Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Wow, man. I feel incredible. We're incredible, aren't we?” Martin's thick, slurred voice was interrupted by another burp that smelled of sweet alcohol.

Keonho snorted, a sharp sound of exasperation that was lost in the thumping music. They were no longer the boys they used to be, the ones who were content with a soft drink and the clandestine thrill of pretending at parties. Coming of age had given them the right to drink, and Martin, in particular, seemed determined to exercise it as a sacred duty. So much so that he had already stolen Keonho's glass, leaving him alone with the bitter residue of intact nerves and ruthless hyperlucidity.  

And he was fed up. The word echoed in his skull with the monotonous rhythm of a drill. Far from drowning his anxiety, the alcohol had refined it, turning it into a thin sheet of glass on which everything slipped and cut. His senses, sharpened to the point of pain, registered every stimulus as an aggression: every flash of neon not only cut through the darkness of the club, but also sliced his retina; the thick, sweet smoke tangled in his throat not like vapor, but like a rope; the body heat of the room emanated a palpable mist that smelled of stale sweat, desperate lust, cheap perfume that tried in vain to cover the smell of ashes and defeat.

And then there were the stares. Always the stares. They weren't curious, but tactile, like sewing needles digging into his skin and pulling at the threads of his discomfort. They settled on his table like flies on honey, irresistibly drawn to Seonghyeon's unconscious magnetism, Martin's drunken, expansive exuberance, James's impassive serenity... especially James. He was the epicenter of this unsolicited attention without realizing it as he approached the bar, took his drink with an unhesitating hand, took a precise sip, set the glass down on the damp circle of wood with a sharp, definitive thud, and without even a sideways glance, slipped back onto the dance floor. 

And her gaze was a magnet in the dim light of the bar. Keonho, despite the noise and smoke, couldn't tear himself away from that fixed attention on them from the moment they walked through the club door. It wasn't a curious or flirtatious look; it was the icy patience of a predator on the prowl, assessing its prey from the other end of the bar. She, a silhouette sculpted in a black dress that seemed to absorb the dim light, maintained a deliberately inscrutable expression—a “dead fly” face, a perfect mask that did not reveal a hint of intention. 

With sudden, mechanical determination, as if an internal spring had been released, she abandoned her post and began to move forward. Her trajectory was unmistakable: she was following the same path James had taken to the dance floor. Keonho watched with a lump in his throat as her confident, serpentine gait dodged bodies with the efficiency of a blade cutting through the human tide, her eyes fixed on her target: the largest of the group, James hyung.

Just at the critical moment, when Keonho saw her hand rising to tap James on the shoulder to get his attention, reality came crashing down on him. Martin's entire abandoned weight, an unstable human load, defeated by drink, crashed into his side. It was like an anchor of flesh and bone. His vision was suddenly interrupted: the relentless figure of the girl, James's look of surprise, everything was replaced by the close-up view of his friend's sweaty neck and the sour smell of alcohol. 

His disgust for these dens was not just physical; it was a visceral rejection that started in his throat and settled in his stomach. Keonho detested the poisoned atmosphere: the stench of stale alcohol and sour sweat that permeated even his clothes, the deafening music that stifled thought, and above all, the false euphoria of drunk people—a grotesque grimace of happiness that seemed to him the saddest of solitudes. But his deepest, sharpest, and most silent contempt was reserved for himself on the rare days when he let his guard down and became just another member of the drunken crowd. Those were the truly unbearable days.

Because the next day, the hangover would not only be a hammering in his temples; it would be a prison of retrospective shame. A sharp, relentless sense of ridicule replayed every forced laugh, every clumsy confession, and every piece of nonsense uttered, aggravated by Martin's tireless mockery. And as if this self-punishment weren't enough, there was the voice of Martin, his tireless tormentor, who with scalpel-like sarcasm reminded him of every foolish thing he had said, turning blurry memories into crystal-clear humiliation.

That's why, almost always, Keonho assumed his role with stoic resignation: the sober caretaker, the anchor in a sea of nausea. He became a silent shadow, holding Martin or Seonghyeon's feverish, sweaty forehead over the porcelain toilet with one hand, while stifling his own annoyance with the other. However, he preferred that a thousand times over to being vomited on, an experience so repulsive that, after the last time, he couldn't look his friends in the face for a week, navigating between disgust and rage, and even seriously questioning his circle of friends.

“Remember not to hit anyone tonight, Keonho,” Martin sang, his abnormally loud voice cutting through the air like broken glass. “That idiot James hyung might realize you like him. Or maybe not. And God forbid anything happens to your beautiful face.”

“Shut up,” Keonho snapped, his dry tone meant to be a wall.

“But don't worry,” Martin continued, approaching with a lewd smile. "Here's Martin Edwards Park, the youngest and most handsome producer in college, to console you. I could even do you a favor and fuck you, if you look desperate enough. Of course, you'd be the bottom. Don't expect me to give up my ass just like that. I know you like to get it."

Keonho glared at him. Why am I still sitting here? he asked himself, not with anger, but with a bitter resignation that was strangely familiar, like an unpleasant taste he had already memorized. Alcohol transformed Martin, bringing out an obscene and provocative alter ego that only existed between the flashes of the bottles. A repulsive side that he knew all too well. And why the hell am I still his friend?

“I don't need your favors,” he replied, rolling his eyes toward the smoky ceiling and neon lights. “And if I did, I'd rather eat my own vomit than accept anything from you. If I wanted to sleep with someone, I would have found them myself.”

“Really?” This time it was Seonghyeon who slumped over his shoulder, heavy and velvety, his breath sweet with drunkenness. Shit. Now he was cornered between two drunken bodies that were stealing his breath. “And I thought the one you wanted to slam against the bathroom wall was James hyung.”

A mocking laugh erupted on his other side, coming from Martin. Keonho clenched his fists under the table. The pressure in his temples was already like a war drum.

“You know what? Right now, I feel like strangling you both. And the fact that you keep giving me reasons to be a murderer doesn't help. So, for God's sake, do yourselves a favor and shut up.”

Keonho crossed his arms, tempted to down the dubious drink that someone in the crowd packed around the bar had left in front of Martin.
 
“I thought your murderous instincts would kick in when that woman in the black dress went to rub herself against James,” he said with a sardonic smile. "But if you insist on blaming us, I'll be nice and pretend to believe you.“ Martin shrugged, grabbed the questionable glass, and took a long sip. He savored it, grimaced at the taste, but the next second, a fit of laughter choked him. ”You're an idiot, Keonho," he managed to say between coughs. "How can you like someone like James hyung?"

“And what's wrong with that?” Keonho leaned on the bar, seeking a little distance from his friends' swaying bodies as the heat began to wash over his face.

“Listen up,” Seonghyeon sang out beside him, his alcohol-laden breath brushing against his ear, almost applauding. “Martin is going to give you a detailed list of reasons why James hyung is a terrible idea.”

Martin puffed out his chest with the solemnity of a television salesman, a spectacle that at another time would have amused Keonho. "Let's begin: you've known him since before you were sixteen. His laugh sounds like a cartoon villain's. He's an unrepentant emo, with a slightly weird personality, an otaku and a normie nerd, but with a cloying optimism. He snores like a broken engine, sleeps with his eyes half open—a chilling image—and has a knack for falling asleep anywhere. Remember the party before Christmas? He collapsed wrapped in the sheets we threw at him, and you, in a stroke of genius, put your boot on his face, and he didn't even wake up."

“Yeah, I remember. I was there, remember?” Keonho replied sarcastically.

Martin ignored him. “There's a four-year difference. He's practically an adult with his life figured out, and you're still a college brat...” He paused, searching for the punchline.

“And he's a bit of an idiot,” Seonghyeon finished, with the efficiency of an accomplice.

“That's it!” Martin clapped his hands and raised his hand above Keonho's head to high-five Seonghyeon's clumsy gesture.

Keonho took a breath, somewhere between offended and surprised. “He's not an idiot.”

“Keonho, Keonho, Keonho,” Martin said, shaking his head with syrupy pity. “Love is rotting away the few brain cells you had left after eating dirt from Juhoon's garden.”

“You were the one eating dirt, you idiot!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. But seriously, that fall from the tree messed with your head.”

“It was Seonghyeon who fell out of the tree,” replied Keonho, his head now throbbing with stress. “I didn't even dare to climb up. I didn't want to tear my clothes and get scolded by my mother.”

“That's right,” said Seonghyeon's voice, surprised, as if the memory of the pain had just materialized. “It hurt like hell.”

