Chapter Text
The first thing Joshua noticed about Korea was the cold.
Not the kind that bit through skin and settled deep into bones—the kind he had known in Los Angeles winters, sharp and demanding. This was different. This cold existed quietly in the spaces between people, in the pauses between words, in the way strangers passed each other on the street without the casual warmth he had grown up believing was ordinary.
Back in Los Angeles, the world had been loud with friendliness. Cashiers asked about your day as though they had known you forever, their smiles easy as sunlight. Neighbors waved from across streets lined with palm trees that swayed like lazy dancers, their fronds brushing against sun-bleached fences. People occupied space the way waves occupied the shore—confidently, noisily, beautifully unapologetic.
Here, everything felt softer. Quieter. As though the city had been dipped in honey and left to settle.
Especially the mornings.
The bus stop near Joshua's apartment stood at the edge of a narrow street where bare ginkgo trees raised their branches like old prayers. In winter, those branches fractured the pale sky into ink-black calligraphy strokes—the kind painted by monks who had learned that emptiness could be its own kind of beauty. Small cafés opened before sunrise, their windows glowing amber against the retreating darkness, each one a tiny lantern keeping vigil. The scent of coffee drifted through the cold air like a secret, mingling with the warm, buttery breath of freshly baked bread from the bakery on the corner—the one with the blue awning and the elderly owner who hummed while she kneaded dough.
Joshua always arrived early.
Not because he liked waiting. He had never been a patient person, not really. In Los Angeles, he had been the kind of boy who peeled oranges in one long spiral just to see if he could finish before the light changed.
But being late terrified him.
Being new terrified him.
Being noticed terrified him more than anything else in the world.
So every morning, without fail, he left his apartment twenty minutes ahead of schedule. He walked the same path—past the convenience store where the cashier never looked up from his phone, past the small clinic with the wilted plant in the window, past the house where an elderly woman always watered her chrysanthemums at exactly 6:30. He stopped beneath the bus stop sign, adjusted his backpack so it hung neatly over both shoulders, and he waited.
And every morning, he watched people pass.
Office workers in charcoal suits, their strides clipped and purposeful, already living in the meetings that awaited them. University students with drowsy eyes and coffee cups clutched like lifelines, their conversations a soft murmur of things Joshua could almost understand but never quite caught. Mothers walking children to kindergarten, small hands swallowed by mittens, backpacks with cartoon characters bouncing with every step. Old men carrying newspapers folded into perfect rectangles, their faces maps of a city Joshua had not yet learned to read.
Faces he never spoke to.
Lives he knew nothing about.
The city moved around him while he remained perfectly still.
Like a visitor pressing his palms against aquarium glass.
Like someone watching the world from the wrong side of a window.
It had been three months since his family moved back to Korea.
Three months since his mother had unpacked the last box of spices in their new kitchen, shaking her head at the unfamiliar labels. Three months since his father had kissed them both goodbye and boarded a plane back to Los Angeles for "just a few more months, I promise"—a promise that had already stretched thin as old rubber bands. Three months since Joshua had transferred schools, had sat in a classroom where every voice sounded like a language he was still learning to dream in.
Three months since he became the quiet American kid everyone talked about but nobody really knew.
Joshua didn't mind.
At least, that's what he told himself every night before falling asleep, the ceiling of his unfamiliar room spinning slowly above him.
Solitude was easier. Safer. When people expected nothing from him, he couldn't disappoint them. Couldn't say the wrong thing in the wrong grammar. Couldn't laugh at the wrong moment or fail to understand a joke that wasn't meant for someone like him anyway.
The bus stop became his favorite place.
No expectations existed there. No classmates asking questions he didn't know how to answer. No teachers calling on him, their voices kind but their eyes impatient. No awkward introductions that required him to explain where he had come from and why he had left and whether he planned to stay.
Just the cold morning air against his cheeks. Just the steady rhythm of buses arriving and departing, their doors sighing open like old friends. Just the slow unfurling of dawn across a city that asked nothing from him except his quiet presence.
A place where he could simply exist.
Without performing.
Without pretending.
Without shrinking himself into something small enough to fit.
Then one morning, everything changed.
It happened on a Tuesday.
Late February, when the world still believed in winter even though spring had already begun whispering its promises underground. The sky was still dark when Joshua arrived, that particular shade of deep blue that exists only in the hour before true morning—the color of water just before it boils.
