Chapter Text
What’s more devastating: a dying town in which its inhabitants are doomed to a cycle of perpetuation, or a boy who believes so adamantly that he, amongst all, will break free of it?
There, stood a rusted swing set of a boy at the bus stop with his hood pulled over his head, worn-down backpack digging into his shoulders, with his only true possession — a singular sketchbook adorned with intentional stickers that served as subliminal messaging in a town that punished bluntness — tucked under one arm, staring at the empty road while the October cold chewed through the sleeves of his washed out sweatshirt.
The world, or what his world felt like in this small stifling town of 2,000 in the middle of nowhere, held its breath with him as he hummed to the Smashing Pumpkins — a sorry attempt at easing his worries of the day ahead of him.
The worn bench beside him had ‘’HELL EXISTS. WE’RE IN IT” carved into the wood in uneven capital letters. Underneath that, someone else had written: ‘’HELL HAS BETTER WEATHER.’’
Seonghyeon mused a tired smile with a small huff.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he murmured, pressing the volume button blasting music in his ears as his phone warned otherwise.
Timely, a truck whose engine whine made Seonghyeon grimace accelerated too fast, rolling over (and effectively, spraying Seonghyeon) a muddied puddle.
His jeans - a once untainted blue besides the occasional white paint streaks on his right leg - now was a canvas with a new addition of mud at his heel bites and knees.
Seonghyeon didn’t look up at the truck driver for restitution, or any sign of remorse. Apologizing just wasn't a custom here — nor confrontation in any sense.
Amidst a sorry attempt of brushing the dripping remnants off his tired denim, a buzz from his back pocket begged once, then another, and a definitive one more.
With a quick squeeze of the temples to ward off any threat of a headache, he read:
Juhoon
dude (5:44 am)
whyd you leave so early (5:46 am)
ik youre upset but dad is still freaking the fuck out (5:46 am)
leaving me to ward him off myself… ur evil (5:48 am)
Seonghyeon sighed, the string of messages inviting memories of the night prior again. His father — a rigid and wallowing man — went on one of his many tangents, consisting of the two very things he never let Seonghyeon forget:
1. That his mother, a ‘’beautiful thing,’’ shouldn’t have died — that Seonghyeon was not an equal trade off, that his death was more just than his mothers.
2. That Seonghyeon would amount to nothing with his constant defiance ( a series of a teenage angst: getting caught with a pack of malaboros he stole and missing curfew… once or thrice.)
are we forgetting that im the one he’s mad at (5:52 am)
i gotta put me first man (5:53 am)
just ask martin for a ride, im positive that shit head wouldn’t mind (5:55 am)
Juhoon
ok so die
i textedhim
but he’s probably sleeping
ill just walk. i have late arrival anyways
(5:57 am)
oh he’ll be devastated
bring a jacket, it’s cold
(Read at 6:00 am)
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and looked up at the sky - a slight shiver rushing down his spine as he closed his eyes, cheeks now chafed as wind swept through.
This town had once been beautiful, probably.
You could tell in the fragments it kept in a losing battle against neglect and something far more rooted that adults refused to mentiin.
Sometimes Seonghyeon imagined the town itself as a person — he liked imagining things as people, or in better words, daydreaming in a world that didn’t rival its possibility.
Streetlights with insomnia. Factories and paper mills with collapsed lungs, coughing every now and then, breathing in each young man's youth as a trade off. Rain gutters that cried dramatically for attention as sludge and wettened leaves stifled its plea.
His father called this tendency “useless” and crippling.
“You live inside your own head too much,” he’d snapped once over dinner, an occurrence that him and Juhoon had grown accustomed to— the same response of theirs being a string of ‘’okays’’ and ‘’yeahs.’’
Stonewalling was their attempt at peace, or a version of peace that they could deal with.
‘‘Life isn’t filled with mystic sonnets and appreciations: it’s truth and reality’’
Seonghyeon, amidst stomaching a less than favorable spaghetti dish he had far too many times a week, had wanted to ask: Where else am I supposed to live?
Here? In the corridors of the past and what ifs?
In this wasting town? Accompanying you and your regrets?
Hypocrite. He wanted to scream. His father lived in his imagination far more and frequently than he ever did, scrounging scenarios to torment Seonghyeon with. With imagery of his own mother - disappointed and slouched, or beautiful and taunting.
With a long mechanical groan and accompanying screech, the bus had arrived — ten minutes late.
Its headlights cut through fog weakly, its folding doors hissing open. A welcoming hello, Seonghyeon figured — the only one he’d probably receive that morning.
Seonghyeon climbed inside, sending an weak smile to the bus driver who averted their eyes in indifference.
The heater blasted aggressively enough to smell faintly burnt and fill the silence of the soundtrack of students fighting shuteye, one yawn inviting the next.
The bus dragged itself through town with the exhausted persistence of something that had long ago ceased believing in destination. Every bump in the road rattled through its metal frame with arthritic complaint, and the windows trembled in their casings whenever the tires sank into the many potholes hidden beneath the puddles that seemed permanent. Heat breathed unevenly from the vents overhead in stale bursts that smelled faintly of rust, wet fabrics, and the burnt-dust scent old heaters acquire after surviving too many chilly evenings.
Seonghyeon sat near the back where the window latch no longer closed properly, allowing thin ribbons of morning air to slip inside and coil around his ankles, inviting a sea of goosebumps that trailed to his neck.
Outside, everything drifted past in slow motions, fragments blurred by condensation and drizzle.
A gas station with one dead fluorescent letter flickering weakly above the pumps. A laundromat whose windows had been covered from the inside with newspaper after the owner disappeared sometime last February. No asked — no one cared.
