered if Hawaii changed him. If he still made that dumb dolphin sound when he laughed. If he still kept polaroids tucked inside his sketchbooks like they were holy.

He missed him. God, he missed all of them. The version of them that lived in that photograph. The one that didn’t know yet what would break them apart.

Soobin reached out. Touched the frame. Traced Yeonjun’s smile with a fingertip.

Then he turned the photo face-down.

Not forever. Just for now.

The bed creaked as he sat down. His body was tired, but his thoughts weren’t. They spun in circles, restless and sharp-edged, bouncing off the corners of old memories and things he didn’t want to feel anymore.

Soobin lay back against the mattress and stared at the ceiling. One arm slung over his eyes like it could shield him from the weight behind them.

Maybe sleep would come eventually.

Maybe not.

But for now, he just let himself be still.

Let the ache hum quietly in his chest.

Let the ghost of Yeonjun’s voice settle beside him in the dark.

The sunlight was rude when it came.

It threaded its way past the edges of the curtains like it had something to prove, unapologetically warm against Soobin’s cheek as he stirred, groggy and unwilling. His mouth was dry. His limbs felt heavy, as if sleep had only brushed him in passing and then fled.

For a moment, he didn’t remember where he was.

Then the quiet hum of the city outside grounded him. Home. His room. The photo still face-down on the desk.

He sat up slowly, joints protesting, eyes gritty with unshed thoughts from the night before.

His phone was buzzing.

He squinted at the screen, expecting maybe Taehyun checking in again or Beomgyu sending a meme at an ungodly hour—but it wasn’t either of them.

Kai ☀️

Incoming Call

Soobin blinked, then answered.

“Hyung,” came the immediate, sunny voice, soft with sleep and tinted with laughter, “please tell me you’re the least hungover one.”

Soobin groaned into the phone. “Define ‘least.’”

Kai laughed. “Good enough.”

There was the sound of ocean wind in the background, faint and rhythmic. A bird cawed somewhere far away, loud and obnoxious in a way only tropical days could be.

Soobin leaned back into his pillow, pulling the blanket over his knees. “What time is it over there?”

“Mid-afternoon. I had a smoothie. Tanned a bit. Cried a little watching a really bad soap opera. You?”

“Woke up twenty seconds ago with my brain leaking out of my ears,” Soobin mumbled. “What was in that cocktail?”

Kai made a scandalized noise, “you actually drank?”

Soobin sighed, “Beomgyu was a menace. Taehyun tried to keep up and failed. I stopped counting after my second tequila sunrise.”

“Sounds like I missed a riot.”

“You chose Hawaii, traitor.”

“I chose my mental health,” Kai said sagely. “Which I lost somewhere during capstone year. I’m trying to relocate it via pineapple farms and vitamin D.”

Soobin smiled into the call, eyes still closed, voice scratchy. “You saw someone’s story, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Kai chirped. “Beomgyu posted something at like… 2 AM? A blurry photo of Taehyun trying to get him to stop flirting with a cardboard standee of Lee Jongsuk. Yeonjun hyung was in the back looking like he regretted every life decision that led him there.”

Soobin’s breath hitched, but he covered it with a laugh. “That tracks.”

“I figured everyone else would be dead, so I called you.”

“You figured right,” Soobin said. “I don’t think I even slept properly.”

Kai went quiet for a beat. Then, softer, “you okay?”

Soobin swallowed. His fingers curled tighter around the phone.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was… a lot. Seeing everyone again.”

Another pause.

“Yeonjun hyung, too?”

“Yeah.”

Kai sighed, gentle. “I was wondering if he’d show up.”

“He did,” Soobin whispered, “like he never left.”

Kai didn’t rush the silence that followed. It stretched between them like thread—not fraying, but quiet. Familiar.

“Was it hard?” Kai asked eventually.

“Yes,” Soobin answered. “And not just because of him. Everything felt like… like we’re all moving forward in different directions, you know? You’re in Hawaii. Beomgyu and Yeonjun already finished their service. Hyun and I are still drowning in review. And somehow we’re still us, but also not.”

Kai hummed. “I think about that a lot, too. How we’re all becoming slightly different people in slightly different time zones. But you know what?”

“What?”

“You’re still my favorite constant,” Kai said, soft and sincere.

Soobin blinked. Bit the inside of his cheek.

“Kai—”

“And I love you, hyung,” Kai added. “Even when you’re weird and avoidant and chronically emotionally constipated.”

Soobin laughed. A real one, breathy and surprised.

“I miss you,” he said.

“I miss you, too. Hey—next time you all get drunk and emotionally reckless, FaceTime me in. I’ll be your moral compass.”

“We’ll need it.”

“You especially,” Kai teased. “You’re a disaster.”

Soobin snorted. “Can’t argue.”

They talked a little longer—about nothing and everything. Kai described the coconut pancake he had for brunch in great detail. Soobin offered a tragic monologue about the state of his liver. For a while, it felt like they were back in their cramped university apartment, sprawled across mismatched furniture, nowhere to be and nothing to run from.

Eventually, Kai yawned and said he had to go to a farmer’s market. Soobin promised to send a photo of Taehyun looking like death warmed over.

“Take care of yourself, yeah?” Kai said, just before hanging up. “Even if he’s back. Even if it hurts.”

Soobin didn’t say anything.

He just nodded even if Kai couldn't see.

And then, when the call ended and the room went quiet again, he set the phone down gently on the nightstand—and for the first time in weeks, pulled the blanket back up and let himself rest.

The smell of burnt toast was the first red flag.

The second was the sound of someone cursing under their breath—not in the dramatic, theatrical way Beomgyu tended to do, but low and tired, like a man hanging by a thread.

Soobin cracked an eye open again. Groaned. The blanket he’d been cocooned in suddenly felt like a lead sheet.

Then came the soft thump of something hitting the floor.

“Fuck,” Taehyun muttered from the kitchen.

Soobin debated going back to sleep, but his bladder disagreed.

He dragged himself out of bed like a corpse reanimated solely by obligation, shuffled out of his room, and blinked blearily at the scene in front of him.

Taehyun, hair sticking up in four directions, was standing over a piece of toast so blackened it looked like an offering to the underworld.

“Jesus Christ,” Soobin croaked. “What did that bread ever do to you?”

Taehyun looked up slowly, like he was halfway to hell and reconsidering. “You’re alive.”

“Barely.”

“Did Kai really call or did I hallucinate hearing that?”

Soobin slumped onto one of the kitchen stools. “Nope. Real. Full conversation. He’s having a perfect fucking day in paradise and I want to kick him into a volcano.”

Taehyun snorted, flipping off the toaster like it personally offended him, “I miss him.”

Soobin didn’t respond to that, just watched as Taehyun abandoned the ruined toast and started digging through cabinets with the desperation of a man who desperately needed carbs.

“He said we looked like a disaster,” Soobin offered after a beat.

Taehyun raised an eyebrow, “we were a disaster. Beomgyu was three shots away from dancing on the table, Yeonjun kept looking like he wanted to either hide from you or kiss you, and I spent the last hour of the night crying about the state of the healthcare system to a guy who turned out to be a DJ.”

Soobin huffed out a laugh. “God. That guy.”

“He thought ‘Hippocratic Oath’ was a band.”

Silence stretched again. Taehyun eventually found a protein bar and tossed one to Soobin, who caught it without grace.

“Head okay?” Soobin asked.

“Like someone scraped the inside of my skull with a rusty spoon,” Taehyun replied. “Yours?”

“Feels like I drank battery acid.”

“You chose tequila,” Taehyun said, accusing.

“You let Beomgyu order the drinks.”

“Okay, fair.”

They chewed in silence, grimacing at the chalky taste of the protein bar. It wasn’t satisfying, but it was enough. 

“So,” Taehyun said eventually, leaning back against the counter, arms crossed. “Are we gonna talk about it?”

Soobin stared at him. “Talk about what?”

“You know exactly what.”

He did. He really, really did.

“I don’t want to.”

“Tough shit,” Taehyun replied, too gently for the bite in his words to land like a slap. “He’s back. He looked at you like he hadn’t seen the sun in years. And you? You looked like you were holding your entire goddamn breath the whole time.”

Soobin’s throat worked. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then opened it once more. “I wasn’t ready.”

“No shit.”

“I thought I was,” Soobin added, quietly. “I thought—time passed, I got over it, we moved on. End of story.”

“It’s never just that.”

“I know.”

More silence. The hum of the refrigerator, the far-off sound of traffic outside, the little cracks in Soobin’s voice as he continued, “he said we’d always find ourselves back with each other. And then, he didn’t. And now we’re supposed to… what? Pretend none of that happened? Pick up where we left off?”

Taehyun didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he pushed himself off the counter, came around the kitchen island, and sat beside Soobin. Not too close. Just enough.

“No one’s asking you to do anything,” he said. “Least of all, him.”

Soobin swallowed, “he didn’t even say anything about it.”

“Maybe he didn’t know what to say. Maybe he thought showing up would be enough.”

“It’s not.”

“I know.”

“I wanted him to follow me last night.”

Taehyun nodded once, “I know.”

“I kept thinking… if he cared, he’d come after me.”

“You think he didn’t care?”

Soobin closed his eyes. Let the weight of that question settle between them like fog.

“I don’t know what to think.”

Taehyun exhaled, low and long.

Then, softer, “hyung, you don’t have to know right now. You’re allowed to be a mess about it. You’re allowed to hate him, miss him, want him, all at once. You don’t need to clean it up to make it make sense.”

Soobin blinked hard. Rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm.

Taehyun added, “but if you want to scream into a pillow, I got you.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“Dude, you were brooding on a rooftop like a protagonist in a Netflix original last night.”

Soobin laughed, despite himself. “Fuck off.”

“I’m just saying,” Taehyun smirked, “next time you dramatically run out of a bar because of your ex, warn me first so I can film it.”

Soobin chucked the empty protein bar wrapper at him. It missed.

But when the laughter faded, the quiet stayed.

Taehyun bumped their shoulders together.

“You’re still standing, hyung.”

“Barely.”

“But still.”

Soobin nodded. Sat with that for a moment. Then picked up his phone again.

“Thinking of texting him?” Taehyun asked, watching him.

“No,” Soobin murmured. “Just deleting old messages. I don’t want to reread anything today.”

Taehyun didn’t say anything, just stood and patted his shoulder once, firm and warm. “I’m making actual food. You’re not allowed to wallow on an empty stomach.”

“Is it food or revenge against my intestines?”

“You’ll find out.”

Soobin watched him disappear back into the kitchen and felt, for the first time in a while, like he could breathe without drowning.

The city didn’t sleep, not really, not Seoul. It just quieted. Softened. Like it, too, was nursing a hangover.

Soobin was walking home alone. Not because Taehyun wasn’t with him—he was, somewhere, probably detouring to grab more coffee or check the 24/7 bakeshop near the station—but because sometimes they needed to split off. Move like moons in different orbits. That was their silent agreement: be there when it matters, disappear when it doesn’t.

The night air was cool on his skin, sticky with leftover humidity. Seoul’s skyline loomed in the background, familiar and indifferent, as if to say you chose this, and he had.

The exhaustion in his bones wasn’t unfamiliar—it came with the territory. Reviewing was its own kind of brutality. Less dramatic than med school, maybe. But slower. Like drowning in centimeters.

He had his hands deep in his hoodie pockets, earbuds in but no music playing, when the world stuttered.

A figure stood just outside the convenience store by the intersection. Tall, broad-shouldered. Dressed too well for this hour in a dark bomber and washed jeans. Lit by the neon flicker of the store’s signage and the low glow of streetlights. Like he’d walked out of a memory and onto this cracked pavement on purpose.

Soobin almost didn’t see him—almost walked right past, eyes fixed on the path ahead. But then the motion caught. A turn of the head. Familiar profile. Jawline sharp as the regret still curled behind his ribs.

Fuck.

Yeonjun.

The night seemed to pause around them. Not a full stop—just a hesitation, a skipped beat in a song.

Soobin blinked. Inhaled too slowly. Didn’t trust himself to speak.

Yeonjun was halfway through a bite of triangle kimbap. Of course. The bastard still ate them like he had no concept of nutrition, still peeled the wrapper with the same fumbling grace, still tilted his head when he chewed like he was in some music video montage.

He looked up—and froze. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second before schooling into neutrality, but it was too late. Soobin had seen it. That flash of disbelief. That tug of something like hope.

And for some reason, that made him angrier than anything else.

