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Of all the seasons, Moon Hyeonjun never knew what to do with winter.
He didn’t love it. He didn’t hate it either. Winter simply arrived, like an uninvited thought that sat beside him and refused to leave. Snow fell the same way. Covering everything whether you asked for it or not. It reminded him of too many things at once, and Hyeonjun had always been someone who felt things in layers rather than singular emotions.
He thought maybe that was why he struggled to name his feelings toward it. Winter was never just cold. It was never just pretty. It carried memories and echoes. Even now, years later, when he stepped outside and the air bit gently at his cheeks, his first instinct was not to complain but to brace. As if winter was something to endure rather than experience.
Winter was the stove season.
That was the first thing his mind always went to. The time when teams gathered around warmth that was never permanent, when hands reached out for heat knowing full well they might be burned next year. Rosters changed overnight. Teammates turned into opponents. Names that once filled comms became names on the other side of the Rift. Snow fell, and suddenly nothing looked the same, even though the map underneath hadn’t changed at all.
Hyeonjun understood that kind of cold well. The professional kind. The kind that smiled politely while taking something away. Stove season always made him hyper-aware of space. Who sat beside him now, who might not tomorrow. Laughter felt tentative then, like it was borrowing time. Even victories tasted different in winter, as if they came with an expiration date stamped somewhere he refused to look at directly. He didn't want to.
It was funny, he thought, how winter could also be the season of his birthday.
December 24th. A date that always felt suspended between celebration and pause between breaths. People were laughing somewhere, lights glowing warmly behind windows, while outside the cold pressed its face against the glass. Hyeonjun had grown used to that contradiction, being happy and anxious at the same time. Cake on the table, candles burning relentlessly, and an unreadable future.
He remembered sitting there sometimes, hands folded loosely in his lap, smiling when prompted. Hearing congratulations layered over unspoken questions. Another year older. Another year closer to decisions he couldn’t fully control. It had taught him early that joy didn’t always come without cost. It will arrive with uncertainty, wrapped neatly so no one else could see the anxiety humming below the surface.
Winter felt like waiting with a phone at two percent battery.
He remembered it too clearly. Dawn, the air colder than it needed to be, pale and unforgiving. A younger Hyeonjun staring at his screen, watching the battery icon turn red, waiting for a message from the T1 coach that might never come. Every second drained something out of him. Snow hadn’t fallen that day, but winter was still there, heavy in his chest, settling like frost inside his ribs. He was aware that expectation could hurt more than rejection and a ride to Seoul might actually prove that.
Winter had wired him that way. It had trained him to wait, to prepare for silence, and to imagine absence before presence. He hated that about himself sometimes but he also knew it had kept him steady. Survival, he’d learned, because that was what keeping the ground from breaking.
Maybe, that was why snow unsettled him.
It also reminded him of middle school evenings, standing outside longer than necessary, breath fogging the air. Waiting for his sister. Waiting, waiting until the sky grew darker and the streetlights flickered on, and she still didn’t come. Back then, he had hated her for it. Not because she was late, but because those evenings taught him what it felt like to be forgotten. He wanted to leave home, too. Hyeonjun wanted to stop living there, to step away from the familiar walls and the memories that clung to them like shadows. Why did it feel impossible for him to walk away, while his sister could leave so easily?
However, that grudge was long gone now.
Time had softened it. The way snow eventually melts into something harmless, disappearing without apology. He understood things better as he grew older. How adults ran late, how life distracted people without meaning to hurt them. When he thought of his sister now, it wasn’t with bitterness anymore. He could still picture the scene clearly, but the pain had dulled, reshaped into something closer to understanding. Winter no longer held that memory hostage. It was simply there, resting like a photograph left out in the open.
Winter carried departures, too.
Wooje leaving T1 felt like the first real crack in the ice that year. Hyeonjun didn’t say much about it. He rarely did. Snow fell again, and this time it felt final. Their time together ended without ceremony and slipped away before anyone could stop it. He remembered sitting at his desk afterward, staring at the monitor long after it had gone dark. Thinking about how winter always took someone with it. It was not cruel but loud enough to leave a hollow space behind.
Nevertheless, he didn’t despise the season. Winter never lied to him. It never pretended things would stay. It never promised warmth without reminding him it was temporary. Maybe that honesty was what kept him from hating it. Life moved, he stayed. Teammates left, new ones arrived.
Moon Hyeonjun still didn’t know what to do with winter.
And yet, Choi Hyunjoon came in winter.
For Hyeonjun, Choi Hyunjoon arrived without a fuss, almost contrary to everyone's thought. November 21, 2024. His first broadcast. The day they officially became teammates. Winter had barely begun, but something shifted. Hyeonjun noticed it in the smallest ways first. The practice room no longer felt hollow. The silence between scrims lost its weight, no longer pressing so heavily against his ears. Winter remained winter. It was still cold, but something had descended quietly within the season, an ember that had no right to be there.
In Hyeonjun’s eyes, Hyunjoon was warmth disguised as clumsiness. A hyung who laughed easily, too easily sometimes, as if laughter were a habit he’d picked up to prevail. Someone who bantered without restraint, who spoke before thinking and then smiled like it didn’t matter if the words landed wrong. Someone who took criticism with a weary smile and returned the next day, sleeves rolled up, and ready to try again.
