Chapter Text
The week before school always felt fake to James.
Like the world was holding its breath.
The sun stayed out too long, cicadas screamed like they were being paid overtime, and every adult in the neighborhood suddenly remembered how much they loved power-washing driveways. James hated it. It meant schedules were coming back. It meant alarms. It meant he’d stop pretending summer could stretch forever if he just didn’t acknowledge August.
He was barefoot in the front yard, dragging a blue recycling bin toward the curb, earbuds in, hoodie tied around his waist because he refused to accept that it was still hot. His house was loud behind him—one sibling yelling about missing socks, another arguing with their mom over cereal that was apparently “for guests.”
James spotted the box near the edge of the shared lawn and sighed.
Cardboard. Medium-sized. Slightly crushed at one corner.
Of course.
One of his siblings, probably. They had a magical ability to half-finish chores. James could already hear his mom later: James, why is there trash everywhere? As if he hadn’t been the only one actually doing anything.
He nudged the box with his foot. It was light.
“Unreal,” he muttered, tugging out one earbud.
He didn’t look inside. Didn’t check for a label. Didn’t even consider that the house next door—the one that had been empty since spring—might suddenly be relevant. He just folded the top flaps in, hauled it up, and dumped it into the bin.
Right on cue, the recycling truck rumbled down the street like some kind of judgmental god.
Perfect timing.
James rolled the bin to the curb, dusted his hands, and turned back toward his house just as the truck’s mechanical arm swallowed the contents whole.
Gone.
Done.
Problem solved.
“Hey—HEY!”
James froze.
He turned slowly, like he was already annoyed before he’d fully processed why.
The guy standing on the neighboring driveway was… new.
Tall. Slim. Black hair that fell into his eyes like it had never met a hairdryer. Oversized T-shirt, jeans cuffed just enough to look intentional, and a look on his face that could curdle milk.
“What did you just throw away?” the guy demanded.
James blinked. Took him in. Clocked the unfamiliar car, the open garage stacked with boxes, the For Sale sign that had apparently completed its life cycle without James noticing.
“…recycling?” James said cautiously.
“My box,” the guy snapped, already walking toward the curb.
James turned, following him. “Your—what box?”
“The one on the lawn,” he said, like James was stupid. “The brown one. With the tape.”
James’s stomach dropped just a little.
“That was yours?” he asked.
The guy stared at him. Hard. “Yes.”
James looked at the now-empty bin. Looked back at the truck disappearing down the street.
“Oh,” he said. Then, because honesty sometimes came late, “I threw it away.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then—
“You did what?”
James held up his hands. “Okay, wait, I thought it was my sibling’s. They leave stuff out all the time. I didn’t know it was—”
“That was my limited edition Academic Issues collection!”
James stared.
“…your what?”
“My Academic Issues,” the guy repeated, like that explained everything. “They don’t print those anymore. I had all the special inserts. I literally just moved them here.”
James blinked again, slower this time. “You left them on the lawn.”
“For five minutes,” the guy shot back. “I went inside to get another box!”
James felt irritation spark. “Why would you leave something important outside?”
“Because I was moving!” he yelled. “Normal people assume other people won’t throw their stuff away!”
“Normal people don’t abandon boxes on shared lawns!” James fired back.
The guy laughed, sharp and humorless. “Are you serious right now?”
“You’re the one yelling at me,” James said, voice rising. “I said I didn’t know. I apologized.”
“That doesn’t bring them back!”
James clenched his jaw. He could feel his temper slipping, the way it always did when someone talked at him instead of to him. “What do you want me to do, exactly? Chase down the recycling truck? Wrestle your magazines out of a landfill?”
“They were worth money!”
“Then maybe you should’ve put your name on them!”
They were standing way too close now. The air between them felt hot, electric, vibrating with something that wasn’t just anger. James noticed, weirdly, that the guy’s eyes were dark—almost too dark—and that his hands were shaking, just a little.
“I can’t believe you,” the guy said. “You didn’t even check.”
“And I can’t believe you’re acting like this is entirely my fault,” James snapped back. “You shouldn’t have left it there in the first place.”
Silence slammed down between them.
The cicadas filled the gap, loud and obnoxious.
From inside James’s house, a familiar voice cut through everything.
“James! Get inside, now!”
His mom.
James exhaled sharply. He turned, already halfway done with the conversation. “I’m coming!”
He started toward the door.
Behind him—
“I hate you!”
James didn’t stop walking.
He lifted one hand, extended a single finger over his shoulder, and kept going.
The door slammed shut behind him.
⸻
Juhoon stood there, staring at the house next door like it had personally wronged him.
Which, to be fair, it had.
He ran a hand through his hair, breathing hard, trying not to think about glossy pages and handwritten notes and how long it had taken him to track down every issue. Academic Issues wasn’t just a magazine—it was history. Commentary. Footnotes that mattered.
And now it was trash.
Because some barefoot idiot had decided it wasn’t worth five seconds of curiosity.
Juhoon kicked a pebble across the driveway and cursed under his breath.
Great. Fantastic. New house, new school, new neighbor, and he already hated someone.
Perfect timing.
⸻
James lay on his bed later that night, staring at the ceiling fan as it clicked rhythmically above him.
He wasn’t proud of the argument. He also wasn’t convinced he was wrong.
Still.
“Limited edition Academic Issues,” he muttered into the darkness. “Who even—”
He stopped.
The guy’s face floated back into his mind. The way his voice cracked just a bit when he yelled. The way he’d looked genuinely panicked, not just angry.
James groaned and rolled onto his side, burying his face in his pillow.
Great. His conscience had decided to show up.
Outside, next door, Juhoon sat on the floor of his room surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, flipping through his phone and googling “recycling center recovery” like that was a thing that ever worked.
He paused.
Looked out the window.
James’s room light was on.
Juhoon scoffed softly. “Jerk.”
But he didn’t close the blinds.