“Soobin?” Yeonjun asked, like he didn’t already know.

Soobin tugged his earbuds out, shoving them into his pockets, not bothering to place them properly inside their case. “Hey.”

They stood like that for a second. Maybe a minute. Maybe the whole fucking year. The space between them was barely two feet and still felt too far. Still felt like no distance would ever be safe again.

“You have something around here?” Yeonjun asked, voice careful, gentle.

“Review center, just on the way home.”

“Ah. Right. The center,” Yeonjun nodded. “How’s it going?”

“Like hell,” Soobin muttered. “But you knew that.”

Yeonjun smiled, but it was thin. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Silence again. Only this time it wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t soft. It crackled with all the things they didn’t say.

“Wasn't able to say it the other night, but you look good,” Yeonjun added.

Soobin almost laughed. Almost. “You don’t have to say that.”

“It’s not a lie.”

Soobin bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t know what to do with that. With Yeonjun’s gaze, with the way it landed and lingered. Like a bruise forming slow.

He looked away. Down the road. Up at the sky.

“I thought you’d leave Seoul,” he said. “After the reunion.”

“Thought I’d stay a bit more,” Yeonjun responds, kicking the ground with a shrug. He breathes in, “that night, I…” 

A pause.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Soobin thinks that wasn't what Yeonjun had initially planned to say. Yeonjun drags his eyes to the side, “I wasn’t drunk enough.”

Soobin barked a bitter laugh, “Beomgyu made sure we all were.”

“Yeah,” Yeonjun exhaled through a smile. “He hasn’t changed.”

But you did, Soobin almost said. You left. You stayed gone. You tore everything open and didn’t even look back.

He didn’t say any of that.

Instead, he asked, “how long are you here for?”

“Just a few more days. Gotta head back soon.”

“Back to…?”

Yeonjun hesitated. “Daegu. For now.”

“Right,” Soobin nodded.

The silence stretched again, taut and thin. Soobin felt like he was standing in the aftershock of a car crash, waiting for the second wave of pain to hit. It always came. Slow, then all at once.

“Look,” Yeonjun said, stepping forward, not quite close enough to touch, “I know I’m probably the last person you want to see.”

“You think?”

Yeonjun winced. “I just—when I saw you again, I didn’t know what to say. Still don’t.”

“Then maybe don’t,” Soobin replied, voice even, eyes sharp.

But Yeonjun nodded. As if he expected it. As if he knew this was the price he had to pay.

Soobin should’ve walked away.

He didn’t.

“You still drink banana milk?” Yeonjun asked softly, glancing toward the store’s fridge behind the glass.

That stopped Soobin cold.

He remembered that. All of it. The way Yeonjun used to buy two—one for now, one for when Soobin inevitably woke up grumpy and craving something cold. It was the stupidest, softest memory. And it hurt.

“Not anymore,” he said.

“Yeah,” Yeonjun murmured. “Me neither.”

Soobin finally took a step back. “I should go.”

Yeonjun nodded. “Okay.”

But before he turned away, Soobin paused.

“Don’t follow me,” he said. Not cruelly. Not softly, either. Just a boundary laid bare.

Yeonjun didn’t move. Didn’t answer.

And Soobin left.

The cold air bit harder after that, but he welcomed it.

Anything was better than feeling warm again. Not when he knew it wouldn’t last.

The apartment is quiet.

Not unusually so—most days it is. The only sound is the faint rush of traffic outside, too far to be invasive, too constant to be noticed. Soobin pads into the kitchen on socked feet, hoodie sleeves stretched over his hands, hair still damp from the shower.

He’s not really hungry, not really awake. He just wants something cold. Something sweet, maybe. Something that reminds him he’s alive.

He opens the fridge and stares. An orange, half-shriveled. Water in a reused plastic bottle. Leftover rice from two days ago. And in the corner, behind the tub of gochujang someone brought home and forgot about—

Banana milk.

He blinks at it. Forgets how it even got there. Probably Taehyun. It’s the wrong brand—the cheaper one, in the clear bottle instead of the yellow carton. But still.

He pulls it out and shuts the fridge door with his hip. Unscrews the cap, leans against the counter, takes a sip.

It’s too sweet.

Too sweet in the exact way banana milk is supposed to be. Artificial and cloying and vaguely nostalgic.

And just like that, it hits him.

It was raining that day. One of those late April storms that came out of nowhere, hammering the windows, turning the whole world grey.

They had nowhere to go. So, they didn’t.

Soobin had been curled on the couch with a textbook, legs pulled up. Yeonjun had walked in with two banana milks and a half-eaten bag of chips. He dropped them both on Soobin’s lap like a gift.

“You didn’t eat lunch,” he said, annoyingly smug.

“You didn’t eat lunch,” Soobin mimicked, unimpressed, flipping a page. “Neither did you.”

“I had three chips. That counts.”

“Chips aren’t food.”

“Banana milk is.”

“Barely.”

“Blasphemy,” Yeonjun flopped beside him dramatically, “next you’ll tell me instant ramyeon isn’t a full meal.”

“It’s not.”

Yeonjun gasped like he’d been stabbed, “you take that back.”

Soobin didn’t. But he grinned into his book.

And Yeonjun grinned back, smug and victorious and glowing in the kind of low light that made the moment feel heavier than it should.

They hadn’t kissed that day. Hadn’t even cuddled. The couch was too small, the humidity too much. But Yeonjun’s shoulder had pressed against his. Their thighs had touched. And they had eaten banana milk and chips and watched reruns of cooking shows with sarcastic commentary, their legs tangled by the time the third episode ended.

No declarations. No drama.

Just two people learning how to be still together. Learning how to exist in the same space without needing to perform closeness.

It had felt like a promise.

That this, even this—quiet, dumb, nothing days—was enough.

Soobin sets the empty bottle down on the counter and stares at it.

His chest aches with a very specific kind of sadness—not the sharp, breath-stealing grief that comes with sudden loss, but the soft, drawn-out kind that comes from remembering something ordinary that turned out to matter more than anything else.

He presses a knuckle into his eye. Not crying. Not really.

It’s just that it’s been a long day. A long few years. A long everything.

And he misses that version of himself.

The one who believed in soft promises.

The one who believed banana milk could fix things.

The one who didn’t yet know how something so simple could be the beginning of an end.

The apartment is dark, save for the soft blue spill of Soobin’s laptop screen and the digital clock blinking 2:47 AM in stubborn, unforgiving red. The fan hums quietly in the corner. Outside, the world is still. Everyone decent is asleep. Everyone smarter than him, at least.

Soobin’s eyes sting.

He’s been re-reading the same paragraph for ten minutes—something about anti-arrhythmic drugs and sodium channels—but the words slip past his comprehension like oil on tile. He shuts the laptop with a soft thud, too tired to feel guilty about it, and leans back in his chair, rubbing the ache from the base of his neck.

The silence presses in, heavy and indifferent.

A memory flashes—not even one of Yeonjun this time, not directly. Just the stupid, silent echo of a laugh. The low hum Yeonjun used to make when he read something funny but didn’t want to share it yet. Soobin used to hear it from across the room and wait, already smiling, already falling.

He exhales. The air tastes like dust.

The moment holds.

And then his phone buzzes.

Not loud. Not urgent. Just a soft tremble against the desk, screen lighting up in the dark like a pulse.

Soobin doesn’t reach for it immediately. He’s trained himself not to anymore—not to flinch every time it buzzes, not to hope for names he shouldn’t hope for. But after a few seconds, curiosity wins. Or instinct. Or whatever fragile thread is still knotted around his ribs.

He glances at the screen.

Choi Yeonjun.

He stares.

The name glows for a moment, then fades.

The missed call notification stares back at him like an accusation.

His throat tightens.

Then a voicemail drops.

Not a message—Yeonjun didn’t text. Didn’t write something safe and rehearsed. He called. And now, he’s left a voice.

Soobin doesn’t play it right away. He just sits there, phone in hand, thumb hovering, eyes unfocused.

When he finally taps the message open, it crackles softly into life. The room stills to listen.

“Hey. Um.”

Yeonjun’s voice is quiet. Rough. Like he’d been pacing for too long before hitting dial.

“I didn’t know if I should call. I almost didn’t. I—fuck, I don’t even know if you’ll listen to this.”

A pause. The sound of breath, uncertain.

“I just… I didn’t want to leave without saying something. That night—I didn’t know you’d be there. But I saw you. And you looked… I don’t know. Grown. Tired. Good. Different. And I wanted to talk more, say more, but it felt like—like maybe I didn’t deserve to.”

Another silence. This one stretches longer.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. I just—” the words taper off. When he speaks again, his voice is soft. Almost boyish.

“I guess I just wanted to hear your name in my mouth again.”

A shaky exhale. “That’s it. Goodnight, Soobin.”

The message ends.

And the quiet that returns is louder than before.

Soobin sets the phone down slowly, screen facing away, as if that might mute the throb of something in his chest.

He doesn’t move for a long time.

Just breathes.

Just exists.

Just listens to the echo of his name in someone else’s voice—someone who used to say it like a promise. Someone who now says it like a wound.

He doesn’t reply.

He doesn’t delete it, either.

It’s another day past midnight, as life has been for quite a while now, and the study desk is a mess.

A scatter of highlighters lies bleeding onto mock exam sheets, half-drained coffee growing cold in a chipped mug. Soobin doesn’t register the growing mountain of balled-up paper he’s tossed into the bin, doesn’t notice that his notes have started to fray at the corners from how often he’s flipped the same pages. His eyes are dry. His knuckles are stiff. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms like the physical act of preparing to endure.

He’s reading the same paragraph for the sixth time.

His pen trembles where it hovers, paused over a question he knows he should know the answer to. But the word aldosterone might as well be in Greek. He squints, tries again, presses the base of his palm into his brow as if he can force the information back into his skull. As if brute force will fix it.

Nothing sticks.

His chest tightens.

Again.

Read it again.

His phone buzzes. The notification light flares softly on the desk’s edge—quick, then gone. He doesn’t even reach for it. Doesn’t dare to, because the memory of Yeonjun’s voice still lives in that device. “I didn’t know if I should call. I’m sorry. I just… couldn’t leave without saying something.”

He hadn’t played the voicemail again. But it hadn’t stopped echoing either.

Soobin closes the book too hard. His breathing is shallow.

Focus.

He recites enzyme cascades under his breath. Mumbles drug names like prayers. The cadence is wrong. The syllables snag in his throat.

God, he knew this before. He could recite the RAAS pathway backward last month. Could name every cytokine in interleukin families 1 through 17. Now, even cortisol feels foreign on his tongue.

His chest burns. Shame seeps in like floodwater—slow, invasive, relentless.

He grips the edge of the desk, fingers white-knuckled.

It’s not the exam he’s scared of. It’s what happens if he doesn’t pass. What it means to fail at the only thing he’s tried to give his life to before, during, and after Yeonjun. What it means if even this—this cold, logical, thankless thing—isn’t enough to keep him steady.

He pulls in a breath. Holds it. Counts to four. Releases it through his nose.

Still, the pressure builds.

Still, the voice in his head whispers: you’re not enough, you’re slipping, you’re wasting time, everyone else is ahead, you’re behind, again, again, again.

“Fuck,” he hisses, low and breathless, rubbing his face like he can scrape the ache off with his hands. “Fuck.”

The tears come out of nowhere. Hot and furious.

He leans forward in his chair and curls over his knees, palms pressed over his eyes like a dam. Tries not to sob, not really, but something cracks and spills over anyway. His chest heaves. His throat burns. It’s not loud, but it’s not quiet either. His body curls in, like he’s trying to become smaller. Like he wants to disappear into the page he couldn’t finish reading.

That’s when the door creaks.

He doesn’t look up, doesn’t even bother to wipe his face. Just breathes through it, clenched teeth and all.

“You okay?” Taehyun’s voice is soft, but the way he crosses the room is decisive, zero hesitation. No judgement.

Soobin shakes his head.

Not a big shake. Just a fraction. Barely more than a breath. But Taehyun sees it.

He sits on Soobin's bed, right beside the chair. Not touching, just near. Just there.

“You could’ve told me,” he says.

“I didn’t want to make it a thing,” Soobin croaks.

“It is a thing, hyung. You’re breaking down over fucking aldosterone.”

That gets a broken laugh out of him, halfway between a wheeze and a cough. “It’s pathetic.”

“No, it’s burnout. It’s grief. It’s guilt. It’s everything. Don’t gaslight yourself into thinking this is just about a hormone.”