It confused Hyeonjun at first. He was used to people hardening under pressure, curling inward when winter came, like animals bracing for snow. His Hyunjoon hyung did the opposite. He stood still. Or maybe he just pretended well enough that it looked that way. Hyeonjun didn't quite get it.
Over 2025, as seasons passed, Hyeonjun learned him slowly. Not all at once. He learned Hyunjoon in fragments, constellations one star at a time. Spring jokes that left awkward pauses from Hyunjoon. Summer scrims that ended in playful arguments, voices raised not in anger but in frustration that only came from caring too much. Autumn fatigue that anchored deep in their bones where Hyunjoon's sighs were longer than usual before sitting down.
They bickered constantly. Over drafts, over mistakes, over nothing at all. Sometimes Hyeonjun snapped before he could stop himself, words sharper than he meant. Hyunjoon always took it in stride, deflecting with humor or brushing it off with a shrug. But Hyeonjun noticed things he didn’t say out loud.
Hyunjoon stayed a little longer after practice even when everyone else had already left. Hyunjoon replayed moments in his head, muttering to himself, blaming himself even when no one else did. Every year, changing teams taught Hyunjoon to pack lightly and expect less. Hyunjoon was ready to leave at any moment if the temperature dropped.
It must have been exhausting, Hyeonjun thought. To never fully unpack. To always feel like a guest and careful not to leave any footprints.
That thought lingered longer than it should have. Because he understood that weight too well. The doubt. The voices that crept in late at night. The quiet fear of not being enough, of being temporary. Winter had taught him that fear early, had made it familiar, like muscle memory.
That was why, whenever Hyunjoon’s expression suggested impermanence, Hyeonjun spoke up without hesitation. A reassurance here. A casual you did well there. It was not loud enough to draw attention and not too emotional enough to invite questions, but it mattered. At least to Hyeonjun, he wanted to be the small pieces of wood for Hyunjoon to keep the fire going.
Sometimes Hyunjoon looked surprised, like he hadn’t expected it. That alone made Hyeonjun speak more often.
Hyeonjun hoped, selfishly, that T1 could be home for him. Not just a place to pass through or another winter to survive.
“I’ll win it for you, hyung.”
At Worlds 2025, in a moment that felt both impulsive and inevitable, Hyeonjun said it out loud. The words left his mouth before he had time to overthink them. He meant it. From knowing what it meant to want something to finally stay. From understanding how badly it hurt to believe, year after year, that you might not be chosen again.
They won.
The victory felt unreal at first. Noise, lights, confetti, everything just blurred together. But in the midst of it all, Hyeonjun’s gaze found Hyunjoon instinctively. He saw the way his hyung laughed, the way his shoulders relaxed. Hyunjoon finally stopped holding his breath for years without realizing it.
And winter came again.
Snow returned like an old question, one Hyeonjun had never learned how to answer properly. Hyunjoon’s contract renewal was uncertain, rumors floating like frost in the air. Hyeonjun felt himself slipping back into that familiar darkness. The waiting. The rehearsal of grief he hoped he wouldn’t need. Before answers arrived, the first announcement came.
Gumayusi’s departure. Minhyung leaving T1.
Hyeonjun felt the snow accumulating without sound. He had known, after all. Before any contracts were signed, before anything was official, Minhyung had told them. Minhyung told him and Minseok about wanting to challenge himself and wanting to soar to new heights outside T1. It hadn’t been framed as an ending, but as a beginning. It was hunger, and far from dissatisfaction. Hyeonjun and Minseok hadn’t held it against him. How could they? Wanting more was never something to resent.
Still, anticipating ahead hadn’t made the pain any easier to bear, had it? Knowing didn’t soften the ache. It still hurt through seams you didn’t know were open. A loss he had rehearsed still arrived sharp. He let himself feel it, because pretending otherwise had never been his way.
Surely, his Hyunjoon hyung would renew.
Surely, warmth wouldn’t leave again.
He told himself that over and over, like a prayer whispered into cold air.
When the next news broke, Hyeonjun laughed before he realized tears had gathered in his eyes. The sound startled even him. Winter loosened its grip, just a little. Relief and heartbreak existed together then, sharing the same space in his chest. One teammate leaving to chase the sky. Another staying, choosing to remain. And Hyeonjun, as he always had, learned to hold them at once.
When Hyunjoon came back from his hometown, Hyeonjun didn’t wait. He didn’t overthink it. He went to him, steps quick despite the cold. This time, snow didn’t feel heavy. It gave way instead of resisting.
That was when he realized it.
He liked winter.
Not because it stayed the same or it was kind, but because it proved that even after endings, something new could arrive. That light didn’t always demand attention. And maybe it wasn’t just winter after all. Maybe it was spring, summer, and autumn too. Seasons that changed. Seasons that tested. Seasons that passed whether you were ready or not.
He liked all of them. He liked the comfort of shared laughter. He liked the brush of hands that said more than words ever could. He liked the rhythm of being alongside someone who made the world feel less overwhelming. He liked the ordinary moments. He liked how these fragments of time made the seasons easier to endure.
Because Choi Hyunjoon was there.
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