Telephone poles leaning at subtle exhausted angles, their wires sagging low. The same man at the same corner, holding his singular possession, ‘’HELLFIRE AWAITS THOSE WHO SIN!’’
The morning possessed a strange colorlessness to it, as though someone had washed the entire landscape repeatedly of every vibrant thing in a violent colonization. Even the trees looked tired, though Seonghyeon never saw their bark any less breathtaking. Their leaves, once burning shades of amber and crimson at the beginning of autumn, now clung damply to skeletal branches in mottled and muted browns, collapsing one by one into the gutters where rainwater carried them toward drains clogged years ago.
Seonghyeon rested his forehead briefly against the cold glass. The vibration soothed him, the occasional major hiccup in the road causing his head to stutter with the vehicle.
It reminded him that movement still existed somewhere, even if only mechanical, even if only appreciated in his purview.
Instinctively, he took a quick scan of his surroundings, to see nothing different from any other morning. In the front of the bus, a freshman slept with his mouth open against the window while pale fog bloomed outward from each breath. Two girls beside him whispered and let out a giggle over a cracked phone screen, their eyeliner smudged into shadows beneath sleepless eyes. Near the emergency exit, someone coughed with the crackling persistence of an old man despite looking no older than sixteen.
Everything in this town seemed to age incorrectly. Children inherited exhaustion before adulthood ever arrived for them properly, before their height matched their gaze. Adults, with every aging year, grew antsy and created personal fables to keep themselves absolved of responsibility.
The bus slowed with a prolonged groan of brakes, rain streaked sideways against the windows as more groggy students climbed aboard carrying gusts of wet cold air inside with them. Seonghyeon barely glanced upward at first, seeing the outline of a boy he knew far too well entering the bus door. Keonho stepped into the aisle, moving quietly despite his height, shoulders drawn inward beneath a scratched black hoodie, soaked darker still at the sleeves from rain. One hand gripped the tops of seats as the bus lurched forward again, no apologies spoken in the air yet again.
His knuckles were split raw beneath half-healed scabs, a feature those around him took as a warning. A bruise darkened the underside of his jaw in diluted shades of purple and yellow that rainwater only made more noticeable as it glided down his chin.
Seonghyeon felt his tongue threaten to ask — inviting the taste of iron, a punishment just for the attempt.
Questions became dangerous too quickly here. Curiosity, a curse that plagued Seonghyeon's every being, had a way of embarrassing people, and embarrassed people in this town felt the response of cruelty.
The seat beside him dipped under sudden weight.
“You smell like mildew,” Keonho murmured, still slightly breathless from climbing aboard.
Seonghyeon snorted quietly and tugged one earphone down around his neck. “Good morning to you too, Keonho.”
A corner of Keonho’s mouth shifted almost imperceptibly before settling again, his eyes flashed a little glint that posed amusement.
Rainwater dripped steadily from strands of dark hair hanging near his eyes.
Up close, in a place Seonghyeon often ventured, he looked exhausted in ways sleep could not repair. The skin beneath his eyes carried faint violet shadows, and his expression possessed that distant carefulness common among people accustomed to monitoring the emotional weather of rooms before speaking inside them.
The bus rattled onward.
Beyond the windows, the paper mill emerged briefly through dead trees beside the river, its smokestacks coughing pale industrial smoke into the low sky. The scent reached even here sometimes — chemical, bitter, vaguely sulfuric — settling over town like another season.
“My stepdad says they’re laying off more workers before Christmas,” Keonho said after a while.
His voice held no outrage, baring only on the flat inevitability of it all.
Seonghyeon watched smoke dissolve upward into fog. “Well shit, they should just put the whole town down.”
Keonho turned slightly toward the window again, steering borderline eye contact. “It's already happened. They did. Nobody noticed.”
The answer settled heavily between them.
Seonghyeon searched to capture his eyes, humming in a resigning agreement. There was always something frightening about how naturally hopelessness fit inside Keonho’s voice, how little resistance remained in it. Most people disguised despair beneath sarcasm or anger or loud self-destruction. Keonho carried his quietly, tucked beneath his ribs in tenure like the many injuries he had stopped attempting to treat blotched across his body.
The bus hit another pothole hard enough to bounce everyone subtly upward from their seats. Laughter burst somewhere near the front and disappeared just as quickly — Keonho held himself and Seonghyeon to lessen the dip with a singular hand to the seat in front of them.
Seonghyeon adjusted the volume on his headphones absently, a series of guitar static leaked into the air between them.
Keonho glanced toward the screen of his phone.
“You still listening to that sad white music every morning?”
‘’Do you even give the day a chance?’’
“It’s atmospheric.”
“It’s miserable.”
“Same thing.”
Rain tapped steadily against the cracked window latch beside them. Keonho rested his temple briefly against the seatback and closed his eyes for several seconds. His throat moved once as he swallowed, and Seonghyeon noticed another bruise near the inside of his wrist where his sleeve had slipped upward slightly.
Again he looked away. And again, he failed to stop noticing.
That was the humiliating thing about him. He noticed everything. The shape of bitten nails. The tremor in voices after people finished crying, the shape of bodies caving in itself as almost as taking the impact of embarrassment. The way certain students flinched whenever teachers raised their hands too quickly while explaining something at the board.
Observing others had become instinctive long ago, developed slowly and instinctively inside a house where survival depended heavily upon predicting moods before they fully surfaced — playing the occasional guessing game with Juhoon.
Outside, the singular church that served as a centerpiece of the town appeared briefly through rain and fog, its white steeple disappearing halfway into low clouds.
Seonghyeon hated churches here, though he stopped attending years ago. Many did. Though in hindsight the same people scowled in disapproval when outed atheists made way.