Martin scratched his head, confused. His thoughts began to cloud over, blurring in the fog of alcohol. Keonho knew that stage all too well: the prelude to disaster, when he began to mix his childhood memories with things that never happened and a few that did. 

“What the hell happened to you? Did you smoke on the sly? Oh! Did you leave your underwear in the pool after swimming?” Martin let out a shrill laugh. The bartender gave them, for the umpteenth time, a look full of strangeness. Shit, Keonho thought, this guy is going to end up kicking us out. He knew the man was listening to them, or that at any moment they could be kicked out of the place. Martin, of course, didn't care.

“Love is seriously screwing you over, Keonho. You're like the poor second lead in a low-budget drama!”

“I'm not a girl, you idiot!”

“Well, cheer up. Unlike that woman in the dress... unlike women in general, you're not so bad. Despite your thousand Dior lip glosses, the liters of water you drink for your beautiful skin, and that youthful air that attracts older women and men alike...”

A bittersweet sting ran through Keonho's chest. He didn't know whether to laugh, with a sharp laugh that would relieve the tension, or to clench his fist and slam it into Martin's slobbery smile. The truth was that, at that point, resignation was no longer a feeling, but a lingering taste on his tongue. And to be completely honest—with himself, in that dark corner of his mind that vanity never abandoned—he loved compliments. Even more so coming from a drunk Martin, whose filter had dissolved in alcohol, revealing a thread of clumsy but genuine sincerity. Keonho knew it: sober, those words would never have crossed Martin's lips. 

And for a few precious, fragile minutes, Martin's drawling voice had woven a bubble around him. He had achieved the impossible: he had managed to take his mind off the woman in the black dress who was still out there, in the middle of the dance floor, with James. 

However, at some point, when Martin began to whine and change the subject because “I can't believe Juhoon didn't want to join us tonight,” the spell was broken. The bubble of words faded, and reality, sharp and shrill, pierced his ears and his side again, more painfully than before. Keonho, masochistic and stupid as he felt at that moment, couldn't help but let his gaze wander to the dance floor. That's when he realized: he could no longer make out James' messy, dyed hair among the sea of sweaty bodies. He couldn't see her either. A knot of rage, frustration, and a childish urge to cry tightened his throat. He wanted to scream. He wanted to hit something, anything.

However, Martin chose that precise moment to retch violently, a guttural sound that cut through the air. The harsh reality suddenly set in: Keonho, with one arm around the staggering Seonghyeon (because he couldn't leave him alone in the state his friend was in), found himself dragging Martin's inert and overly tall body toward the men's room door. Inside, in the narrow cubicle smelling of cheap disinfectant, Keonho held Martin's sweaty forehead while he emptied his stomach on his knees. Disgust rose in his throat, but his mind, in an act of automatic defense, refused to question the situation. He could only focus on two things: not breathing through his nose and not looking at the repulsive state of the floor where Martin was kneeling.

And James hyung? As the nausea of others echoed in the porcelain, Keonho wished, with bitter and deep satisfaction, for him to have a sudden bout of diarrhea. Or for the woman not to be so hot. Anything that would balance, even minimally, the cosmic scales of misery that night. Those vengeful thoughts did not make the mixture of acid vomit and public bathroom smell any less nauseating, but they served as an anchor, a small and toxic comfort amid the chaos.

• • •

Keonho woke up with his neck at an unnatural angle and a sharp pain that instantly shot through the back of his head. The air in the room smelled like a sour mixture of vomit, sweat, and stale alcohol. And to top it all off, the image of the woman in the black dress sliding a ring onto James's finger was etched into his mind, clear and cruel. Yes, his dreams, of course, were truly enchanting. Pure cotton candy and rainbows.

Irritated, he opened his eyes. A few inches away, Seonghyeon's face lay on his chest, a string of drool connecting the corner of his mouth to Keonho's shirt, which already had a suspicious wet spot. He grimaced in deep disgust. He remembered the previous night with annoyance: a drunk, clingy, and insistent Seonghyeon, declaring that being his pillow was a “privilege” that Keonho should be grateful for. Only the exhaustion that closed his eyelids had saved the idiot from a punch.

Looking away from that spectacle, he scanned the room and the morning mess. On the other side, Martin was snoring fully clothed on the sofa in front of the video game console. Aha. So he and Seonghyeon had stolen the blond guy's bed, good for them. And then there was James. Lying like a sack on the carpet, in front of the TV and the coffee table where the remains of a cold, greasy pizza they had eaten the day before going to the club. Mouth open, eyes half-closed, with a slight whistle escaping from his lips that seemed to fill every corner of the room, the true soundtrack of that hungover dawn. Keonho never knew if James had managed to hook up with the woman in the black dress, although his brain, always so “kind,” had taken it upon itself to provide him with vivid conjectures.

The memory of their escape from the club came to mind, vivid and exhausting: them and Martin, locked in the bathroom for twenty endless minutes, the tall one emptying his stomach with guttural sounds after four hours of wild excess; Seonghyeon turned into a dead weight, babbling incoherently in Korean and English; and him, Keonho, his muscles burning, struggling to keep the most stubborn blond in Seoul on his feet to drag him to the exit. The cold, sharp night air had dried the sweat from his forehead, leaving traces of salt and icy clarity.

They only had to wait five minutes. Five minutes in which, with his fingers clumsy and slippery from holding Martin, he managed to type a message to James from Seonghyeon's phone: “Outside. We're leaving.” And then, the older man appeared in the doorway like an apparition, unperturbed, his silhouette outlined against the neon lights. He didn't say a word. He just went to help Seonghyeon. Keonho didn't ask any questions. His world, at that moment, had been reduced to a single mission: to prevent Martin's face from kissing the pavement and his drunken screams of “I'm a young and beautiful producer!” from waking up half of Seoul.

An imaginary line, as tenuous as it was shaky, had begun to form without anyone naming it. It separated the comfort of a favorite hyung from the unsettling novelty of uncharted territory whose contours Keonho was still afraid to explore. It all began when Keonho, before he turned sixteen, met that incredible hyung who had just moved into the neighborhood Martin talked so much about: Zhao Yufan, better known as James.

Keonho grew up alongside Martin, Seonghyeon and Juhoon, living very close by and attending the same schools (albeit in different grades). Keonho spent his childhood and adolescence spending entire afternoons playing video games and messing around with each other. With them, childhood was a safe and boisterous territory. Then James arrived, a little older, with a maturity that the others lacked, but with a rare and captivating sensitivity that made them laugh and guided them without them realizing it. The group expanded and consolidated: they shared afternoons, meals, studies, laughter, and sometimes tears.

With Keonho, the youngest of them all, James immediately adopted a softer, more protective tone. He laughed at his simplest jokes, scolded him patiently, and cared for him with an almost brotherly devotion. They were polar opposites in many ways, and those differences, far from separating them, wove a unique bond between them. There were no lies between them; they shared their problems and feelings with the absolute certainty that they could count on each other. Perhaps everyone in the group had that trust, but between James and Keonho there was always a different nuance, a step further, an emotional refuge for crises large and small, even the most absurd ones, such as not having money for a CD by his favorite band because he had spent it all on clothes.

Their relationship seemed to be almost brotherly. And that “almost” began to widen, to become a subtle chasm that only Keonho seemed to see. He was the first to notice the change, to mentally draw that line and see how lifelong admiration was slowly transforming into something more poignant and confusing. 

Just out of adolescence, on a random day, with nothing special going on, he noticed for the first time how the evening sun, filtering through Seonghyeon's bedroom window, gilded his hyung's neck as he concentrated on a video game. It was a physical detail, as mundane as any other, but that afternoon, for some reason, it stuck with him. He no longer saw only James, his cool and protective hyung; he began to see things: the curve of his smile when he won a game, the way he bit his lower lip when concentrating, the low, clear sound of his laughter when Keonho said something silly. His admiration, always present, took on a new texture: it became a warm, nervous knot in his stomach that appeared every time James put his arm around his shoulders.

The usual gestures began to mean something else. James' protective care—adjusting his scarf in winter, saving him the last bite of his favorite food, listening to him with infinite patience—no longer felt like just a brotherly act. To Keonho, in the quiet of his room at night, those memories caused a sudden warmth in his cheeks and a disorderly heartbeat that he didn't know how to calm. He began to collect insignificant moments as if they were treasures: the time their fingers brushed against each other when they reached for the same controller, the day James lent him his sweatshirt because it was cold and it smelled of fabric softener, clean and home.

