Chapter Text
Paris, Day xx, Month xx, Year 203x
Neither Louis nor Ohyul ever expected to meet again under these circumstances.
Louis stumbled blindly down the street, his face flushed red from crying too much. It felt as though life itself was conspiring against him: his phone battery was dead, not a single taxi was in sight, and his cold, indifferent boyfriend hadn't even let him finish his sentence before abruptly hanging up. He let out a bitter laugh, whispering to himself that maybe he was just a third wheel intruding on a love affair between his boyfriend and his career.
The pain of being lonely within your own relationship hurts a hundred times more than the pain of betrayal. Because if you are betrayed, you can use hatred to completely wipe out the lingering remnants of your affection. But if they are consumed by work, you are left torn between the thoughts of "Am I being too selfish?" and "Don't I deserve to be loved too?" In the end, you choose silence, because loving someone means respecting and supporting them, right? But that silence kills you day by day without you even realizing it, until one day, you hit your absolute limit and explode.
Louis decided that this was his limit. Enough was enough. He collapsed onto the pavement, sobbing uncontrollably. Humiliated? Yes. Angry? Yes. Disappointed? That, too.
"Are you okay?"
He lifted his head. Both he and the stranger froze in utter shock.
It was him. After five years of cutting off all contact, he had crossed paths with him completely by chance in a foreign land.
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Seoul, Day xx, Month xx, Year 202x
Amidst the chaotic blending of a buzzing electric guitar, the sharp rhythmic clatter of drumsticks, and the distinct musty odor of the basement rehearsal room in the Arts building, Louis realized his heart had completely skipped a beat. Louis liked Ohyul, the "boss" of the university band. If you were to ask him how he could suddenly fall head over heels for a senior four years his elder during his very first week of college, he would just shrug. He didn't know, and he didn't care to know why he liked him.
He only knew that he liked him, and he wanted to be the one standing proudly by his side.
Ohyul was the vocalist and leader of The Echoes, the most renowned K-hiphop band at Seoul National University. Students rumored that passing the band's three rigorous audition rounds was harder than getting into the prestigious university itself. Their reputation extended far beyond the campus walls, prompting students from neighboring universities to wait in long lines under the biting cold of the Seoul winter just to snag a ticket to their regular gigs. People applied to the band for the fame, to break into the indie scene, or simply to expand their social circles.
As for Louis, he gathered every ounce of his youth's courage and recklessness for one single name: Ohyul.
Louis had noticed Ohyul even before setting foot on campus. In Louis's somewhat hazy memory, Ohyul was "pretty"—fair skin, rosy lips, and long, curled eyelashes—but he exuded an aura of proud defiance that commanded respect from everyone. He was the kind of person you knew you couldn't push too far. What started as a distant admiration gradually morphed into a heavy, unrequited infatuation before he even realized it.
To earn the right to stand in the same space as Ohyul, Louis stayed up all night practicing guitar chords until his fingertips bled and grew calloused. Louis showed up to every meeting, took on the heaviest chores, and became such a dedicated member that even Ohyul himself nodded in approval in front of the executive board. Yet, aside from those formal, professional compliments, Ohyul remained standing there like an immovable iceberg. That coldness repeatedly dashed Louis's pride, leaving him exhausted and telling himself to give up.
And yet, amidst the sea of people, on a stage bathed in colorful lights, Louis's eyes, driven by a stubborn instinct, would always unconsciously drift back to him.
Then, the turning point came just when Louis thought he had completely let go. Ohyul, who had always kept his distance, unexpectedly shifted the dynamics, becoming the one to actively step into Louis's world.
Louis kept a small, moss-green notebook where he secretly jotted down the tender moments Ohyul left behind, whether intentionally or not:
It was the evenings Ohyul dragged Louis out for cold noodles after a late practice session, the way his eyes looked at Louis while humming an unfinished love song.
It was when the entire band was being scolded mercilessly by Ohyul for messing up the sheet music, but when he turned to Louis, he merely sighed and gently corrected his posture holding the guitar.
It was the nights Louis fell bedridden with a high fever, and Ohyul quietly stayed up until 3:00 AM, juggling Louis's schoolwork while tutoring Louis through the dense Philosophy concepts, which was a subject Louis was completely hopeless at.
But Louis hid all of these sweet gestures away in a dark corner of his heart, mocking himself for indulging in delusional fantasies.
Until one autumn day, as the ginkgo leaves painted the walkways in brilliant gold, Louis's best friend, who also happened to be Ohyul's favorite drummer, nudged his shoulder and said, "He's crazy about you, Louis." Unable to bear the ambiguity any longer, Louis marched straight to Ohyul's classroom building with a racing heart, asking him out to the corner of the courtyard to demand answers. That afternoon, the Seoul sunset dyed their shadows red against the ground.
The word on the street was that from that day onward, the world had two fewer lonely souls.
At that time, the pressure of academics and family expectations weighed heavily on both of them. To evade the strict surveillance of their parents, they were forced to create a secret code of their own. During their whispered midnight phone calls, Ohyul told him that he would replace the phrase "I love you" with the reminder: "Don't stay up late anymore."
It was a phrase dry enough to slip past their parents, yet painfully practical. That year, Louis was spinning like a top between the band's performance schedule, studying, and working a part-time job to make ends meet. Compounded by a newly blossoming romance, sleep became a luxury for him. Every time he heard that phrase over the phone, Louis would chuckle and tell him he was worrying too much: "If they knew their son had such an outstanding boyfriend like you, no parents would have the heart to be upset." But regardless, that was how they loved each other—a hidden, stolen love that nevertheless raged like a storm through the passionate years of their youth.
