Archive of Our Own

I will search for you all night.
Come to save us, time traveler,
following the stars through the atmosphere.

***
life 1

“Kihyun?”

The blond lifts his head from the notebook he’d been studying. Classes haven’t yet started for the day, and Kihyun is one of the only people in the room. He smiles when he sees Changkyun there at his desk, a surprised smile laced through with confusion, because this isn’t Changkyun’s classroom, and they both know it. Somehow, it makes Changkyun feel bold.

“Ki-Kihyun, I—” Changkyun can’t remember the last time he stuttered, but he thought he kicked the habit for good back in grade school after dozens of lessons with a speech therapist and too many beatdowns from the local bullies. He’s surprised that it’s made an appearance now, and perhaps that should have been an omen. “Kihyun, I like you.”

“Oh.” The face that had showed confusion a moment ago shows regret now, and Changkyun feels his stomach drop down to rest between his worn sneakers. Somehow, even before Kihyun speaks, Changkyun knows where this is headed. “I’m flattered, but I’m not really into guys.”

And Changkyun should really feel thrilled that Kihyun let him down so easily, that he didn’t threaten to out him to the school or to the group of upperclassmen that already look for reasons to make his life hell – this would be a perfect excuse for them, Changkyun is more than aware – but mostly he’s just disappointed. He and Kihyun are on okay terms, greeting each other in the hallway and capable of pleasant conversation during school hours, but they’ve really only been together on their own a couple times. And yet somehow, for some reason, Changkyun had expected this to go differently.

“It’s okay,” he says instead, forcing a smile that Kihyun seems reluctant to return. “I didn’t expect you to feel the same.” That’s a lie. “I just wanted to tell you. It didn’t feel right to hide it from you. You’ll make someone very happy one day. I hope they make you happy, too.”

This time Kihyun does smile. It breaks Changkyun’s heart. “Thanks.”

After school lets out, Changkyun returns home and his mother greets him with the news that they’re moving again. She and his father have gotten a job teaching in Africa, and they’ll be on a plane headed across the ocean by the end of the week.

Years pass, but Changkyun never forgets.

***
life 2

It feels like déjà vu all over again.

Changkyun walks into the classroom they share, a carnation held in one hand behind his back to hide the way his hand shakes. Kihyun is the only one in the room, and he’s bent over a textbook like he’s trying to decipher the secrets of the universe. The glasses he only ever wears while reading are slipping down his nose, and Changkyun is struck with the urge to fix them.

He doesn’t.

“Kihyun?”

Kihyun glances up, eyes comically wide. When he sees Changkyun, he smiles, and Changkyun’s heart beats a little faster.

“Hey,” he greets, gesturing Changkyun closer. “Your tie’s crooked.” Changkyun glances down to check his handiwork as he obediently steps forward. Sure enough, his tie is crooked, and he finds himself frowning like a child at it. He’s sure he tied it fine this morning before he left the house. He swears he even remembers his mother telling him that he looks just like his father did at his age, all neat and tidy, prim and proper. His older sister had even laughed before heading out the door to catch her bus into the city.

“What are you doing here this early?” Kihyun asks as he grips Changkyun’s tie and moves to untie it.

“What do you mean?”

Kihyun’s purses his lips, words coming slow as he focuses on looping the tie just right. “You’re usually out in the courtyard dicking around with Jooheon and Hoseok.”

“I don’t—”

“Changkyunnie?”

A head of blond hair pops around the corner of the doorway, and when he catches sight of Changkyun beside Kihyun’s desk, he grins. “There you are. Jooheon said he thought you came inside. Came to see Kwihyoni, I see!”

Changkyun’s mind blanks for a moment, because what? But then the details start filtering in.

Kihyun is right. Changkyun’s mornings before classes start are usually spent dicking around in the courtyard with Hoseok and Jooheon. Jooheon who he’s known half his life and Hoseok who he befriended earlier this year when he first met Kihyun. Sometimes Minhyuk is with them, another beginning-of-the-year friend, Jooheon’s kind-of boyfriend, but he’s stuck at home for the rest of the week, doped on pain killers and recovering from a broken leg.

Changkyun blinks, because what. How could he have forgotten?

Hoseok hums a little tune beneath his breath as he strolls inside and drops into Kihyun’s lap. He kisses Kihyun’s cheek, too, ignoring Changkyun’s look of astonishment and the way Kihyun makes a face at him.

Changkyun’s heart sinks, and he wracks his brain, trying to figure out what other important information he might have forgotten. Had he just been about to confess to his friend’s boyfriend?

“Kwihyoni, why don’t you ever come play with us?” Hoseok whines, grip tightening stubbornly as Kihyun attempts to discreetly dislocate Hoseok from his lap. When being discreet doesn’t win him any points, Kihyun moves onto something a little more violent and stands. Hoseok is forced to release him and find his own footing, and as he does that, Kihyun makes his escape and comes to stand on Changkyun’s other side.

Changkyun nearly stops breathing when Kihyun throws an arm over his shoulders and leans into his side.

“The last time I did, you and Minhyuk decided to see who could climb the highest. As you recall, you won, and Minhyuk broke his leg. The time before, you and Jooheon had a sack race using your backpacks. Ten seconds in, Jooheon ripped his bag and you fell on your face and nearly broke your nose. You had a double shiner for a week and a half.”

Hoseok has the decency to look guilty. “In my defense, it was muddy. I didn’t plan to get stuck and fall. I would have won.”

“We were in the middle of a drought.”

“Well—” Hoseok seems to stumble upon a better idea, and rather than fighting Kihyun, he waggles his brows at Changkyun instead. “Come on, maknae. Jooheon found some of his brother’s fireworks. We’re going to go have a Harry Potter duel. You know you want to join us.”

“He absolutely does not!” Kihyun protests, kicking out at Hoseok.

Hoseok cackles and dances out of reach, then proceeds to run from the room.

For a moment, there’s silence. Kihyun looks thoughtful. And Changkyun just feels confused, like he’s missed something, like he’s missed a lot of somethings. He’s getting ready to trail out after Hoseok, defeated and befuddled, when Kihyun’s voice breaks through his thoughts.

“Is that for me?”

Changkyun blinks dumbly at Kihyun for a moment, confused. “What?”

Kihyun gestures to the carnation at Changkyun’s side, a small smile pulling at his lips. “The flower. Is that for me?”

Changkyun lifts the flower, eyeing the drooping petals cynically before nodding. “Yes, but—”

Kihyun plucks it from his hand, his own smile blooming like a flower of its own as he lifts the carnation and smells it. “I love it, Changkyunnie, thank you.” He leans in to kiss Changkyun’s cheek, then takes his hand and pulls him through the door of the classroom. “Come on, let’s go keep an eye on them. You know Hoseok probably wasn’t kidding. There’s bottle rockets, or roman candles, or something in Jooheon’s bag. If they use them as wands and duel, they’re going to knock someone’s eye out, and Minhyuk is going to be pissed that we didn’t record it for posterity.”

Changkyun allows himself to be pulled along, quietly rejoicing in the fact it’s Kihyun’s hand he’s holding, and the warmth of Kihyun’s lips still upon his cheek.

This, he thinks, the thought vague and detached, is how it was supposed to go.

***
life 3

“Ji Xian!”

Qiang Gui frowns, watching as the kingdom’s crown prince scrambles a little bit higher into the tree he’s standing beneath. To his credit, Ji Xian looks a little bit like a monkey up there, all reaching limbs and beaming smiles. His exuberant laughter sounds a little bit like screeching as well, which also helps with the picture. If Qiang Gui were anyone else, this scene would not be taking place. But Qiang Gui has always given Ji Xian a little more liberty than any of the other guards.

Once upon a time when Ji Xian was still very, very young, the king and queen had wondered, perhaps afraid of what other liberties Qiang Gui might have been taking. But then Ji Xian had requested Qiang Gui as his guard, his personal guard, his only guard, and explained to his parents that Qiang Gui kept him safe while allowing him to still have the little things that his childhood and the hierarchy permitted him. His parents had not been thrilled then, but had seen reason and allowed Qiang Gui to take the position.

In the years since, Ji Xian and Qiang Gui had grown closer, formed a bond more like brothers than that of a prince and his guard, and perhaps that is why Qiang Gui stares up into the tree like he now is, his amusement bordering on exasperation.

At fourteen, Ji Xian should be focusing more on his duties as crown prince and less on his clowning around, and Qiang Gui knows he should be a little more firm with the boy, especially now that Ji Xian has been betrothed to create peace for their country, but Qiang Gui has a terrible soft spot for the boy, one that Ji Xian knows and is all too happy to exploit when given even half the chance.

But today....

Today something is off, wrong, and it has Qiang Gui on edge, casting furtive glances around them even though, logically, Qiang Gui knows that the orchard they’re in is as safe as anywhere else. With the coming marriages, tensions between them and the other family and their kingdom had eased somewhat, and the looming threat of war had eased with it. Realistically, however, Qiang Gui can’t shake the feeling that they’re being watched, and he also knows, in a deep well of knowledge he pretends he doesn’t possess, that the orchard would be an excellent place for an ambush.

“Ji Xian! Come down now!”

Above him, the  branches shift until a face can peer down at him. Like this, Ji Xian appears all of his fourteen years, and it takes Qiang Gui digging his teeth into his tongue to keep his expression solemn. Thankfully, Ji Xian catches on immediately, the smile slipping from his features. “Qiang Gui, what’s wrong?”

Qiang Gui steals another glance around himself, feeling more and more like a rat on a sinking ship in the middle of an ocean. Was that movement to the east, a figure ducking behind the tree? The orchards aren’t empty by any means, it’s harvest time for the apples and Qiang Gui knows the workers are checking and collecting apples before they can fall from the tree and take rot, but they have no reason to hide from him, and they adore their crown prince. In fact, they’re more likely to come right up and offer the prince an apple to ease his hungry – because growing boys are always hungry, and—

And it’s been perhaps thirty minutes since that last happened, since Quang Gui last saw anyone else.

Fear pulses through him, striking at his nerves like a snake. As credit to his training and service to the kingdom, Qiang Gui manages to keep his limbs relaxed and manages to keep his tone as even as the expression of exasperation he wears. “Ji Xian, it’s time to come down now. We’re going to be late.”

Ji Xian doesn’t get it immediately and heaves a sigh. “Qiang Gui, we don’t have anywhere to be. That’s why we’re here.”

Qiang Gui ignores the urge to glance around himself once more. He ignores the possible shadow shifting between the trees to their west. He ignores everything but Ji Xian. “Crown prince Ji Xian,” he emphasizes, expression shifting minutely to something more like irritation. That shift, as much as the use of his title, gets Ji Xian’s attention. “Your father requested you meet him for a meeting. We need to make our way to him before he misses us.”

Ji Xian gets it then, something in his face shifting as he allows himself to drop from the tree. “Why didn’t you say that, Qiang Gui? We mustn’t upset father.”

As Ji Xian straightens, Qiang Gui turns to lead the boy away and finds they’ve been surrounded. The figures are still a distance away, but they’re close enough now that Qiang Gui knows escape is going to be near impossible. From the soft noise at his back, Qiang Gui knows Ji Xian has seen it, too.

“When I sound the alarm, I want you to run.” Qiang Gui doesn’t glance back to see Ji Xian’s expression, knowing it will be troubled and frustrated. But this is their plan, and Qiang Gui holds Ji Xian’s safety above all else. He is the crown prince, and he must survive.

“Greetings!” Qiang Gui calls as he strides forward to meet the nearest figure, “Did his majesty the king send you to find us?” From a closer distance, Qiang Gui can see they’re not wearing any visible colors or markers, and that’s when he knows for sure what he’d suspected all along. This is an ambush, an attack sent from the other family. The betrothal had been a lie, a setup, a distraction. They’re here to kill the crown prince and set the kingdom into anarchy.

When he’s within reach of the nearest body, Qiang Gui can see the confusion in their eyes, and that’s when he strikes, reaching with one hand for his sword and the other for the horn kept at his belt. He gets off one call before Ji Xian takes off running, slipping through the gap between the bodies that’s created when Qiang Gui’s sword carves into the body of the stranger he’d addressed.

A third of the group takes off after Ji Xian, but Qiang Gui isn’t worried. Ji Xian is small and fast, and he knows the kingdom like his own body, aware of all the best places to hide, the sneaky shortcuts, and the easiest places to lose unwanted followers. With his head start, he’ll be fine.