A thin layer of frost had painted the pavement overnight, each crystal a tiny constellation. His breath appeared in little white clouds that vanished almost as soon as they formed, like messages sent to no one. He pulled his scarf higher over his nose—the gray one his mother had knitted two winters ago, slightly uneven at the edges but warm as a hug—and checked his phone.
6:47 AM.
Too early.
The bus wouldn't arrive for another ten minutes.
Joshua sighed softly, the sound barely audible even to himself. He adjusted his backpack. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Watched a stray cat stretch lazily on the opposite sidewalk, its fur the color of chimney smoke.
Then he saw him.
At first, it was only movement—a suggestion of shape at the far end of the street. A figure approaching through the half-dark, footsteps soft against frost. Tall. Lean. Wearing a black school uniform coat that seemed to drink the remaining shadows.
Joshua paid little attention.
People passed here all the time. Strangers with their own destinations, their own worries, their own quiet mornings. He had learned not to look too closely. Not to wonder too much. Wondering led to wanting, and wanting led to loss, and loss—
The figure stepped beneath the street lamp.
And suddenly—
The world seemed to slow.
Not like a movie, not like a photograph. Like the moment before thunder when the air itself holds its breath. Like the second between a question and an answer, when anything is still possible.
The boy couldn't have been much older than him. A year, maybe two or maybe same age. His dark hair moved slightly in the wind—not the stiff, styled movement of someone who had spent thirty minutes in front of a mirror, but the natural, unguarded way of someone who had simply woken up and walked outside, still half-caught in whatever dream had held him through the night. His hands were tucked deep into his coat pockets, seeking warmth. And around his neck—
A camera hung.
Not a phone. Not one of those sleek, modern things that could do everything and nothing. An actual camera. The kind Joshua had only seen in photography magazines, the kind with lenses that caught light like water in cupped palms. Silver and black. Worn from use, the way beloved things become worn—not broken, but lived in. The leather strap had softened at the edges. The metal bore small scratches that caught the street lamp's glow like tiny stars.
The boy looked sleepy.
Not in an unattractive way. Not in the way that made you want to look away. More like someone pulled from a dream too early, still carrying fragments of wherever he had been. His eyes were half-lidded, thick-lashed, holding secrets Joshua could not begin to guess. His expression was calm. Unhurried. As though the entire city—the buses, the traffic, the growing crowd of students checking their watches—operated at his pace.
He stopped beside the bus stop sign.
Close enough for Joshua to notice details.
The graceful curve of his nose, like something drawn by an artist who had learned anatomy from statues. The soft shape of his mouth, neither smiling nor frowning, simply existing in a way that made Joshua's own mouth feel suddenly unfamiliar. The tiny beauty mark near his cheekbone, a perfect dark dot as deliberate as a punctuation mark.
And then—
The boy looked up.
Their eyes met.
For one brief second.
One impossibly short moment that somehow contained entire universes.
Joshua forgot how to breathe.
The world vanished.
The cars. The cold. The distant sound of a convenience store door beeping somewhere behind them. The frost melting on his eyelashes. Everything disappeared, wiped clean like a chalkboard after a difficult equation, leaving behind only those eyes.
Dark.
Quiet.
Beautiful in a way that hurt.
The kind of beautiful that arrives without warning and lodges itself somewhere behind your ribs before you can build defenses.
Then Joshua immediately looked away.
His heart slammed against his ribs—hard, fast, violent, like a bird that had forgotten it knew how to fly. His hands, tucked into his own pockets, curled into fists so tight his fingernails bit into his palms. His face felt hot despite the cold, despite the frost on the pavement, despite the winter air that still carried the memory of snow.
'What was that?'
'What had just happened?'
He stared determinedly at the pavement. At a crack in the concrete that branched like a river delta. At a small pebble that had probably been there for years without anyone noticing. At literally *anything* except the boy standing a few feet away, the boy who was now glancing at his phone, the boy who had probably already forgotten Joshua existed.
His ears felt warm. His hands felt strange, as though they belonged to someone else. His chest felt impossibly tight, like something had taken up residence there without asking permission.
The sensation was unfamiliar.
And yet somehow, in some deep, instinctive way that bypassed logic entirely—
He understood it immediately.