Soobin turns his face, blinking rapidly, “I don’t know how to let go.”

Taehyun finally lays a hand on his shoulder. Gentle. Warm.

“I don’t think you have to,” he murmurs. “But you have to stop trying to outrun it.”

Soobin nods, eyes stinging again. His voice comes out quieter, less clipped, “I’m tired.”

“I know.”

“I feel like I’m slipping, and I don’t even know where I’d land.”

“You’re not slipping,” Taehyun says. “You’re overwhelmed. But you’re not alone.”

Soobin doesn’t answer right away.

But he doesn’t pull away either.

The silence stretches, heavy but not suffocating.

Taehyun stays with him, not demanding answers. Not offering solutions. Just grounding him in something real.

And in the fragile hours before dawn, that’s all Soobin needs.

The sunlight is merciless.

Not in a poetic way. In an annoying way. It slants directly across the dining table and stabs straight into Soobin’s eyes the moment he looks up from his bowl of rice.

His head hurts.

His joints ache.

His notes are still sprawled across the couch from last night, but they look less like lifelines now and more like debris from a shipwreck. The quiet of the apartment is thick and fatigued.

Taehyun was out on a run, Soobin doesn't know how he does it. He saw him crashed out on the couch at five in the morning with his reviewers as a blanket, didn't have enough energy to walk the few steps into his room.

Soobin stares into his half-eaten breakfast like it holds answers. His chopsticks are limp in his hand.

Then the door swings open.

Loudly.

“Rise and fucking cry, my beautiful nerd!” Beomgyu announces, stepping into the apartment like he owns the lease. He’s wearing a yellow cap backwards, sunglasses indoors, and a hoodie that Soobin hasn’t been seen since the last time they all went to Han River. That was years ago.

Soobin flinches. “Jesus, Beomgyu—”

“Oh good, you’re alive,” Beomgyu grins. “Taehyun said you weren’t answering calls and I was like, either he’s dead or he’s finally run away to join a cult.”

“What kind of cult would even want me,” Soobin mumbles, poking at his rice.

“Don’t be dramatic. You’re tall, quiet, and emotionally repressed. You’d be perfect for those sketchy pseudo-Buddhist retreats that promise inner peace but end up stealing your passport.”

Soobin doesn’t smile, not really. But his lips twitch.

Beomgyu clocks it instantly.

“You’re smiling,” he says, grinning wider. “You missed me.”

“I didn’t answer your last three calls.”

“Which is why I showed up in person. Duh.”

He drops into the chair across from Soobin like gravity’s doing him a favor, plucks a piece of egg from Soobin’s plate without asking, and sighs dramatically. “Oh, domestic meals. This is what I missed about you med kids. You cook when you’re spiraling.”

“I didn’t cook. Taehyun did.”

“Of course he did. Of course he’s the reliable one.”

Beomgyu leans back in his chair and kicks his feet up on the table, completely unbothered by the quiet.

And then, softly, “hey, heard about the voicemail.”

Soobin stiffens. His chopsticks freeze midair.

Beomgyu doesn’t push. Just lets it hang there, light but real.

Soobin eventually exhales, “of course you did.”

“I mean, Kai called me the second he heard. Something about ‘damage control’ and ‘protect the precious peace of Soobin’s brain chemistry.’ He’s dramatic, but not wrong.”

“Of course he called you,” Soobin mutters, rubbing his temple. “I might as well be the one who answered the damn call.”

“Yeah, and he thinks that makes you the weakest link.”

“Wow.”

“But in a loving way,” Beomgyu amends quickly. “In a ‘Soobin hyung is soft and needs protecting’ way. You know how Kai gets.”

Soobin huffs, “I’m not soft.”

“Sure you’re not. Just emotionally constipated with a heart of absolute marshmallow.”

Soobin tosses a wadded napkin at him.

Beomgyu ducks it easily, then reaches over to refill Soobin’s coffee. It’s a small, casual gesture, but Soobin notices. Because it’s Beomgyu. Who doesn’t do domestic. Who doesn’t do quiet. Who doesn’t do gentle unless someone really needs it.

Soobin remembers the time Beomgyu and he got into an argument—it was bad, messy. They fixed it, though, somehow.

“I’m fine,” Soobin says eventually, because that’s the default.

Beomgyu shrugs. “Sure.”

“I just… had a long night.”

“Sure.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. Him calling.”

Beomgyu looks at him, really looks, and for once the teasing fades.

“Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. But you don’t have to bleed out pretending you’re not still healing.”

Soobin stares down at his plate. His stomach turns. But not from the food. From being seen.

Beomgyu stands up with a clap of his hands. “Anyway! Enough emotional bullshit for breakfast. Let’s go outside.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you need air, and I’m here visiting and not even spending time with my friends.”

“Gyu—”

“Nope, come on. Pants. Shoes. Freedom.”

Soobin groans into his sleeve. But he gets up anyway.

And maybe that’s the point.

The neighborhood isn’t glamorous.

It’s all cracked pavement and sleepy laundromats with faded awnings. Pigeons fight over the crumbs near the convenience store, and someone’s dog yaps from behind a chain-link fence. The kind of street you memorize without meaning to. The kind that still smells like your early twenties even when everything else has changed.

Beomgyu kicks a soda can into the gutter as they walk.

“I forgot how weirdly quiet this part of town gets,” he says. “Like, suspiciously quiet. Are we about to get murdered?”

Soobin shrugs, “not unless we walk past the ajumma who hates tattoos.”

“Oh shit, she’s still here?”

“Still waters her plants like she’s threatening them.”

Beomgyu laughs. The sound echoes a little too sharply against the buildings, like the air’s not used to joy anymore. But he doesn’t seem to mind.

They walk in that way they’ve always done—slightly out of sync, shoulders brushing occasionally, like neither of them really knows how to stay in their own lane when they’re together.

Soobin watches a leaf skitter across the asphalt. His shoes scuff against the sidewalk. He’s thinking about absolutely nothing and also everything.

Yeonjun’s voice still lingers like static behind his ribs.

Beomgyu breaks the silence again, “you’re doing the thing.”

Soobin blinks, “what thing?”

“The Thing. Where you stare at air like it owes you money.”

“I’m just thinking.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem.”

Soobin exhales slowly, “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Didn’t say we had to.”

They turn a corner, passing an old bakery with its shutters halfway down. There’s a warmth in the air that doesn’t quite reach Soobin’s chest. He tugs his sleeves over his knuckles.

“I meant what I said,” Beomgyu adds, voice quieter now. “About not needing to bleed out pretending you’re okay.”

“I’m not pretending,” Soobin mutters. “I am okay.”

Beomgyu gives him a side-eye so sharp it could slice cement. “Seeing how unraveled you are? That’s not ‘okay,’ that’s regression.”

Soobin snorts despite himself, “you sound like Taehyun.”

“Yeah, except I’m not trying to save your soul, I’m just trying to keep you from spontaneously combusting in the middle of a review center.”

They walk a little farther. Past the pharmacy where Yeonjun used to buy candy instead of medicine. Past the old bus stop where they’d once waited too long in the rain, laughing so hard Soobin forgot why he was sad.

Everything feels haunted now.

“You know,” Beomgyu says, “it was never just the two of you.”

Soobin frowns. “What?”

“You and Jun hyung. I know it felt like it was just the two of you. Your little apartment world, your shared Spotify playlists, your quiet mornings and your loud-ass fights. But the rest of us were there, too.”

Soobin doesn’t speak. The air stretches thin between them.

“You don’t have to shut us out just because he’s back,” Beomgyu says. “We’re not ghosts. We’re not memories. We’re still here.”

It hits something tender in Soobin. Not like a punch. More like the ache after one. He looks over, eyes narrowing a little, “that was dangerously close to an actual emotion.”

Beomgyu shudders dramatically. “Ew, you’re right. I take it back. Let’s never speak of this again.”

They walk a little more. The wind picks up, lifting the edge of Soobin’s hoodie. It smells like old coffee and warm pavement.

Beomgyu bumps his shoulder against Soobin’s, “I’m proud of you, you know.”

Soobin looks down. “For what?”

“For still being here.”

It sits in his chest, warm and strange.

“Thanks,” he says softly.

“Now buy me a snack before I cry.”

Soobin rolls his eyes, but reaches for his wallet anyway.

They duck into the corner store.

The street, behind them, stays quiet.

It started with a look, sometime in their third year of university.

The five of them were sprawled on the floor of Yeonjun’s old apartment, post-takeout, pre-finals. Half a movie was playing in the background, ignored. Taehyun had fallen asleep curled up under a hoodie two sizes too big, head on Kai’s shoulder. Beomgyu had been mid-rant about some guy in his class who wore crocs with socks, which apparently warranted a public trial. And Soobin—Soobin had looked up when Yeonjun laughed.

He hadn’t meant to. Not like that. Not with the soft, involuntary kind of gaze that cracks open secrets.

But Beomgyu saw it.

Beomgyu always saw everything.

Soobin felt it, the shift in the room. The way Beomgyu’s teasing narrowed into something quieter. The moment the rest of his words died unsaid.

It wasn’t until later, when the others had gone home, that Beomgyu said it out loud.

They were on the rooftop—another one, older, chipped concrete and a borrowed view of the city.

Beomgyu didn’t look at him when he said, “how long?”

Soobin paused. “Gyu—”

“How long, Soobin?”

The weight of the silence told him lying would only make it worse.

“Since… February,” he admitted. “Not long. Not—serious. Yet.”

Beomgyu scoffed, sharp and mean. “You think saying ‘not serious’ makes it better?”

Soobin flinched, “I didn’t say it like that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Beomgyu turned to face him then, and there was no humor in his eyes—just disbelief, and something like betrayal.

“You fucking knew, didn’t you?” he said. “You knew I was right. That’s why you didn’t say anything.”

Soobin’s voice came out quiet, “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d react like this.”

Beomgyu barked a laugh. “Wow. Love the logic. ‘I lied so you wouldn’t get mad.’”

“I didn’t lie—”

“You didn’t tell me! You knew how I felt about this. We talked about this, hyung. Months ago. I said it then. Don’t date within the circle. Don’t fuck up the dynamic for the sake of your—your serotonin rush or whatever the hell this is.”

“It’s not just a rush,” Soobin snapped, louder now. “I love him.”

Beomgyu’s mouth opened, then shut.

And that—that was the moment it fractured.

Not because Beomgyu was disgusted. Not because he didn’t believe in them. But because he did. Because Beomgyu had seen it coming—had spent years watching the way Yeonjun’s walls lowered only around Soobin, how Soobin would always save the last bite for him, how Taehyun once said they’re gonna implode or get married, no in-between—and he still warned Soobin.

Because he knew what it would cost if it ever fell apart.

Beomgyu’s voice dropped, low and tight. “Then why didn’t you fight for us, too?”

Soobin blinked. “What?”

“You’re in love, great. Congrats. But we—all of us—we were something, too. You don’t get it, do you? This whole thing we had? Five of us? It’s fragile. And you just threw a fucking lit match at it.”

“I didn’t throw anything—”

“Yeonjun’s a mess when he’s hurt,” Beomgyu went on, like he didn’t hear him. “And you—you cave in when you’re scared. So what happens when you two crash? What happens when it bleeds into the rest of us? We all lose.”

Soobin felt it then. The gut-punch of it. The truth buried in Beomgyu’s anger. The unspoken I’m scared to lose you underneath all the yelling.

But still.

Still.

“I’m not going to apologize for being in love,” Soobin said, soft but steady.

Beomgyu turned away. “No, but I don’t have to pretend I’m happy about it either.”

And that was the thing with Beomgyu. He didn’t hide his bruises. He let them bleed in plain sight.

Soobin reached for him, barely. Just a ghost of a gesture. But Beomgyu didn’t move.

He didn’t leave either.

They stood there like that—between love and loyalty, between what they had and what was now changing forever.

Later, when Yeonjun asked how it went, Soobin only said, “he’ll come around.”

He had to believe it.

Because what they had—their friendship, their everything—it was real. And love, for all its mess, wasn’t the enemy.

The silence that followed held all the fear he wouldn’t say out loud.

The moon had only just risen, the building lights spilling pale light across the city like a secret that hadn’t decided if it wanted to be shared. Soobin stood at the sink in the tiny kitchen of their apartment, fingers wrapped around a chipped mug half-full of now-cold coffee. He hadn’t really slept. Not since the voicemail. Not since the memory of banana milk. Not since Beomgyu.

Not really, not fully, not the way he used to—before everything cracked open and stayed that way.