Qiang Gui, however, resigns himself to death, knowing that there’s no way to win when he’s outnumbered one dozen to one. He takes three down before a lucky blow catches his him in the side. He manages four more before a cheap shot from behind brings him to his knees with him hamstrings cut. A sword slices through his abdomen, and Qiang Gui tastes blood on his tongue as he falls to the orchard glass.

In the distance, Qiang Gui hears a horn, an answer to his own, and when that peters off, he can hear the braying of hounds and the cries of men. As Qiang Gui’s vision begins to blacken and blur, he can see the men as they scatter.

He is left alone then, dying and in pain. His last thought is of Ji Xian and of hope for his escape.

Except it’s not.

This, Qiang Gui thinks some time later, vague, detached, and with a little bit of astonishment, is not how it should have gone.

***
life 4

From the first moment Daniel could recognize it, he’s known something has been missing from his life.

As a child, he’d thought it was a sense of stability, a home, friends. His father is a scientist, so their lives are uprooted at least once each year, sometimes closer to three or four times each year, and Daniel can’t remember the last time he spent three consecutive holidays in the same home – or, consequently, the last time kept a friend for more than three months.

As a teenager, he’d thought that maybe it was a sense of belonging. After all, it’s hard to belong when you’re a Korean-American living in Germany or South Africa. Even if you do know the language – or a language, any language – well enough to get by, you’re immediately marked as a foreigner, an oddity. No matter how long you may live there, or how good your speaking skills are, or how social you attempt to be, you will always be marked as an oddity. The girls refuse to get to know you, much less like you, the boys refuse to talk to you out of some misplaced thought that the girls are all after you, the adults ignore you outright.

As an adult, finding himself unable to stick to a relationship for longer than a couple months at a time, no matter how happy they might have made him at some point, Daniel comes to the realization that it’s not a what, but a who.  He’s missing a someone rather than a something, and he has been his entire life. On nights when he can’t sleep because the space beside him in bed is too empty and too cold, he looks up the term soulmate on his phone, and he tries to ignore the frustration that comes when no one else seems to feel the same inexplicable pull of longing that he does.

Daniel spends the rest of his life searching for someone that doesn’t even know he exists, and every night before he falls asleep, he thinks, This is not how it was supposed to happen.

***
life 5

Changkyun and Kihyun meet when Changkyun is still young, and innocent, and brimming with a curiosity about everything. And somehow, without even knowing that there had been a hole to fill, the day Kihyun moves in next door, Kihyun slots himself neatly into Changkyun’s life as if he’d always been there.

The two grow up together, pranking their parents and Changkyun’s older sister, spending their summers together, and then attending school together (because while Kihyun is two years his senior, Changkyun had been allowed to skip a grade and they find themselves separated by only a single year). It’s the closest thing to perfect that Changkyun has even known, and he never wants it to end.

In middle school, their duo becomes a quintet. Kihyun and Changkyun meet Hoseok, Jooheon, and Minhyuk, and things become a little bit better. Even though it’s no longer just the two of them, causing trouble is much easier with more people, and Changkyun on more than one occasion, Changkyun finds himself with an unbidden thought.

This is the life I should have been living.

He doesn’t understand it, but Changkyun doesn’t bother to try. In middle school, he also finds himself with the unbidden attraction to his long-time friend, and that takes a startling precedence over thoughts that come from nowhere.

In high school, five becomes seven with the addition of Hyunwoo and Hyungwon. Their group feels complete, and Changkyun has the time of his life being doted upon – and picked upon – by the other six. He finds a solid friendship in Jooheon and Minhyuk, and he often looks upon Hyunwoo as an older brother figure. Kihyun and Hoseok become close, near-inseparable. But none of them achieve the same sort of friendship Kihyun and Changkyun share.

In high school, Kihyun also asks Changkyun out. Changkyun is so stunned that he doesn’t say yes until after a painful kiss in which he and Kihyun have clacked their teeth and crushed their noses together. Their second kiss goes much smoother and is shaky with Kihyun’s laughter.

Changkyun’s family support him. Kihyun’s do not. But their friends do, too, and that little bit of support is all they need to make it work. They graduate high school one year apart with Kihyun taking a year off to work. After Changkyun graduates, they move in together and then start university.

Five years down the line finds Kihyun with a double major in music and language and Changkyun with a degree in composition. The two find work at an entertainment company with Kihyun teaching music and language to the new trainees while Changkyun writes their songs.

At no point is it ever easy, not like it was when they were children, but they’re happy. They’re happy together.  

It takes until the fifth time for Changkyun to see the pattern and recognize it for what it is. In this life, Kihyun had never once called him quick, so Changkyun thinks of it as a record of sorts.

***
life 6

Changkyun doesn’t know where it all went wrong.

Maybe it was when Kihyun pushed for the truth, for the reason why Changkyun knew things he shouldn’t have, or the reason why he sometimes got that faraway look in his eyes, or the reason he lost track of things he should have known. After all, Changkyun doesn’t have a sister in this life, and Hyunwoo died when Changkyun was still a teenager, killed by a car that came out of nowhere and struck him down before speeding away. He’d pushed Changkyun out of the way, and Changkyun had suffered abrasions and a broken leg that stole his hopes for a soccer scholarship. Kihyun had been in his life then, but only barely. It was Hyunwoo’s loss that brought them closer together.

Maybe it was when Changkyun admitted to the dreams, the ones of lives he couldn’t have possibly lived.

Or maybe Kihyun just figured it out on his own. He’d always been smart. In every life Changkyun has ever known Kihyun in, he’s always been so much smarter than him. So maybe Kihyun just figured it out. Finally. After all of Changkyun’s mistakes, Kihyun has finally just figured it out.

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t help Changkyun as he watches his life dissolve around him.

Kihyun calls him a stalker.

He calls Changkyun crazy.

And yeah, maybe he is crazy. Who else remembers lives they shouldn’t have lived, all the details from them that shouldn’t have been? Changkyun doesn’t know, but he doesn’t blame Kihyun for his fear. He’d be afraid, too.

He’s afraid now. But not for the same reason Kihyun is.

Changkyun is afraid because Kihyun is at the door, and there’s a wild light in his eyes that Changkyun hasn’t seen since Kihyun admitted his father used to beat him and that sometimes he wished his father would just end it. It’s a manic gleam, and it terrifies Changkyun.

In the end, Changkyun can do nothing as Kihyun rants and raves, as tears fill his eyes, as the manic gleam dies out.  

In the end, Kihyun leaves, and Changkyun learns that he must keep his secret safe and close if he is to ever find happiness with Kihyun again.

In the next life, he promises, I will do better.

***
life 7

In the next life, Changkyun does do better.

He’s Changkyun again, which is always nice. He’s gotten attached to the name. But Kihyun is Jihyun, and Jihyun is blond, and Changkyun doesn’t have a fond memory of blond hair. The last time Kihyun was blond, he broke Changkyun’s heart in less than ten words.

But this time, Jihyun is blond, and bright, and bold, and beatific, every bit the Kihyun that Changkyun continues to fall so hard for, and she is beautiful, and she loves him, too.

It’s easier on Changkyun in this life, for some reason. Jihyun doesn’t jump on his case for how cheesy and sentimental Changkyun can be. In anything, she’s enamored by it, and she loves how he remembers the little things, like her favorite food, and the songs she grew up singing and still knows every word to, and the brand and scent of lotion she uses in the winter when the skin of her hands dry out and crack. It gives Changkyun a chance to shower Kihyun -- Jihyun -- in all the love he’s accumulated over the years, but has never been able to give.

The fact that she returns it in kind makes everything better.

In this life, Changkyun is happy. He does better. It’s as if the universe is attempting to make up for the fact that Kihyun left him in his last life, and that he didn’t exist in a life before that. But even so, it isn’t perfect.

***
life 8

“Ki, I swear to god, get down from there.”

In the next life, Kihyun is a cat. His cat, specifically. And Changkyun thinks that maybe the world hates him. Him being Changkyun, but also maybe him being Kihyun, because in his fifth life -- third life? the one where he and Kihyun had a mostly happily ever after -- Kihyun had been allergic to cats. Deathly allergic. The one time Changkyun had brought home a stray, Kihyun had puffed up like a puffer fish, and they’d been forced to take a trip to the emergency room.

And yet in this life, Kihyun is a cat, his cat, and he likes to terrorize Changkyun about as much as he did in their second life.

Present time finds Kihyun on top of a blade of the overhead fan and Changkyun on the floor, staring up at the fan like he’s afraid it might come crashing down any second.

And it might. Kihyun isn’t a fat cat by any means, but overhead fans are not meant to be sat upon by anything. Especially a cat. Therefore, it’s one of Kihyun’s favorite places in the house, and one of Changkyun’s greatest frustrations.

“How did you even get up there, anyway?”

Changkyun will never understand how Kihyun can get from the closest piece of furniture in the room -- the  top of the fridge -- to the middle of the room where the fan sits. It’s astounding. Possibly magic. Cats can have magic, right?

“You need to come down.”

Kihyun stares down at Changkyun, blinking guileless golden eyes at him as if Changkyun will understand what it is that Kihyun means. But he doesn’t. Kihyun is a cat, and Changkyun is a human, and as human-smart as Kihyun can be, he’s still just a cat. A cat that falls into the toilet on a daily basis because Hoseok is an idiot and tried to train him to use the toilet as a joke.

“Come on, you idiot,” Changkyun grumbles, grabbing for one of the chairs located around the table in the corner. “You know you’re not supposed to be up there. What if I were to turn the fan on, huh?”

Kihyun meows at him, then mrahs at him, as if they’re holding a conversation. Changkyun just sighs and holds out his hand, waiting with a patience that has strengthened with every lifetime in which he has needed to wait for Kihyun.

Eventually Kihyun does creep along the fan toward him, and Changkyun sighs in relief as he wiggles his fingers and waits. But three steps away, just out of reach, Kihyun loses his footing, and Changkyun watches as he slips, as he falls.

Reflex had Changkyun reaching out and twisting his body so that when the ground rushes to meet him, Kihyun is in his arms and out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, it puts Changkyun directly into harm’s way, and he lands hard on his ass. It knocks the breath from his lungs, and for a long moment, Changkyun can't breathe, head spinning from pain and a lack of oxygen.

“Fuck!” Changkyun whines at length as he lies back and shifts to rub his aching tailbone. “Ki, you did that on purpose, didn't you!”

In his arms, Kihyun meows, blinking guileless golden eyes at the human before he rolls over and wriggles out of Changkyun’s arms. Then, with a flick of his tail, Kihyun trots from the room.

Changkyun watches him go, caught between stunned and bemused. “That little shit,” he mumbles, sighing. “I swear to god.” Shaking his head and one hand still pressed to where he's sure his tailbone will bruise, Changkyun crawls to his feet as, in another room of the house, Changkyun hears the tell tale splash and scramble of claws on porcelain.

“Kihyun, I swear to god! You are a cat, not a human!”

***
life 9

Changkyun and Kihyun meet through school. Despite not sharing classes this time, they get to know each other through the youth choir that their school hosts, and after a friendship is struck, they grow up together over the years. They're the best of friends, getting into and out of trouble together, sticking together through thick and thin regardless of the odds they're faced with. When Kihyun’s father leaves his mother, Changkyun is there. When Changkyun’s mother is diagnosed with early onset dementia and starts to forget his name, and his face, and the fact that she has a son at all, Kihyun is there.

It’s almost perfect. But perfection is transient and never lasts long enough.

Changkyun is thirteen when he learns that. Again.

Normally, Changkyun and Kihyun walk home together after school, often stopping off at the convenience store to pick up a candy bar or ice cream to finish while they walk home. Today, however, Changkyun arrives at their usual meeting spot and finds Kihyun waiting with another person. A familiar person. Changkyun just saw him in his last life, and he would think it funny how he and so many other always seem to recur in each other’s lives if not for the fact that there’s a weight sinking to the pit of Changkyun’s stomach.

When Kihyun sees him, he smiles and gestures to the male at his side. “Changkyun, this is Hoseok. His family just moved from Busan and he started in my class today. He lives near us, too. You don’t mind if he walks home with us, right?”

And Changkyun can’t say yes because while he does mind, he can never refuse Kihyun anything. Maybe if he had, things would have been different.