Adoration mixed with sweet, agonizing anxiety. Now, he waited for afternoons at James's house with a mixture of euphoria and panic. He rehearsed conversations in the mirror, worried absurdly about his clothes, and every casual compliment from James “You studied well today,” “That jacket you bought looks good on you” lifted him to a cloud of private happiness for days. At the same time, a pang of irrational jealousy pierced him when he saw James laughing the same way with someone else outside the group, or when someone else called him “hyung” with the same confidence.

What had been simple admiration, a fondness for the company of the coolest hyung, had transformed, without permission and at full volume, into his first love. A clumsy and absolute teenage love that made James not only his refuge, but the silent center of his universe. And that thin, shaky line ceased to be an abstract boundary and became the rapid heartbeat Keonho felt every time his hero smiled at him.

It was hard for him to admit it. The discomfort gnawed at him slowly, sweetly and bitterly, like an acid that revealed his own guts until one day, unable to hold it in any longer, he stammered everything to Seonghyeon, who was lying on Keonho's bed. Without looking up from the comic he was reading, Seonghyeon blurted out the truth like someone throwing a bucket of cold water: “You're in love with James. Accept it and stop drowning in your cliché whining.”

Although there was a high degree of trust between them, after accepting, discussing, and processing it, Keonho found it consistently uncomfortable to talk about James' relationships. It was a minefield, especially when contrasted with Martin's uninhibitedness, who flirted with anyone and shared his adventures with the group without the slightest hesitation. Keonho, on the other hand, avoided not only talking about his own feelings, but even learning the details of James' romantic past: those first loves, fleeting flings, or interests that, upon hearing them, left him with a bitter aftertaste.

His discomfort was a paradox. After all, James had been the first to know his biggest secret: that perhaps Keonho wasn't only attracted to girls. However, when the conversation turned to dating, relationships, or, worse still, to James and “the biggest” (as the group called his last and final relationship), Keonho withdrew. A lump formed in his throat.

He justified his discomfort by telling himself that he had disliked all of James' girlfriends. They seemed too cliché, or simple, or unworthy of the extraordinary person that his hyung was: a funny guy but serious when it mattered, a little weird, sensitive, open-hearted, and, although Keonho resisted admitting it, deeply attractive. The situation, far from improving, became unbearable when James confessed one night over drinks that in high school he had also felt “something” for a boy named JJ (or something like that, his nickname), although it never amounted to anything. Keonho feigned indifference, while inside he burned with a confusion that he himself diagnosed as “brotherly jealousy”: the fear of being displaced by his favorite hyung. He clung to the illusion that he found it hard to imagine James—so much his own, so present—sharing intimacy, laughter, and kisses with someone else.

It was Martin, perceptive and mocking, who was the second to discover his feelings and who dismantled his facade. “You're so obvious,” he said mercilessly. “You always look at him like a drooling puppy, hanging on his every word.” And he didn't stop mortifying him, urging him to accept the truth, until a simple dinner set everything off.

They were in a restaurant, James brought a finger to his lips to wipe off some BBQ sauce and, without thinking, licked it. Keonho watched the gesture, the languor of his tongue, the wet glisten in his mouth, and a visceral desire ran through him: I wish I could be the one to wipe that sauce from his lips. It wasn't a thought, it was a physical impact. The harsh, undeniable reality hit him in the chest and then in the face, changing his expression.

So yes, it wasn't brotherly jealousy. It was love. A deep, romantic, desperate love for the person who would never see him as anything more than his little brother.

And so, for the first time, Keonho had a real secret from his favorite hyung.

“Keonho? Are you awake?” James' voice, still hoarse from sleep, cut through the darkness.

“Yes.”

“Seonghyeon hasn't choked you yet?”

Keonho felt, rather than saw, James rolling around on the worn carpet. He knew he would be smiling with that mixture of amusement and tenderness that made him so unbearable.

He stifled a snort.

“Obviously not. But he's covering me in drool,” he muttered, feeling his friend's soaked shoulder against his own.

“His drool is your drool. That's what twins are for, or as you used to call yourselves.”

“How funny.” The words fell into a void. Keonho remained motionless, staring at the textured ceiling. There was an image burned behind his eyelids: James, under the flashes of neon lights, with that woman in the black dress gliding toward him like an elegant, confident shadow. A sharp, stabbing, absurd pain closed his throat.

“How was your night?” James asked, his tone sincere, almost careful.

Keonho swallowed the answer that burned his tongue: You'd know if you hadn't disappeared as soon as we got there. If you hadn't let yourself be swept away by that woman who claimed you with every curve of her body. It sounded like reproach. Like possession. Like a weakness that Keonho, the great maknae, couldn't afford.

He forced a short, dry laugh.

“What do you think? I wasn't as lucky as you hyung. I stayed at the bar with Martin and Seonghyeon, listening to conspiracy theories about life between drinks.” He managed a carefree, even amused tone. But he wasn't fooling anyone, least of all James.

Across the room, James' sleepy, cheerful smile suddenly faded, as if someone had turned off the light behind his eyes. Keonho heard him stir, turning his back. He knew it. James had activated his big brother mode: that automatic mechanism of guilt and responsibility that surely, in his head, was already making him feel guilty for abandoning them.

A tiny, bitter, horrible satisfaction blossomed in Keonho's chest. It was a single heartbeat, fleeting and sharp. But the feeling was instantly drowned out, suffocated by a long, guttural groan that rose from the sofa.

“Damn it...” Martin growled, his voice thick with sleep and, surely, a hangover. “My head... it's going to explode.” There was the sound of fabric dragging, a thud on the floor, and a groan. Then: “Hey! Where's my bed?”

• • •

Monday crawled by for Keonho. He woke up with a heavy head, a sour mood, and a bitter taste in his mouth, a direct result of Sunday.

The previous morning, after the three of them had woken up and Keonho could stand without his head exploding, he had fled the gathering with his friends at dawn (even though Juhoon would bring breakfast for them), with the hangover already biting his mouth and barely a vague gesture of farewell, deciding he needed some time alone. Back home, in the safety of his room, his only booty had been a throbbing headache and the ominous company of his calculus books: a pile of equations, derivatives, and integrals that stood like a wall between him and the only thing that really mattered to him: staying in the university swim club.

He was only in his second year, but despite being an athlete undergoing professional and Olympic training in the sport, they still had to take official subjects outside of the water, the most classic and important ones. And his disdain for math grew every week, and now, he was drowning in a whirlwind of recurring thoughts: the image of that woman in the black dress, James' carefree smile, and the uncomfortable comments his friends, motivated by alcohol, had made to him. Maybe Martin was right, he thought, pressing his fingers to his temples. Maybe this... interest is messing with my brain. Or maybe he was just a masochist, feeding an absurd hope.

His bad mood was like a thick fog surrounding him. Without the energy or patience to pretend everything was normal, he made an unusual decision: he skipped class. Even his older sister, who saw him as the disciplined student, raised her eyebrows in surprise when she saw him still at home, in his pajamas and taking painkillers. But his isolation, his fragile fortress of resentment, lasted only a short time. As evening fell, while Keonho was asking his classmates for the notes and assignments from the day he had missed, the group chat lit up with a simple and devastating notification: it was James suggesting fried chicken for dinner. And Keonho knew immediately, with a certainty that made him close his eyes in a gesture of utter defeat: he couldn't say no to the chicken (James), of course.

So there he was, amid the hustle and bustle of the restaurant, waiting for the order, with a glass of water in front of him and a notebook cruelly blank. His gaze, empty and distant, was lost on the page, but his mind was elsewhere, submerged in that ocean of voices, clattering cutlery, sizzling grease, that he didn't even notice Martin's shadow approaching him.

Until, without warning, a quick, sharp movement snatched the pen from his fingers. Keonho blinked, disoriented, and before he could protest, Martin, with a firm, exasperated stroke, wrote over the blank space of unresolved problems: “Pay attention to me.”

Keonho sighed and took back his pen, writing back.

“Fuck you.”

“I'd rather fuck others, thanks.”

Keonho rolled his eyes, looking away from Martin. His attention, like a faulty compass, went straight to James, who was on the other side of the restaurant, at the order counter, with Juhoon and Seonghyeon, immersed in the momentous calculation of the price of everything if they included dessert. James was good with numbers, a skill that Keonho found as stranger as it was fascinating.

"Keonho, I'm bored,“ Martin wrote again, dragging his pen across the paper to get his attention. ”Stop looking at James. If you focus your pupils any harder, you're going to shoot holographic hearts at him, and I'll have no choice but to find another friend."

“Then find another one and leave me alone,” Keonho wrote, without conviction.

“If you like him so much, tell him. I don't think the clueless guy will figure it out on his own. And I'm already starting to repeat my jokes because of your one-sided love.”