Taehyun was asleep in his room, their books scattered across the living room table like academic carnage, a half-eaten bag of snacks nestled beside a highlighter-desecrated copy of First Aid for the Boards.

Soobin hadn’t touched his phone all afternoon. Couldn’t.

Instead, he stood still. Let the quiet settle in his chest like silt.

And then, as if pulled by gravity or something older than muscle memory, he picked up his phone.

6:04 PM

Beomgyu’s name was at the top of his recent messages. No unread texts. Just a photo from their day out and a sticker reply to something Soobin said about it—something dumb. It didn’t matter.

He hovered for a second. Then opened it.

Typed.

do you think you ever forgave me?

He stared at the blinking cursor, watched it accuse him in the language of things left too long unsaid.

Deleted it.

Typed again.

from before. me and yeonjun. the way i handled it.

Deleted that too.

He set the phone down like it burned.

A pause. Then, footsteps. Shuffling. Taehyun appeared in the hallway, bleary-eyed and pillow-faced, rubbing sleep from his cheek.

“What time are we going?” Taehyun mumbled, pertaining to their review center schedule that night.

“In a bit, let's leave early and grab dinner before it starts,” Soobin said.

Taehyun gave him a look, analyzing. Not judging. Just knowing. Like he had filed away every crack in Soobin’s voice since this whole thing began. “What’s in your head now?”

Soobin hesitated. Then, carefully. “Beomgyu. The fight. Years ago.”

Taehyun didn’t ask which fight. He remembered.

“He was mad,” Soobin continued, eyes fixed on the steam curling up from his mug. “And he was right. About a lot of it. But I always hoped… even if he didn’t agree, even if he hated how it started—he’d still understand.”

Taehyun padded into the kitchen, reached for a glass. “You really think Beomgyu’s the type to hold something like that against you forever?”

“I think…” Soobin exhaled. “I think I broke something. And I’m not sure he ever let me fix it.”

Taehyun took a slow sip of water. “He did. In his own way.”

Soobin looked up.

“He invited you to that reunion, didn’t he?” Taehyun said. “Sat with you on that roof. Still shows up. Still picks fights over the aux cord. Still stayed with you during and after Yeonjun hyung. Still cares—just not always in the way you expect.”

Soobin looked down at his phone again. The screen had gone dark. But the guilt still pulsed quietly, steady as his heartbeat.

He nodded. Slowly.

Maybe that was forgiveness. Not a grand declaration. Not an apology accepted with fanfare. But this—presence in the aftermath. A hand reaching out, not to erase the past, but to say I’m still here anyway.

“Yeah,” Soobin said softly. “I guess he does.”

He didn’t send the message.

But the ache in his chest lightened, just a little.

The review room at the center was always a little too cold. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like a fly too stubborn to die, and the air-conditioning groaned like it regretted being turned on at all.

A whiteboard stood crooked at the front, marked with faded diagrams of cardiac output and murmurs that no one had the heart to erase. There were six chairs, three power outlets, and zero windows. It smelled faintly of ink, sweat, and cheap instant coffee.

Soobin didn’t want to be here.

But Taehyun had insisted—something about collective memory recall being useful. That had been when they were having dinner, with a quiz booklet Soobin had left unopened for hours.

So here he was, back pressed into one of the cracked plastic chairs, highlighter loose in his grip, trying not to fall apart.

“Okay,” said Lia, one of the review center regulars. She was the type to make you feel like you were slacking even when she was smiling. “Next case: 32-year-old male, syncopal episode during exertion. ECG shows ST-segment elevation in leads II, III, and aVF. What’s the most likely diagnosis?”

“Right ventricular infarct,” Taehyun answered from across the table before anyone else could. His tone was clipped, laser-sharp. Lia nodded.

“Good. Next—”

The song playing from his laptop jumps to the next, faint but enough of a background noise to keep them sane. Soobin blinked. He felt it before he remembered it.

4th year.

Yeonjun.

Fuck.

Soobin stared at the edge of the table. A scratch in the laminate looked like a lightning bolt. His highlighter had dried out.

“Hey,” Taehyun’s voice cut low, close. “You good?”

Soobin nodded. Too fast.

A song Soobin knew too well. That guitar riff, clean and sharp, the way it had once filled the old apartment like a heartbeat. Your playlist is weird, Soobin had teased, but still played it anyway. On mornings. On drives. On the night they hung the fairy lights together, the two of them laughing at how uneven it looked.

Now, it clawed into Soobin’s chest like a blade that had waited months to strike.

He looked up.

Too bright. Too loud. Too much.

“Bathroom,” Soobin muttered, already halfway out of the room.

Taehyun stood too. “Give me a sec,” he told the others, before following.

Outside, the hallway was quieter, save for the hum of vending machines and the low murmur of distant classrooms. Soobin leaned against the wall, hand gripping the corner where the paint had chipped.

“I didn’t think that song would…” he trailed off.

Taehyun didn’t press. Just waited.

“It was from his playlist,” Soobin said finally, voice flat. “I didn’t even realize it was still in my rotation. I guess I—forgot.”

“No,” Taehyun said gently. “You didn’t forget. You just survived.”

Soobin closed his eyes.

Survived.

It didn’t feel like survival. It felt like slow, deliberate erosion.

“You can leave, if you want,” Taehyun offered. “I’ll cover for you.”

Soobin shook his head. “I need to finish the case sets.”

“You also need to not burn out,” Taehyun replied. “But sure. One thing at a time.”

They stood there for a moment, not speaking. Just breathing. Just existing in that thin, fragile space where memory and the present collided.

Eventually, Soobin whispered, “do you ever wonder if it’ll stop?”

“What?”

“Feeling like this.”

Taehyun didn’t lie.

He just said, “some days, yeah. But other days, I just let it be there. And eventually, it passes.”

Soobin nodded.

And after a while, they went back inside.

It was raining that afternoon—one of those summer downpours that caught you without warning. The sky was still bright, sun still leaking stubbornly through gaps in the clouds, but the rain came anyway: loud, unrelenting, like someone had dumped an entire ocean over their corner of the city.

Soobin had just come back from the grocery run, soaked from the knees down, a thin sheen of sweat clinging to his neck despite the chill of the store’s air conditioning. He’d taken too long, he knew that—had wandered the aisles half-distracted, trying to remember the exact brand of wafer snacks Yeonjun liked best. The apartment smelled like rain on pavement and soy sauce and the start of something being sautéed when he walked in, dropped the plastic bags on the counter.

Yeonjun didn’t look at him.

“You forgot the onions,” he said, too evenly.

Soobin blinked. “What?”

“The onions. You said you’d get them. For the stir-fry.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry, I—there was a line, and I thought I’d grabbed—”

Yeonjun finally turned, spatula in hand. Not angry. Not really. But tight around the eyes in a way that always meant something else.

“You always forget something,” he said. Not cruel. Not even loud. Just quiet, and cutting in its own way.

Soobin straightened, stung in the way only familiarity can wound. “It’s onions, Jun.”

“I know,” Yeonjun replied. “That’s not the point.”

Then what is the point?

But Soobin didn’t ask. He just said, “I’ll go back,” already turning, already reaching for his keys like the cold tiles of the store would be easier than staying in this room another second.

Yeonjun sighed. “Don’t. It’s fine.”

“I said I’ll go back—”

“I said it’s fine, Soobin. Jesus.”

Soobin froze at the door, keys still in hand. The rain was louder now, hammering against the windows, bleeding gray into the white kitchen light.

They stood in silence.

It wasn’t a fight. Not really.

But it stayed. Clung like damp clothes. That quiet distance that never got fully dried out.

Later, over dinner, they didn’t talk about it. Yeonjun made a joke about his own cooking being shit anyway, and Soobin laughed, because that’s what he was supposed to do.

And when they cleaned up, their elbows didn’t brush the way they used to.

The café was small, barely more than a tucked-in alcove at the end of the block. Glass windows fogged with rain, low lights softening everything. One of those places with too many plants and mismatched mugs, where time felt slower even though it wasn’t.

Yeonjun chose it. Texted Soobin the address like it was just another Saturday.

And Soobin came. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was the fatigue, or the sleepiness, or his brain shutting down and his fucked up, stubborn heart decided for him instead.

Yeonjun was already there, sitting by the window, two mugs on the table. He looked up when Soobin arrived and smiled like they hadn’t been avoiding each other through a year of silence. Like he wasn’t the reason Soobin had cried on the roof last week, like he hadn’t left years of wreckage and nostalgia in his wake.

“Hey,” Yeonjun said, like it was that simple.

Soobin sat down slowly. The tea was still steaming. Honey citron—his favorite.

He didn’t touch it.

“You’ve been okay?” Yeonjun asked, as if he deserved the answer. “I was with Beomgyu yesterday. Said you guys were pulling all-nighters again. When’s the exam, by the way? Can't believe I haven't asked.”

Soobin stared at him. “Why did you ask me here?”

Yeonjun blinked, “what do you mean? Can’t I just—can’t we catch up?”

“No,” Soobin said. Too fast, too sharp. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

Yeonjun tilted his head. “Do what?”

“This,” Soobin hissed, hand cutting through the air between them. “Pretend. You always do this—like if you smile enough, if you bring my favorites and small talk, then nothing has to be said out loud. Like we’re okay. Like I didn’t fall apart while you looked me in the eye and walked away.”

Yeonjun didn’t speak. His fingers curled slowly around his mug, the only part of him that moved.

Soobin’s voice cracked. “You don’t get to come back and ask how my review’s going. You don’t get to just show up like this is easy. Like you didn’t make everything harder.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Yeah, I know,” Soobin snapped. “That’s the worst part. You never mean to. You just do it anyway. You disappear, and then show up acting like it’s normal. Like we’re normal.”

His chest heaved. The tea still sat untouched, growing cold between them.

“I’m tired, Yeonjun. I’m so fucking tired of being the only one who stays broken. While you get to… pretend none of it happened.”

“I’m not pretending,” Yeonjun said softly.

Soobin laughed—sharp, bitter. “Then, what the hell is this?”

Yeonjun opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked away. The plants in the corner swayed slightly in the breeze of the aircon. Rain ticked against the glass, insistent.

Soobin stood up.

“I can’t do this with you. Not when you’re still doing it. Still trying to skip to the happy part without sitting in the mess you left behind.”

He didn’t wait for a response.

The door chimed when he left. The rain was still falling. Soobin didn’t have an umbrella, but he didn’t care. The wet stuck to his skin, cooling the fire in his chest, anchoring him to the moment.

Behind him, Yeonjun stayed inside.

And the tea—honey citron, still too hot to sip—remained untouched.

The apartment living room smelled like dust and old books and the sickly-sweet tang of Taehyun’s third convenience store energy drink. The air-conditioner makes the atmosphere colder than it already was, providing white noise with a low, repetitive whirr that had been drilling into Soobin’s skull since sunset.

They’d been here for hours. Case files spread open like autopsies on the table. Highlighters bled across question booklets. The clock ticked past eleven.

Soobin had answered the last three questions wrong.

He didn’t usually get those wrong.

“Try again,” Taehyun said gently, tapping the case study in front of them. “Take it from the top. Middle-aged woman, chronic NSAID use, sudden onset epigastric pain—what do you think it is?”

Soobin’s grip on his pen tightened.

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“You do,” Taehyun replied, too calm, too sure. “You’ve gotten this before. Think back to—”

“I said I don’t fucking know,” Soobin snapped.

The words cracked like thunder in the tiny room. Even the air conditioner stuttered in its rhythm.

Taehyun blinked, stunned quiet for a second, but not angry. Not yet.

Soobin stood, shoved back his chair. The scrape of plastic against wooden tiles grated in his ears.

“I’m not you, okay? I can’t just—just pretend none of this is affecting me. I can’t focus. I can’t sleep. I can’t fucking breathe without—” he broke off, chest heaving.

Taehyun stared at him, lips parting. “Soobin hyu—”

“No, you don’t get it,” Soobin said, voice rising. “You’re always composed, always focused. Even when shit’s hard, you just… keep going. Like nothing touches you. Like you’re already halfway to the top of the goddamn honor roll while I’m clawing my way out of the fucking floor.”

The silence that followed was sharp.

Taehyun’s jaw tightened. He looked down at the case file, then back up, eyes dark and unreadable.

“I’m not perfect, hyung.”