“Of course not,” Changkyun says with a smile. And he can’t help the way his stomach lurches at the way Kihyun brightens. Changkyun turns his smile upon Hoseok and is rewarded by a smile that is all teeth and gums, and it’s almost as familiar as Kihyun’s. After all, he’s known Hoseok in five lives now, and Hoseok’s smiles have never been anything but gums, and teeth, and curved crescent eyes. “Hoseok, was it? I’m Changkyun.” And Changkyun bows because it’s proper and regardless of knowing Hoeok six times now, this is their first meeting in this life, and Changkyun’s mother has raised him right time and time again.

They walk home together that day, and the next day, and the rest of the week, and the weeks that follow, the months that follow, and time slips away from Changkyun because time always slips away in lives that like one. And maybe that should have been his first clue.

But if that was the first clue, the second should have been the day that Kihyun skipped walking home with Changkyun to visit Hoseok at dance practice. And at first was just once, and Changkyun let it go, but then it was once every other week, and then more regularly with every Monday and Thursday each week. And Changkyun should have seen it, but he didn’t. Or maybe he did see it, but he pretended not to.

The third clue, and the most telling one, came on a Monday when Changkyun had started walking home and Kihyun’s voice from behind him stopped Changkyun in his tracks.

When Kihyun appears at his side, he’s out of breath, and his cheeks are red, and if Changkyun didn’t know better, he might think that Kihyun had been— 

“You left without me!” Kihyun complains.

Changkyun blinks. And then stares. And only then does he say, “But it’s Monday.”

Kihyun’s cheek burn a bright red, and Changkyun mentally likens his friend to a tomato as he turns to continue walking home. “Dance practice didn’t meet today.”

If Changkyun were a better friend, he would accept his excuse at face value. But he’s also Kihyun’s best friend, and it’s his obligation to ask all the embarrassing, nitty gritty questions. Even if he really doesn’t want to hear the answers. “Then where’s Hoseok?”

That effectively shuts Kihyun up. Or down. He doesn’t speak for the remainder of their walk, and it’s only when they reach their shared street and are preparing to branch off for their own homes that Kihyun finally confesses. “Hoseok kissed me.”

Changkyun’s heart sinks. He closes his eyes, counts to ten, and bites his tongue until he tastes the copper of blood in his mouth. Only then does he turn around, a small smile on his lips. “Do I need to kick his ass?”

Kihyun chokes on air. Or maybe his tongue. Regardless, it takes him a moment more to speak, and his voice has lifted to a startled squeak. “What? No?”

Something inside of Changkyun withers and dies, but he forces a smile. Regardless of how he feels – how he’s always felt – he is Kihyun’s best friend first. In this life, that is all he’ll ever be, and Changkyun would be a fool to throw that away now. “So you liked it?”

Kihyun’s face is red, redder than a tomato and more like the color of ketchup or blood, and Changkyun squashes the part of himself that finds it endearing. The only thing he allows himself to do is coo and pinch one of Kihyun’s cheek. The swat he earns is worth it to see Kihyun smile. “Stop it, you heathen. I’m trying to ask for your help here!”

Changkyun’s smile doesn’t falter, but his heart breaks just a little. “Are you really? Are you trying to ask me if you should tap that ass? Because you should.”

Kihyun makes another strangled noise and reaches out to smack him, but Changkyun ducks and dances just out of reach with a delighted cackle. Kihyun swears, pressing his hands to his face, and it takes a moment for Changkyun to rein himself back in. He has a part to play now, and he knows it. He’ll do what he can to make Kihyun happy, even if that happiness isn’t found with him.

“You should date him.” The laughter is gone from Changkyun’s voice, and even though it breaks his heart, Changkyun continues to smile. When Kihyun peeks through his fingers at him, Changkyun offers him a double thumbs up. “You can do it, hyung. Hwaiting.”

When Kihyun finds the courage to return the gesture, Changkyun takes that as his cue to go, and he gestures over his shoulder at his building. “It’s my day to watch mom and make dinner. Dad’s working late. Text me, alright?” And when Kihyun nods, Changkyun goes.

That night, he lies in bed and stares at the illuminated screen of his phone as Kihyun tells him about how he’d walked back to school after Changkyun had gone inside. He tells Changkyun about how he’d waited until after practice, cornered Hoseok by his locker – a move Hoseok had seen in a drama and had practiced on the both of them for shits and grins – and asked him out. He tells Changkyun about how Hoseok had grinned that gummy grin of his and how he’d kissed Kihyun senseless. He tells Changkyun that they’re dating, and Changkyun doesn’t smile because no one else can see his lapse in character, but he does tell Kihyun congratulations and that he’s so happy for the both of them.

And when he sets his phone down for the night and rolls over to curl around his pillow, Changkyun cries and asks why.

***
life 10

“What do you even have in here?” Hoseok’s voice is pitched at a whine, and Changkyun can’t help the tendril of satisfaction he gleans from the words. He’s not punishing Hoseok for falling in love with Kihyun in the past life – in any of their past lives – but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t derive a little bit of satisfaction out of torturing Hoseok every so often. As the youngest in his group of friends, it’s his job to terrorize them every now and again.

“Books,” Changkyun eventually answers, lips set in a smug smile. “Is it too heavy for you, hyung? You told me you could carry anything, so I figured a box of books would be easy.”

Hoseok shoots Changkyun a look, and even though he can’t see it, Changkyun can still feel the heat of the stare on his back. It makes him grateful that he has the keys to his new apartment and headed up the stairs as soon as he’d loaded himself down with a stuffed backpack and box of plants.

The building is old enough that the elevator isn’t working (again, apparently, as the downtime happens approximately once each month), and Changkyun is unlucky enough to have secured an apartment on the fourth floor. But in his defense, it could have been worse. The apartment building has seven floors, and there had been open apartments on the sixth and seventh floors as well.

Changkyun has the decency to pull open the door at landing for the fourth floor so that Hoseok can go through first, but he still skirts around him in the hallway and makes it to his apartment first. Hoseok grumbles at him the entire time. “Why couldn’t you get Jooheon to help? And where’s Hyunwoo?”

“Jooheon has class. His composition class was today and they had a presentation. Hyunwoo will be here soon. He was covering for a coworker. He’s very sorry you had to suffer this alone, but he’ll make it up to you by bringing pizza with him.”

Hoseok makes a face, and Changkyun can feel it in his bones despite being unable to see it. “I hope it has ramen on it.”

If Hoseok were anyone else, Changkyun might comment. Hell, if he were anyone else, Changkyun would probably comment. But Hoseok is a fiend for ramen, and Changkyun fondly remembers a lifetime in which Kihyun’s favorite pizza had macaroni and cheese on top. Instead, Changkyun shakes his head and tries not to smile too hard.

While Hoseok drops his box of books in what’s going to eventually be Changkyun’s bedroom, Changkyun takes the time to pull his plants from his box, setting them on the window sill so they can bask in sunlight for the rest of the afternoon. Hoseok isn’t even in sight – in fact, he’s probably halfway down the stairs – when Changkyun steps back out into the hallway, but he leaves just in time to catch his landlady as she’s leaving the apartment next door.

“Ahjumma?”

She turns as if startled, fixing Changkyun with a look that he freezes at. When she recognizes him, her expression eases some, but only a little. “Changkyun-ah.... I wasn’t sure you’d be by to move in today.”

Changkyun frowns, confused. “Why wouldn’t I be? You told me the apartment was ready and today was my day off. Should I not be moving in right now?” Changkyun glances over his shoulder at the door to his apartment, then back at her. “We’ve only just gotten started, so we can put it off another couple days if we need to.”

Her relief is odd, twisting her features in a way that has Changkyun’s insides lurching. He knows that look. Something is wrong.

“I just.... I didn’t know if you’d heard and had decided you didn’t want to move in after all.”

Changkyun tries to look around the woman and into the apartment she’d been exiting, but the door is already mostly closed. At his visible curiosity, she pulls the door shut with a decisive snick. “It was on the news last night and again this morning, and a number of our other residents have already expressed their concerns.”

“I stayed up late to finish packing last night because I had to cover someone’s shift this morning. That’s why I didn’t come out yesterday.” Changkyun can’t ignore the nauseating lurch in his stomach, like one shoe’s just dropped and he’s waiting on the second. He’s not sure he wants to know, but something compels him to stay there and hear his landlady out to the end. “I haven’t seen anything. And Hoseok, the blond guy helping me move, the van he borrowed has a busted radio. What’s going on?”

Her expression falls. “Changkyun-ah, this apartment’s tenant killed himself last night. I’d dropped by to tell him he’d be getting a new neighbor and to ask that he treat you well since you were both around the same age, but I found him in his tub, and—”

Changkyun steps into her, arms snaking around her waist as tears trickle down her cheeks. Changkyun’s not sure why this is so important, why he’s supposed to bear witness to this, but the least he can do is offer comfort to her.

“—I couldn’t understand why, even after I found his note. He was so lonely, Changkyun-ah, and I’d thought the two of you would get along so well. Kihyun-ah was such a good boy, always singing and smiling, and—”

Changkyun freezes, and the rest of the woman’s babbling passes him like water in a river around a rock. Kihyun. His Kihyun? The Kihyun he’d been searching for, for all of his nineteen years of this life? Had he indirectly missed Kihyun by a single day by agreeing to take his coworker’s shift? Had he lost Kihyun by trying to be a nice guy?

The rest of the conversation passes in a blur. The landlady gathers her control and apologizes. Changkyun tells her it’s fine. She wants him the police might stop by again, but that they’re viewing it as a suicide and the case is mostly closed. If he has any questions or problems, he can talk to her. And Changkyun nods as if he hears it all, but his head is miles upon miles away.

When he descends the stairs again, Hoseok is waiting for him at the bottom, hands on his hips and expression a glower. Maybe Changkyun had cried, or maybe there’s just something telling in his face or the slump of his shoulders, because Hoseok’s anger eases and he doesn’t say a word as he passes Changkyun another box and herds him gently back toward the stairs.

That night, after Hyunwoo has come and helped him move the heavy furniture around, and after he and Hoseok had eaten all the pizza they could handle while Changkyun fought to finish half of a single slice, after the door is locked and the lights are out, Changkyun closes his eyes and tries to imagine the sound of Kihyun’s voice.

In his memory, it’s the voice of Kihyun from when they had grown up together and loved each other all their lives, it’s the voice of an angel as Kihyun practices some Italian piece for one of his recitals.

Changkyun tries to hum along, but he can’t. Despite having heard the song so many times – in person and then in memory – he just can’t break the silence of his apartment.

Changkyun cries himself to sleep and promises Kihyun, wherever he may be, that he’ll do better next time.

***
life 11

“Another one? Vulcan must wish to be heard today.”

Niccolaio glances away from his notes, eyes lighting briefly upon Giovanni before shifting out the window. Out in the distance, far beyond his family’s private vineyard and even further still beyond the rolling fields and hills of the countryside and farmland outside of the city, the mountain sits idle, watching over them all.

Something niggles at Niccolaio’s conscious, and he finds himself frowning at Giovanni’s words. For some reason, despite the widely held belief that the god Vulcan speaks to them through the tremors, Niccolaio cannot shake the belief that something is wrong and that the shaking of the ground is more than just their god speaking to them. After all, why would a god speak to them of all people when Rome is a more likely choice? It just doesn’t make sense.

But then again, Giovanni is an advisor and more of a scholar than he. Niccolaio is merely working toward taking over his father’s merchant business. It’s Giovanni he should listen to, not his doubts.

“Perhaps he is hungry.” Niccolaio’s attention shifts down the mountain and back to their vineyard. From where he sits, he can see some of his family’s slaves checking the vines and plucking grapes to be turned into wine. “You grumble when you’re hungry, Giovanni.”

Giovanni is silent for a moment, but then he’s laughing, a loud and whooping laughter that anyone else would call loud and unbecoming. But from Giovanni, it sounds right. “As do you, Nic. The Vinalia is going on down in the city. I’m sure the people would be happy to see their favorite little lord.”

Niccolaio turns to eye Giovanni with distaste. “Don’t call me that.” It doesn’t matter that it’s true and that the citizens love him for reasons that Niccolaio is unable to fathom. Sure, he’s more even tempted than his father, and he treats everyone with respect, and he only haggles over wares and foodstuffs when it can be afforded by both parties. But there’s just something about the phrase that makes Changkyun uneasy. “I am hungry though. And it would be nice to see Sabina.”