Because there are moments in life that arrive without warning. Moments that don't knock, don't announce themselves, don't ask permission before changing everything. They slip through the cracks of ordinary days, quiet as thieves, and by the time you notice them, they have already rearranged your entire interior landscape.
Joshua didn't know the boy's name.
Didn't know his age, his grade, his favorite color, the sound of his laugh, whether he preferred tea or coffee in the morning. Didn't know what kind of music played through his headphones, what books he kept on his nightstand, what he dreamed about in the hours before dawn. Didn't know where he lived, where he was going, why he carried that camera everywhere like a talisman.
Didn't know anything about him.
Yet standing beneath that pale winter sky, with frost glittering on the pavement like scattered diamonds and buses roaring past in the distance and the first birds beginning their tentative morning songs—
Joshua fell in love.
Completely.
Hopelessly.
Instantly.
His first love.
And he didn't even know it yet.
The bus arrived three minutes later.
Its headlights carved through the remaining darkness, illuminating the frost on the road, the tired faces of waiting passengers, the way the boy's hair caught the light for just a moment before he turned away.
The boy stepped aboard first.
Joshua followed several passengers behind, careful to keep distance between them—not because he wanted to, but because he was afraid of what might happen if he got too close. Afraid his heart might beat loud enough for the whole bus to hear. Afraid he might say something without meaning to, some clumsy greeting in his still-learning Korean that would reveal everything.
He chose a seat near the back. Far from the windows. Far from attention. A seat where he could press his forehead against the cool glass and pretend to be anywhere else.
The boy sat near the window.
Three rows ahead.
Slightly to the left.
Joshua spent the entire ride pretending not to look at him.
It was surprisingly difficult. Every few seconds, his gaze drifted forward like a compass finding north. Just a glance. Just one. Then another. Then another, until he had lost count completely and stopped pretending he had any control over his own eyes.
The boy spent most of the journey looking outside. His profile was soft against the gray morning light, features relaxed in a way that suggested deep comfort with silence. Occasionally, he lifted his camera—those graceful fingers wrapping around the worn leather—and took photographs through the glass.
*Click.*
The sound was soft. Almost intimate. Like a heartbeat recorded and played back.
*Click.*
*Click.*
Joshua found himself wondering what he was photographing.
The sunrise, bleeding gold and rose across the horizon? The buildings they passed, gray and ordinary and somehow transformed through that lens? The people waiting at intersections, their faces full of stories no one would ever read?
'Did ordinary things look different through his eyes?'
'Did he see beauty everywhere, the way some people saw dust motes floating in sunlight?
'Did he ever photograph people?'
'Will he ever photograph him ?'
The thought lingered, warm and terrible, long after the bus reached the school district. Long after they both stepped off, their breaths mingling with the morning air for just a moment before separating. Long after the boy disappeared through the school gates, his camera swinging gently against his chest, his footsteps unhurried.
Joshua watched him go.
Then entered school himself.
The rest of the day passed in a blur.
Math, where numbers refused to arrange themselves correctly. History, where dates slid through his memory like water through fingers. English, ironic and strange, where he was suddenly the best in the class but felt like the worst. Lunch, where he sat alone in the corner of the cafeteria and pushed rice around his bowl without eating.
None of it stayed in his mind.
Because every time he closed his eyes—even for a blink, even for a breath—he saw that face.
That smile-less expression.
Those dark eyes that held something Joshua couldn't name.
That camera, silver and black, worn from use and beloved.
By evening, Joshua convinced himself it was nothing.
Just admiration. A random crush, the kind that bloomed quickly and faded faster. Something temporary, like spring rain or morning fog. The kind that disappeared after a few days, leaving behind only the faintest memory of something that had never really been there at all.
He believed that.
He lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling of his unfamiliar room, and he believed it.
Until the next morning.
When he arrived at the bus stop and found himself looking for him.
Searching for him.
Automatically. Without thinking. Without meaning to. The way his eyes had once searched for the moon after his father had pointed it out to him as a child—not because he needed to see it, but because something in him simply wanted to know it was there.
And when he finally saw him walking down the street, still half-asleep, still beautiful, still carrying that camera like a promise—
Joshua's heart reacted before his brain could.
There he is.
The realization arrived instantly, warm and immediate, like stepping into sunlight after weeks of rain. As though seeing him had completed something missing, had solved an equation Joshua hadn't even known he was trying to solve.
The older boy reached the bus stop.