“Sure feels like it.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

Soobin let out a bitter laugh, a crackling thing that didn’t sound like him. “You think this is help? Dragging me into study groups I don’t want to be in? Hovering every time I zone out? Acting like if I just highlight enough goddamn keywords, I’ll stop feeling like shit?”

“You’re spiraling,” Taehyun said quietly. “And I’m scared to leave you alone in it.”

The words landed heavy.

Soobin swayed a little where he stood, not physically, but something inside—something loose at the edges.

Taehyun continued, soft but firm. “I know you’re hurting. I know what he meant to you. And I know this exam is eating you alive. But I won’t stop showing up for you just because you’re trying to self-destruct in peace.”

Silence again.

Then Soobin’s voice, small and shaking, “why?”

Taehyun looked at him for a long time.

“Because I love you, dumbass,” he said. “Not like—romantically or whatever. That’s disgusting to even consider. Just… I’ve known you too long. I’ve seen you at your best. And right now, this isn’t it. So yeah, I’ll be annoying. I’ll be pushy. I’ll keep dragging you out of your room and shoving review notes in your face, because it’s either that or I sit back and watch you burn.”

Soobin’s shoulders slumped. The fight in him sputtered out all at once, like someone had pulled the plug.

He sat back down. Stared at the page in front of him until it blurred.

“I’m tired, Hyun.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if I’m gonna pass.”

“You will.”

“I don’t know if I want to.”

Taehyun reached across the table and gently turned Soobin’s highlighter so it faced the right way.

“You’re allowed to fall apart,” he said. “Just don’t do it alone.”

And this time, Soobin didn’t pull away.

It was almost three in the morning when the quiet settled. Not the kind of quiet that meant everything was okay, but the kind that arrived after—after the shouting, after the breaking point, after the dam cracked and the grief poured out.

Soobin’s eyes scan his and Taehyun’s apartment, one they’ve been in for a while. It’s small, familiar with the mismatched mugs and laundry they never folded.

The floor still held the silence of earlier anger, but the air was different now—softer, thicker with understanding.

Soobin sat on the couch, socked feet pulled close to his chest, hoodie sleeves too long and twisted in his hands. His eyes were red but dry, for now.

Taehyun padded in barefoot from the kitchen, carrying two steaming mugs of instant coffee. He handed one over wordlessly before sitting down beside him, close but not crowded. Their knees touched. Neither pulled away.

“You know, I almost quit med school,” Taehyun said quietly, like he’d been waiting all night to say it. “Finals season. Freshman year.”

Soobin turned his head, brows furrowed, eyes still cloudy with the weight of the day, “what?”

“Yeah,” Taehyun chuckled, humorless. “I was drowning. Everyone seemed to have it together, and I—didn’t. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Felt like I was going through the motions of someone else’s life. Every lecture felt like a punch in the gut.”

“You never told me that.”

“I never told anyone.”

Soobin swallowed, the warmth of the mug grounding his hands. “What changed?”

“You tripped into my life. Literally,” Taehyun said, nudging him gently. “In the hallway. Spilled your entire lunch on me.”

Soobin let out a surprised, breathy laugh. “I forgot about that.”

“I didn’t. You kept apologizing and offered to buy me a meal. Then you did, and you wouldn’t stop talking the entire time. You told me the story about that old woman in line at the canteen who smacked you with her umbrella because she thought you were cutting.”

“She did smack me,” Soobin muttered, a small smile forming.

Taehyun smiled back, but it softened quickly. “That’s when something shifted. I didn’t know it then, but… you became the reason I stayed. You brought me into your weird little world—introduced me to Beomgyu, Kai, Yeonjun hyung, dragged me to movie nights I didn’t want to go to. You gave me something to hold on to that wasn’t just pressure and pain.”

Soobin didn’t know what to say. His throat tightened around the words he wasn’t ready to voice.

“You guys were my rock, hyung, but you were my anchor. Kept me grounded. Still do,” Taehyun said, voice barely above a whisper now. “You made this feel survivable. You carried all of us through pieces of it without even realizing. And then—” his voice broke, just for a second, “you had to survive something no one should have to survive. You did your clerkship in the middle of your own personal apocalypse.”

Soobin’s eyes welled. He didn’t look away.

“And you did survive,” Taehyun said. “You kept showing up. Kept studying. Kept waking up, even when it looked like it was killing you.”

“I didn’t feel brave,” Soobin whispered.

“I know,” Taehyun said. “But I saw you. And I was in awe.”

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy—it was holy. A brief, precious thing that settled over them like a blanket, stitched from the grief they shared and the gratitude they didn’t say out loud often enough.

Taehyun reached over, fingers curling lightly around Soobin’s sleeve. “You’re allowed to fall apart. You don’t always have to carry it like you’re the only one who can.”

Soobin blinked, and a tear slipped down, warm against his cheek.

He nodded.

Taehyun stayed beside him, hand steady, voice quiet. And for the first time in days, Soobin let himself rest in the knowledge that maybe—just maybe—he didn’t have to survive all of this alone. Not again. 

A few days passed in the gentle, indistinct way time moved when things were both healing and unfinished.

The city buzzed with August’s edge, all sweat and restless breeze, and Soobin found himself outside again—head tucked into the shade of his cap, sneakers scuffing against warm pavement—following Taehyun to a small lunch spot tucked just off a quieter street near the university hospital.

Beomgyu had chosen it, of course. A last-minute invitation that came with a picture of his packed suitcase and a message from his mother in full caps:

IF YOU DON’T COME HOME TONIGHT, YOUR NEXT PAY WILL BE A BAG OF RICE.

Followed by:

Love you. Bring chili powder and those egg wafers from that bakery near your university.

“She’s so dramatic,” Beomgyu said now, sliding into the booth across from them, sunglasses on despite the shade, iced americano already in hand. “I work like a dog for her and this is what I get.”

“You say that like you’re not the heir to your neighborhood’s banchan empire,” Taehyun deadpanned, reaching for a menu.

“Regional franchise, thank you very much,” Beomgyu said, flipping his hair and grinning. “She’s expanding to Busan. I am crucial infrastructure.”

Soobin snorted, finally letting the tension between his shoulders dissolve. It was easy, with Beomgyu like this. Loud, ridiculous, ever a little too much and never not welcome.

They ordered food—sundubu-jjigae for Taehyun, fried mackerel set for Beomgyu, just porridge for Soobin, light appetite these days. While they waited, they called Kai.

It was 4 AM in Honolulu, and he answered on the fourth ring, bleary-eyed and barely upright, hair a mess, wrapped in a blanket like he’d been dragged from the grave.

“I hate all of you,” Kai mumbled into the screen. “It’s still dark.”

“You look like a possessed throw pillow,” Beomgyu said cheerfully.

“Miss you too,” Taehyun grinned.

Soobin didn’t say much, but he smiled. Genuinely. The sight of Kai’s sleepy pout warmed something in his chest he hadn’t noticed had gone cold.

“Go back to sleep,” Taehyun said after a minute, fond. “We’ll bother you properly on your birthday.”

“I’m blocking you all,” Kai muttered before hanging up.

The food arrived. They ate, talked, slipped into that old rhythm that felt like second nature—shared stories, complaints about the heat, jokes about Taehyun and Soobin’s med school trauma and Beomgyu’s inability to cook rice without burning it. Taehyun was mid-sip when his phone buzzed.

“Mom,” he said, glancing at it. “She wants me to meet her in Gangdong before two. Something about temple errands and driving her to a cousin’s house.”

Beomgyu snorted. “You’re the favorite child. Suffer.”

“I am the favorite child,” Taehyun said proudly, standing, “you two behave.”

“Tell him that,” Soobin muttered, but Taehyun was already walking away, waving over his shoulder.

And then it was just Beomgyu and Soobin. The sun hit the tabletop in slanted gold, casting long shadows over their cups. The noise of the city filtered in—cars humming, a bike bell, some student on the sidewalk arguing over a missed lab report.

Beomgyu leaned back, rubbing his stomach. “Okay. When are we all hanging out again?”

“When you escape rice bag exile,” Soobin said.

“I’m thinking November,” Beomgyu nodded solemnly. “You and Taehyun are officially doctors by then, so you’ll forge me a sick leave form, right? We go somewhere far. Mountains. Sea. Somewhere with no cell signal so Kai can’t make us join his Zoom trivia night.”

“Your boss is your mom, I think she’d know if her son is sick,” Soobin smiled, then looked down at his bowl. The porridge was half-finished, growing cold.

He hesitated, then asked, quietly, “hey, Gyu.”

“Yeah?”

“How… was he? After we broke up.”

The words hung there. Fragile. Real. A truth that trembled on its feet.

Beomgyu blinked, the shift in tone catching him off guard. He didn’t deflect, not this time.

“He wasn’t okay,” he said. “He acted like he was, but we all knew.”

Soobin swallowed hard.

“He moved out of his apartment. Stopped answering Kai for a while. Took the job in Daegu because he didn’t know where else to go. That first year after graduation, you in your last, he was… gone, hyung. Not physically. Just—he wasn’t the same.”

Soobin’s fingers curled around the edge of the table, “I thought I was the only one.”

“You weren’t,” Beomgyu said. “He was a wreck.”

Soobin didn’t speak for a while. The ache in his chest was familiar, but now it had weight. Shape. It wasn’t self-pity—it was shared pain, named for the first time.

“Why didn’t we fix it?” he asked, more to himself than anything. Beomgyu didn’t flinch. He just looked at Soobin, gaze level.

“You did, though. Both of you tried. Multiple times,” his voice wasn’t accusing—just honest, tired. “That’s what started the on and off cycle. It wasn’t... healthy.”

The restaurant was still bustling, but Soobin felt as though it had gone completely quiet around them.

“It reached the point where it wasn’t fixable,” Beomgyu said gently. “Not then. You two weren’t trying to hurt each other, but you were bleeding into every part of your lives. It got messy. You were both drowning, and trying to hold each other up without learning how to swim.”

Soobin exhaled, shaky. He hated how true that sounded.

“You needed to grow,” Beomgyu added. “Apart. Away. I don’t think it was the wrong call.”

Soobin nodded slowly. “But?”

“But,” Beomgyu said, cracking a tiny smile, “you’re different now. So is he. You’ve survived so many versions of yourselves. Maybe this time, if you tried again… I wouldn’t stop you.”

The words didn’t solve anything. But they settled into Soobin’s bones like warmth after a chill.

He looked out the window, let the light hit his lashes, let the ache settle where it belonged—not as something to carry alone, but something lived.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Maybe.”

It started like most of their “offs” did: with nothing. No fight, no screaming, no slammed doors. Just a long silence in a shared space.

Soobin sat curled into the corner of the couch, highlighter uncapped in one hand, a printed set of notes balanced on his lap. He hadn’t turned the page in twenty minutes. The air between them was still, thick with words neither wanted to be the first to say.

Yeonjun was in the kitchen, pretending to wash dishes he’d already rinsed twice. The clatter of porcelain was the only sound cutting through the static.

They hadn’t touched in days.

Soobin finally spoke, but it came out too sharp. “Are you seriously mad I couldn’t go to that dinner?”

Yeonjun let the faucet run, “I’m not mad.”

“You are,” Soobin said, quieter now. “You just won’t say it.”

Yeonjun turned off the water. “What’s the point in saying anything when you’re always exhausted anyway?”

Soobin’s mouth opened. Closed. “I’m not doing this with you again.”

“Yeah?” Yeonjun let out a low laugh—bitter, bone-tired. “Then, what are we doing?”

It was always like this. An accumulation of unmet needs and unchecked expectations. Soobin, drained by rotations, trying to be enough with whatever energy he had left. Yeonjun, craving closeness, starved by the way Soobin shut down when he was overwhelmed.

Their love had turned into a standoff. A waiting game to see who would give in, who would apologize, who would chase.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Soobin said, voice breaking at the edges.

“I know,” Yeonjun whispered. And that was the worst part—he did know. And it still wasn’t enough.

A long beat passed.

“I think we need space,” Yeonjun said finally, gently, like that would make it hurt less.

Soobin didn’t answer. He just nodded, once. Felt the floor drop under him in slow motion.

And a week later, they were together again. A midnight message. A clumsy, desperate kind of forgiveness. Kisses that felt like stitches. Promises no one could keep.

They mistook making up for mending.

But nothing had changed. Just enough time passed for the cracks to spread beneath the surface, waiting for the next silence to split them open again.

The rain started slow—just a soft, rhythmic tapping against the balcony railing. But by the time Soobin’s voice cracked the silence of their apartment, the sky had opened up in full.