Every sermon seemed to revolve around endurance. Suffering gracefully — ‘’Company loves Misery’’ Juhoon once put it simply, and Seonghyeon felt nothing bore better words. Just remain humble and grin-faced beneath hardship. How grand.
Keonho opened his eyes again and nodded toward the sketchbook tucked beneath Seonghyeon’s arm. “What are you drawing lately?”
“Buildings mostly.”
“How interesting,’’
“People move too much.”
The answer slipped out thoughtlessly.
Keonho looked at him then — casually and briefly, but with a kind of stillness that made Seonghyeon suddenly aware of the small confined world of the bus seat around them. The smell of rain trapped in cotton fabric. The heater clicking overhead. The rhythm of windshield wipers dragging across glass.
“Guess they do,” Keonho said quietly.
Something in his tone lingered long afterward.
The abandoned theater downtown passed outside moments later, its cracked ceiling half-collapsed above the sidewalk. Rainwater gathered in the shattered ticket booth windows while faded gold detailing still clung stubbornly around the roofline like remnants of another era refusing erasure.
Seonghyeon stared after it automatically. “If somebody fixed that place, this town could almost feel alive again.”
Keonho followed his gaze toward the theater.
“You always do that.”
“What?”
“Talk like things can still be saved.”
Seonghyeon froze immediately, the accusation had truth to it.
Maybe despite everything — despite his father’s incessant drinking, despite overdue bills stacked beneath magnets on the refrigerator and countertops, despite hearing factory sirens so often they had begun sounding like part of nature itself — some embarrassing stubborn part of him still believed in restoration.
The bus hissed into the school parking lot beneath a curtain of cold rain.
Students rose immediately, crowding the aisle with backpacks and damp hoodies and the sour smell of wet denim. Seonghyeon remained seated another second longer than necessary, watching water slide down the windows in trembling uneven lines.
“You coming?” Keonho asked from the aisle.
For a moment, absurdly, the question felt larger than itself.
Seonghyeon stood quickly and followed him off the bus.
Cold struck like an open hand to the face, leaving the blood in Seonghyeons face to group in the apples of his cheeks .
Rain had intensified into something fine and relentless, coating the parking lot in reflective silver beneath the weak morning light. Briarwood High stood ahead of them with all the exhausted dignity of an institution surviving long after belief in it had disappeared. Parts of the brick exterior had darkened from water damage. One floodlight near the football field blinked incessantly even during daylight hours, stuttering pale yellow against the fog.
Students drifted toward the entrance in clusters, shoulders touching beneath shared umbrellas. Smoke curled from behind the gym where seniors huddled against the wall passing cigarettes between them before first bell.
Somewhere across the lot, a truck backfired loud enough to startle birds from the telephone wires.
Keonho shoved his hands deeper into his hoodie pockets as they crossed the sidewalk. Rain darkened the fabric around his shoulders almost black.
The closer they moved toward the school entrance, the louder the building became.
Lockers opening and slamming,wet sneakers that encored squeaking against linoleum, and the occasional announcements about the subpar athletic program crackling uselessly overhead through speakers blown-out years ago.
Inside, yellow fluorescent lights buzzed faintly above crowded hallways that smelled of wet coats, cafeteria grease, cheap body spray, and industrial cleaning chemicals. Everything carried the washed-out fatigue of places occupied too continuously. Posters advertising homecoming still peeled from walls weeks after the dance had passed — no one ever bothered to remove them anyways. Trophy cases displayed decades-old photographs of football teams whose expressions all carried the same small-town certainty that life would eventually begin elsewhere.
People glanced at Keonho as they passed, staring with the same foreseeing assertion that decided the trajectory of his life,scheming, merely waiting for confirmation.
Teachers lowered their voices around him instinctively. Guidance counselors spoke with cautious rehearsed patience usually reserved for wounded animals. Rumors followed him through the building constantly, attaching themselves to his name with the permanence of stains.
He was a cliche: Troubled, adrift, felt with violent tendencies, and carried accusations that he, like many, would end up just like his father.
People loved inheritance — the thought of an inherited gene dooming us provided a sense of justification behind their actions. The town treated personality as bloodline, that young boys were doomed to become their fathers, confined to the job as a factory worker.
Though Seonghyeons swapped soot-filled lungs and employment for an oozing bitterness that arrested his development, his life essentially, to an aching indented couch.
Near the stairwell, Martin leaned against a locker scrolling through his phone while Juhoon stood beside him drinking burnt cafeteria coffee from a styrofoam cup. The second Juhoon spotted Seonghyeon, his entire face shifted — a feign smile, an attempt at a faux scowl.
“You left me alone with him,” he accused dramatically.
“You survived.”
“Barely — he begged me to stay home, to go visit mom, again”
‘’—whatever that means to him’’
Martin snorted, nudging against Juhoon. “Your dad looked at me like he wanted to kill me when I picked him up.”
The smile disappeared from Juhoon’s face instantly. He elbowed Martin hard enough to silence him, though the statement had already landed at the burrows of Seonghyeon's ribs. Seonghyeon felt his stomach tighten reflexively.
Even miles from home, even in the safe yet empty confinement of the schools, he could feel the sneer etching itself on his skin.
His father remained lodged somewhere inside him like shrapnel — the induced pain coating his every decision.
Juhoon noticed the change immediately and softened, sending a glare towards Martin's remorseful retreat.
“He fell asleep again shortly after.”
‘’Nothing happened— don’t worry,’’ Juhoon reasoned.
Students moved around the four of them in noisy currents while first bell warnings echoed overhead, the sound of sneakers squeaking filling the weighted silence held.
Keonho had gone quiet beside him.