Stood beside him.
Neither spoke.
The silence stretched naturally between them—not uncomfortable, not awkward, simply *there*, like the space between two trees growing side by side. Joshua could smell something faint and clean, like soap and cold air and something else he couldn't identify. Something that was simply him.
The bus arrived.
They boarded.
The same routine. The same distance. The same stolen glances that Joshua told himself the other boy never noticed.
And then the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
Without realizing it, Joshua began organizing his entire morning around someone who didn't even know his name.
He woke earlier than necessary. Left his apartment earlier than necessary. Walked slightly slower than necessary, just in case the boy might be running late. He learned the rhythm of those footsteps. Learned the way the camera strap shifted when its owner turned his head. Learned the small sounds—the soft exhale, the occasional hum, the quiet *click click click* of photographs being taken.
He learned everything he could learn from a distance.
And told himself it was enough.
His name, Joshua learned three weeks later.
Not from the boy himself. Not from the whispered conversations Joshua sometimes overheard at the bus stop, girls speaking in voices pitched low and urgent. Not from any of the normal channels through which such information traveled.
From a soccer game.
The spring semester had begun, bringing with it longer days and warmer winds and cherry blossom buds that had not yet opened but would, soon, any day now. The weather softened around the edges, losing winter's sharpness. Students gathered around the athletic field after classes, their laughter carrying across the schoolyard like birdsong.
Joshua rarely attended school events.
Crowds exhausted him in ways he couldn't explain—the noise, the proximity, the constant awareness of being watched, even when no one was watching at all. He preferred the library, the empty classroom, the quiet corner of the courtyard where no one ever went.
But one afternoon, walking past the main hallway on his way to nowhere in particular, he heard a group of girls talking excitedly near the notice board. Their voices were bright with anticipation, the way voices become when something wonderful is about to happen.
"Jeonghan's playing today."
"Really? I thought he was still injured."
"He missed the last match, but he's back. Definitely. Minsoo told me."
"Then we have to watch."
Joshua paused.
Something about the name felt familiar, though he couldn't place why. It lingered in the air like the last note of a song, like the faint memory of a dream you can't quite remember but can't quite forget.
Jeonghan.
Curiosity won.
For once, Joshua followed the crowd.
The field buzzed with energy.
Spring sunlight spilled across the grass like honey, warm and golden, catching on the white lines painted into the green. Students lined the fences three and four deep, their faces bright with excitement. Teachers stood nearby, clipboards in hand, pretending not to care as much as they clearly did. The atmosphere felt almost festive—the way the world feels on the last day of school, or the first day of vacation, or any day when something important is about to happen.
Joshua found a quiet place near the back.
A spot where he could see without being seen.
Where he could watch without being watched.
Then he saw him.
His breath caught.
The bus stop boy.
Running across the field.
The same dark hair, now slightly longer, falling across his forehead in a way that made Joshua's fingers ache with wanting to push it back. The same eyes, though now they were alive in a way Joshua had never seen before—bright with focus, sharp with intention, seeing everything at once. The same calm expression, though now it was the calm of a predator, not the calm of someone half-asleep.
Only now he wore a soccer uniform—white jersey, black shorts, cleats that dug into the grass like anchors—and somehow looked entirely different.
Brilliant.
The afternoon sunlight seemed to follow him. Or perhaps it only seemed that way because Joshua couldn't look away. Perhaps the sun had simply decided, for these ninety minutes, to pour all its light onto one person.
He moved effortlessly.
Gracefully.
The way water moves downhill—not trying, not forcing, simply flowing along the path of least resistance. He passed the ball with the casual precision of someone who had been born with it attached to his foot. He ran like running was dreaming, like his body had forgotten it was made of bones and muscle and was instead made of wind and intention.
The crowd erupted when he scored.
Students shouted his name, a chorus of voices rising into the spring air like smoke from a fire.
"JEONGHAN!"
Joshua felt something strange settle inside him.
Something warm and permanent.
Something that felt like finding a word for a feeling you hadn't known had a name.
Jeonghan.
So that's your name.
He repeated it silently. Let it rest on his tongue like a piece of candy, sweet and slow-dissolving. Let it echo through his mind until it became as familiar as his own heartbeat.
Jeonghan.
The syllables felt beautiful. Like discovering the title of a song you've been humming your whole life without knowing why. Like learning the name of a star you've been wishing on.