“You didn’t show up,” he said, standing just inside the sliding glass door, drenched despite the umbrella now useless at his feet. His hair clung wetly to his forehead, and his hoodie—Yeonjun’s, technically—dripped onto the floor.

Yeonjun looked up from the kitchen, blinking. “Show up where?”

“The presentation,” Soobin said, sharper now. “The one I practiced for three nights in a row. The one I asked you—begged you—to be there for.”

Yeonjun wiped his hands on a towel, confused, already defensive. “You said it was fine if I couldn’t make it.”

“No, I didn’t,” Soobin’s laugh was hollow. “I said I’d understand. That’s not the same thing, and you know that.”

Silence. Thunder, somewhere close.

“I had work,” Yeonjun said finally, quieter. “It ran late. I thought you’d be okay.”

Soobin flinched, “you always think I’ll be okay.”

He walked past the puddle of water he was leaving on the floor, past the couch, and stood in front of him now—too close, too loud, too raw.

“I needed you there, Jun. For once. And you just—you didn’t come. You didn’t even send a fucking text.”

Yeonjun’s jaw clenched. “Why is it always me?” he snapped, “why is it always my fault?”

Soobin froze, stunned. But Yeonjun wasn’t done.

“Every time something goes wrong, you act like I’m the one who dropped the match. Like you haven’t been pulling away for months. Like you don’t shut down every time I try to ask you how you’re doing.”

“Because you never fucking stay!” Soobin shouted. “You show up when it’s convenient. You give just enough to look like you care. But you never stay through the ugly parts, Yeonjun. You always leave when it gets too hard.”

The rain hit harder against the windows now, the sky graying like bruised fruit.

“That’s not true,” Yeonjun said, voice trembling. “I’ve stayed through more than you know.”

“Then why does it always feel like I’m alone?” Soobin’s voice cracked, breaking into something wet and hoarse and deeply tired. “Why do I feel lonelier with you than I do without you?”

Soobin took a step back, like his own words physically struck him.

Yeonjun inhaled hard, pressing his sleeve to his eyes, “this isn’t working.”

“Don’t say that,” Soobin's head snaps up immediately. “Don’t you dare say that.”

“You think I want to?” Yeonjun said, quieter now, eyes glassy. “You think I haven’t been fighting every day to keep this alive?”

Soobin looked at him, blurry, unfocused. “And I am, too.”

Neither of them moved.

Outside, the rain poured harder. Inside, the storm had already passed through them—left everything wrecked and waterlogged and impossible to piece back together.

But neither of them walked away.

Not yet.

It was another one of those days, with the silence that was too loud.

Not heavy with tension like before, not brimming with the next argument. No. This silence was different. It was tired. Stretched thin. Final.

Soobin sat on the couch, fingers curled into the sleeves of his hoodie. He didn’t look at Yeonjun, didn’t speak. Just stared blankly at the flickering television screen that had been left on, muted, playing some late-night drama neither of them were following anymore.

Yeonjun stood near the door, hand on the frame. Not quite holding it. Not quite letting go.

He looked at Soobin for a long time. Eyes that used to be full of so much certainty—so much reckless, radiant affection—now dulled, hesitant. Bruised in ways that had nothing to do with fists or fatigue, but with loving something that had become too sharp to hold.

“I don’t think I can fix this,” Yeonjun said finally. His voice wasn’t angry anymore. Just quiet. Defeated.

Soobin’s gaze stayed forward, though something in him twitched.

“I… I don’t think we can.”

The silence after was a full-body blow. Soobin breathed in like it hurt.

Yeonjun moved then—slow, mechanical. He picked up his jacket from the back of a chair, unplugged his phone charger, didn’t look toward the kitchen where their matching mugs from Jeju Island sat rinsed by the sink, didn’t glance at the framed photos on the shelf. The little life they had stitched together.

The door creaked as he opened it.

“I love you,” Yeonjun said, still facing the hallway. “But I think whatever this is we’ve become, it’s destroying you, us.”

And that—that—was what cracked Soobin open.

He stood too fast, stumbling a little over the edge of the rug, over his own disbelief. “Wait,” he said. “Yeonjun. Just… wait.”

Yeonjun turned, slowly. His face was unreadable. Guarded in that way he got when he was trying not to cry.

Soobin took a step forward, “don’t go. Not like this. Please.”

His voice broke on the last word, like even his throat was afraid of what it meant.

Yeonjun looked at him then. And Soobin swore, for a second, his resolve shook. That maybe, just maybe, he’d close the door. Walk back inside. Let the fight stay unfinished, the apology start now.

But instead, Yeonjun only looked at him with this soft, terrible kind of sadness. The kind that said I want to and I can’t in the same breath.

“I can’t stay just because you’re hurting, Bin,” he said gently. “Because I’m hurting too. And when we’re like this, we just keep bleeding on each other.”

Soobin’s hands clenched into fists, “but we’re supposed to try.”

“We did,” Yeonjun said. “That’s the problem. We tried. Again and again and again. And it just made it worse.”

He stepped back into the hallway.

“I’m doing this for you,” Yeonjun whispered. “Even if you hate me for it.”

Then the door closed.

And this time, Soobin didn’t chase it.

He just stood there, in a room full of their shared memories, the rain painting shadows on the floor, and wondered how love could sound so much like leaving.

The apartment was too quiet again.

No music, no ambient buzz of city life leaking through the windows, no Taehyun’s soft humming from the kitchen. Just the idle click of Soobin’s pen against a blank page and the faint hum of the air-conditioner.

He’d meant to study. He always meant to study. But the highlighters lay scattered like exhausted limbs across the table, untouched for hours.

He had flipped through the same set of notes three times, absorbed nothing. His mind kept drifting—to Daegu, to rooftop nights, to bitter coffee in a chipped cup, to what he should’ve said and what Yeonjun never did.

And then his phone buzzed.

Kai ☀️

Incoming Call

Soobin blinked. It wasn’t even midnight.

He picked it up on the second ring. “Kai?”

“Holy shit, you answered,” Kai exhaled, voice warm and incredulous. “I thought for sure you’d be comatose from burnout or out cold on your floor.”

Soobin let out something that wasn’t quite a laugh, just an unshaped breath of relief. “Nope. Still vertical. Barely.”

He could hear Kai shifting, the rustle of fabric and what sounded like a low cabinet door creaking open. “Saw Gyu’s back in Daegu already, he kept tagging me in his selfies with stray dogs and saying he missed me.”

Soobin laughs at that, “you know him, means he really is missing you.”

There was silence for a beat too long.

“…You okay, hyung?” Kai’s voice softened.

Soobin leaned back against the couch, let his eyes fall shut, “yeah. No. I don’t know.”

A pause. Then, gently, “is it seeing Yeonjun hyung again?”

The name landed like a coin in a well—deep and echoing. Soobin didn’t answer right away.

“I figured,” Kai said quietly, not unkind. “I didn’t want to assume, but I heard from him. Said you two met in a cafe and… yeah.”

“Yeah,” Soobin said. His voice felt thin. “It’s been… a lot.”

Kai hummed in understanding. “You don’t have to explain. I just wanted to check in. I know I’m literally across an ocean, but—”

“You’re not far,” Soobin’s voice cracked at the edges of the honesty. “You’ve never felt far.”

He heard Kai exhale, as if relieved by that. “I think about you guys a lot. About that summer after my freshman year. All of us at your old place, eating burnt tteokbokki and watching movies on that glitchy TV. You remember?”

“Yeah,” Soobin’s smile was small but real. “We made Beomgyu cry with that one documentary on brain surgeries.”

“You made Beomgyu cry,” Kai corrected, laughing. “You and your stupid medical commentary.”

Soobin huffed a laugh, “he got his revenge with three hours of quiz questions for my review the next morning.”

They stayed quiet for a while, the line filled with the soft static of distance. Then Kai said, carefully, “you loved him, Soobin hyung. The way people only get to love once. That doesn’t mean you owe him forever.”

Soobin’s throat tightened. He swallowed. 

“Yeah, I know.”

“But it’s okay if some part of you still wants to.”

The words opened something in Soobin he hadn’t known was still locked. He pressed a knuckle against his lips and nodded, even though Kai couldn’t see.

“Thanks,” he said, and it meant more than just for the call.

“Anytime,” Kai said. “Tell Taehyun I said hi. And make him pick up my call next time.”

“I’ll try.”

The call ended with a soft click, the screen going dark in his hand. For a moment, Soobin just sat there, phone balanced on his thigh, the weight of Kai’s words settling into his chest like snowfall. Quiet, but persistent.

“You loved him the way people only get to love once.”

He hadn’t meant to cry, but his body betrayed him anyway. It wasn’t loud, not dramatic—just that hollow, aching kind of crying, like something inside him had quietly cracked open. The kind that didn’t even make a sound. Just breath hitching. Eyes stinging. The corners of his mouth trembling like a confession that never learned how to speak.

He curled slightly where he sat, arms loosely wrapped around his knees, forehead resting against them. The fabric of his sweatpants was worn thin, soft and familiar under his cheek. He focused on the feel of it. Anything to ground him.

Because Kai was right.

He had loved Yeonjun that way. With a kind of stupid, blazing certainty. With an open-heart surgery of a love, raw and full of risk. The kind of love you could bleed out from and still crawl back to, again and again.

And he still loved him, in a way. Not with the same fire, not with the same naïve abandon—but something enduring. Something that pulsed quietly under all the wreckage.

That's the hardest part, isn't it?

That it didn’t just stop when the relationship did. That he could still miss the good parts even when he knew the bad parts were real. That sometimes he caught himself smiling at memories before remembering how it ended. 

How they ended. 

That fucking reunion. That fucking voicemail. That fucking afternoon in the cafe.

Soobin let his head fall back against the couch and stared at the ceiling like it owed him an answer. The hum of the air-conditioner, cutting through the silence.

He thought of the memories that still found him in the quiet. That perfect weekend in Busan. The way Yeonjun’s laugh used to echo through the apartment. The way he once kissed Soobin’s knuckles and said, “I think I could follow you anywhere.”

That had been such a lie.

Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Yeonjun had meant it when he said it, and life just got in the way. Or they got in the way. Or love just stopped being enough.

He reached for the blanket draped over the couch arm and pulled it around his shoulders like armor. The air felt colder than it should’ve.

Somewhere across Seoul, Yeonjun probably wasn’t thinking about him at all.

Or maybe he was.

And maybe it didn’t matter either way.

Soobin sat there a long time, blinking at nothing. The kind of quiet that didn’t heal, but didn’t hurt as much as before. Just… was. A bruise that had stopped throbbing, but still turned purple every time he touched it.

He whispered, into the quiet, “what now?”

No one answered.

But for the first time in days, he felt like maybe.... he’d find out.

They don’t say goodbye.

There’s no dramatic airport run, no last-minute confessions on a rain-slicked street. Just a faint shift in the air, like something has been quietly packed away, and the city lets it happen.

Soobin hears it from Beomgyu, not Yeonjun.

“He’s leaving,” Beomgyu said through Soobin’s phone, halfway through a coffee that’s gone cold. “Tonight, I think. Or early morning.”

That’s it. No follow-up. No pause for reaction. As if they’ve all learned by now that naming the ache only makes it sharper.

Soobin tries to shrug it off like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t make his chest tighten with that horrible, familiar pressure—the kind that settles in your lungs and doesn’t go away even when you try to breathe through it.

Yeonjun is leaving again.

Again.

The first time wrecked him. This time, it’s worse because he knows how it goes. How the silence grows like vines around unanswered messages, how his memory of Yeonjun will shift shape to something easier to carry, until it’s not Yeonjun at all anymore.

Just a half-remembered scent. A voice he doesn’t know how to miss properly. A weight in his chest that never quite dissolves.

He doesn’t know if he should reach out.

He thinks about it too much—fingers hovering over his phone screen, chat box with Yeonjun open. He doesn't send anything.

Taehyun finds him that evening, curled up on the narrow couch in their apartment’s living room, a mug of untouched tea going cold between his palms.

“He’s really going?” Soobin asks without looking up.

Taehyun nods, soft. “Yeah, already on train back to Daegu, said he didn’t want to make a thing out of it.”

Of course he didn’t.

Yeonjun has always been good at leaving quietly. That was the cruelest part.

“He always does this,” Soobin says, voice brittle. “Just… disappears. No closure, no explanation. It’s like he doesn’t even believe in endings. Just acts like time will blur everything out eventually.”

Taehyun doesn’t interrupt. He just sits there, steady and still. A hand near enough that Soobin could reach for it, if he wanted to.