Seonghyeon wondered suddenly what his own bruises looked like to outsiders — not physical ones, but the invisible domestic wreckage people carried unconsciously in his posture and speech. Maybe damaged kids recognized one another through instinct alone. Perhaps that’s why Keonho, who he barely knew, stuck. The same way stray dogs circled carefully before deciding whether proximity meant danger.
“You got art first period?” Juhoon asked.
“Mhm.”
“Lucky. I have chemistry first—with ‘’shithead’’” Martin sent a betrayed look at the random insult, ‘’Where’d that come from?’’
‘’Someone gave a new descriptor for you — it’s fitting don’t you think?’’
Seonghyeon stifled a laugh, side-eying Juhoon in a way only the two could understand — averting his eyes once Keonho, a quiet presence, noticed as well.
Then, lowering his voice slightly as students brushed past them, Juhoon asked:
“Are you coming home after school?”
The question lingered too carefully between them, from the blurred glance Seonghyeon stole, Juhoon stood frozen in place — as if his response would change the trajectory of his life.
It was once. Once. I ran away. Seonghyeon wanted to say, but knew Juhoon would wince in a far too deep way at the mention. The weeks following the incident still remained stinging.
Seonghyeon looked away toward the rain outside, “Eventually — don’t stay up waiting though.”
Juhoon nodded once, ruffling Seonghyeon's hair as he trailed off with Martin's murmuring complaints becoming absorbed by the surrounding noise as they passed.
That was how they loved each other now — quietly, through constant forms of acknowledgement, around the edges of larger uglier things. In a way that survived the subliminal messaging needed to navigate a house in which the smallest hiccup tore at its foundation.
The warning bell rang again, unleashing surges of hormonal teenagers in the poorly renovated halls.
For one brief second amidst all the noise and fluorescent light and rain-streaked windows, Seonghyeon became sharply aware of Keonho standing beside him, damp hair curling slightly from the weather, bruised knuckles disappearing beneath hoodie sleeves, eyes distant with whatever private storms he carried around inside himself — unwavering presence, a noble showcasing of solidarity in his terms.
Keonho caught his eyes, gestured a checking nod: Good?
Seonghyeon closed his eyes and hummed: Good.
—Enough.
The lie passed between them easily. Most things did here. Everything functioned almost entirely on mutually agreed performances, each person carrying their own version of suffering quietly enough to preserve the illusion that everybody else was coping better-wearing it better. Hallways swelled around them with noise and movement as students pushed toward classrooms in uneven currents, locker doors slamming shut with metallic finality while fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in tired spasms, but for a strange suspended second Seonghyeon remained aware only of Keonho standing beside him — eyes carrying that same restrained watchfulness that made him seem perpetually braced for impact.
Then the moment broke with a push.
A sophomore shoulder-checked Keonho accidentally while rushing past with his headphones on, muttering a distracted “move,” without looking up properly, and Seonghyeon watched the change happen instantly. Not outwardly dramatic or explicit — that was the unsettling part. Keonho didn’t shove him back or snap or glare— a tendency he grew in style recently. He simply stiffened in ways that in Seonghyeon's proximity, felt devastating—jaw tightening once beneath the skin, shoulders locking, his entire body going still with the kind of control that looked painful. The boy kept walking obliviously, disappearing into the crowd, while Keonho stared after him a second too long before forcing himself forward again toward class.
Seonghyeon followed without thinking.
“You okay?” he asked quietly once they reached the stairwell landing.
Keonho blinked as though surfacing from somewhere far away, patting Seonghyeon on the back. “Mhm.”
“You looked like you were about to kill him.”
A humorless smile flickered briefly in disruption across Keonho's usual stoic manner. “Thought about it, but…”
The response should not have made Seonghyeon laugh, but it did — one short startled sound escaping him before he could help it, and immediately something shifted in Keonho’s expression at hearing it. It was small.Invisible to most, to those who hadn’t spent hours dissecting every micro expression and hint of emotion—But Seonghyeon had.Seonghyeon caught it; the way tension loosened subtly from his shoulders, the way his eyes softened with something more than the edges of distance—the instinctual need to meanmug.
They climbed the stairs together in silence after that, shoes squeaking faintly against the old tile floor still damp from rainwater tracked in by hundreds of students. Someone farther down the hall shouted obscenities loud enough for a teacher to bark back immediately, lockers slammed in rapid succession like gunfire, and beneath it all the building groaned softly around them with old pipes and bad insulation settling against the cold.
Keonho stopped outside his first period. English Literature — a subject he had clearly voiced a faux dislike for, hiding moments in which his poems were treated with utmost royalty and care by teachers across the department.
Seonghyeon shifted his backpack higher on one shoulder. “You have Diamond first?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Damn—condolences dude, condolences.”
“He assigned a five-page essay on symbolism in The Scarlet Letter like he personally survived the Puritans.”
“That man gets hard over public suffering—actually,correction: everyone does here.”
Keonho let out a quiet snort through his nose, glancing down briefly before looking back at Seonghyeon in that same intense half-distant way that had begun unsettling him recently. Keonho listened with his entire body when Seonghyeon spoke, storing away every careless thing said to him with frightening precision. Most people in town barely listened at all; conversations here usually consisted of waiting for your turn to complain or to sneer. But Keonho noticed things. Remembered them too.
“You hate this place that much?” he asked suddenly.
Seonghyeon leaned back against the wall beside the classroom door, considering, really considering. “I think,” he started slowly, “if I stay here too long, I’ll become somebody I don’t recognize anymore.”
The hallway noise seemed to grow strangely quiet around them.
Keonho’s gaze didn’t leave his face. “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
‘’Seonghyeon—you have the biggest chance of leaving this shithole out of any of us.’’