After that day, the name stayed with him.
Tucked carefully inside his heart like a pressed flower between the pages of a book.
A secret.
One nobody knew.
One he would keep forever, if forever were required.
Spring arrived slowly, the way all beautiful things arrive—unhurried, deliberate, each day bringing something new.
Cherry blossoms opened their pale pink petals to the world, transforming ordinary streets into tunnels of ethereal beauty. The mornings grew brighter, the sun rising earlier each day as though impatient for its own return. The bus stop changed too—the bare branches of the ginkgo trees filled with leaves the color of new money, and flower petals occasionally drifted across the sidewalks like confetti from a wedding no one had been invited to.
Joshua noticed everything.
Because Jeonghan noticed everything.
At least, that was how it seemed.
Every morning, the camera appeared—sometimes the silver one, sometimes a different one, older and more worn, as though he collected them the way other people collected memories. Every morning, photographs were taken. Clouds arranged in impossible patterns. Buildings that caught the light just so. Birds perched on telephone wires like notes on sheet music. The sunrise bleeding through the city's silhouette. A stray cat washing its face on a warm doorstep. Rain on glass, transforming the world into something soft and blurred and beautiful.
Nothing escaped his attention.
Joshua found himself paying attention too.
Looking longer at things he had previously ignored. Observing more carefully the way shadows fell across pavement, the way steam rose from manhole covers on cold mornings, the way elderly couples walked with their shoulders touching. Wondering what beauty Jeonghan might see in ordinary things—and whether, if Joshua looked hard enough, he might learn to see it too.
The world felt different now.
Softer. Brighter. More alive.
As though someone had adjusted the focus on a camera lens, bringing everything into clearer definition.
One morning, while waiting for the bus, Joshua noticed a cluster of cherry blossoms hanging above the road.
They were perfect.
Each petal translucent in the early light, veins visible like tiny rivers on a map. The pale pink seemed almost impossible against the blue sky—too delicate, too fragile, too beautiful to exist in the same world as traffic and alarm clocks and the ordinary disappointments of daily life.
He stared at them absentmindedly.
Lost in something that felt almost like prayer.
*A camera shutter clicked.*
Joshua glanced sideways.
Jeonghan stood nearby, camera raised to his eye. Photographing the flowers.
For a brief moment—a fraction of a second—Joshua smiled.
Small. Unconscious. The kind of smile that happens without permission, the kind that reveals everything you're trying to hide.
*The shutter clicked again.*
Joshua immediately looked away.
Heat rushing to his face like a fever. His heart performing gymnastics behind his ribs. His hands suddenly clammy inside his pockets.
'Had Jeonghan noticed him?'
'Had he photographed him?'
No. Probably not. Hopefully not. The boy was photographing flowers, not people. Joshua was simply standing nearby. A coincidence. An accident. Nothing more.
The bus arrived.
Saving him from further embarrassment.
But the warmth stayed on his cheeks for the entire ride.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
The cherry blossoms fell and were replaced by green leaves. The green leaves grew darker as summer approached. The mornings grew warmer, and Joshua stopped wearing his scarf, though he still carried it sometimes, just in case.
And still they never spoke.
Not once.
Not even a greeting.
Not even a simple 'hello' or 'good morning or 'I see you every day and I think you're beautiful but I don't know how to say it'.
Yet somehow Jeonghan became woven into the fabric of Joshua's daily life. A constant presence. A familiar rhythm. The heartbeat beneath the surface of every ordinary morning.
Joshua knew which days he carried different cameras—the silver one on Mondays and Thursdays, the older black one on Tuesdays and Fridays, sometimes a small Polaroid on weekends when they happened to see each other. Knew he preferred window seats, always the left side, always facing forward. Knew he sometimes listened to music on rainy mornings, white earbuds trailing down beneath his collar, his head nodding almost imperceptibly to rhythms Joshua would never hear. Knew he bought coffee from the café near the station every Friday—always Americano, always black, always served by the same barista who smiled at him like she knew something Joshua didn't.
Tiny details.
Meaningless details.
Treasures nonetheless.
The kind collected by someone hopelessly in love, though Joshua still refused to call it that.
Love sounded too dramatic. Too impossible. How could he love someone he didn't know? Someone who never spoke to him? Someone who probably barely noticed he existed, who probably thought of him as simply 'that quiet kid who stands near the sign?'