Giovanni’s eyebrows wiggle, and the expression he wears is somewhere between comical and absurd. Niccolaio laughs aloud as he stands and steps around the male to find his purse. “Our relationship isn’t like that, Giovanni. Don’t start on that again.” Giovanni obediently calms, but the amused twist of his lips still lingers when he follows Niccolaio out the front door of their villa and down toward the center of the city.

Sabina is the young wife of an equally young merchant whose stall sells snacks to those passing by, and she is, in fact, grateful to see Niccolaio. She loads him bearing with snacks and treats, chiding Giovanni for not bringing Niccolaio down sooner. As she continues to take him to task for his supposed disregard of his little lord, Niccolaio slips away and heads further into the festival. He greets those that greet him and often stops at the stalls to admire trinkets and items of beauty and value. At the same time, he passes out Sabina’s treats so he won’t be forced to try to explain where they came from when he returns to the villa.

It’s as Niccolaio is nearing the main road that will eventually take him East and by the amphitheater that he sees the incoming train of slaves. Like many of the others, he steps off to the side to watch them pass, eyeing the builds and frames and trying to guess which will be sold into slavery and which will be taken into the arena for the games. Midway down the line, however, there is one slender body among the built, a paler skin among the those tanned in the sun. When their head lifts, Niccolaio sees angled eyes and a gentle slope of a nose, a sharp jaw and high cheek bones. And somehow, beyond any explicable sort of reason, Niccolaio wants.

He knows better than to take the other there and then, and instead watches the rest of the train as it passes, mind working furiously as he counts and recounts the money he had brought with him. Depending on where the slender slave is meant to go, he should have enough. And if he doesn’t, Niccolaio has no qualms with returning home to the villa for more. When the train of slaves has marched by, Niccolaio follows. When he finally steps into the doorway leading to the holding cells beneath the amphitheater, Niccolaio finds himself thinking that Giovanni will be furious when he finds out.

Giovanni is, in fact, furious. But Niccolaio’s lighter purse and the boy staring between the two of them in mute horror is worth it.

“What were you thinking, Nic? A slave?”

Niccolaio glances to the boy, meeting his eyes for an instant before the slave turns his focus back to his feet. It’s a shyness that Niccolaio hopes hasn’t been broken into him. “Father has slaves. Mother has slaves. Sister has slaves. There are slaves that work the vineyard, slaves that prepare our meals, and slaves that obey our every whim.”

Giovanni sighs, shoulder slumping. “Niccolaio, you detest the use of slaves.”

The slave glances up and meets Niccolaio’s eyes, startled, then glances away again. Niccolaio smiles. “Detest is a strong word. I don’t agree with the way many of them are treated. Besides, I saw him and I wanted him. Can you really tell me he’d have survived long in the arena?”

For a moment, Giovanni is silent, but then his head is shaking, and he sighs, gesturing his concession and defeat. “It will be up to you to tell your mother and father of your decision. Don’t forget to procure space for him in the servant’s quarters.”

Niccolaio smiles. “I’ll be sure to remember.”

In actuality, Niccolaio does no such thing. He convinces his mother that the slave boy is to train up and be his personal guard. Therefore, he is to live in the room on the other side of his. His mother is not amused. His father is bemused. His sister thinks it’s a riot and offers to help train him.

That night, the slave boy admits he has no name, and that he hasn’t for years. He also admits that he’ll be useless as a guard, and that Niccolaio should return him to die in the arena.

By the time Niccolaio closes his eyes to sleep that night, the slave boy has chosen the name Cione and has promised to spend the remainder of his life serving him, whether that life be spent as a guard or as something else.

The eruption of the mountain three years later cuts that lifetime short. Cione and Niccolaio – and so very many more – are buried beneath the ash and cooked by the pyroclastic flow. It could be argued that at least they died together, but they also died terrified and in agony. And above it all, Niccolaio – Changkyun, as he remembered in his final moments – died knowing that he’d had warnings and had ignored them. He died knowing that, in the end, he’d still failed.

***
life 12

“Wait, what?”

The expression Kihyun wears is stunned, and Changkyun tries to ignore the spike of frustration he feels. “I said you're right. You're right, I knew you before. Not in this life, but in the life before this, in so many before this. I'm losing track of how many. I just remember the ones that are happy, where we're together, and the ones where we're not, where we missed each other by days, and the ones where I watch you fall in love over, and over, and over again, but never with me.”

Kihyun stares at Changkyun like he's grown a second head. “How many times? How many times have you loved me? How many times have we actually been happy together?”

That stops Changkyun short. “Every time. I have loved you every time. In the lives where I know who I am and what is happening, I look for you. In others, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know there's something missing -- someone missing -- and when I do finally find you, if I find you, it's like finding a piece of myself that had been missing.” The next question takes longer to answer because Changkyun actually doesn't know. He's been happy, and Kihyun has been happy, but how many lives had their happiness been shared?

“Three,” he says. Finally. “We've been happy three times. Two other times were close, but something happened.” In one, Changkyun had been working to coax Kihyun into opening up more to him when death came for them both. In the other, a mirror scenario this this moment, Kihyun had bolted. “But in two lives, I never got to meet you at all.”

For a moment, Kihyun looks devastated, and Changkyun has the irrational belief that this is it, that this is the last moment they'll have in this life and that Kihyun is preparing to run. But he doesn't run. Kihyun pulls Changkyun close instead, and then Kihyun kisses him as if it's their last chance to do so. “Do you love me in every life, Changkyun?”

Changkyun stares at Kihyun for a moment, flustered and stunned, then nods. “I search for you in every life. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. I never stop looking and hoping.”

When Kihyun smiles and pulls Changkyun down for another kiss, Changkyun’s heart lurches in his chest, turning somersaults and upsetting flocks of butterflies. He lets himself enjoy the gentle press of Kihyun’s lips, the warmth of Kihyun’s hand at the back of his neck, the warmth of the hand that rests over his breast and burns through the fabric of his shirt.

And then he pulls away, eyes wide and confused. “Kihyun?”

This has never happened before, and Changkyun should know better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, but he’s terrified of what will happen next, and he just wants to prepare himself for the inevitable loss of Kihyun leaving. But Kihyun doesn’t leave. He smiles instead, fixing Changkyun with a look that is so sweet, so fond, so loving, that Changkyun feels the butterflies upset all over again.

“Let me make it up to you.”

Changkyun blinks dumbly, uncomprehending. “What?”

But Kihyun just smiles, fingers curling into the hair at the back of Changkyun’s neck. “All the lives we were never happy, where I loved someone else, or where we never met at all. Let me make it up to you.” And when Kihyun pulls him back in for another kiss, one that is more teeth and tongue than lips, Changkyun doesn’t protest. He’s missed this, after all, and like all human beings, Changkyun is selfish enough to want to be happy.

That night, Kihyun takes Changkyun to bed, and it’s beautiful. They’ve had sex in this life before, they’d been dating for nearly a year before this, but somehow... Somehow it’s different, the intimacy deeper than it had ever been before. As Changkyun lies on Kihyun’s chest later that night, dozing to the steady beat of Kihyun’s heart and drowsing in the warmth of Kihyun’s arms, he finds himself likening it to the act of coming home.

***
life 13

“Well, Chanmi?”

Changkyun glances up from the book he’d been pretending to read for the last thirty minutes, managing to look both sheepish and startled. It’s an expression he’s come to hone over the past few weeks, and he should feel bad that he’s had to learn it at all, but…

Kisun stands in the doorway to their living room, gesturing to herself. “Does this dress make me look fat?”

It’s a cute dress, black, form-fitting, and flirty. It’s one that Changkyun’s worn before on more than one occasion. In this life, he and Kisun are the same size, sharing a slender body and almost petite frame that makes it easy to share both clothes and accessories, and also drives the boys wild. The only problem…

“Chanmi, you’re doing it again.”

Changkyun snaps back to the here and now with another sheepish smile. “Sorry, unnie,” he chirps, ever obedient. “It looks good. It always looks good.”

Kisun smiles and it’s like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Changkyun watches as Kisun’s shoulders straighten out and as she adjusts the neckline. After months of vocal lessons required for her degree, the dress doesn’t fit quite the same around Kisun’s chest like it used to. Changkyun should offer to safety pin the neckline so Kisun’s cleavage doesn’t show as much, but Kisun looks to be ahead of him. She’s already riffling through her clutch. Besides... “Do you think he’ll like it?”

Changkyun’s smile falters, and he’s grateful Kisun can’t see it. He’s even more grateful that he manages to yank his expression back into place before Kisun glances up and approaches with the safety pin. “Hoseok, right?” Kisun hums, and Changkyun forces a smile. He forces a little something extra into his voice and couples it with a tsk. “Of course he’ll like it. Kisun, he looks at you like you’re the sun, moon, and stars. He adores you.”

Kisun smiles and ducks her head, a blush adorning her cheeks, and Changkyun nearly swallows his tongue as he hurries to finish pinning the neck line. “You think so, Chan?”

And Changkyun’s chest hurts because he could look at Kisun like that. He would look at Kisun like that, if only she would let him. But Kisun only likes boys, and as masculine as Changkyun might identify, he still has the body of a girl, the genetic makeup of a girl. To Kisun, he is still Chanmi, the girl she grew up across the street from, the girl she’s gone to school with since they were children, and the girl that followed her to SNU after graduation. Changkyun – Chanmi – will only ever be her roommate, and nothing more. Changkyun could confess everything to her, could jeopardize everything he’s worked so hard to build, and Kisun still wouldn’t like her – not because Changkyun is a Changkyun and not Chanmi, but because Changkyun is still technically a she, and Hoseok is a he, and Kisun likes boys.

So Changkyun smiles and tucks a flyaway lock of Kisun’s hair behind her ear. “He’s going to love you.” Because Hoseok does adore her, and Changkyun can’t not wish for Kisun’s happiness above his own. “Text me if you decide not to come home, okay? Otherwise I’ll be up all night.”

“Chanmi!” Kisun looks scandalized. “I have class in the morning!”

Changkyun only smiles. “Just text me. I…have something important I want to tell you when you get back, okay?”

Kisun pauses in the doorway to the bedroom, having headed back to hunt for the shoes. “If it’s important, you can tell me now.”

Changkyun shakes his head. “Tomorrow. After your morning class. It’s not a five minute discussion, okay? I don’t want to make you late for your hot date.”

Kisun protests hotly, just like Changkyun knew she would, but she doesn’t protest further. When she leaves minutes later, it’s with the reassurance that Hoseok is going to love her and the promise that she’ll Changkyun when she decides what to do.

Kisun doesn’t come home that night. She doesn’t text Changkyun, either.

Instead, Changkyun wakes to someone pounding on the door to their apartment. When Changkyun finally opens the door after throwing on a hoodie over his tank top and shorts, it’s to the sight of two uniformed officers wearing matching grim expression. Changkyun’s stomach plummets to rest somewhere in the vicinity of his bare feet.

Changkyun doesn’t remember much of what they tell him. All he really gathers is that it was a drunk driver and that Hoseok and Kisun were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hoseok is lucky to be alive. And Kisun.... Kisun won’t be coming home again.

When the officers leave, Changkyun can’t help the way he sinks to the floor and cries, legs tucked close and forehead pressed to his knees. In time Changkyun forgives himself for letting her leave. In time the pain eases. But Changkyun never forgets.

***
life 14

“What are you thinking about?”

Changkyun glances up to catch the way Jooheon stares at him, usually joyous expression oddly serious. For a moment, Changkyun almost thinks he can feel that lurch in his stomach, the one often accompanied by butterflies. But he hasn’t felt that for years now, lives. And besides, this is Jooheon, not Kihyun. The butterflies only ever happened for Kihyun.

“Changkyun?”

At Jooheon’s prompting, Changkyun smiles. “Nothing, hyung. It’s just a book I read a while ago.”

Jooheon looks thrilled by the response, and he hops over the back of the couch to sprawl next to Changkyun. “It must have been good if you’re still caught up on it weeks later. Tell me about it, Changkyunnie?”

Changkyun stares for a moment, unsure of where to begin. After all, this isn’t a book he’d read so much as it is the story of his own life, but when Jooheon shifts so that his head is in Changkyun’s lap, Changkyun finds himself smiling. “It’s hard to explain,” he warns, “but I can try.” Jooheon cheers and settles himself further, legs thrown over the arm of the couch.