‘’And when you eventually do, forget me—forget everyone here. Never look back. For my sake, and for your own.’’
There was something immediate in the answer that made Seonghyeon’s stomach tighten unexpectedly. Keonho spoke with certainty so rarely that when he did, the words landed harder than intended — that Seonghyeon could only respond by holding his gaze. Before Seonghyeon could force his mouth open, the classroom door opened behind them and several students filtered inside complaining loudly about assigned busy-work reading. Mr. Diamond appeared moments later balancing a coffee cup and a stack of papers against his chest, pausing briefly when he saw them lingering outside.
“If either of you are planning a dramatic hallway confession,” he deadpanned tiredly,the furrow in his brow tethered, “do it after attendance.”
Seonghyeon barked out another laugh before he could stop himself, heat rushing immediately to his face afterward. Keonho looked momentarily stunned beside him, going in only briefly after digesting the sight of Seonghyeon laughing again — and then something quieter crossed his expression, something almost unbearably soft before it disappeared beneath his usual stoic composure.
“See you later,” Seonghyeon muttered quickly, catching his breath from the previous laughing-attack, pushing himself off the wall in the process — before his embarrassment consumed him whole.
Keonho nodded once. “Yeah.”
But even as Seonghyeon twirled on his hill to go to the art room which had settled in the basement of things, he felt his eyes following him halfway down the hallway anyway.
Art class passed slower than usual after that. Rain continued steadily against the windows overlooking the football field while Mrs. Alder shuffled between tables offering distracted encouragement to students who clearly did not want it, and Seonghyeon spent nearly forty minutes pretending to work on perspective sketches while accidentally drawing the same pair of eyes over and over again in the corners of his page. It was deeply humiliating. Every version came out slightly different — sometimes sharper, sometimes exhausted, sometimes softened by amusement that rarely surfaced fully — but all of them unmistakably Keonho’s.
Mrs. Alder noticed eventually.
Not the eyes specifically — Seonghyeon thought he would have rather died than survive that humiliation — but the distraction itself. She drifted toward his table carrying the stale scent of peppermint tea and acrylic paint, her long patchwork cardigan brushing against desks as she moved.
“You’re elsewhere today,” she observed gently.
Around them, pencils scratched lazily against paper while someone near the supply cabinet argued over charcoal sticks with enough passion to suggest real emotional investment. Rainwater threaded downward along the classroom windows in crooked translucent rivers, distorting the football field outside into something impressionistic and blurred.
Seonghyeon flipped his sketchbook shut too quickly.
“Just tired.”
Mrs. Alder hummed in that way adults did when they knew children were lying but lacked either the authority or energy to challenge it. Her gaze lingered briefly on him before moving toward the unfinished perspective drawing abandoned on his desk — the outline of downtown buildings warped beneath heavy shading.
“You’re very good at making empty things look loved,” she said absentmindedly.
The statement struck somewhere strangely delicate inside him.
Before he could answer, the bell rang.
Immediately the room exploded into noise. Chairs screeched backward against tile. Backpacks unzipped. Someone cursed loudly after dropping a metal water bottle onto their foot. Mrs. Alder retreated toward her desk with weary patience while students flooded toward the door in clumps smelling faintly of wet hoodies and cheap detergent.
Seonghyeon packed slowly.
His mind had spent most of class wandering unwillingly back home again.
His father asleep on the couch.
The television flickering pale blue light over beer bottles clustered across the coffee table like casualties.
Juhoon moving carefully around him the way people crossed frozen lakes.
That was the worst part about rage in houses like theirs. It lingered after the fact. Even once silence returned, the walls still seemed aware of what had happened inside them. Objects carried memory. The couch retained the shape of drunken grief. Plates remembered being thrown.
Seonghyeon shoved his sketchbook into his backpack harder than intended.
By second period the rain had worsened.
World History occupied the second floor near the older wing of the building where radiators clanged violently enough to interrupt lectures every few minutes. Mr. Bennett spoke in a monotone severe enough to flatten entire wars into background noise, his overhead projector humming loudly while faded maps illuminated the whiteboard in jaundiced light.
Seonghyeon sat near the windows.
Outside, the parking lot shimmered beneath endless rain. Water pooled in fractured asphalt while leafless trees bent subtly against wind that looked colder than it probably was. Students crossing between buildings kept their heads ducked low inside jackets, moving quickly like prey animals.
His notebook remained mostly empty except for fragmented phrases written absentmindedly near the margins.
’’everything rots eventually — am i up next?’’
’’paper mills have lungs with its black goo oozing, i wonder if we’ll all die by lung cancer by second hand smoking’’
with variations of fonts, all reading ‘’ Ahn Keonho’’
He stared at the last one too long before scribbling over it aggressively.
“Mr. EOM.”
Seonghyeon blinked upward.
Mr. B stood beside the projector with one eyebrow raised. “Would you care to explain the economic consequences of postwar industrialization, or are you communicating spiritually with the wall?”
Scattered laughter moved through the classroom.
Seonghyeon straightened slightly. “Uh.”
“Captivating analysis.”
More laughter.
Normally embarrassment rolled off him easily enough — humor serving as insulation — but today everything felt too close to the skin. His thoughts moved sluggishly beneath the weight of anticipation. Final bell loomed hours away already, carrying home with it like a threat folded neatly inside paper.
His teacher sighed eventually and continued lecturing.
Seonghyeon tuned him out almost immediately.
The classroom smelled faintly of pencil shavings and pennies. Somewhere behind him somebody tapped their foot uncontrollably against a desk leg. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with enough persistence to become hypnotic after awhile.
He wondered what Keonho was doing, wondered whether he listened in class or simply endured it — as seonghyeon found easiest.