And yet—
Every morning he searched for Jeonghan first.
Every morning his mood depended entirely on whether the older boy appeared.
Every morning began with a small, secret hope.
'Will he be there today?'
'Will he look at me today?'
'Will today be the day something changes?'
That had to mean something.
Didn't it?
The first smile happened in April.
A rainy morning. The kind of rain that doesn't fall so much as hover, thick and gray and insistent, turning the world into watercolor. The bus arrived late—ten minutes, then fifteen, then twenty—and students crowded together beneath the shelter, shoulders touching, breath mingling, umbrellas dripping onto shoes.
Joshua stood near the edge.
Watching raindrops bounce off pavement like tiny dancers.
The city seemed wrapped in mist, buildings fading in and out of visibility like memories. The ginkgo trees had become soft green blurs. The café across the street had turned on its lights early, their glow warm against the gray.
A gust of wind suddenly swept through, carrying cold rain sideways.
Several students complained loudly, their voices sharp with irritation.
Joshua's umbrella nearly turned inside out—a violent *whump* of fabric and metal that left him struggling awkwardly, trying to wrestle it back into shape. His backpack slipped. His shoe found a puddle. For one horrible moment, he was all elbows and embarrassment, the center of his own small disaster.
He expected no one to notice.
He hoped no one would notice.
Then he looked up.
Jeonghan was watching him.
Not staring. Simply watching, the way one watches rain fall or clouds move—without agenda, without judgment, simply present.
And—
Smiling.
A tiny smile.
Barely there, the way dawn is barely there before the sun rises. The corners of his mouth lifted just enough to soften his entire face, to transform him from beautiful into something otherworldly. His eyes crinkled slightly at the edges. Something warm and amused and impossibly gentle lived in that smile.
It lasted maybe two seconds.
Three at most.
Then it disappeared, replaced by the familiar calm expression, as though it had never happened at all.
Joshua forgot every word he had ever learned.
Every language. Every grammar rule. Every phrase his mother had taught him, every song lyric he had memorized, every prayer he had ever whispered into the darkness.
His brain emptied completely.
His heart became a disaster.
The bus finally arrived, its brakes hissing like relieved sighs. People boarded in a wet, shuffling line. Joshua sat down in his usual seat—near the back, against the window—and spent the entire ride staring outside without seeing anything.
Unable to process anything except that smile.
Because Jeonghan had smiled.
At him.
Not at someone else. Not in general, at the weather or the rain or some private joke only he understood.
At Joshua.
The memory remained vivid for days. Weeks. Months.
A tiny smile.
A tiny moment.
Yet Joshua carried it like something precious. Something fragile. Something irreplaceable.
His first love had given him a smile.
And somehow, impossibly, that felt like enough.
For now.
Because first love is rarely loud.
It does not arrive with dramatic confessions or grand gestures or orchestral swells. It does not announce itself with fireworks and fanfare and certainty.
Sometimes *often* it begins with something much smaller.
A shared bus stop.
A pair of eyes meeting beneath a street lamp, the way two stars might meet across impossible distances.
A name learned from a soccer field, shouted into spring air by a hundred voices.
A smile lasting only seconds but remembered for a lifetime.
Tiny things.
Insignificant things.
The kind that quietly root themselves inside your heart while you're not paying attention, sending out thin tendrils that wrap around your ribs and settle into the spaces between your lungs.
And before you realize it—
They become everything.
That spring, Joshua still didn't know where the story would lead.
He didn't know whether Jeonghan would ever speak to him. Didn't know whether his feelings would grow stronger over time or eventually fade like morning frost. Didn't know whether this first love would bring him happiness beyond measure or heartbreak beyond imagining.
All he knew was this,
Tomorrow morning, he would wake up early.
He would leave the apartment twenty minutes ahead.
He would walk the same path—past the convenience store, past the clinic, past the elderly woman and her chrysanthemums—and he would stand beneath the bus stop sign.
And somewhere between the first light of sunrise and the arrival of the bus—
He would look for Jeonghan.
Just as he always did.
Just as he would continue to do, every morning, for as long as mornings existed.
Without knowing that this quiet beginning was only the first page of a story neither of them could yet see.
A story that had started with a single glance.
A boy with a camera around his neck.
A boy with a scarf pulled over his nose.
And the strange, terrifying, beautiful thing called first love.