The word one-sided stuck in Keonho's mind. He stared at it in the notebook, as if he could erase its existence by sheer force of will, and with it, the entire pathetic trajectory of his love life since he had fallen in love with James, his favorite hyung. Martin waited, with a smile of pity and anticipation. Keonho, to buy time, made the pen dance between his fingers with studied laziness.

Before, on these outings, he always sat next to James. But lately, in an act of self-defense as clumsy as it was painful, he forced himself to keep his distance. Now, trapped between Martin and Seonghyeon, and in this moment, he was paying the price for that failed tactic.

“How about you stop making fun of me?”

“Keonho, I'm not making fun of you,” Martin write, letting his guard down a little. “I'm trying to make you see that you're being an idiot, suffering for nothing. Deep down, I'm a good friend.”

“You're not. I hate you.”

“Deep down, you love me.”

Keonho clicked his tongue in annoyance. He threw down his pen and pushed his notebook, now stained with confessions unrelated to math, toward the center of the table. He turned toward James and the others, devoting himself to the infinitely less productive task of wondering why the hell they were taking so long to choose an ice cream flavor and chicken sauce. And, above all, to observe the way James pursed his lips, absorbed in the crucial decision between chocolate and strawberry.

A tug on the sleeve of his leather jacket brought him back to reality. Martin, ignoring his resistance and snort, had called him over. He smiled with a mocking grin, his math problems completely forgotten.

“A question I've always wanted to ask you,” Martin said, leaning in. “Do you like the vampire type, like James hyung, because you're a Twilight fan or because you're passive?”

Keonho frowned. “What kind of question is that?”

“An honest one. Answer me.”

“I don't like vampires. I'm Team Werewolves. And I'm not always passive.”

Martin struggled to stifle a laugh, covering his mouth with his hand. The laughter escaped between his teeth in a stifled hiss. He grabbed the pen and wrote furiously, completely forgetting discretion: "NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND IS TEAM WEREWOLVES. And all the guys we've seen you hook up with looked like James. Fragile, mysterious vampire vibe. Recognizable pattern."

Keonho gaped and looked up. “What...? Are you keeping track of my love life?”

“No need. Juhoon has trained me to be observant. And it's not like you're still that prudish virgin, are you?”

“So what if I like them that way? Is that a crime?” Keonho replied, his defensiveness betraying more than he would have liked.

“Nothing. I'm just wondering, in this moment of boredom and hunger and sugar craving, if your taste for ‘vampires’ is genuine or just another symptom of your obsession with James. Which makes me think that maybe you've been screwed up over him for much longer than even you knew.”

Keonho's throat suddenly went dry. The noise of the restaurant faded away. He looked Martin in the eyes, searching for mockery that he didn't quite find, only an uncomfortable harshness. The moment froze, long and revealing.

Until the metallic sound of ice cream cups and fried chicken baskets being placed on the table echoed like a gong, rescuing him. His private torture was over, for now. 

“What are you doing? A staring contest?” James joked as he finished setting the food on the table and settled into his chair, followed by Seonghyeon and Juhoon. “We tried to get your attention to see if you wanted to order more drinks, but you didn't even look at us.”

Keonho, sitting across from them, felt a twinge of discomfort. And before any of the three could read the notes in his notebook with its ruined pages and exercises, just as James noticed the paper and raised his eyebrows curiously, he reached out and brusquely pushed it away. With an awkward, somewhat childish movement, he took his backpack off the restaurant chair and began to pack his things. Martin let out a low laugh beside him as he reached for a piece of chicken that was still sizzling.

"Something like that, hyung,“ Martin said with a mischievous smile. ”And Keonho just lost." 

• • •

The basketball game, as always, had drawn an invisible line between them. Those who knew how to play, or at least tried to—James, Martin, Seonghyeon—dominated the court near the neighborhood. Keonho had long since accepted (not without some bitterness) that this particular sport was not his thing and that he had no interest in being pushed around and sweating excessively. So, after aimlessly riding his skateboard around for a while—he almost crashed face-first three times, his mind was elsewhere—he decided to give up and take refuge in the wooden bleachers.

He sat down next to Juhoon, who seemed like an oasis of calm, absorbed in his phone. Keonho watched the game with boredom, mentally betting on when Martin would kiss the ground. Without realizing it, his right foot began to tap the bench with a nervous rhythm.

“Keonho.”

“Mmm?”

“Stop doing that with your foot.”

Juhoon looked up from the screen. His gaze, slow and deliberate, was the same one he used to warn you, without a word, that you were crossing a line. Keonho stopped abruptly, embarrassed. The vibration had ceased.

“Sorry,” he muttered, embarrassed.

The blame for all this, of course, lay with Martin's comments. And, above all, with James. His frustrated infatuation had reached an unbearable boiling point. Because there was James, here, on the court, being the absolute center of attention. Without his glasses, his attractive eyes followed the ball and he ran with an electric energy that attracted everyone's attention, the sun caressing his shoulders and a glisten of sweat silvering his skin. He jumped, spun, commanded the game; his movement was so confident, so inherently his, that Keonho's breath caught for a moment, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, a band-aid on his cheekbone, and a smile that lit up the entire court. It's not like I've been in love with that idiot for so long, he thought angrily. The whole thing was so absurd that he hadn't even noticed when it had started, and now he was stuck in the worst of situations: that of the non-blood younger brother.

“Guys, watch out!”

The warning cry came too late. Juhoon, alert, managed to dodge the stray ball. Keonho, distracted by his inner turmoil, did not. The impact exploded in his nose with a dull crack. The pain was instant and absolute: a blinding flash, white and hot, that erased all thought. Then came the dizziness, a nausea that made the sky and the grass spin in an uncontrollable whirlwind. He doubled over at the waist, his hands flying instinctively to his face, as a thick heat began to ooze between his fingers. Through a veil of involuntary tears that clouded his vision, he felt someone kneel in front of him. Large, firm, and surprisingly warm hands took his face with a gentleness that contrasted brutally with the violence of the blow, and lifted it gently.

Keonho blinked repeatedly, trying to fight back the tears and pain. The world slowly came back into focus. And there, inches from his surely already swollen and bleeding nose, was James. He was panting, as if he had run faster than anyone else to get to him. His hair was messy, and in his eyes, always so serene, there was a glint of panic and a concern so genuine and raw that it broke his heart in a different way.

“Are you okay?”

His voice wasn't the soft tone of hyung, nor was it protective. It was harsh, charged with an urgency that enveloped him completely.

Keonho's face burned with a stinging fire, and the taste of copper and salt from the blood flooded his mouth, nauseating. And the worst, the absolutely unfair thing was that James, even kneeling on the ground with his hair tousled and his breath ragged, looked incredibly good. The sunlight played on his high cheekbones, and the concern in his eyes made them seem deeper. The violent combination of acute pain, public humiliation, and that stubborn, persistent attraction was too powerful a cocktail for his already fragile control.

Instead of the measured and somewhat plaintive response that any dongsaeng would have given to his hyung, his words were laced with acid sarcasm that barely concealed his trembling agitation.

“I just hit me in the face with a ball,” he snapped, his voice thick and congested from his nose. “How the hell do you think I am?”

From behind, trying to break the tension with his usual clumsiness, Seonghyeon couldn't help but make a nervous comment:

“Poor thing. Your beautiful face suffering temporary imperfections.”

“Shut up or I'll make you eat the ball, Seonghyeon,” Keonho growled, his voice muffled by the hand pressed against his throbbing nose. At the same time, with his other free hand, he tried to push James' hands away from his face with an irritated gesture. He pushed with a gentleness that was meant to be rude but betrayed his weakness. However, those warm, firm fingers didn't move an inch. It was like trying to move a marble. James' silent resistance—his refusal to let go—sent a new message, clearer than any words: This is not negotiable. I'll take care of it.

“Finish the game. I'll take him,” he announced in that commanding voice that no one in the group dared to question. Then, just for Keonho, he lowered his tone to a much softer “Let's go,” almost a whisper laden with responsibility, worthy of the great hyung, and Keonho wanted to roll his eyes, but he followed him when James helped him up and put one arm around his shoulders and took his skateboard with the other.

Then he walked him home. Their houses weren't far—just one block from the court—but the journey seemed endless. He walked in silence, his head slightly bowed forward as James had instructed, feeling his hyung's gaze fixed on his face, protective and unbearably present. When they arrived, Keonho's mother examined the boy's nose, which was no longer actively bleeding, and although she assured him with her experience as a mother and a boy who has spent too much time on a skateboard that nothing was broken, James insisted on staying “just for a while, just in case.”