Whether he was sleeping with his head against folded arms right now, dark hair falling over bruised eyes while teachers pretended not to notice because exhausted boys frightened adults less than angry ones did.
The thought settled warmly and strangely inside his chest. Humiliating.
By lunch the entire school seemed infected with restlessness.
Rain trapped everyone indoors, swelling hallways beyond capacity while cafeteria workers shouted themselves hoarse over the noise. The lunchroom carried its usual scent of fryer grease, bleach, ketchup, and something vaguely sour beneath it all — old milk maybe, or hundreds of teenagers existing too closely together for too many years.
Seonghyeon sat with Juhoon and Martin near the back wall beneath a flickering vending machine.
Martin was midway through describing an argument between two chemistry teachers with dramatic hand gestures while Juhoon picked apart cafeteria fries with visible distrust.
“I’m serious,” Martin insisted. “Ms. Smith is sleeping with Mr. Diamond.”
Juhoon snorted. “Honestly?.”
“Probably.”
Seonghyeon listened only partially.
His gaze kept drifting unconsciously toward the opposite side of the cafeteria where Keonho sat alone near the windows, one earbud in, hood pulled low despite being indoors.
He picked at food more than actually eating it.
Every once in awhile somebody approached his table — usually athletes attempting performative friendliness for reasons Seonghyeon never fully understood — but conversations never lasted long. Keonho answered minimally. People eventually retreated.
Isolation followed him naturally, more than anyone, Seonghyeon knew it was not because he demanded it, but purely because everyone else did.
“You’re staring again,” Juhoon muttered suddenly.
Seonghyeon nearly inhaled his water, releasing him to a guttural coughing fit — a short but fitting death on his part.
“What?”
Juhoon lifted one fry accusingly. “You keep doing that weird tragic yearning thing.”
“I literally do not.”
Martin glanced between them immediately, delighted. “Oh my god, are we talking about Keonho?”
“No,” Seonghyeon said far too quickly.
“Dude,” Martin grinned. “You look at him like Victorian kids look at moldy bread — drooling..”
Juhoon barked out laughter loud enough to earn several irritated glances.
Seonghyeon wanted the floor to collapse beneath him instantly — his face plastered in permanent red.
“You both need hobbies.”
“We have hobbies,” Juhoon informed him, sticking out his tongue. “It just seems yours is not occupying you enough.”
Martin nodded solemnly, continuing to munch down on the lunch he called disgusting a second ago. “Mine is witnessing whatever this appears to be.”
Before Seonghyeon could threaten violence properly, movement across the cafeteria caught his attention again.
Keonho stood.
Even from here he looked tired and caved in that specific quiet way Seonghyeon had begun associating entirely with him — shoulders slightly rounded inward, expression distant beneath fluorescent light that washed everybody pale and ghostlike.
Their eyes met briefly across the room.
Keonho pausing each time to capture Seonghyeons to its fullest.
Then, almost imperceptibly, tipped his chin once toward the cafeteria doors.
A non-verbal language only they understood: You alive?
Seonghyeon exhaled slowly through his nose and mirrored the gesture: Barely.
Something softened momentarily around Keonho’s mouth before he disappeared into the hallway.
Martin stared after him dramatically.
“Oh, you both are sickening.”
The afternoon dragged itself forward afterward with cruel slowness.
Chemistry passed in a haze of equations Seonghyeon barely copied correctly. English involved group discussion he contributed almost nothing toward. By his last period the entire building felt overheated despite the weather outside, radiators blasting uneven warmth that left classrooms smelling faintly metallic, stale, and dewy.
The clock became unbearable.
Every minute closer to home lodged itself heavier beneath his ribs.
His father would be awake by now probably.
Maybe apologetic — no, never.
Maybe worse— belligerent and waiting.
Sometimes remorse made him crueler somehow — softer voice, sadder eyes, more dangerous because hope briefly returned alongside it.
Seonghyeon rested his head against the desk during independent reading while rain battered the classroom windows hard enough to sound almost oceanic.
He imagined simply continuing forward after school instead of going home.
Walking until the town dissolved behind him entirely.
The final bell rang at 2:17.
Instantly the building convulsed into motion.
Students surged into hallways carrying conversations and exhaustion and relief with them in loud uneven currents. Lockers slammed shut one after another while teachers called reminders about homework no one intended to complete.
Seonghyeon moved slowly through the crowd.
Outside the sky had darkened prematurely beneath thick storm clouds. Rain still fell, though lighter now — reduced to cold mist drifting through parking lot floodlights beginning to flicker awake against the early evening gloom.
He found himself lingering near the front steps without consciously deciding to.
Students disappeared gradually.
Engines started.
Bus doors hissed open.
Somewhere nearby somebody blasted music loud enough for bass to vibrate faintly through wet pavement.
“You heading home?”
Seonghyeon turned.
Keonho stood a few feet away beneath the awning, backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder. His hoodie sleeves were shoved up slightly today, exposing bruises blooming yellow-purple along one forearm before he tugged them back down again instinctively after noticing Seonghyeon looking.
“Eventually,” Seonghyeon answered, sighing in a way he cut short — trying to faux indifference.
The word tasted heavy, though an instinctive response he grew privy to as many of his nights were spent the same.
Keonho studied him quietly for several seconds, as if searching for the honest answer. Rain whispered steadily around them while students hurried past toward buses trailing muddy footprints across concrete.
Then:
“You wanna disappear for awhile first?”
Seonghyeon blinked.
“What?”
Keonho shifted his weight slightly. “Just for a couple hours.”
His voice remained casual, but there was something careful underneath it too. Tentative in ways Keonho rarely allowed himself to be.
“We could go down by the tracks or something.”