“I hate it,” Soobin whispers. “I hate that he can leave so easily.”

But it wasn’t easy. A part of him knows that. A part of him remembers.

The tight-lipped restraint in Yeonjun’s eyes. The way his hand lingered the last time they met in the cafe, as if he was waiting—waiting for a reason to stay.

Soobin didn’t give him one.

He was too tired. Too wounded. Too afraid that if he said, let’s just try again, he’d have to open every old wound again just to keep Yeonjun near.

Now, he just stares at the screen of his phone again.

The cursor blinks in the empty message box.

No words come.

Yeonjun is leaving. Again.

And Soobin doesn’t chase after him this time.

Not because he doesn’t want to.

But because he doesn’t know if Yeonjun wants him to.

Because maybe wanting someone to stay was never the problem.

Maybe it was figuring out how to make staying feel like enough.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .

The train slides out of Seoul like it’s exhaling.

Yeonjun doesn’t look out the window. Not yet. The skyline always makes him hesitate—the way the buildings bleed into each other, the way the city seems to hold a piece of him in every neighborhood. Every street corner. Every train station.

He watches his reflection ripple against the glass, blurred by motion and evening light—a flickering thing, caught somewhere between past and present. Half ghost, half apology. The kind of face that’s been staring too long at nothing, eyes rimmed with exhaustion, lips bitten raw and never quite healed.

He doesn’t look like someone who knows what he’s doing. He looks like someone waiting for the ache to quiet.

The seat beside him stays empty. He never said which train he’d take—not to Beomgyu, not to Kai, not to Taehyun.

He thought, maybe, he wanted to be alone. He’d told himself it was easier that way. Simpler. But now that he is, the silence scratches at him, sharp and echoing.

Soobin didn’t call. Didn’t text.

Yeonjun didn’t either.

What would he even say?

“I’m leaving, but it doesn’t mean I want to.”

“I didn’t know how to stay without hurting you again.”

“I waited.”

He closes his eyes and rests his head against the cool windowpane, the rumble of the tracks a low hum under his skin. The weight in his chest is familiar now. A grief that’s not fresh anymore, but still bleeds when pressed.

He thinks of Soobin’s face the last time they saw each other.

Still and composed, but his eyes—God, his eyes.

He had looked at Yeonjun like he didn’t know whether to scream or beg or walk away.

It gutted him. It always did.

Yeonjun had smiled that day. Too casual. Too practiced. Because that’s how he survives things—pretending they don’t tear him up inside. It worked for years. Until Soobin stopped letting him get away with it.

He remembers Soobin’s voice from one of their fights, hoarse and cracked and exhausted.

“You keep pretending. Like it doesn’t matter. Like nothing matters. And it’s fucking unfair, Yeonjun. I love you. I still—”

Yeonjun had walked out before he could hear the rest.

Not because he didn’t care.

But because he did.

He cared so much it strangled him. Every time he stayed, he turned into someone Soobin had to flinch away from. And Yeonjun couldn’t stomach that. Couldn’t become the villain in Soobin’s story. Couldn’t see the heartbreak he caused and still ask to be loved.

He opens his phone.

No new messages. No missed calls.

Of course not.

Beomgyu had offered to say goodbye for him.

“It’s cleaner that way,” he’d said. “Less chance of you two ripping the stitches open again.”

Yeonjun had laughed. Not because it was funny, because it was too damn true.

The train tilts into a curve, a gentle pull that nudges him sideways. Yeonjun finally turns to the window, and for a long, suspended breath, he just watches.

Seoul stretches behind him, sprawling and relentless—a blur of concrete and memory, of streets where he learned to love and unravel in equal measure. The skyline softens in the distance, swallowed by dusk and distance.

The city doesn’t wave goodbye. It just recedes, quiet and unbothered, like it never noticed he was leaving.

And then, slowly, it disappears—all the noise, all the chaos, all the ache—slipping behind him like smoke through open fingers.

But the shape of Soobin still lives in his chest. Still lingers in the pauses between thoughts, in the beat before every breath.

He told Soobin once, “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

He meant it.

But maybe this time, walking away is how he followed.

Daegu is quieter. Always has been.

The streets aren’t as busy, the skyline doesn’t press down on you the same way Seoul does. It’s supposed to be comforting. Familiar. Safe.

But Yeonjun feels like he’s stepped into a version of himself that doesn’t quite fit anymore.

He drags his luggage into his apartment with a grunt. It’s small—clean, modern, slightly too impersonal, like a showroom someone forgot to live in.

The walls don’t remember anything.

That should be a good thing.

He tosses his keys into the dish by the door, kicks off his shoes. The silence swallows him whole. He’s alone. The realization doesn’t come like a slap. It comes like a tide—soft, inevitable, lonely.

He shrugs off his coat, leaves it somewhere it probably doesn’t belong. 

Yeonjun drops onto the couch, and it doesn’t give the way he wants it to. Too firm. Like everything else here. Like he has to re-learn how to sit still in his own body.

It shouldn’t feel this bad. He chose this.

He was the one who left.

He scrolls through his phone without really seeing. The notifications are nothing. A calendar alert. A news update. Kai’s blurry selfie from his sunrise surf in Hawaii.

Yeonjun smiles. Briefly.

It’s the kind of smile that doesn’t reach anywhere. Just stretches across his face like muscle memory, and fades just as quickly.

Then his thumb hovers—stupid, instinctive—over Soobin’s name.

Still pinned. Still starred. Still there.

Even now. Even after everything.

He stares at it like it might hurt him. Like it hasn’t already.

He doesn’t press it. He doesn’t call.

There’s no point.

He breathes, if it can be called that.

It’s more of a collapse, really. A controlled implosion into the couch, head tilted back, eyes fixed on the ceiling like it might hold some version of peace he hasn’t earned.

And he thinks about that day.

The last time.

How Soobin’s voice had broken around the words. 

“Don’t go. Not like this. Please.”

Yeonjun still hears it—like a ghost note that never quite fades. The way Soobin’s voice caught, the tremble tucked between syllables, the quiet shatter he tried so hard to swallow.

He tells himself he did it for both of them. That if he stayed, they’d keep falling into the same loop—love, guilt, silence, apology, repeat.

They were cutting each other open just to kiss the wounds.

But sitting here now, in a city where no one knows what he left behind, Yeonjun wonders if that was just the coward’s way of saying I was afraid.

Afraid he wasn’t enough.

Afraid that love wasn’t enough.

Afraid of being hated by the person he loved most, again and again, until it stuck.

His phone buzzes.

Beomgyu.

made it back? dont get all emo, hyung. let the boy breathe.

also, your plant died. again. im not getting you another one. buy a cactus.

Yeonjun huffs out a laugh. It’s pitiful and small, but it’s something.

He types a reply, deletes it. Tries again. Deletes that too. Finally settles on something.

im fine. tell him im proud of him.

He doesn’t write Soobin’s name. He doesn’t need to. Beomgyu will know. He always knows.

Outside, the sky bleeds slowly into night. The mountains fade into shadow. A few stars blink into view, tentative. Distant.

The apartment catches the last light—warm and golden, the kind that pretends everything’s okay. It washes over the walls like something holy. Like something mocking.

Yeonjun lets it happen. Lets the silence press against him again. He thinks about what would’ve happened if he stayed.

Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe they would’ve fallen apart all the same, but slower. Softer. With gentler hands.

He doesn’t know.

What he does know is that he misses Soobin in a way that isn’t cinematic. It’s not a swelling orchestra or a great romantic scream.

It’s a new toothbrush left hidden in a drawer. A sweater folded and never worn. A banana milk in a convenience store fridge he can’t look at without wanting to disappear.

It’s the ache of knowing that the love was real, and maybe, that made it even harder to keep.

It was past 10 PM and the library was nearly empty, just a few scattered silhouettes hunched over books and blue-light screens, the overhead fluorescents humming like they were trying to stay awake too.

Yeonjun sat across from Soobin at one of the far corner tables, a mostly-forgotten assignment open in front of him but his eyes fixed on the person he loved most in the world. 

Soobin was wearing his review hoodie—three sizes too big, sleeves stretched from anxious thumbs—and his brows were furrowed in the same way they always were when he hit a mental wall. Highlighters lay abandoned beside his thick biochemistry notes, color-coded tabs like battle scars on the paper.

Yeonjun loved him most in these moments. Loved the way Soobin whispered facts under his breath, how he tapped the back of his pen against his jaw whenever he was trying to recall an acronym, how he’d mouth the words before writing them like it helped ink them deeper into his brain.

He didn’t know how to put it into words then, so he didn’t. He just stayed. Quietly, unshakably.

He brought Soobin his favorite snacks during their breaks and carried extra paracetamol in his bag just in case Soobin got a tension headache. He memorized Soobin’s schedule better than his own, learned to distinguish his study-silence from his self-doubt-silence. 

When Soobin forgot to eat, Yeonjun would drop off kimbap rolls and pretend he just happened to have extras. When he looked tired, Yeonjun would reach across the table and press their pinkies together, wordless reassurance.

“You know you don’t have to wait,” Soobin whispered, eyes never leaving the page. “You could go home.”

“I could,” Yeonjun had replied, soft and smug. “But then who would glare at the guy who keeps sniffing too loud behind you?”

Soobin had smiled then—just a little, but it was real—and Yeonjun had held onto that smile for the rest of the week.

He loved Soobin in ways he never thought he was capable of. Not just in grand gestures or late-night kisses or whispered I love yous, but in the discipline it took to sit still across from him for hours without speaking unless spoken to.

In the choice to stay beside him even when they were in different worlds—Soobin in his medical cases, Yeonjun in his SWOT analysis papers—and still find a way to meet in the quiet in-between.

Yeonjun would always think this was one of their best seasons. Not because it was dramatic or passionate or romantic in the way movies taught him love should be—but because it was real. Solid. Ordinary in the most extraordinary way.

And maybe that’s what made it hurt the most.

That once upon a time, they’d worked. Really worked.

And still, somehow, they hadn’t made it.

It’s colder now.

Daegu has traded its golds and reds for gray skies and bare trees. The heater in Yeonjun’s apartment makes a quiet humming sound all day long, background noise to a life still figuring out how to be lived.

His mornings have become routine, methodical—wake up, make coffee, answer emails, plan meetings, pretend none of it still stings.

He’s learned how to smile through most things, but not all.

He scrolls through his calendar as he eats a piece of burnt toast—again. The dates blur together until something catches.

A single red circle on the screen, marked two months ago by muscle memory rather than intention.

“KMLE Board – Soobin + Taehyun”

Bold font. No emoji. Just that. As if his heart had typed it before his brain could object.

His chest tightens the way it used to in university before a big presentation, the kind that meant something. His toast goes untouched after that.

He checks the date again.

Tomorrow.

Their exam is tomorrow.

Yeonjun leans back in his chair like he’s been hit.

It’s not like he forgot. He knew it was coming—he just didn’t expect it to arrive so soon. Time has been strange lately. Fast in all the wrong ways, slow when he needs it to move.

He stares at the name on the text box. Binnie.

His Soobin.

Or not his, anymore. Maybe never really his in the way that mattered most.

Still, the thought of him walking into that exam room—tired, probably over-caffeinated, jaw set with that impossible, trembling focus—hits Yeonjun like a wave he forgot to brace for.

He wonders if Soobin is okay.

If he’s slept.

If his hands are cold.

If Taehyun made him eat.

He wants to send something. A message. A stupid meme. A photo of the creme pudding at a convenience store. Anything.

You’re gonna crush it, Bin.

You’re already brilliant, this is just formality.

I believe in you. Always have.

He doesn’t type any of it. 

Instead, he puts on a jacket and steps outside.

The cold bites at his cheeks, wind sharper here than it ever felt in Seoul. He walks down the hill from his apartment, hands in his pockets, breath fogging in front of him like the ghosts of words he’ll never say.

At a street corner, he stops in front of a familiar convenience store. Not the same chain. Not the same city. But something about it makes his chest ache in perfect clarity. He walks in anyway.

The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. He scans the aisles absently, fingers brushing familiar labels.

There it is.

Banana milk.

He doesn’t think. He grabs two.

The cashier rings them up without fanfare. The bottle sweats in his palm as he steps back into the cold. It looks the same as always—yellow and cheerful and cruel.

He twists the cap off and takes a sip.

It tastes like spring. Like long nights on tiny balconies. Like someone else’s laughter. Like the version of himself that dared to believe something that soft could last.