“In the first life,” Changkyun begins, words slow, “he was young, and stupid, and naive. They met in school, and somehow, for some reason, he fell in love. She was beautiful, and popular, and everyone adored her. Even him. So you can’t really blame him for how he fell for her, too. And one day he confessed. And she broke his heart.”

In his lap, Jooheon gasps, and Changkyun tries not to smile.

“In his next life, they were in school again. And she was still beautiful, and popular, and adored by everyone. Even him. And they were together. She loved him, and he loved her, and everything was right in the world. Except it wasn’t, because he remembered things he shouldn’t, and he didn’t understand why. In the third life…”

And Changkyun continues like that, fingers stroking slowly through Jooheon’s hair as he recounts his many lifetimes as if they were a book to be read aloud. He changes things, of course. Kihyun is always a girl – save for when he had been a she, and then she is a he – and the names of the people Changkyun has met time and time again are omitted. And Jooheon listens, captivated by Changkyun’s story.

When Changkyun reaches the end, stopping before he can begin to describe his current life and how Kihyun doesn’t exist again, Jooheon is in tears. It makes Changkyun feel guilty, because how would Jooheon react if he knew that the only reason they’re together now is because Kihyun doesn’t exist in this lifetime?

“Is that the end?”

Changkyun frowns because he doesn’t know, and he ignores the sting of tears that prickle at his eyes when he realizes that he doesn’t want this to be the end.

Perceptive as always, Jooheon smiles through his own tears and reaches up to pat Changkyun’s cheek, earning a wrinkled nose and half-frown for his efforts. “There’s more to the story, Changkyunnie, I’m sure. Maybe there’s another book out there, just waiting for you to read it. He’s going to be happy with her. He’s been through a dozen lives just for her, so he has to be happy one day, right? In the meantime, he’ll find happiness where he can, and it’ll be okay until they find each other again.”

The tears are immediate, and Changkyun turns his head away so that Jooheon can’t see them. But Jooheon does see them, Jooheon always sees them, and he pulls Changkyun down to him with a soft laugh so he can press a kiss to the corner of Changkyun’s lips. “Don’t look so sad, Changkyunnie. Every story has a happy ending.”

Changkyun wants to protest that it’s not true, that Shakespeare’s stories rarely, if ever, had happy endings, and that many classic literature stories were the same way, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he’s overwhelmed by Jooheon’s love, this love that Changkyun returns only a fraction of, a love that he feels for a boy that doesn’t exist in this life and might not exist in the next life. Changkyun doesn’t protest because he’s so selfish, to accept Jooheon’s love when his own heart beats for someone that doesn’t exist.

“Yeah,” he says instead, sniffling. “Every story has a happy ending. I’m sure his is coming.”

***
life 15

Changkyun tries to ignore the heat of Kihyun’s gaze as he dribbles the soccer ball back and forth between his feet, practicing the occasional move every now and again. When he completes one that looks particularly difficult, Kihyun oohs quietly beneath his breath before falling silent again. If it were anyone else, Changkyun might be irritated, but it’s Kihyun, and Kihyun’s wonderment at Changkyun’s soccer skills is more endearing than annoying.

Halfway home, Kihyun breaks the quiet they had been sharing, eyes cast out over the street. “You should take the scholarship.”

Changkyun missteps, nearly tripping over the ball. He glances to Kihyun, lips pursing. “How did you know?”

Kihyun smiles, glancing back to Changkyun before his focus drifts again. “Mom told me. Yours told her.”

Changkyun sighs, shaking his head. His mother is a traitor, and Kihyun’s is no better. He’d asked his mother to keep his secret, not blab it around. “I’m not sure I want to take it.”

“Why not?” Kihyun looks so stunned, so surprised, that Changkyun forgets what he was going to say. He has a lie in place, one he’s been working on for a while, but he’s never been good at lying to Kihyun. The truth almost comes out instead.

I don’t want to go overseas to study if you’re not there with me. I love soccer, but I love you more. I’d give up soccer and go to SNU for business if it meant I could spend this life by your side .

“I don’t know,” Changkyun says instead, a half-smile on his lips. “I’m not sure I want to move that far away from home? I mean, I love soccer, but someone has to be around to take care of my parents. And besides, what would I do halfway across the world without you to keep me out of trouble?”

Kihyun smiles, but there’s something off in his expression, like he knows Changkyun isn’t telling him the whole truth, but he’s not sure where the actual lie is hidden. “What, are you saying you wouldn’t be able to survive university without me there to keep an eye on you?”

“Yes.” And it’s too honest, too much too soon, and Changkyun knows that, but he doesn’t take it back. He can’t. Not now, not when it’s so close to a confession, and definitely not when taking it back would cause more problems than he knows how to solve.

Kihyun is silent, expression pensive, and he’s still that way when he and Changkyun pause at the corner of the street to wait for the light to change. Changkyun wonders if maybe he’s figured it out, if he’s figured out the truth that Changkyun hadn’t dared to speak and is now stuck in a cycle of processing.

The light switches over then, signaling that pedestrians have the right of way. Changkyun waits a moment, checking the street to make sure the cars have all stopped before he stoops to grab his ball and steps into the crosswalk.

Things happen fast after that, fast enough that it makes Changkyun’s head spin and leaves him with an incomplete picture of what must have happened.

Halfway across, there’s a shout from behind him, a shout of his name that has Changkyun turning to see what’s wrong. It’s Kihyun, of course, because Changkyun would know his voice anywhere. And besides, who else would be calling for him in the middle of a busy intersection? He doesn’t turn in time to see what happens, but he feels it, the way a body slams into him, the way pain lances through his side, his leg, his arm, his face.

Dazed and through the pain, Changkyun hears screaming. It takes more energy than Changkyun imagines he has to push himself upright – and agony sears into his shoulder at the action – but then he’s more on his side and back than his front, and he can see—

—and he wishes, desperately, that he can’t.

Someone lies in a tangle of limbs behind him, one arm bent at an odd angle and blood pooling around their body. It takes Changkyun a moment to recognize the cardigan that Kihyun had been wearing, the cardigan now soaked in blood. It takes much longer to recognize the pale face when would-be rescuers shift the body enough to try to help.

Sometime after, amidst the pain of helpful hands taking his pulse and voices begging him to just stay awake, help is on the way, Changkyun’s eyes slide shut and he slips away into painless oblivion.

When he wakes later, tethered to half a dozen machines and tucked into a bed of antiseptic white, his mother is at his side. Moments later, as if she’d been called for, so is Kihyun’s mother. The expressions the two women wear, bereft and stunned, tell Changkyun everything he needs to know.

***
life 16

Changkyun has always known this was coming. Since the very first day that he realized what he’d gotten himself into with Hyunwoo and Minhyuk, Changkyun has known that this moment in time was inevitable and would one day come to pass. He had known in a way that was innate and beautifully agonizing. And yet he’d continued on.

If he hadn’t, he never would have met Kihyun in this life, after all, and some things are worse than death.

Cold metal presses to Changkyun’s temple and the weight of it sits on his chest like an anchor, stealing away each breath he tries to take before it can reach his lungs. A chill races down his spine like lightning, and Changkyun knows that it’s not because there’s a gun to his head.

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

He almost can’t hear the question over the ringing in his ears, the gunshots echoing in them like cries and deafening the haunting moans of the wounded around him. If not for the fact that Changkyun has trained himself to listen for this voice above the noise of a mob in full cry, then he probably wouldn’t have heard it. He’s not sure whether to be proud of not.

“Hey.” The barrel of the gun taps him hard enough that Changkyun nearly topples. But it’s easy to unbalance him when his ears still ring and his head aches with the bitter knowledge that everyone he loves is dead.

He can see it in his mind’s eye. A lucky shot had taken Hyunwoo down fifteen minutes into the firefight, ripping through his throat like paper. Changkyun can still feel the heat of the blood on his face even though the body is now long-since cold. Minhyuk had lost it after that, prying Hyunwoo’s Glock from his fist and spraying the area around them with bullets. He’d gotten a number of lucky shots himself before being taken down with a bullet to the chest. Changkyun had watched him bleed out, unable to end his suffering and unwilling to let him die alone. In his final moments, Minhyuk had curled into Hyunwoo’s side, and Changkyun distantly remembers a spike of sadness and yearning.

After the death of their leader, the others had fallen quickly, ranks destroyed by their terror and confusion. Some had run, but Changkyun knows better than to think they’ll get far. They’d walked into an ambush, brought on by Hyunwoo’s pride and failure to know when he’d been outwitted and outmaneuvered by the enemy. The deserters will be killed before they can escape the building, and there’s no telling how painful those deaths will be.

A hand laces into his hair, fisting among the strands as it wrenches Changkyun’s head back and forces his neck into an odd angle. The gun retreats for a moment before returning, this time pressed to his throat. If Changkyun didn’t hurt so much, he might laugh.

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

Changkyun opens his eyes and looks up at Kihyun.

In this life, Kihyun’s eyes are so dark they look black, but Changkyun knows there’s a thin ring of dark ocher around the pupil. Changkyun knows because he’d called it beautiful once when their legs had been tangled together and their chests had been pressed close. If Changkyun tries to, he can still remember the sound of soft laughter, crisp enough to cut through the heavy air around them. Kihyun had told him there was nothing beautiful about it, but had thanked him regardless with a kiss that had left Changkyun dizzy.

He wonders if Kihyun remembers that night.

The way Kihyun jerks Changkyun’s head around before his grip eases ever so slightly is telling enough.

“Changkyun.” There’s a command in Kihyun’s voice, but there’s something else, too, something more. There’s weakness, softness, and Changkyun steels his resolve in order to be the enemy he needs to be. They’ve already broken one rule with Kihyun’s use of his name. They can’t break any more. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Changkyun smirks, but his lips remain sealed. It must be maddening, because the gun pressed to his throat digs into the skin, attempting to cut off his oxygen. There’s an argument above him, but Changkyun tunes it out when he recognizes the voices. Jooheon and Hoseok. They’re friends again in this life, as they’ve been in nearly every life, and Changkyun finds it oddly hilarious that they’re fighting over whether to keep him or kill him.

The gun is pulled away from his throat, but Kihyun’s hair still sits in his hair, anchoring Changkyun in place. He could get away right now if he really wanted to. He knows it. Kihyun knows it. This is an opportunity being given to him, but Changkyun doesn’t take it.

The arguing eases, and both Jooheon and Hoseok turn to Kihyun, prepared to lay out their cases. But Kihyun turns to Changkyun instead, crouching so they’re closer, so their conversation is more personal. Changkyun ignores the way his breath hitches. He ignores the way Kihyun’s does, too.

“You could join us,” Kihyun says, voice soft and coaxing. This close, Changkyun can see the ring of ocher in Kihyun’s eyes, and he yearns to call him beautiful again. But he doesn’t. Changkyun knows better than to undermine Kihyun’s authority.

He smiles instead, a bittersweet and savage offering on his part. “You’d never be able to trust me. Not for sure. Save yourself the trouble.”

Something breaks in Kihyun’s eyes, but he releases Changkyun and steps back and away without another word. Changkyun can see the way Hoseok lifts his gun, preparing to end Changkyun’s miserable excuse of a life, but then Hoseok’s arm drops, face palm as he turns away. Jooheon fixes Changkyun with an inscrutable look before turning with him. It’s only when Kihyun steps around to Changkyun’s front, arm raised and Glock in hand, that Changkyun understands why.

Some say it is agony to look death in the face and know it’s coming for you, to see your mortality stretched thin and cradled by the razor edge of someone else’s knife.

And yet Changkyun is smiling as he closes his eyes and accepts oblivion.

***
life 17

“Isn’t the beautiful, brother? She is the flower of her kingdom, and she is to be mine.”

Changkyun – Charles in this life – looks out over the line of people approaching, eyes scanning the faces for anyone familiar before coming to rest upon one in particular. Somehow he knows, even before Thomas points her out, that she is his brother’s betrothed.

She is also Kihyun. In this life, her name is—

“Katherine.”

Changkyun’s heart breaks a little as he smiles. “She’s beautiful, brother.”