The tracks.
Seonghyeon hadn’t been there in months.
Old freight rails cut behind the edge of town near the river where abandoned train cars rusted slowly beside overgrown brush. Teenagers drank there sometimes. Smoked. Kissed. Complained. Broke things.
Mostly people went there to feel temporarily absent from the rest of Briarwood.
The idea settled into him immediately with startling relief.
A reprieve.
A delay.
Breathing room.
“Okay,” he heard himself say, imagining Juhoons betrayed face — a face he made quite often nowadays.
Something unreadable crossed Keonho’s face then vanished quickly beneath his usual composure. He softly smiled, but quickly reverted to his natural face — eyeing Seonghyeon to see if he was caught.
“Cool.”
With that, they immediately started walking with Keonho just a beat ahead — stringing Seonghyeon along.
The town looked different after school — quieter somehow despite traffic, like exhaustion had settled fully over everything by late afternoon. Storefronts glowed weakly against gathering dusk while puddles reflected fractured neon signs in trembling colors. Wind dragged damp leaves across sidewalks in scraping clusters.
Neither of them spoke much at first.
Their shoulders brushed occasionally beneath shared silence — neither moved, neither strayed.
Seonghyeon became painfully aware of every accidental point of contact.
The route toward the tracks cut behind downtown where older buildings leaned subtly toward one another with age and neglect. The abandoned theater emerged gradually through fog ahead of them, its broken marquee hanging crooked above shattered ticket windows.
JOOY-RIDE THEATER
Only half the letters still remained, their previous tenure staining even through absence.
Rainwater dripped steadily through holes in the rusted awning.
Seonghyeon slowed instinctively.
Even ruined, the building carried something beautiful about it. Old detailing curled stubbornly around the roofline beneath years of grime while massive faded posters remained trapped behind cracked glass cases near the entrance — movies from decades ago staring outward toward a town that had forgotten them.
Keonho noticed him looking.
“You love this place.”
“Not love,” Seonghyeon murmured. “Maybe mourn.”
Keonho glanced toward the theater again.
“Same thing sometimes.”
The tracks waited farther ahead beyond a line of skeletal trees.
Wet gravel crunched beneath their shoes as they climbed the small embankment beside rusted rails stretching endlessly into fog. The metal gleamed dark silver beneath weak evening light while weeds pushed stubbornly upward between rotting wooden ties.
Everything smelled like rain and cold dirt and distant industrial smoke.
For awhile they simply walked.
Parallel to one another.
And like before, their hands brushed accidentally at their sides before retreating again.
The town looked smaller from here somehow.
Paper mill smokestacks rose faintly against the horizon while church steeples and water towers punctured low clouds in uneven silhouettes. Freight cars sat abandoned farther down the line covered in graffiti and rust, their windows smashed inward years ago.
Seonghyeon shoved his hands deeper into his sleeves.
“My dad’s probably awake now,” he admitted suddenly, the thought threatening an instant aching headache.
Keonho stayed quiet.
The tracks hummed faintly beneath wind.
“He’ll either pretend nothing happened,” Seonghyeon continued, eyes fixed ahead, “or apologize in that weird self-pitying way where somehow I end up comforting him instead.”
His laugh came out thin.
“Sometimes I think he hates me for surviving it instead of her.”
Keonho stopped walking.
So abruptly Seonghyeon nearly continued past him.
When he turned back, Keonho looked stricken in a way Seonghyeon had never seen before — not shocked exactly, but wounded on his behalf. His jaw tightened once.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“No,” Keonho said quietly. “It isn’t.”
The certainty in his voice startled him.
Wind moved through dead grass around the tracks with a sound like distant waves.
Seonghyeon looked away first.
“My bad,” he muttered automatically.
Keonho frowned immediately. “Why are you apologizing?”.
Seonghyeon shrugged — he hadn’t known either and felt unpacking it wasn’t in his interest today.
Keonho felt it—the two boys resumed walking slower than before, as if to savor their moments before dark.
Dusk deepened gradually around them, clouds lowering until the entire sky looked bruised. Somewhere far away a train horn echoed mournfully through fog, long and hollow enough to make Seonghyeon’s chest ache unexpectedly.
Beside him, Keonho shoved his cold-reddened hands deeper into hoodie sleeves.
“I guess it’s my turn to ask you this — do ever think about leaving?” Seonghyeon asked quietly, tired eyes searching for Keonhos.
“All the time.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Keonho smiled without humor.
“With what money?”
The answer lingered between them alongside countless others neither voiced aloud — things left unsaid: With what future.With what guidance. With what belief. With what father to steer me away from my inheritance — a beer belly and a throat gone hoarse with screaming.
The tracks curved eventually toward the river where the old theater loomed again nearby through drifting mist, larger from this angle and somehow sadder. One side entrance hung partially open behind collapsed fencing.
“Wanna go inside?”
Seonghyeon looked toward Keonho sharply. “Seriously?”
“You said it deserves mourning.”
Rain tapped softly against metal rails around them.
Then Keonho added, quieter, “I think you’d look happy in there.”
Something painful and warm unfolded slowly inside Seonghyeon’s chest.
They crossed carefully through broken fencing toward the side entrance.
The theater smelled like wet dust and rotting wood.
Darkness swallowed them almost immediately after stepping inside, interrupted only by pale evening light filtering weakly through holes in the ceiling and boarded windows. Their footsteps echoed softly across ruined tile floors littered with plaster fragments and damp leaves blown inside over years of neglect.
Seonghyeon stopped breathing for a second.
Even abandoned, the lobby remained beautiful.