With great patience, James cut small pieces of toilet paper, rolled them up precisely, and, sitting opposite Keonho on the sofa, carefully placed them in his nostrils. His warm, steady fingers brushed Keonho's sensitive skin as he remained still and submissive, letting the humiliation of being treated like a small child sink into his bones. Each touch was a reminder of his vulnerability and, at the same time, an involuntary caress.

When he finished, there was a silence that lasted a few seconds.

“It's not funny,” Keonho murmured from the couch, his voice nasal and whiny. He then noticed James on the floor, hiding a clear and genuine smile behind Cookie, the attention-hungry dog who was taking advantage of the moment to settle down on his favorite hyung's lap.

“I know,” James replied, without looking at him, stroking the animal's back. “But you look kind of cute with that on your nose.”

The phrase, spoken with devastating naturalness, hung in the air of the room. Keonho felt the heat that had left his nose suddenly move to his ears. He looked away. He had always tried to appear cold, impressive, worthy of praise in front of his hyung. All for a crumb of his recognition, to capture his attention and, in the deepest silence of his heart, to deserve something more. And now, showing himself like this, swollen and tearful, no longer a teenager, he felt alien to everything he had wanted to project in the past.

“How about we play some video games this afternoon?” James' voice broke the silence, low, as if he were talking to the dog and not to him. “We don't hang out like we used to,” he added, still not looking at him, absentmindedly scratching the dog's ear.

It was true. A truth as concrete and painful as the crackling of his nose. They used to be an inseparable duo, but now—and Keonho knew with burning certainty that it was his own cowardly fault for having systematically avoided it—they were rarely alone. There was always a Martin, a Seonghyeon, a Juhoon in the way. A human shield. Their afternoons of video games and junk food on a shared plate and conversations had become distant memories.

Suddenly, guilt rose in his throat, thick, sharp, and bitter. It drowned out the heat of shame and replaced it with a cold weight. James knew nothing. He knew nothing of the torment, the wavering line, the racing heartbeat. He only knew that his favorite dongsaeng had suddenly pulled away. And Keonho, in his selfish fear, was punishing the person who least deserved it, who at that very moment was still caring for him with patient hands. He shouldn't treat him like this. 

Then, something in James' expression—that mixture of quiet expectation and a vulnerability he rarely showed—caused an instinct older and deeper than fear to take control. It wasn't the instinct of a lover, but that of a dongsaeng who had been teased for years by his hyung.

Keonho sighed, a long, exaggerated sound that finally made James look up.

"It was you who dropped the ball, wasn't it? 

“Maybe,” he admitted with a broad, guilty smile, scratching the back of his neck like a surprised child. “My treat. Pizza. The one with double cheese.”

A visible, almost comical relief spread across his face, and the tension broke.

• • •

Perhaps it was the paper sticks, now red and stiff with dried blood in his nose, or the genuine concern that still shone in James's eyes, or simply something in the air on that lazy afternoon, but the fact is that it ended up being fun. For a few magical hours suspended in time, Keonho got his friend and favorite hyung back. There were no strange looks, no Martin with his jokes, no Seonghyeon with his sharp comments, no external agents to distract or damage the fragile space they had rebuilt. It was just the two of them, an ocean of junk food, and the sound of their pixelated battles.

In part, he had distanced himself precisely because of his feelings, but he still missed him because, before any confusion of the heart, James was his friend. They were conflicting emotions that frustrated him like hell. Nevertheless, he had fun. So much so that in the end, exhausted and happy, Keonho fell back onto the carpet, his stomach heavy and satisfied from the fat and cholesterol. Cookie settled down with a sigh in the warm space between them. A moment later, James did the same, lying down beside him, so close that Keonho could feel the warmth of his arm. They both stared at the lines on the ceiling in comfortable silence, broken only by the dog's breathing.

It was in that peace, in that shared horizontal vulnerability, that James spoke. 

“Why haven't you been dating lately, Keonho?”

“What?” Keonho gasped, as if the air had been knocked out of him.

“I never see you flirt with anyone,” James repeated, his voice still soft but now imbued with persistent curiosity. “In fact, Juhoon told me you turned down a girl in his class who asked you out.”

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

What was he supposed to say now? Was it a sin not to want to date anyone? His heart was beating so hard that he feared James might hear it. Keonho didn't want to date anyone because he was ridiculously and utterly head over heels in love with his older hyung, and deep down, in the most secret and pathetic corner of his soul, he harbored the tiny, stubborn hope that, by some miracle, that feeling would be reciprocated. But saying that was impossible. It was the line that not only teetered, but leaped into the void.

“I don't want to date anyone,” he finally replied, forcing his voice to sound flat and indifferent, as if the subject bored him to death.

“Liar.”

“It's the truth!” protested Keonho, his voice breaking with panic.

“You're lying,” whispered James, and this time there was no space for air between them. He had moved so close that his breath, warm and soft, brushed Keonho's ear. Keonho jumped as if he had been electrocuted and turned away instinctively, suddenly finding himself caught in James's gaze. Their faces were a breath apart, so close that Keonho could count his eyelashes, and shit, shit, shit, he shouldn't have blushed, but heat flooded his face treacherously.

“Tell me the truth.”

And Keonho, caught in that web of proximity and pressure, broke. The words came out before he could stop them, a minimal and monumental surrender. “I like someone.”

James raised his eyebrows, an expression of genuine surprise sweeping away the intensity of his gaze for a second. For a moment that stretched between them like a guitar string about to snap, neither spoke. Keonho held his breath, watching as that information processed behind James's dark eyes. Then, as if a spell had been broken, James backed away. He returned to his original position, lying on his back, creating a space of cold air between them once more. Keonho was able to take a shaky breath, feeling the world spinning again.

The peace lasted less than a minute.

“Girl or boy?”

"Boy."

Silence. A silence so thick and heavy that it seemed to have its own weight. Keonho held his breath, glancing sideways at James's perfect but motionless profile against the carpet.

“Do I know him?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Keonho murmured, so quietly that it was almost inaudible. He closed his eyes tightly, wishing the carpet would swallow him up. Anything but face this interrogation.

“You never want to talk about it with me.”

It was a growl, a low, hoarse sound that was almost lost in James' stomach, but Keonho, with all his senses tuned in to him like an antenna, picked it up instantly. Every word, every inflection, was vital information. 

Keonho blinked, opening his eyes, bewildered. He didn't understand. Why... why did he feel like James was angry with him? But James never got angry. At least, never with him. No matter how many pranks, inappropriate comments, or embarrassing situations Keonho had created for him—from hiding his keys to waking him up with the alarm on his phone—James had always maintained the patience of a saint, an unshakable serenity. His anger was a myth, something that happened to other people, not Keonho.

However, now the atmosphere was strange. Keonho could be imagining it, it could be the paranoia of his own secret, but he could feel it in his skin: the air had become heavy and sharp like ground glass, and his hyung's stubborn, deliberate silence was sinking him into a pit.

And then, as if he had calculated the exact moment when Keonho was most vulnerable, James spoke. Without looking at him. 

“I requested a transfer to the Taipei headquarters.”

The words, simple and clear, struck Keonho's heart like a hammer.

“What?”

The question escaped his lips, naive, raw, the only one his blank mind could form. It was the question of the night. Keonho jumped up, as if propelled by a spring, to look at him. He needed to see his face. James was still there, reclining, with an appearance of icy calm that, for the first time in his life, made Keonho want to curse him and beat him until he felt a fraction of the earthquake that was shaking his own chest. Because he felt neither peace nor calm, only a void opening up at his feet, and his favorite hyung, his refuge, hadn't told him that he was planning to request a transfer to go work abroad... far away from him.

James was a choreographer at one of the most famous dance studios in Seoul, and the longing to return to the country where he grew up and lived his most important formative years... to leave and go to Seoul, far from his family, had always been a thorn in his heart since Keonho had known him, a distant shadow in their conversations. But... that was before. Before they were this, whatever they were now.

“When did you do it?” he managed to say, his voice trembling with contained rage.

“Early this year,” James replied, with a naturalness that sounded like betrayal. He shrugged, a carefree gesture that cut like a knife, and sat up to face him on the carpet. 

Cookie sensed the change before anyone else did. He rose from his spot between them, stretching with a nervous yawn. But instead of heading for James' lap, his perpetual refuge, he lowered his ears, sniffed the heavy air, and with a quick, decisive movement, ran to hide under Keonho's bed. 

“Why didn't you tell us before?” Keonho managed to ask, although what his mind was really screaming was: Why didn't you tell me? Why now?