Thomas sighs as he leans against the wall beside the window, a hand over his chest. “Isn’t she? More beautiful than the sun and the moon. She’s a goddess among women, Charles, and she is to be mine! May god smile upon our union.”

Changkyun thinks, more than a little bitterly, that if god existed, he would stop tearing Kihyun and Changkyun apart. If god does exist, then he is a cruel and vengeful god, one that thrives upon bloodshed and broken hearts. After all, in all of the lives Changkyun has lived, he’s only ever been happy in a handful of them. The stress of constant failure and loss is beginning to take its toll on him. In this life, he rarely smiles and is known by his people as the sad prince. Changkyun is so tired of being sad.

“Charles?”

Changkyun lifts his head, unaware that he’d looked away, and offers a weak smile. “Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

No is his first thought, lurching and traitorous.

“Yes,” is what he says instead, quiet and controlled. “I didn’t sleep well. I was too excited for you.” His brother beams, more than appeased by the response, and turns back to the window to continue admiring his betrothed. He doesn’t notice when Changkyun slips away from him, departure discreet and well-timed.

Retreating to his room doesn’t offer much in the way of relief, but Changkyun hadn’t expected it to. He’d just wanted somewhere quiet to muddle through his thoughts without other voices breaking his fragile concentration. Listening to his brother talk about a woman that he’s never met – the same woman Changkyun has loved through life after life, regardless of gender and circumstance – is absolutely maddening and Changkyun just can’t take it anymore.

He’s so tired of being sad, so tired of his parents and siblings treating him as if he’s prone to breaking, exhausted by the way the servants coddle him, frustrated by the dreams of things that will never come to pass. Changkyun itches for an escape, yearns for freedom from this nightmare of watching the one he loves most marry his brother. But there is no escape. There never has been, nor will there ever be.

He knows that. He has always known.

Changkyun crosses his room to the shelf of books that hides his secret from prying eyes, pulling books from the shelf and sending them careening to the floor in his haste. The vial is still there, the servants knowing better than to touch his books, and he cradles the vial in his palms as if it contains the answer to the question he’s been searching for since hearing of his brother’s betrothal.

Maybe it does.

Morning comes in a wash of primrose, peach, and lilac skies that dissolve into a dazzling blue as the sun rises. The sky is clear by midmorning, not a cloud in sight, and the sun beams in through the window of Changkyun’s room, puddling on the worn stone floor and creating a pool of warmth that drifts as the sun rises.

Just before noon, before the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, the last rays of light from the window catch on the vial. Lying on its side and emptied of its contents, the glass created tiny rainbows and flickers of light that flash across the stone floor for several minutes they’re gone, disappearing as if they had never been there.

In the courtyard below, Changkyun’s voice rings out as he swears fealty to his brother’s betrothed and makes an oath to follow and obey her for as long as she lives. His brother loves the idea, and his parents find his diligence endearing. And Kihyun -- Katherine -- calls Changkyun her knight.

It’s not perfect, nor is it enough, but it’s better than nothing, and Changkyun will take what he can get.

***
life 18

Changkyun sighs, tugging a hand back through his hair as he eyes the alleyway stretched out before him. It's late, well after midnight, and Changkyun’s body aches from the extra hours he'd put in at work after covering two different shifts and staying after to finish counting for the coming audit. He's tired, exhausted, and he knows better than to take shortcuts, especially in this part of the city, but something on his gut pulls him to concede. Just this once.

Changkyun heaves another sigh, glancing down the way he knows he should go, then steps into the darkness with the resolution that the sooner he gets started, the sooner he can get home. He's barely halfway down, just far enough from the mouth of the alley that his eyes have begun to adjust to the dark, when he hears someone come up behind him.

In this life, Changkyun grew up on the streets and was bounced between foster home for more than half of his life. He's slender, but muscled, and is more than capable of holding his own and taking on anyone that dares to challenge him. So when Changkyun swaying around, arms coming up to shield his face and fists at the ready, he thinks he's prepared for whatever he might need to face.

Except he's not.

There, looming out of the gloom, standing in silhouette from the light at the mouth of the alley, is Kihyun. Kihyun with white blond hair, a bruise on his right cheek, and color around his left eye. He looks like an angel, one that's been dragged to earth and punished for existing. And in his right hand is a knife, wicked, and sharp, and gleaming.

Changkyun’s stomach lurches, then settles, and Changkyun finds himself filled with the odd knowledge that this is the end. But at least he met Kihyun in this life.

“You shouldn't have come down here!” Kihyun protests, and his voice is high, so high, and Changkyun wonders just how old he is this time. Younger than he is, for once, that much Changkyun is sure of.

“What do you need?”

Kihyun stares at him, and Changkyun finds it’s easy to smile at him. Even knowing that this is it, that this is the end and this will be his last night in this life, he finds the will to smile. He can always smile for Kihyun.

“What?”

“I said....” Changkyun moves to step forward, but he sees the way Kihyun’s muscles tense, and he lifts his hands instead. He’s prepared to die. He is. But not yet. “How can I help? What do you need?”

It’s like talking to a frightened animal, but with the additional knowledge that this animal can and will kill him, and likely already has every intention to at the end of this conversation. But Changkyun has gotten much better at playing games like this. He has learned how to handle Kihyun in every life before this -- in every life Kihyun existed, at least -- so he feels confident enough to do it on the fly now.

“Are you hungry?”

Kihyun blinks, then stares. He’s confused, and it’s enough to startle an answer from him. “Yes?”

“You look like you could use a nice, solid meal. A warm one.” Changkyun smiles. And somehow, unbelievably, Kihyun risks a fleeting smile in return. But the knife does not waver, held between them like a shield. Whether it’s to shield Kihyun from him or the other way around, Changkyun isn’t quite sure.

“I could,” he agrees. “But I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?”

Kihyun glances over his shoulder, as if checking the mouth of the alley for something, then turns around with a shake of his head. “I can’t. I have to do this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you go the way you normally do? It wasn’t supposed to be you!”

Kihyun continues babbling, his free hand lifting to fist his hair as panic consumes him, and despite knowing his life is cradled by the razor edge of the knife Kihyun holds, Changkyun finds him beautiful. He wonders, vague and distant, if Kihyun’s eyes have an ocher ring in this life. Maybe it’s a pattern.

“I don’t know why I came this way,” Changkyun interrupts. “I just wanted to get home faster so I could go to sleep. It’s not your fault. It’s nothing you did.” And when Kihyun looks at him, hope in his eyes and written into his expression, Changkyun smiles. “I know you can’t let me go. But let me make it easier on you, okay?”

Kihyun hesitates. Changkyun sees it. But then he nods.

“I’m going to give you the cash in my wallet,” he says, reaching slowly for his pocket. He pulls the cash and the coins, but leaves the cards and his ID card. “Take this,” he says, offering it. “Pocket it. Don’t touch my wallet, don’t take the cards. They’ll track it back to you, okay?” Kihyun nods dumbly, stepping forward to snatch the cash from Changkyun’s hands. He tucks it away and retreats, the blade beginning to shake.

Changkyun waits until he’s ready, the continues. “Be careful not to hurt yourself. If they find your blood, they’ll find you. When you’re done, ditch the blade in the river. Drop it over the side of a bridge. If they can’t find it, then even if they do somehow find you and tie it to you, they shouldn’t be able to charge you.” Changkyun waits until Kihyun nods an acknowledgment, mentally going through a checklist.

Are his affairs in order? Not really, but that hardly matters. He has no pets, and it’s not like his plants will die in the next couple days if they’re not watered. His job won’t miss him. He has no partner, no kids, no one to depend upon him that will be impacted by this. His parents are travelling the world for their fiftieth anniversary, and he finds himself hoping that they’re not contacted until the end. His sister doesn’t exist in this life. Neither does his brother.

“It’s for your family, right?”

Kihyun jolts, panic etching itself into his features. “W-what? What did you say?”

“Don’t let them find out what you’re doing.” Changkyun thinks back to the life two before this, to the last time Kihyun had stolen his life, and he recalls Kihyun telling him about how he’d done it for his family. He’d started off as a punk kid, doing it to earn his family’s shop protection and moving up through the ranks from there. Changkyun wonders, and not for the first time. “Your family. Don’t tell them. Let them think anything else. Whatever they want. Don’t tell them about this. If you ever have to, make them think you’ve died. But don’t tell them about this. Especially if you have to leave.”

Kihyun has paled, and his hands shake where they hold the knife now, brandishing it before him like one might hold a sword. “How did you know--”

“Educated guess.”

This time when Changkyun smiles, Kihyun doesn’t return it, but that would be hoping for too much, and he knows it. “Make it fast. One clean cut across the neck. Hit an artery and I’ll bleed out within about two minutes. It’ll be painless.” Mostly. There’s nothing painless about bleeding out, after all. His only saving grace is that he’ll pass out quickly. Being unable to breathe plus a sudden loss of blood will knock him flat in a matter of seconds. Aside from the terror, and choking on his own blood instead of air, and what it’ll mask, it’s technically painless.

“Don’t step in the blood. Burn your clothing. Burn your shoes if you have to. Wash your hands, and face, and everything else.”

Kihyun nods.

Changkyun nods back.

When Kihyun steps close this time, the blade no longer shakes, and Changkyun wonders what it was that he’d said to strengthen Kihyun’s resolve. He wonders if it’ll be Hyunwoo and Minhyuk against the world again, put against unreasonable odds by circumstance and poor choices. He wonders if it’ll be Jooheon and Hoseok at Kihyun’s side again. He wonders if Kihyun will end up with Hoseok in this life now that he’s gone.

“I’m ready,” Changkyun says, taking a breath and savoring his last moment of life.

And then the blade is dragging over his skin, and pain cuts through Changkyun’s consciousness like a hot knife through butter. He gasps, losing the air he’d just sucked into his lungs, and reaches up to curl his fingers around his throat even as his knees shake and send him down.

At his side, Kihyun sinks with him, watching with wide, terrified eyes. His lips are moving, but over the pounding of Changkyun’s heart in his ears, he can’t hear what Kihyun is saying. It’s only after a moment of studying his lips that he can make out the litany of apologies.

Changkyun struggles to shake his head, but it hurts so much, and his vision jostles and fades, and he resorts to mouthing back a response that he doesn’t expect to be seen.

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay .

Something wet hits Changkyun’s cheek, and if he weren’t trying to stop his blood from spilling from his throat, he might reach to brush it away, but his body’s reflexes are stronger than his own will, so all he can do it blink rapidly, attempting to blink away the encroaching darkness. It’s only when something warm and heavy rests against his forehead that Changkyun manages it, and what little breath he’d managed to retain catches in his throat at what he sees.

Kihyun looms above him, foreheads pressed together and tears welling in his eyes. Even like this, he’s beautiful, and Changkyun finds himself stilling, unable to even considering fighting for his breath when he sees Kihyun’s eyes up close for the first time.

There is a dark ring of ocher around the pupils, eerily familiar and so terribly beautiful..

Kihyun smells of dirt, and blood, and terror. And beneath it all, hidden away like a gem in the rough, is a hint of vanilla and citrus. Changkyun hasn’t smelled that combination for nine lives now, and it brings to mind afternoons spent walking home after school, bag heavy on his back and Kihyun unshakable at his side until the day he starts smelling of citrus and clean linens

It’s then that Changkyun knows, or that he thinks he does. There’s a pattern to this, to each life and each death, the details insignificant and somehow hiding the devil within them.

It’s a shame he’s discovered it so late.

***
life 19

“Daniel.”

A warmth drapes across his back, arms snaking around his neck and shoulders as a cheek presses to his. It cuts into his field of view, but Daniel doesn’t mind. It’s early enough before class that the only people around are the other serious art students, the ones trying to use the extra time to perfect a piece or the ones that can’t stand the noise of the commons upstairs. And they don’t mind this, the tiny moments between Daniel and his not-quite boyfriend.

“Keith,” he murmurs, pencil stilling. There’s always that reflexive urge to try to hide what he’s been working on when someone comes up behind him to peer over his shoulder, but Daniel her never felt the urge to hide from Keith. Even before this thing started between the two of them, Daniel has felt inexplicably at ease with the male. Once upon a time, Daniel had tried to put a name to the feeling, but he’d never quite managed it and has long-since given up.

“What see you drawing?”

Daniel studies his drawing for a moment, then leans back into the warmth of Keith's body. “You.”