Faded crimson carpet stretched toward sweeping staircases lined with tarnished brass railings. Massive chandeliers hung overhead coated in dust and cobwebs, their crystals dull but still catching fragments of dying light. Peeling wallpaper curled from walls in elegant patterns while old movie posters remained half-visible beneath water damage.
It looked like decay trying desperately to remember glamour.
“Oh,” Seonghyeon whispered.
Keonho watched him instead of the theater.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
His voice sounded reverent.
Wandering slowly through the lobby, everything began to creak softly around them. Rainwater dripped somewhere distant inside the building while wind threaded through broken upper windows carrying cold October air along dark hallways.
Seonghyeon brushed his fingertips lightly against a ruined velvet curtain near the old concession stand.
“I used to come here with my mom,” he admitted after awhile.
The confession slipped out easier here somehow.
Keonho stayed beside him quietly.
“She loved old movies,” Seonghyeon continued. “Like embarrassingly loved them. Black-and-white films, shitty romances, all that. I spent so many hours pretending enjoyment — smile line came before I reached 5. ”
He smiled faintly despite himself.
“She used to cry over literally everything.”
“What kind?”
“Happy endings—a good underdog story, something that made our daily bleak seem temporary.”
The answer lodged itself heavily in the dark.
Keonho looked down briefly.
“I think I would’ve liked her.”
Seonghyeon swallowed hard unexpectedly.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I think she would’ve liked you too.”
Silence followed, a mutual laugh came from their belly’s — as if the thought of spending a night where Charlie Chaplin movies illuminated on their faces with a slightly deranged women was plastered in both their minds.
Though sooner or later, they found the auditorium eventually through heavy double doors swollen from years of water damage.
Rows upon rows of collapsed red seats stretched downward toward a massive torn screen. Dust drifted visibly through weak projector-light beams filtering from holes high above the balcony while the stage curtains hung shredded and motionless in the dark.
It felt almost holy somehow.
Like entering the skeleton of something once beloved.
Seonghyeon moved slowly down the aisle between ruined seats.
The theater breathed around them with settling wood and distant rain.
Keonho followed a few steps behind.
“You really see people as buildings,” he said quietly after awhile.
Seonghyeon glanced back.
“What?”
“You talk about broken things like they’re still worth loving.”
The words hit harder than intended.
Especially because Keonho wasn’t really talking about buildings anymore.
Seonghyeon stopped near the front rows.
Keonho halted beside him close enough now that Seonghyeon could feel warmth radiating faintly through damp fabric despite the cold.
Neither spoke.
Rain whispered softly overhead through the damaged roof.
Somewhere distant, thunder rolled low across the town.
Seonghyeon became acutely aware of everything at once.
Keonho’s breathing revealed the bruising beneath his jaw.
The careful stillness he carried around people, as though affection itself might startle them away if handled wrong.
“You scare me sometimes,” Seonghyeon admitted before thinking.
Keonho looked stricken, a small furrow in his brow making way. “Oh.”
“No—not like that.”
Heat rushed instantly to Seonghyeon’s face.
“You…” He struggled briefly. “You notice too much.”
Keonho stared at him quietly.
“So do you,’’ carrying no bite.
The distance between them suddenly felt devastatingly small.
Seonghyeon could see rainwater still caught in strands of Keonho’s dark hair, see the faint scar near his chin he’d never asked about, and see exhaustion layered beneath every restricted expression.
Yet undressed laid something terrifyingly in awe.
Keonho looked away first this time.
His voice came quieter when he spoke again.
“I think about you constantly.”
The confession settled into the ruined theater like another form of weather.
Seonghyeon forgot briefly how breathing worked.
Keonho exhaled sharply afterward, almost frustrated with himself.
“Sorry. Fuck.”
“No—”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” Seonghyeon repeated softly.
Keonho went still.
Outside, rain intensified again against the roof.
“I think about you too.”
The honesty frightened him immediately after saying it aloud.
Keonho looked back toward him slowly.
Something unbearably vulnerable crossed his face then — gone almost instantly, but real enough that Seonghyeon felt his chest ache around it.
Neither moved.
The theater seemed to hold its breath with them, only the crashing wind on its exterior being heard.
Then, very carefully, like approaching something wounded, Keonho stepped closer, enough Seonghyeon could feel warmth radiating from him entirely.
His voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Can I kiss you?”
Keonhos voice grew dry at the end of the question — wincing as if to lessen the impact of rejection and sudden realization.
However — an exhale later, Seonghyeon nodded before fear could intervene, Keonho clothed an awkward pause.
One hand lifted hesitantly toward Seonghyeon’s face before stopping midway, giving him every opportunity to pull away. His fingers looked rough from cold weather and recent fights, knuckles scarred and split beneath fading bruises.
When Seonghyeon leaned into the touch first, something in Keonho’s expression nearly broke.
The kiss itself happened gently, painfully slow.
Keonho kissed him like he was afraid of damaging him — one hand resting hesitant against Seonghyeon’s jaw while the other remained curled tightly inside his hoodie pocket as though restraining himself from reaching further.
Seonghyeon shivered slightly — Keonho was incredibly warm despite the cold.
Seonghyeon felt the exact moment Keonho realized he was being kissed back, a tiny startled inhale and twitching grin.
Clumsily after what felt like an eternity of muffled smooches, Keonho pulled away, his hands rubbing Seonghyeon's neck in reassurance, eyes dilated and blown and with lips that glistened in the dark.
With each synchronized breath and peck, the thunder rolled yet again through the dying town — however, this time, Seonghyeon barely noticed its presence and aching call for attention.
Inside the abandoned theater, beneath dust and rain and years of ruin, Keonho kissed him with such unbearable tenderness that Seonghyeon suddenly understood how dangerous hope could become once given a face, with whispered reassurances.