“I thought they wouldn't give it to me,” James shrugged, trying to downplay it with every word, as if it were an office formality and not the collapse of Keonho's world. And Keonho hated him for it. Each flat syllable made him feel more betrayed, in layers: as a friend, as a dongsaeng, as... whatever he was to James. And it hurt. Shit. He was going to Taiwan. Maybe for a year. Maybe for longer. Maybe forever. Out of the country. There would be no more shared meals of a single dish, no more afternoons of video games with their shoulders brushing against each other, no more knowing glances that sustained him. And, for some strange and illogical reason that burned in his stomach, Keonho felt certain that he had been the last to know. That this afternoon of games had not been a truce, but an act of pity towards poor little Keonho who would be left behind.

“Are you leaving?” he asked, already knowing the answer, but needing to hear it anyway.

“What do you think?” James replied, and finally there was a glimmer of something in his voice, something tense. “It's a great opportunity. I'll finally be able to see my family again after a long time. In my hometown.”

Yes. It was. It was James' dream, the thorn that had always stuck in his side. But Keonho had a knot of conflicting feelings that weighed heavily on his chest, and perhaps he was still that immature sixteen-year-old boy, because he couldn't feel completely happy for him. He could only feel the emptiness opening up at his feet.

“What about me?”

The words escaped him in a whisper, uncertain, terribly selfish, childish. But they were the only truth he had left.

James looked at him. There was a flicker, a break in his composure. His gaze hardened slightly, just for a second, as if the question had touched him in a way he hadn't expected. But then, as if remembering who he was supposed to be, his face softened. Because that was James. Always the hyung, always the adult, even when the ground was giving way beneath them both.

“You have Martin,” he said, his voice regaining that calmness that now sounded false. “And the others.”

Keonho rose from the carpet as if his bones weighed twice as much, feeling an ice stake piercing the center of his chest. It hurt. It hurt with a physical, stabbing intensity. Hurtful, dark thoughts flooded his mind: James hadn't even counted on him to talk about his new goals and dreams, about the opportunity of a lifetime. Not just with him. Perhaps he had requested the transfer behind his back, behind everyone's back: his, Martin's, Juhoon's, Seonghyeon's. It had been a secret kept for months, a plan that had been brewing while Keonho consumed himself in silence.

But then, in the midst of the hurricane of his rage and pain, a last beacon of lucidity lit up: they were friends. And if he didn't control himself at that very moment, if he let the bitterness, selfishness, and fear come out of his mouth, he would ruin things even more. He would poison the days they had left. So, with superhuman effort, he tried to do what any good friend, any loyal dongsaeng would do: he swallowed the lump of pathetic feelings that closed his throat and forced a smile. It was an awkward gesture that didn't reach his eyes.

“When are you leaving? Early next year?” he asked, forcing a tone of neutral curiosity.

James looked at him. “Actually, I just have to wait for the company to complete all the final procedures... So I'll be leaving in a month.”

A month?

The number was another low blow. Had he waited so long, until the last minute, to let it out? Would they not spend the summer together either? The last weeks of a “before” that would never return. Again, he swallowed. He swallowed the pain, the disappointment, the feeling of being an expendable addition to James's life. Although the smile trembled treacherously on his lips, he held it.

It was over.

He knew it in his soul.

“I'm happy for you, James hyung,”he said, his voice sounding strangely clear, as if it came from someone else. “Congratulations.”

• • •

Of course, the news also shocked the others. There were cries of disbelief, some muffled reproaches, and, above all, a heavy silence that settled over the group. And yet, despite the initial shock, they accepted it with an ease that Keonho found incomprehensible and at the same time insulting. For them, it was a great opportunity for James; a sadness, yes, but not a heartbreak.

Keonho, on the other hand, was killing himself. He sought momentary relief in the physical exhaustion of training, a kind of substitute, controllable pain that would overshadow, even if only for a few minutes, the deeper wound. He spent so much time submerged in the pool that the burning in his muscles and the acrid smell of chlorine were etched into his skin, haunting him like a ghost even after a long shower. These were dark feelings that accompanied him when he woke up, during his morning runs under a sky that seemed grayer, in the university classrooms where the professor's words became a distant buzz, and in each new practice session, in an endless cycle of self-imposed punishment. His older sister, seeing his empty gaze and his body consumed by discipline, did not dare to question him either; the silence between them became an involuntary complicity, a non-aggression pact on an emotional battlefield.

The news of James' departure had stretched the atmosphere of their dynamic like a violin string about to snap, emitting a sharp, unpleasant sound. Not even Martin dared to crack one of his many jokes for quite some time. Everyone walked on eggshells around Keonho, which made him feel even more isolated, like a terminal patient that everyone avoids talking about.

Keonho, for his part, tried to anchor himself in the concrete, in what did not bleed: passing his exams, living his college life, moving forward into a future where James would no longer be there, overcoming the feeling. He repeated that mantra like a spell. The immediate present, at least, was a monster of logic and numbers that he could face: next week's math exam, a maze of formulas that promised to drive him crazy but, unlike his heart, offered clear answers and definitive solutions.

“You're worrying too much,” said Martin, balancing precariously on his chair, the back legs lifted off the floor. Everyone was gathered in Juhoon's living room, surrounded by empty soda cans, in a last-minute study attempt that smelled like disaster.

“Sure, because you pass without opening a book,” Keonho growled sarcastically as he reviewed the same pages of his notebook for the fifth time. Panic, a metallic taste in his mouth, grew as he confirmed that he didn't understand half of it, that the exercises were incomplete and, at best, poorly solved. It was a numerical shipwreck.

“I told you to pay attention in class,” Seonghyeon pointed out from his side, without looking up from his own book.

“Even if I had paid attention! Professor Kim explains as if he were in another dimension,” Keonho complained, almost pulling his hair out in frustration.

At that moment, James came out of the kitchen with one of his snack bags, the aroma of something fried and salty announcing his arrival. Since that awkward afternoon of video games and the revelation of the move, a slight but noticeable layer of ice had come between them. Or at least, that was what Keonho felt in every silence, in every glance he avoided.

“Let me see,” said James, and he took the notebook from Keonho's hands unceremoniously, as if the last few days of tension had never existed. Keonho, overwhelmed, felt an instant urge to bite his nails down to the bone. James leafed through the pages, his expert eye scanning the mess. “This is bad,” he muttered, “this isn't even finished... Do you draw kittens in math class?” he asked at last, raising an eyebrow in amused disbelief.

“It's a dog!” Keonho protested, offended, snatching the notebook away as if it were a treasure.

“It doesn't look like one.”

"Are you going to criticize my art instead of helping me, hyung?” Keonho retorted, with a complaint that sounded more like that of a sixteen-year-old boy than a distressed college student.

James leaned over and, in a gesture as old and familiar as their friendship, ruffled his hair carelessly. Keonho snorted, an automatic sound, and grabbed his wrist, pretending to bite him, like an angry puppy that bares its teeth but has no intention of using them. For a moment, a single heartbeat, there were no transfers, no distant future. There was only them, the mess of books, and the echo of a complicity that refused to die. It was a flash of their normality, as bright as it was fleeting.

“I'll help you,” James said, and his voice had a new weight to it, a seriousness that nipped the hair-playing and pretend biting in the bud. He sat down across from Keonho, looking him straight in the eye. “We'll study together every afternoon. I'll make time.” He paused, and his next sentence fell like a ton of bricks: “I'm worried about leaving you like this.”

Keonho didn't know how to react. The air stuck in his lungs. The offer was an academic lifeline and, at the same time, a cruel reminder of his departure. I'm worried about leaving you like this. Like a disaster at math, or like the emotional disaster he had become? He hesitated, his heart—that traitor—turning painfully. But the truth was simple and selfish: he was desperate. Desperate to pass, yes, but even more desperate to spend time with his hyung, to cling to any crumb of normalcy, even if it had an expiration date. 

“Um... thank you?” he managed to stammer, his voice smaller than he would have liked.

Then, in a quick change of tack to avoid drowning in the intensity of James' gaze, he turned to Seonghyeon with his hands clasped in dramatic supplication.

“Can I copy your math homework? Please, this time it's a national emergency.”

“You don't learn by copying, Keonho,” Seonghyeon replied with the pragmatism of a jaded teacher.

“I know!” Keonho pleaded. “But there's no time now. I promise I'll do it later... I promise I'll try hard.”

Seonghyeon sighed, defeated by the combination of  theatricality. “You better,” he said, handing him his notebook. The exercises, while not perfect, were at least legible and light years ahead of Keonho's scribbles.