It's little more than a basic sketch at this point, but any trained eye would be able to compare the two and see the resemblance. Even Keith, it seems, because Daniel can see the pale fingers that extend into his field of view, hovering over the page, but not touching.

“Is my jaw that sharp?”

Daniel shakes his head, humming softly. “It's just a sketch. It's sharp, but it's not that sharp. I just haven't softened it yet.”

Daniel doesn't need to see Keith's face to know he's smiling. “And my eyes?”

“They're beautiful,” he admits easily, perhaps too easily. “What about them?”

Keith's lips press to the junction of where Daniel's neck meets his shoulder, and hidden inside the kiss is a smile that has Daniel's lips shifting into a reflexive curve. “Nothing,” he murmurs. “Nothing at all.”

They linger in silence for a moment as Daniel resumes his work. It's peaceful, quiet, and Daniel finds himself wishing that this moment could go on forever. Instead, Keith reluctantly pulls away with a sigh, hands lingering on Daniel's shoulders for an instant before he retreats entirely.

“Bell's about to ring,” Keith mumbles. “The assembly is today, and the choir is supposed to perform after the principal's speech. I need to go organize those little shits. I'll see you after first period?”

Daniel sighs, but he's smiling as he turns to face Keith. “You know I hate assemblies...” But regardless of how much work he might get done if he slips into the bathroom and hides there until the assembly is over, Daniel will be there. For Keith. “I'll be at the front cheering you on. I'll have a big sign and everything.”

Keith groans, but Daniel can see the smile he wears even as he heads for the door. And true to his word, the first bell rings seconds after he slips out of the room and into the empty hallway. Daniel watches him until Keith slips from his line of sight.

As soon as he’s gone, as students begin to filter into the room, Daniel finds himself with an inexplicable feeling of loss and the awareness that something is wrong. But the students walking in are smiling, chatting amongst themselves, and their faces are so at odds with the feeling that his stomach churns. There’s nothing to signal that something is wrong, and yet Daniel can’t shake it. He just can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong and that his world is about to come crashing down.

Class starts a few minutes later, and Daniel has to force his attention away from the door, away from the windows, away from the clock, and back to the charcoal piece he’s been working on for the past two weeks. It doesn’t work. Daniel spends the entire class doodling in his sketchbook, filling page after page with Keith’s hands, and eyes, and lips, and side profile.

His teacher isn’t pleased to find her normally studious student shirking on his project, and when the bell rings, he’s forced to stay after to discuss his behavior with her. She seems to relent when he admits that he’s felt off all morning, and that he thinks he might be getting sick because he couldn’t focus. That’s not normal behavior for him, and she knows it – him being sick usually ends with Daniel’s head pressed to the desk and no work done whatsoever – but maybe it’s something in his voice or his expression. Maybe she senses the wrongness he’s felt since the first bell. Whatever the reason, she lets him go, and Daniel hurries to the  auditorium.

Because of staying after to talk with her, Daniel is one of the last to arrive, and he’s stuck in one of the rows closest to the doors. He can see Keith, but it’s clear Keith can’t see him, so Daniel dips a hand into his bag to find his phone, hoping that a quick text of apology and explanation will appease him.

But his phone has no service. Granted, it’s not uncommon for cell phones to lose service in the school. Much of the building is shielded to a certain point, after all. But the auditorium is usually one of the few places where students can still get signal. Daniel frowns and sends the message anyway, hoping that the signal will waver in soon and Keith will get his message before Daniel has to pass it along by word of mouth.

He tries desperately to ignore the unwavering feeling of unease and a mounting emotion that sours in his mouth and tastes remarkably like fear.

It happens after the speech.

No one sees it coming, no one sees the man walking toward the front of the auditorium with an assault rifle in his hand. No one sees it coming. Not even Daniel, seated at the back with a perfect view of everything going on around him.

Their principal goes down in a spray of bullets, the noise of each shot loud and reverberating in the enclosed room. The panic is immediate, screams filling the air as students and teachers stand—and are then forced down when bullets spray above their heads and into the wall behind them.

Daniel, meanwhile, remains immobile in his seat, frozen in terror at the sight of the students still trapped on stage. The chorus members are trapped up there with a madman waving his gun, sitting on the risers they’d been provided and shrinking back into themselves every time he glances their way. Keith is among them. As one of the shorter members of the group, he’s in the very first row, and Daniel can see the panic he wears even from where he’s sitting.

Demands are made. Daniel doesn’t hear them, caught in that reflexive place of terrified immobility. But he sees the way the choir students share glances, and he can see the idea they’re hatching, and it’s then that the unplaceable fear returns to him. And suddenly Daniel can’t move fast enough.

One of the bigger guys in the chorus slips off the risers.  Shawn, Daniel thinks is his name, one of Kihyun’s few friends and one of the few people Daniel actually knows from the choir aside from Keith himself. The gunman doesn’t notice him at first, but then someone draws attention to him, and the gunman turns, and the gun lifts.

A storm of bullets takes Shawn down before he can rush the last of the distance, and Daniel watches in mute horror as he falls. The people around him scream and shrink away, averting their eyes. But Daniel can’t not look. He can’t not watch. And then his eyes shift, and he sees it.

On the risers behind where Shawn had fallen, other choir members clutch themselves and each other. Among them is Keith, held by one of the alto girls who holds her hand to his stomach and to the red that’s beginning to bloom across his white shirt.

Something roars in Daniel’s ears, something terrible and violent and furious, and he doesn’t understand why he drops into the floor, why he crawls past legs and backpacks and into the aisle, why he crawls down until he’s close enough to the stage to see the white of Keith’s eyes. He doesn’t understand why he draws attention to himself then and stands, demanding the gunman’s attention.

“Why are you doing this?” Daniel steps to the side, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible even as he shifts to keep both the gunman and the chorus students in his line of sight. He waits for them to get it, to see the opening he’s leaving for them. While the gun is turned on him, while the gunman is facing him, they have precious seconds to either escape into the seats or escape through the doors at the back of the stage. “What’s the point of trapping us in here, taking out our principal, and making all these demands? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

Movement from the corner of Daniel’s eye alerts him of the fact that some of the chorus students are creeping toward the seats while others head for the back doors.

“You took out the best option you had to get what you wanted. Our principal could have probably done something for you. Made a deal with the cops. Something. Because you know the cops are coming. Of course they are. You may have gotten most of the student body in here, but the teachers are all still out in the school. And you know at least one of them heard the gun. Your time is—”

The back door to the stage swings shut then. The gunman turns to look for the source of the sound, and it’s only then that he sees the risers are empty. It’s only then, belated and furious at having been duped, that he lifts the gun again and fires off half a dozen rounds.

Daniel feels them, the three that hit his chest and the one that catches him in his left arm, but he doesn’t really register them until he looks down and sees the bursts of red beginning to stain his shirt. He doesn’t feel the pain until he tries to take a break and realizes that he can’t. He doesn’t feel it until a cough tears through his chest, and blood bubbles from his lips, and he sinks to his knees, stunned and afraid.

Daniel collapses, and he lies there for a moment, fighting the pain and the darkness swallowing his vision. And when he can finally blink it away, when he realizes that his fingers are cold and his toes are cold, and everything is getting cold, he can see Keith in the aisle just a few meters away. The voice of the gunman as he begins to rant again is distant and vague, and Daniel’s attention shifts elsewhere as he drags himself across the floor.

Keith meets him halfway, and his fingers cup Daniel’s cheeks even as he coughs more blood and collapses into Keith’s arms. But they’re not warm any more. Daniel’s so cold, but even he can feel the difference. Keith’s cold, too. They both are. And even though Daniel doesn’t want to consider why, he knows.

He knows, and the way Keith is beginning to tear up, he knows, too.

Daniel doesn’t bother wasting time on pleasantries. He drags himself a little closer, pressing his forehead to the crook of Keith’s neck and slinging an arm around the male’s shoulders. “Is everyone else okay?”

Keith nods, and Daniel can feel the shaky puffs of air from what’s supposed to be his laughter. But he doesn’t have the breath to laugh. Not anymore, not when he’s bleeding out like this. “Yeah. He shot Sarah in the leg and Holly has one in her thigh. I think he got Jesse in the shoulder, but he slipped out the back with Hunter, Susan, and Shannon, so I don’t know for sure.” Keith swallows hard, and Daniel can feel it, the way he shakes with fear, the way he tries to compose himself in their final moments. “They’re going for help.”

“That’s good,” Daniel murmurs, eyes fluttering shut. It’s getting harder to breathe, and if Daniel is going to be brutally honest, he doesn’t even hurt any more. He’s just...tired. So tired and so, so cold. He knows better than to think they’re going to make it out alive, but he doesn’t want to die with regrets, either. He doesn’t want to die without telling Keith, “I love you.”

Keith freezes. But then he’s laughing, low, and soft, and gasping, and it makes Daniel wonder just how bad it is. How long does Keith have? How long does he have? How long do they have with each other?

Not long enough.

“I know,” Keith says, voice no more than a sigh. But Daniel can hear the smile in it, the smile Keith presses to his cheek, the smile tainted with blood. “I love you, too, even though you’re an idiot. What were you thinking, huh?”

Daniel smiles, humming softly. He’d shrug, but it’s getting so hard to focus, and even his words are coming slower, following at length and slurring into each other. Not long left now. “You. Was thinking about you.”

Keith shakes his head, and Daniel swears he can feel something wet against his neck, but he doesn’t have the strength to ask. It’s taking everything he has just to answer, and even then, sleep is looking so inviting. And maybe Keith knows that, because a hand smooths over his hair, and lips press to his temple, and Daniel’s eyes slowly shut of their own accord.

“Sleep, baby. It’ll be okay. I’ll see you when you wake up.”

And Daniel would laugh if he could, because it’s a lie. It’s such a lie. But it’s a merciful one, and he finds himself wanting to agree anyway. He would agree to anything if Keith asked it of him.

“Yeah. See you. Love you.”

“I love you, too.”

His final thought is of Keith, of the shine in his eyes and the curve of his lips when he smiles, and of maybe next time.

***
life 20

Next time, Changkyun is twenty and just finishing a degree in art education when he meets Kihyun while wandering through the park in search of ideas for his next project.

But it’s not just Kihyun. It’s Kihyun and Hyunwoo, and they’re joined at the hip, laughing and sharing ice cream, and walking a small spaniel. It’s young and bounces between the two of them, making high yipping noises occasionally to get their attention. Every couple minutes or so, Kihyun stoops and stills, lifting a camera to his eyes to take a picture of the dog, or of Hyunwoo, or a patch of flowers beside the park’s path.

In this life, Kihyun is blond again, the almost cornsilk color that comes after the previous dye – no doubt bright and fluorescent in nature – has washed out. He looks beautiful. He’s also small beside Hyunwoo, muscled and sweetly gentle of a giant Hyunwoo, but Changkyun thinks they’re a match made prettily perfect by their dual natures. It’s beautiful, they both are, it all is, and he itches to draw it.

And even though Changkyun sees the sweatshirt Kihyun wears, one paying homage to the same college Changkyun attends, he doesn’t dare to step into Kihyun’s life. It doesn’t matter that there are what ifs and maybes. It doesn’t matter that Changkyun could at least try to make friends with Kihyun in this life. It just doesn’t matter. Not this time. Not when he’s so happy with Hyunwoo.

Changkyun doesn’t seek Kihyun out when he leaves the park. He promises himself he won’t, and he doesn’t. Changkyun buries himself in his work, pushing for his degree. He graduates six months later, the top of his class and months ahead of schedule. In that time, Changkyun sees Kihyun three times – twice with Hyunwoo in the park and once more with someone Changkyun thinks might be Minhyuk. Not once does he approach Kihyun, always watching briefly from afar before moving on.

After graduation, Changkyun moves halfway across the world, resettling in New York City. He takes a job teaching children at a special art academy, and he takes up photography as a hobby, filling boxes upon boxes with pictures of pretty people, and architecture, and animals, and anything that catches his eye.

It doesn’t fill the void in his chest, the one Changkyun thinks is meant for Kihyun to fill, but it’s enough.

For this life, at least, it’s enough.