Yeonjun wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and curses quietly.

“You’re still so fucking stupid about him,” he murmurs to no one.

He finishes the bottle. Doesn’t know why he bought two.

Maybe he’ll leave the second one in his fridge. Maybe he’ll throw it out tomorrow. Maybe he’ll keep it a few days too long, just to feel like he’s waiting for something he’s not allowed to want anymore.

That night, he opens his notes app and types, quickly, like he’s afraid he’ll lose the nerve.

good luck tomorrow. you’ll do great.

no need to reply. just wanted you to know.

Then, he deletes it. Instead, he texts Beomgyu.

tell them im rooting for them. quietly. like a ghost. like the world’s most pathetic ghost.

Beomgyu replies after five minutes.

already did. you’re not that quiet, by the way.

also you’re a dumbass, respectfully.

Yeonjun scoffs. Fair.

He sets his phone face-down on the coffee table, screen still aglow for a moment before it fades to black. The apartment is too quiet, too still. The kind of silence that makes your own thoughts echo louder.

Yeonjun sinks into the couch like it’s trying to swallow him whole, limbs heavy with something deeper than exhaustion. He pulls the blanket over his head—more fortress than comfort—and curls in on himself, knees drawn up, heart aching louder than he’ll admit.

He doesn’t sleep. Not really.

Just lies there, eyes open in the dark, listening to the low hum of the heater and the sound of his own breathing.

Wishing.

Wishing things had turned out differently. That he hadn’t left. That Soobin had asked him to stay louder. That they hadn’t broken each other down in the end trying so hard to hold on.

Wishing that tomorrow, the two people he loves most in this world walk into their exams steady, sure, and knowing they’re not alone.

And wishing—achingly, selfishly—that he could be someone they’d still want waiting at the finish line.

Someone worth coming back to.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ .

The city was still shaking off sleep when Soobin and Taehyun stepped out into the cold morning air, collars turned up against the late October wind.

It was the kind of dawn that didn’t feel like a beginning, just an extension of all the days that had come before it—every sleepless night, every frayed nerve, every page memorized until it blurred. The sky was soft and pale, like it hadn’t decided yet whether to break into light or rain.

Soobin barely tasted the coffee Taehyun pressed into his hand. It sat warm against his palm, grounding, but the taste turned sour against the acid already curling in his stomach. His lanyard badge felt too heavy around his neck. His fingers wouldn’t stop twitching.

They walked in silence, not for lack of things to say—but because saying anything would make it real. That the exam was today. That this was it. That everything they’d worked for was hurtling toward its final measure, a single shot loaded with years of pressure and sacrifice.

His phone had buzzed that morning—messages from his parents, his older siblings, his friends, even his usually quiet cousin who’d somehow remembered the date. 

We’re so proud of you. No matter what happens, you’ve already come so far. 

They didn’t know exactly what to say, but it didn’t matter. The weight of their words settled warm in his chest, a reminder that he wasn’t carrying all of this alone.

When they reached the testing center, Soobin paused under the arching entrance, the buzz of candidates moving like a tide around them. Some were laughing too loudly. Others sat on curbs, mumbling mnemonics like prayers.

Soobin could barely breathe.

Taehyun nudged his arm lightly, “hey.”

He turned, eyes wide, unfocused.

“You’re here,” Taehyun said simply, voice calm but not cold. “You made it. You’re ready.”

Soobin blinked. Swallowed. Nodded once.

And maybe that was all he needed—someone to believe in him, out loud, without conditions. Without reminding him of the cracks he carried under his skin. Just someone who stood beside him and said yes, you.

They found their assigned rooms eventually, parted ways in the hallway with a soft, shared glance.

Inside, the white walls of the testing room seemed too sterile, too still. His hands trembled as he filled in his name. As the proctor’s voice droned instructions, Soobin stared down at the paper in front of him.

This was it.

Seven years of surviving. Of aching. Of losing and choosing and rebuilding. Of pouring everything he had, everything he was, into a future that had no guarantees.

He thought of his family. Of Taehyun, probably sitting straight-backed in another room, already in the zone. Of Beomgyu, somewhere in Gwangju with his family. Of Kai, probably asleep in Hawaii with the sun just rising on his side of the world. And, inevitably, he thought of Yeonjun.

He thought of the way Yeonjun used to hold his shaking hands before his OSCEs. Of whispered jokes between library shelves. Of someone who once promised, I’ll always be there at the finish line.

Soobin swallowed hard. Blinked once. Then picked up his pen.

And began.

Students flood into the university halls as soon as the bell of their last exam that semester rang. Some ready to finally go out without the guilt of academics, some just urging to pack up and leave for the winter break.

Soobin stumbled out of the exam room with the distinct sensation of his soul peeling off and dragging behind him like static. The fluorescent lights felt too bright. His limbs too heavy. His brain still looped question forty-two over and over like it was trying to rewrite history.

He didn’t cry, but he was close.

He barely made it halfway down the hallway before Yeonjun was there, all open arms and knowing eyes, already pulling Soobin into his chest like he’d just survived something harrowing. Which, to be fair, was basically what med school exams were.

“I bombed it,” Soobin mumbled, muffled into Yeonjun’s jacket.

“Aigoo, my big baby,” Yeonjun just hugged him tighter. “You say that every time.”

“I mean it this time.”

“You mean it every time.”

Soobin didn’t answer. He just stood there, letting Yeonjun hold him together in the echoing corridor, their shadows stretched long by the late afternoon sun bleeding through the windows. Eventually, Yeonjun kissed the crown of his head and nudged him toward the exit, one arm still slung lazily over Soobin’s shoulder like he didn’t plan on letting go anytime soon.

They crossed the quad, Soobin’s footsteps sluggish, Yeonjun’s rhythm attuned to him like a second heartbeat.

“I should quit,” Soobin said at last. “Move to a cottage in the mountains. Live off the grid. Never speak to another human again.”

Yeonjun snorted, “okay, recluse. And what, leave me to raise our hypothetical children alone?”

Soobin gave him a tired glance, “I thought we agreed we’re adopting twelve cats instead.”

“Nope. Changed my mind. I want human kids who get to brag about how their dad saves lives and still makes the best pancakes in Seoul.”

Soobin cracked the faintest smile, but before he could answer, a familiar chorus interrupted them.

“Did someone say pancakes?” Beomgyu’s voice rang out, followed by the unmistakable sound of Kai’s laughter and Taehyun’s groan of despair, “too loud, Gyu.”

The three of them descended like chaos in motion—Taehyun with his ever-present tote bag of notes, Kai in the middle of a story that involved dramatic hand gestures, and Beomgyu ever the burst of energy.

“Damn,” Beomgyu hissed, squinting at Soobin. “You look like a ghost. That bad?”

“Worse,” Soobin muttered.

“Jun hyung just kiss him already—oh wait. You probably already did,” Taehyun said, nodding toward the way Yeonjun’s arm was still curled loosely around Soobin’s waist. The kind of quiet, unthinking intimacy that made you feel like the world could slow down just for a moment.

Kai was the one to ask, “where are we eating? I’m starving.”

“There’s that noodle place near the next station from here,” Taehyun suggested. Beomgyu made a face, “it’s rush hour, the train’s full, and I am not fighting a crowd for udon.”

“We’re too broke for a taxi,” Kai added, dramatically patting down empty pockets.

Yeonjun chuckled, nudging Soobin gently, “our kids are gonna have a bunch of broke uncles who’ll still find a way to spoil them rotten.”

“You’d still name one after me, right?” Beomgyu asked, poking Soobin in the side.

Soobin rolled his eyes, but his hand tightened imperceptibly around Yeonjun’s, “sure. Middle name, maybe. If you behave.” They all laughed.

The sun dipped lower, casting everything in warm gold. Their footsteps fell into messy rhythm as they argued about food and train schedules and whether or not Beomgyu was morally obligated to name one of his future kids after Soobin, too. No one mentioned the exam again. Not really. Just soft jokes, shared space, a little warmth between fingers.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was real.

And that memory—whole and aching in its simplicity—was one Soobin would carry like a talisman long after it had passed.

It’s cold in Seoul.

The kind of cold that clings to your coat and nestles in your bones, but Soobin doesn’t mind. His scarf is wrapped securely around his neck, his luggage rolling quietly behind him, wheels ticking against the tiled floor of the train station.

The air is filled with the familiar churn of departure—the low murmur of voices, the hiss of brakes, the soft chime of announcements echoing overhead. But Soobin walks slowly, calm, unhurried. There’s no more sprinting now. No more cramming, no more desperate bargaining with the universe to please, just let me pass.

He already knows the result. He's Dr. Choi Soobin now.

Just as Taehyun is Dr. Kang.

Kai had screamed when they told him. Beomgyu was teary, which he blamed on allergies. Soobin’s parents cried when he visited home with the official print out.

Soobin had just laughed softly, relief blooming in his chest like something sacred. Like spring coming back around.

Taehyun left for vacation the day after results were released, his parents whisking him away with packed bags and proud arms. Kai promised to be back by New Year’s. Beomgyu, ever the instigator of reunions, was already badgering them all into picking a date for a congratulatory meal—“on me,” he said, “courtesy of the family restaurant’s bonus fund, you nerds.”

And Soobin? Soobin is on his way to his own retreat.

He finds an empty bench near the platform, breath fogging lightly in front of him. There’s a kind of quiet in his chest now. Not the painful, echoing kind that used to come with loss, but a new quiet. A settled one. Soft. He exhales, then pulls out his phone and opens their old thread.

His fingers hover over the screen, hesitant for only a breath.

Then he types,

looking for a nice place to spend my birthday at in daegu

if you’re not busy, want to join me?

The reply comes almost immediately. As if it had been waiting.

As if he had been waiting.

i know just the place

Another message follows.

you’ll stay over, right?

Soobin feels the weight of every emotion at once. Every version of himself—tired, lost, angry, in love—collapsing gently into this singular moment. But he’s not afraid of it anymore. The ache doesn’t drown him. It lives inside him now, but so does hope.

So, he types back.

if you’ll have me

His phone rings almost the second after he sends it.

He picks up, breath catching just a little at the sound of the voice on the other end. Familiar. Steady.

“Always, Soobin.”

The hours of the journey from Seoul to Daegu were long, but there's no fatigue in Soobin’s body. He’s shaking—in fear, in excitement.

The train slows with a long, exhaled sigh, brakes hissing as the platform comes into view. Soobin rises from his seat, scarf wrapped snug around his neck, the soft weight of his coat brushing his knees. The train doors open with a familiar mechanical chime. Cold air rushes in. And for a second—just a second—he doesn’t move.

Then he sees him.

Yeonjun stands just beyond the yellow line, coat unbuttoned, cheeks flushed pink from the winter air, eyes scanning every passenger until—

There.

Their eyes meet. A flicker of disbelief, even though they’ve been messaging for days. Even though Soobin said he’d come.

Yeonjun still doesn’t quite believe it. Not until Soobin steps off the train. Not until the suitcase hits the edge of the platform and Soobin lets go of it entirely, feet moving faster than his thoughts.

He runs.

No hesitation. No fear. Just the thundering, breathless urgency of this—of now, of finally, of every almost and every what if burning into something solid and real.

Yeonjun barely has time to open his arms before Soobin’s crashing into them. A collision of limbs and breath and something old becoming new again.

“Hi,” Soobin whispers, voice caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his arms wrapping tight around Yeonjun like he never plans to let go.

Yeonjun holds him like the answer to every version of loneliness he’s ever known. He presses his face to Soobin’s shoulder, breathing him in like it’s the first full breath he’s had in months.

“You came,” Yeonjun murmurs, almost disbelieving.

“I told you I would.”

They stay there like that, on a crowded platform that feels like it was built just for this moment. Around them, strangers pass, wheeling suitcases and chattering about the cold, but they don’t notice.

Soobin pulls back just enough to look at him. “Happy birthday to me,” he says softly.

Yeonjun smiles, thumb brushing against Soobin’s cheek. “You’ll stay awhile, right?”

Soobin nods. 

“For as long as you’ll have me.”

“I’ll be keeping you forever, then,” Yeonjun breathes. Then, with a voice laced in something steadier, deeper.

“Welcome home, Doctor Choi.”

Soobin doesn’t say anything at first. He just presses their foreheads together, eyes closing.

And in the quiet warmth between them, something blooms again—slow, familiar, and unshakably alive.

Hope.

It doesn’t erase the years. The good, the bad, the in between. But this… this feels like the start of something that might finally last.