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Martin interjected from his chair, which was now rocking dangerously, like a ship on the high seas. "You can die from studying too much, you know? Knowledge overdose is real... OW!"

The sentence was broken by the sharp sound of wood hitting the floor and a muffled cry. The chair, having finally succumbed to the laws of physics and Martin's recklessness, sent him sprawling backwards onto the carpet with a thud.

For a moment, there was silence. Then, before he could contain himself, a genuine, raucous, liberating laugh burst from Keonho's chest. It escaped like a deflating balloon, shaking his shoulders and carrying with it, for one glorious second, all the pent-up tension, the fear of the exam, and the knot of pain over James' departure. It was such an unexpected and real sound that even James couldn't help but smile, while Seonghyeon and Juhoon shook their heads in resignation and Martin, from the floor, let out a theatrical groan.

And then, like a flower blooming against the odds in concrete, Keonho felt hope. Not the grand, dramatic hope of before, but a small, tenacious, fragile certainty: that perhaps, if he could laugh like that despite everything, if they could still have study afternoons and old gestures, it might be okay. Even after.

Even without him.

• • •

Math had always been an insurmountable wall for Keonho. He didn't know if it was a deep-seated trauma with the subject or simply a congenital enmity. But this past year, things had been different, and not for the better. James no longer spent as many afternoons helping him with his homework as he used to. He remembered, with a cold knot in his stomach, the casual comment James had made during one of their increasingly rare video game sessions: “It's not just the two of us anymore.” Keonho didn't know whose fault it was. He assumed, with the practical sadness of someone who didn't want to delve deeper, that it was the price of growing up: they had more friends in common, other commitments, lives that were expanding. And, in his most secret case, he himself sometimes found it difficult to be alone with James without his treacherous imagination beginning to wander into forbidden territory: what would it be like to treat him as a boyfriend and not just a friend? What would it be like to be able to touch him without having to make up an excuse?

It was precisely in that intimacy that James did those little things that disarmed him: a casual touch on the arm, a prolonged hug, bringing his face inches from his to see the screen. Keonho refused to get his hopes up. He armed himself with skepticism as if it were armor. Perhaps that was why, without wanting to admit it, he had been spacing out those video game afternoons. He had built a silent retreat. And perhaps, in a cruel game of reflexes, that was why James hadn't counted on him to announce that he was leaving for Taipei.

However, at this point, with time becoming a tangible countdown, Keonho, against all his defensive will, accepted. He accepted James' proposal, he accepted the afternoons of study, he accepted every minute of closeness as a loan from the future that would soon steal them away. It was a sweet and bitter surrender.

“My brain is melting,” Keonho murmured, letting his forehead fall with a soft thud onto the open book. They were at James' apartment this time. It wasn't as close to their childhood homes, but for work, it was functional. The air smelled of fresh coffee and a dense nostalgia, and of the imminent future.

“It would have been easier if we had done this at the beginning of the year,” James said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, a familiar gesture of exhaustion. “But don't worry, we still have time.” He paused, his eyes scrutinizing Keonho over the rim of his glasses, and one corner of his mouth twisted into a smile. "Besides, you're picking up the concepts faster than other times."

Keonho frowned, feigning deep offense that masked the little flip his heart gave at hearing “other times.” It was a recognition of their shared history, of a before. “I don't know how to take that.”

James looked at him, and for a moment, the light from the table lamp caught a warm glow in his eyes.

“Take it well. You're going to pass this exam, and then you won't have to know anything about logarithms ever again.”

“Until I need to calculate change at the convenience store and get cruelly ripped off because I'm too lazy to add without a calculator,” Keonho complained, adopting a dramatic tone. Almost everyone in the group was like that, which is why they always delegated to James, their human calculator and guardian of the group's finances.

“You already do that,” James laughed, a clear, genuine sound, rolling his eyes with amused exasperation. “You'll have to carry a calculator with you when I'm in Taipei.”

The comment, uttered as casually as one might comment on the weather, pierced Keonho like an icy dart. Even though he had been trying for days not to think about it too much. When I'm in Taipei. It wasn't a distant hypothesis. It was a sentence with an expiration date. The harsh reality of departure struck him again in the center of his chest, mixing nauseatingly with the bitter aroma of coffee and the frustration of numbers that refused to fit into his mind.

James said it as a joke, laughing with the naturalness of someone talking about an everyday, inevitable fact. But Keonho couldn't emulate him. His attempt to smile or return the joke went awry, getting stuck somewhere between his brain and his lips, and emerged as a tense grimace, a forced and broken gesture that didn't fit with the lightheartedness of the moment.

It did not go unnoticed.

James caught the disharmony instantly, like a musician who hears a false note in the middle of a familiar melody. The laughter died on his lips, fading into sudden silence. He set the pencil he was holding down on the table with a soft thud and stopped completely. Then he fixed Keonho with a stare. It was not the gaze of the amused hyung or the patient tutor. It was an inquisitive, sharp gaze that dug beneath the surface, as if searching for the crack through which the pain had seeped.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. A heavy silence settled between them. James nervously fiddled with his pencil, twirling it over and over between his fingers with restless precision, while Keonho seemed to have completely zoned out, his gaze lost in some crack in the table or in the empty space between the lines of his open notebook.

“Hey... Keonho,” James began, breaking the ice with a voice so low it was almost drowned out by the hum of the lamp. “I'm really sorry I didn't tell you about Taipei from the beginning. I mean it.”

Keonho looked up, dragging his consciousness back into the room. Their eyes met, and in that exchange of glances, James seemed to find the courage to continue, or perhaps surrendered to the need to say something, anything, to repair the damage.

“When I applied for the transfer, I really didn't think they would select me,” he confessed, the words coming out in a hurried torrent, as if he feared his courage would vanish if he paused. "It was an impulse, something I did almost without thinking, a ‘what if...?’ thrown into the void... and that's why I didn't tell anyone. I didn't even take it seriously myself.

Keonho nodded slowly, a mechanical movement. He shrugged in a gesture that was meant to convey complete indifference, but only succeeded in making him look vulnerable.

“It doesn't matter,” he lied. “I'm not going to lie to you, I was very surprised. Especially because there's so little time left and I... well...” He paused, swallowing hard, searching for a way to express his hurt without sounding like a spoiled child. What came out was pathetic: “Am I no longer your favorite dongsaeng?”

The phrase tasted like dry cardboard, false and ridiculous as soon as he uttered it. 

“I know. I'm sorry,” James hastened to say, scratching the back of his neck with a gesture of deep discomfort. His gaze shifted, focusing on the details of the wood on the table. And then, as if a dam had broken, he added what had really been eating away at him: “These last few months... we haven't been as close as before. And maybe...” He took a deep breath. “I felt stupidly jealous of Martin. Of how close you seemed to be with him.”

“Martin? Our Martin?”

Keonho's surprise was genuine, so profound that for a second it swept away all other feelings. Jealousy? Of what? His mind, always quick to jump to desired conclusions, had to slam on the brakes. Ah, of course. That Martin was now the hyung with whom Keonho spent the most time, with whom he joked around in the crudest way, to whom he perhaps turned first. Logic, cold and bitter, prevailed: James believed that Martin had taken his place in the hierarchy of friendship. Keonho had to remind himself with an internal punch: it was sibling jealousy. Jealousy of attention, of complicity, of being the favorite. He had to cling to that, with a bitterness that dried his mouth, because the alternative—that the jealousy was of another kind—was a precipice he didn't dare look over. James would always, always see him as a friend, a little brother to protect. Never as anything more. 

“Is that why you didn't tell me? Because I was spending time with Martin?” he asked, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

“It's possible,” James murmured, and embarrassment, a visible and rare blush, forced him to look down at his own hands. A slight pink color crept up his jawline. "God, saying it out loud sounds so childish. I'm sorry, I'm supposed to set an example, not act like an elementary school kid.

The combination of seeing James—always so confident—embarrassed, and the frustration that had built up over weeks, even months, of feeling misunderstood, created an unstoppable impulse in Keonho. Without thinking, driven by a cocktail of exasperated affection and the need to break the tension in a way that only they understood, he gave him a slight nudge with the tip of his foot under the table.

"Ouch!" James jumped up, as if he had been electrocuted, hitting his knee on the bottom edge of the table with a dull, painful thud. "Ouch! That really hurt, you brat."

Keonho frowned in a fake stern expression, although a spark of genuine humor, the first in a long time, appeared in the depths of his eyes. “Sometimes you're so silly, hyung,” he said, and his voice finally lost its brittle tone, regaining an echo of its former teasing familiarity.