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Paris, Late Night, Day xx, Month xx, Year 203x
"How have you been lately?"
Ohyul’s deep voice echoed in the confined space of the car cabin. Louis sat quietly in the passenger seat. The drizzling Paris rain clung tightly to the windows, blurring and distorting the streetlights outside into smeared streaks of light. Louis told himself that if it hadn't been for an unavoidable situation that forced them to cross paths today, he would have turned and run the moment he heard that voice from afar.
Louis's throat felt bitter, his chest tightening with an indescribable emotion. If this were the nineteen-year-old Louis—the age of pure innocence and vulnerability—he would have burst into tears, clinging to his arm to pour out how brutal life in France was, and how exhausting working and studying had been. But the twenty-four-year-old Louis chose silence.
Five years had passed, filled with the ups and downs, the bitterness, and the sweetness of life. Louis was no longer the child who sought a hiding place to cry whenever a storm hit. At most, on nights of sheer exhaustion, he would drink himself into a stupor, sleep deeply, and face reality again the next day. Life had to go on, whether he wanted it to or not. Cruel time had taught Louis how to heal himself and embrace his own sorrows. After all, who in this world could understand you better than yourself?
A suffocating, dense silence enveloped the car, leaving only the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers sounding like the heartbeat of a soulless machine. Louis looked out the window, watching the crowd of people hurrying past each other in the rain, and broke the awkward atmosphere:
"How have you been?"
"Not much different from before." Ohyul lightly turned the steering wheel, his voice remarkably calm. "How is your love life?"
"Pathetic," Louis answered without a shred of concealment.
Ohyul let out a faint, half-joking, half-serious smirk. "Is it as pathetic as when we were together?"
His question sent Louis falling straight into a void of memories, filled with fractured pieces that had him bleeding for years.
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Seoul, a rainy day, Year 202x
"How was your day today?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
...
"How was your day today?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Why do you never share anything with me?"
"I don't have anything to say."
"..."
...
"Ohyul, something really funny happened at school today, it was like..."
"Oh, really?"
He had truly changed. The warmth of the past was replaced by blunt, short answers and yawning chasms of silence.
...
"Can you please stop shutting me out like this?"
Read.
...
"Let's break up."
"You don't love me anymore, do you?"
It took a long time for Ohyul's final text to appear, landing like a fatal blow to all remaining hope:
"Please forgive me. Everything around me right now is incredibly heavy, and I'm still not ready to let my guard down for someone to step in. I should have realized this before I started loving you. You deserve someone better than me."
"It's okay, thank you. I will always love you."
Ohyul would probably never know that behind Louis's calm and understanding text was a person who had cried to the point of exhaustion for days and nights, with swollen eyes and a chest that throbbed with agony. But no one can mourn forever over someone who has turned their back. Louis began throwing himself into meaningless gatherings with friends, burying himself in unfinished paintings, reading, and cooking, basically doing anything just to fill the void Ohyul left behind, stubbornly trying to forget him. Yet, those clumsily covered wounds of the heart had never truly healed.
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Paris, Day xx, Month xx, Year 203x
"You are different, and they are different," Louis spoke up, shattering the train of reminiscence. His voice had regained the composure of a mature adult.
"Why is that?" Ohyul glanced over slightly.
"Most adult love is incredibly pragmatic, Ohyul. If people aren't calculating what they stand to gain or lose, they are just using each other to fill a temporary void of loneliness, or finding a place to dump their life's frustrations. Even though we might have loved each other the wrong way back then, at least the feelings between us that year were entirely genuine and pure."
Louis paused for a beat, drawing in a deep breath to stop himself from crying in front of him.
"You aren't a bad person. It's just... have you ever wondered, if we had met when we were more mature, when we knew exactly what our hearts wanted, and knew how to communicate better... would we have been able to stay together just a little bit longer?"
Louis's question struck the deepest silence in Ohyul’s heart. As if to evade the emotions on the verge of spilling over, he stammered, his voice trembling slightly, "We... we're at your place."
The car slowly pulled over to the curb. Both of them stepped out. Louis lowered their head and looked straight into his eyes. The boy from those brilliant youth years in the sweat-drenched basement was standing right in front of him. His eyes were now weathered, stripped of the clear, innocent gaze of youth, but deep within them, Louis knew, he was still harboring a million stars from the old days.
"You will always be the person I loved most. Always," Louis smiled faintly, their gaze steady yet steeped in sadness. "But there are some things that, once broken, can never be mended. Right now, we are both happier without each other, and that's what matters most."
Louis saw the hesitation written all over Ohyul's face. He pursed his lips, his hands clenching into fists as if he wanted to say something—wanting to pull him close or explain away all the trauma of the past. But in the end, all words choked up in his throat, and he only let out a familiar phrase in a raspy, strained voice:
"Don't stay up late anymore."
The smile on Louis's lips grew a little brighter, even as tears threatened to spill from the corners of their eyes. He still remembered everything.
So, you still remember us.
"Take care of yourself."
Louis turned around and walked away without looking back. The sound of the car engine revved, and the vehicle sped off into the curtain of rain, carrying away the boy and the stars of yesteryear, slowly dissolving into the deep darkness of Paris.