Chapter Text
“Why are you so furious over this?” Yeonjun uttered in cold blood.
“What do you mean? I just can’t imagine you stealing! After all the things you promised me you’d change?” The tears that flooded Beomgyu’s eyes betrayed an unsure feeling of dejection. He didn’t want him to become delinquent. He was desperate to bring him back to his senses, or maybe, he just wanted to return to that night, when they first became aware of each other. When their promises were not just words but they had purpose.
“Beomgyu, you’re overreacting. Why can’t you just trust me? I got this under control.” Yeonjun didn’t want to believe that he had changed, that he had taken the wrong road to success which didn’t lead him to a dream, but a bittersweet nightmare instead. “You’re so behaving like your father right now. Maybe your mother was right about you. You never take anyone seriously. You’re so self-absorbed”, just as Beomgyu replied, Yeonjun froze. He was speechless, how could a person who knew what he had gone through say that about his behavior? All those dreamlike moments, all those words he swore were real, turned out to be an illusion of love, and Yeonjun had just found the glasses of truth. Unshed tears were glistening on Yeonjun’s deep green fox-like eyes. The sentence that hurt him the most had come out of the mouth of the person he loved the most. Like usual Yeonjun wouldn’t have cared about “just words”, if the person that vocalized them was random, but it was Beomgyu. The person who made him feel valuable and found, because he knew what it was like to lose faith in yourself.
Yeonjun couldn’t take it anymore, he left disappointed, sprinting off to the playground he used to hide in, during elementary school when the kids would bully him because of his family status. He sat under the red slide, where the stickers he had stuck underneath it were still there, reminding him that the times hadn’t changed. That he was still an “outsider” in this town. He opened his bag and took out the mix tape Beomgyu had given him on his birthday. His hands trembling, he wore the earphones and pressed play. The first song played, Yeonjun’s mind filled with reminisces of the past, of the promises he had made with Beomgyu, of the future they had planned with each other and of the first time he ever saw him. His mind went back a year ago, where he swore he didn’t believe in love, when he only believed in his divorced mother when it came to love.
His mother would always point to him since he was little, that falling in love could drive him crazy. “This lingering obsession your heart quietly supports will destroy you, it can make you accomplish things you never thought you could Yeonjun”. She often used that argument to justify how unsettling love really was. Growing up with that mindset, made Yeonjun naturally lose interest in expressing his feelings. That was until he started 11th grade, when their class welcomed a new transfer student.
Yeonjun didn’t pay much attention at first; he just knew his name, Choi Beomgyu. The transfer student had the same family name as him, leading to various misunderstandings during class. For instance, one day when the principal called Yeonjun in his office, Beomgyu went instead, or when Yeonjun wrote his name in exams, the teacher would confuse Beomgyu’s paper with his and give him the wrong grade. And the cycle continued, whenever Yeonjun got involved in fights, Beomgyu would take the fall. Although they had a lot of interactions, they weren’t close at all. Beomgyu would occasionally ignore Yeonjun, not because he hated him, but because he never really liked socializing. He believed it was hopeless. People would always misunderstand him as cold or often childish, so he never bothered to clear up his name. Only one person was curious enough to go walk up to him and understand him better. That person was Soobin.
Soobin was Beomgyu’s neighbor and childhood friend; he was one year older than Beomgyu. Soobin’s mother was close with the younger’s family, so Soobin usually took care of Beomgyu. The younger would always visit Soobin’s classes to update him about his day or simply just to hang out with him. They were really reliable friends. Soobin knew everything about Beomgyu and why his attitude towards others was this cruel and sometimes quite unfair.
Beomgyu grew up alongside mostly his father, since his mother had unfortunately died in a car accident when he was 6 years old. From that drastic moment, his dad developed a habit of drinking abundant amounts of alcohol, which gradually affected Beomgyu’s childhood. His father was always ignoring him. Every time Beomgyu tried expressing his opinion, his dad would reject him, insisting he was “too young” to understand. This led to Beomgyu’s fear of expressing and owning an opinion, as people would either be judging him, distancing themselves from him or either misunderstanding him.
“Turns out there is always a reason behind one’s behaviour” figured Soobin. Beomgyu and he were talking about Yeonjun’s immoral act. “What do you mean? Even if there is a reason behind it, it doesn’t make him innocent” the truculent boy replied quickly. Soobin’s gaze hardened and Beomgyu’s mind sailed briefly back to that moment, when things had just started going south.