“Ugh, Keonho,” James groaned, rubbing his knee with a pained expression that made his eyebrows knit together.

“Well, you practically knocked yourself into the table,” Keonho replied, giving him a look of feigned reproach that failed to hide the sparkle of amusement in his eyes. It was the same sparkle as before, from the Keonho who reveled in small victories.

James looked at him, that mixture of exasperation and helpless affection painted on his face. Finally, he gave up. Defeated. Not by the pain in his knee, but by the impossibility of being angry with him, by the desperate need to make up for it, to fix things with the only thing that had ever worked. “Can I buy you an ice cream?”

Keonho didn't hesitate. He negotiated from the position of strength of someone who knows they've won the round.

“Three flavors. With five scoops.”

“Deal,” James agreed without batting an eye, as if the price was fair.

A small, shy but genuine smile finally appeared on Keonho's lips. It was like seeing the sun come out after a long storm. It felt warm and familiar in his chest. And just then, with the sweetness of the ice cream yet to come but the bitterness still lingering, the thought struck him like lightning:

Shit.

I'm going to miss him so much.

It wasn't a feeling. It was a certainty that settled in his bones. He looked at James, who was already picking up the books with a calmer expression, and knew that this feeling, this mixture of exasperation, negotiation, and sugary consolation, was what would leave a void in the exact shape of James when he left. The nostalgia didn't wait for the departure; it had already arrived, and it hurt with heartbreaking clarity.

• • •

On the eve of his final math exam, Keonho had reached a state of resigned calm. If in previous weeks his attitude had bordered on hysterical—swimming until exhaustion, devouring books with desperation—that afternoon he found himself in a strange peace, reviewing exercises with an almost absurd serenity. As so often, James' apartment was the meeting place, although the atmosphere was far from the chaos of an intense study session. Only Seonghyeon accompanied them, having begged for asylum to study. But after barely two hours of struggling with books and exercises, he had abandoned the mission and was now fast asleep on the sofa, emitting little snores that were the only constant sound in the room. James, in a fit of playful frustration, had almost suffocated him minutes earlier with the long scarf he was wearing (which, in reality, belonged to Martin and had been stolen weeks ago).

“You know how he is,” said Keonho, watching the sleeper with a mixture of envy and affection.

“The worst thing is that he'll pass without any problem,” muttered James, shaking his head with a resigned smile.

“The fool is lucky.”

“You, on the other hand, are quite calm,” James pointed out, turning in his chair to look at him fully, as if searching for the source of that new calm.

Keonho shrugged, a tired but honest gesture, with no trace of his former anxiety.

“I've studied everything my brain could retain. What hasn't sunk in over the past few weeks won't sink in in a couple of hours.” He paused, looking at his open notebook. “I'm happy just to pass and be able to keep swimming. That's all.”

“You've done pretty well,” James congratulated him, his voice taking on that softer, more private quality he only used with him. “You should be able to pass without any problems. I promise.”

Keonho nodded, rubbing the back of his neck and brushing stray strands of hair from his forehead. He didn't say “thank you.” He didn't need to. A comfortable silence, heavy with things left unsaid but already understood, settled between them, broken only by Seonghyeon's hoarse, steady breathing.

Then James slumped languidly, without ceremony, against Keonho's shoulder. The weight was familiar, warm, an anchor. Keonho smiled, a small, private gesture, and leaned in turn, resting his head against James's. The review, in essence, was over. The books lay forgotten on the table.

And despite the exam looming the next day, a warm, quiet happiness flooded Keonho. It wasn't euphoria. It was something deeper: the satisfaction of having made it this far, of having made it through these last hours of study, of silent complicity, with his hyung. It seemed like cruel and beautiful nonsense to think that next year he would no longer be able to study—or rest, or simply be—by his side. For now, however, the weight of James's shoulder was enough to drown out the future.

“Still breaking hearts, huh?” James asked softly, his voice a warm murmur against Keonho's shoulder, breaking the silence but not the physical closeness. On the contrary, the question seemed to arise from it.

“You mean the guy from the swim club?” Keonho replied, knowing full well what he was referring to, though he made an effort to sound indifferent.

The incident had been the gossip of the week on campus: an arrogant, overconfident classmate had declared his feelings with the absurd condition of a freestyle race. If Keonho lost, he would have to go out with him. Keonho won, of course, leaving him half a pool behind, and the rumor—sweetened and exaggerated—spread like wildfire. It was the price of popularity and a face that, according to Martin, “was just begging to be punched.” Martin, of course, hadn't been able to resist telling James all about it during the week, when he also tried to crash one of his study sessions.

Keonho felt James nod slightly against his shoulder and cheek, making a guttural sound, a low laugh of approval.

“That guy's an idiot,” Keonho declared.

“We agree on that,” James nodded.

“Then why does it seem like everyone wants me to date him?” Keonho asked, his voice somewhat hoarse, tinged with a deep exhaustion that was not only physical, but also the fatigue of constantly having to justify his choices, his non-choices, to the world.

“I don't want you to go out with him. It was just an observation,” James quickly clarified, as if to make that clear. Then, after a yawn of genuine exhaustion from his day, James whispered, “Aren't you going to at least tell me the name of the person you do like?”

The question hit Keonho like a whip to the stomach. He tensed suddenly, raising his head and looking away at his inert notebook, as if the equations could give him an answer. James sat up, breaking the warm contact of their shoulders, and Keonho could feel his piercing gaze, scrutinizing him, measuring every tic, every blink, every twitch of his facial muscles. He twisted his fingers under the table, his nails digging into his palms. His mind, once calm, was now a silent, white panic. He couldn't confess it to him. Not like this. Not now, with a plane ticket to Taipei waiting in some drawer.

“It's not worth it,” he finally muttered, his voice barely a whisper, hoarse with contained emotion. “He... doesn't feel the same way about me.”

“He rejected you?” James insisted, not giving an inch. He leaned forward slightly, fixing him with his intense dark eyes behind his glasses, which now seemed like magnifying glasses, increasing his vulnerability.

Keonho licked his lips, suddenly dry. Damn it, why did he have to make it so difficult? That dark, fixed gaze anchored him to the spot, devouring him alive, awakening in his chest a swarm of nerves that had nothing to do with the damn math exam. It was a whirlwind of illogical hope and pure panic. He didn't understand it, because in the midst of that electric tension that seemed about to spark, James did something that completely paralyzed him: he slowly reached out his hand, with surreal calm, and caressed his cheek with the back of his fingers. It was a light touch, a sweetness so intimate and out of place that it sent a tingle down his spine and a burning warmth to the center of his chest.

And then James leaned forward. His face came closer, erasing the world around him. The scent of his shampoo, coffee, snacks, James, filled Keonho's senses. The air disappeared. His heart stopped, trapped between his ribs.

Keonho held his breath.

He believed—he was sure—that he was going to kiss him.

“What are you doing?”

The magic—that charged, electric, sweet bubble—shattered with the harshness of broken glass. Seonghyeon woke up completely with a crash of clothes and a grunt, squawking his question from the sofa like a clumsy crow. James pulled away abruptly, the movement so quick and sudden that Keonho felt like he'd been slapped by an invisible hand, a cold void where warmth and closeness had once been. He blinked, forcing reason—that old, cruel friend—back into his brain with iron fists.

They were friends. Just friends. James, the older one. Keonho, the younger one. The hyung and the dongsaeng. And good friends, normal friends, friends like Martin and Seonghyeon, didn't do those things. They didn't look at each other like that. They didn't caress each other's cheeks. They didn't lean in to...

“Nothing,” James said flatly, his sudden coldness seeming to lower the temperature in the room. Not a trace of the tenderness from seconds ago remained. He was addressing Seonghyeon, but his words were a wall between him and Keonho. “Are you finally awake? Is that how you plan to pass math, snoring like a broken engine?”

Keonho continued to twist his fingers under the table, his knuckles white from the force. He stared at a logarithm problem he could no longer see, which had become a black blur on the paper. Friends didn't kiss. Friends didn't fall in love. And he couldn't forget, even for a second, that his love for James was a frustrated, secret, one-sided feeling. A monologue in an empty room.

However, a practical, almost clinical thought emerged as a bitter consolation: he would have several months to get over it, wouldn't he? When James left for Taiwan, when oceans and borders came between them, perhaps Ahn Keonho could finally, slowly, leave Zhao Yufan behind. Physical distance would force emotional distance. It was logical. It was healthy.

So... why didn't that thought, that supposed solution to his torment, make him feel any happier? Why, instead of relief, did he feel a new kind of emptiness, bigger and more definitive, opening up beneath his feet?