***
life 21

“Hoseok, quit bitching and hurry up!” Changkyun props open the door to the lobby with a sigh, impatient as he waits for Hoseok to pick which box he wants to carry up two flights of stairs. He’s looking for the lesser of two evils, as he always does, but while Changkyun would normally find it amusing, he’s just tired now. Tired, and grouchy, and hot, because it’s probably one hundred degrees out, and his apartment might be air-conditioned, but the outdoors definitely aren’t. The sooner this is done, the sooner they can sprawl out with a bottle of Soju and celebrate Changkyun’s independence by getting wasted. But first…

“Hoseok, I’m going upstairs!”

Hoseok calls back something unintelligible as he rifles through the back of the van, and Changkyun sighs as he slips inside. It’s cooler in the lobby, and even a bit cooler in the stairwell, but two flights of stairs isn’t a walk in the park, so Changkyun’s already begun to sweat by the time he hits his floor and shuffles out into the hallway.

After a careful balancing act that nearly has Changkyun dropping his box while trying to unearth his new key from the depths of his apartment, Changkyun is shuffling inside. “I’m home!” Changkyun calls with a laugh. The apartment doesn’t answer, but Changkyun hardly expects it to. His box goes on the counter in the kitchen, and then he’s heading into the other rooms to turn on the central cooling and to drop his backpack in his bedroom.

It’s in the bedroom, while opening the blinds to let in the sun and sliding open the closet door to put more boxes inside for storage, that he finds the textbook. It’s lying on its side at the very back of the closet, half-hidden by the doors and by shadows. Changkyun supposes the previous tenant left it behind on accident when in his hurry to leave, so he reaches back there for it. Textbooks aren’t cheap after all, and it looks like it belongs to an education course, which means it’s that much more costly.

Changkyun flips through the textbook as he heads back into the living room, smiling fondly when he finds sticky notes marking dozens of pages, and highlighted passages throughout the front half of the textbook. It’s clear to him that it had been left accidentally, especially when he knows that the semester is only half-over. Whoever had left the book behind will probably want it back.

It’s only when Changkyun flips to the front of the book to look for a name or contact information that he stops cold in the middle of the living room. In the front of the book, written in a scrawl that is painfully tidy and precise, is a single name.

Yoo Kihyun.

Beneath that, just as tidy and precise, is a phone number.

All the air rushes from Changkyun’s lungs as if he’s been punched, and for a long moment afterward, he can’t breathe. But then he’s reaching for his phone, and after a mental debate of what to say and how casual to be about it, Changkyun shoots the number a text.

Hey. My name is Changkyun and I just found this education textbook in my closet. This number was in the front. I’ll be here all night if you want to drop by to get it. Or I can meet you somewhere if that would be easier.

Changkyun sets the textbook on the counter and heads back into the hallway. He passes Hoseok – weighted down by a box and another backpack slung over his shoulders – and is halfway down the stairwell when his phone rings. The chorus to Twice’s Like Ooh Ahh starts playing, and Changkyun flinches away out of surprise and nearly falls down the rest of the flight as he scrambles to pull his phone from his pocket.

Hoseok will die for touching his precious phone, Changkyun decides as he swipes to answer and lifts the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, hi—Dawon, sweetheart, that’s my hair, not—” There’s a brief moment of scuffle, then the voice returns. “You found my textbook?”

It’s Kihyun’s voice on the other end, breathless and surprised. In the background, Changkyun can hear the high, squealing voices of children, and behind that is the murmur of another voice that sounds oddly familiar. It takes Changkyun a moment to place it as Minhyuk’s.

“Yeah, it was in the back of my closet. What used to be your closet, I guess?”

Kihyun groans, his voice tinny through the speaker. “Shit, of course. The only place I didn’t check.”

There’s childish laughter from the other end of the line, and Changkyun can just barely make out a little girl’s voice saying, “Kiki oppa said a bad word!” Kihyun groans, and Changkyun tries to smother his laughter as he heads back out to Hoseok’s van.

“You sound like you’re busy,” Changkyun says after another moment of semi-silence punctuated by the sound of chattering children and rustling fabric.

“I am,” Kihyun admits with a sigh. “It’s lunch time, and the kids are super busy today. But I really need that textbook back. I have a test next Tuesday, and I can’t keep borrowing my coworker’s.”

Changkyun glances down at his watch, judging the time. “I could bring it to you?”

“No, no. You’re moving in, right? I’ll come get it. How late are you going to be awake?”

“Uh.” Changkyun stops short, because the original plan had been to get wasted with Hoseok, but if he has the chance to meet Kihyun in this life, then... “Whenever? I don’t have classes in the morning and I don’t work tomorrow. Whenever is good for you. I’ll be here.”

Kihyun is quiet for a moment, and Changkyun can hear the sounds of children quieting. He’s probably stepped into another room to finish the call, and Changkyu finds himself smiling. It’s a smile that widens when Kihyun answers. “I have to work until dinner time. Maybe later. A lot of the kids at this daycare have parents that work late, so I can’t leave until they’re all headed home.”

“Then what about meeting somewhere?” It’s forward, but Changkyun feels emboldened, like this life wants him to succeed. “We could stop and get food, maybe? I don’t have any groceries yet and was going to get take out anyway. And if you’re going to be working late, you’ll probably be hungry, right?”

Kihyun is quiet for a moment, but then he’s smiling, and Changkyun knows because he can hear it in the male’s voice. “That sounds good, actually. I’ll call you when the last kid is leaving, and we can figure out where to go?”

Changkyun leans against the side of Hoseok’s van, raking a hand through his hair as he struggles not to laugh incredulously at it all. “Yeah. Yeah, that would be fine. Just let me know.”

“I will.”

And then he’s gone, and Changkyun can’t hold it in any more. He sinks to the ground, laughing and holding his phone close as he thanks every god he’s ever heard of for this chance.

When Hoseok appears a moment later to eye him as if he’s grown a second head, Changkyun doesn’t feel at all bad about telling him that they can’t get wasted because Changkyun has a hot date with a cute boy. Hoseok doesn’t even bother to pretend to be offended, jumping on the excuse like a dog with a bone as he presses for details.

Later that night, well after the usual dinner time, Changkyun meets Kihyun for the first time. They have McDonalds.

Kihyun is just as beautiful as Changkyun remembers.

***
life 22

“John Green is an asshole.”

Changkyun doesn’t look up, eyes fixed on the book he’s been pretending to read for the last hour. It’s upside down and he’s flipping through it backward, but Minhyuk hasn’t noticed yet, and Changkyun isn't going to give him a reason to talk more than he already is. If he didn’t already have terminal cancer, Minhyuk’s incessant talking would probably kill him.

But then again, Minhyuk is all angles and jutting bone, a sharply diminished appetite and struggle with eating having reduced him to well below an unhealthy weight. He’s terminal, too.

They all are.

“I mean, what kind of bullshit is he trying to sell us?”

Changkyun is still making a valiant attempt to ignore Minhyuk’s attack on the author when a foreign, but not unfamiliar, voice speaks up. “What do you mean?”

Changkyun and Minhyuk both glance up and over. At the corner of Minhyuk’s room, leaning against the door and hooked to half a dozen bags that swing from the hooks on his pole, is Jooheon. When he sees he has their attention, he grins and saunters inside, dropping into the other open chair beside Minhyuk’s bed.

That’s all the encouragement Minhyuk needs to really get into things, and he lifts his book, waving it in the air like a pastor at sermon when they really get into things. It’s almost funny how alike the image is. “John Green is attempting to sell our sob stories by turning it into a sordid love affair!”

When Jooheon glances his way instead, looking for clarification, Changkyun finds himself grinning. “He finished reading The Fault in Our Stars.” And then, turning to Minhyuk and shutting his book in one smooth motion, he adds, “And really, it’s more like a tragic, star-crossed lovers deal. They both die, you know?”

“You don’t know that!” Minhyuk screeches, loud enough that Changkyun knows every nurse on duty in this floor had heard them. Thankfully, they also know about Minhyuk’s lack of volume control, and while they don’t enjoy it, they’ve also stopped coming by every five minutes to ask him to quiet down. Although Changkyun thinks that perhaps an adult chaperone might be a good idea, if only this once. Minhyuk’s getting worked up, and Changkyun still hasn’t gotten rid of the bruises Minhyuk gave him nearly a month ago.

Sighing, Changkyun glances to Jooheon, making a gesture meant to be interpreted as why do I bother. Jooheon may have been borderline genius before his diagnosis, but he’s not smart enough to read Changkyun’s cues, and he walks right into Minhyuk’s trap.

“Who dies?”

“Definitely not Hazel Grace!” Minhyuk snaps, fixing Changkyun with a stare, daring him to object, before turning back to Jooheon. The book is being waved again, and Changkyun discreetly tries to scoot his chair back to avoid being in the path even as he turns to Jooheon to catch his answer.

True to form, Jooheon smiles. It’s dimpled and toothy, a warm, sunshine-y grin that instantly manages to appear Minhyuk. “Of course.” And just like that, Minhyuk deflates.

But not for long.

“Regardless of Hazel Grace not dying, John Green is attempting to sell our stories for millions, and I am not at all amused by this!”

With an ease that only he ever seems capable of, Jooheon plucks the book from Minhyuk’s hands and turns it over to read the backside. It takes him a moment, a moment that Minhyuk and Changkyun both patiently give him, before he glances up with an amused quirk to his lips.

“So whose sordid love affair is this guy making millions off of?”

Minhyuk sits upright so fast that both Changkyun and Jooheon lean forward and reach to steady him. But for once, Minhyuk is under control. He turns himself to Jooheon instead hands on his knees and looking more excited than Changkyun has seen him in months. And in the past year since they found another set of tumors, Changkyun has seen a lot of Minhyuk.

Excitement is a nice look on him.

Minhyuk glances Changkyun’s way, grinning, and Changkyun tries to ignore the way his stomach drops away because no, no, no--

“Kyunkyun and Kihyoni, of course!”

Jooheon is the one that waves the book at Changkyun this time, expression one of delight. “Really? You two are together?”

Changkyun sputters, recoiling into his seat because Jooheon’s much closer and he really doesn’t want any more bruises, dammit. Hoseok just got him the other day during one of his fits, and he’ll probably have that bruise on his arm until the day he dies. But Jooheon doesn’t relent, leaning out of his chair to swat at Changkyun until he lashes out and kick Jooheon in the shin. Slippered feet don’t do much damage, but it doesn’t matter because at least Jooheon stops and turns back to Minhyuk.

“Tell me more!”

The gleam in Minhyuk’s eyes is a manic one, and Changkyun realizes that it’s his cue to leave. Hearing Minhyuk and Jooheon discuss how he and Kihyun are meant to be together is fun, but not that fun, and Changkyun really just doesn’t want to hear it.

Neither Minhyuk nor Jooheon glance his way when he leaves, so Changkyun takes it as his cue to make a hasty escape, scurrying into the hallway as fast as his own IV stand will allow. From there he’s not really sure where to go, and he stands in the white hallway for a moment, marveling at the nurses that stroll with each other and their patients, and then at the number of people motivated enough to move around today.

It makes him think of Hoseok and, by default, Kihyun.

Changkyun’s feet begin to move before he really knows where he’s going, and minutes later finds Changkyun in the doorway to Hoseok’s room. And like he’d expected, Kihyun is there. Because if he’s not with Changkyun, Kihyun is often with Hoseok.

Even though Hoseok isn’t awake, no doubt sleeping off a sedation rather than asleep by his own volition, Kihyun is sitting as his side, reading one of the books Hoseok had borrowed from the mobile library bus that had stopped by at the beginning of the week. It looks interesting, if Kihyun’s hunched shoulders and hunkered form is anything to go by, but Changkyun doesn’t think he’ll mind an interruption. Kihyun rarely does.

Changkyun knocks on the doorframe, a small smile forming at the corner of his lips when Kihyun lifts his head and turns to smile at him. He reaches for the whiteboard on the side table even as Changkyun shuffles into the room.

“Morning, sunshine,” Changkyun greets with a lazy drawl even as Kihyun lifts his whiteboard to show off a scrawled you’re disgusting. Kihyun grins. And then Changkyun grins. And then he’s there at Kihyun’s side, eyeing the book he’d been reading with consideration. To his surprise, it’s the same book he’d just escaped from.

“Really?”

Kihyun gives him a Look. Not just a lot, but the Look. The don’t you dare judge me Look that Kihyun had become a master at giving. And considering how much shit the others give him over the silliest of things, it’s not unfounded.

Changkyun takes the other chair beside Hoseok’s bed, casting the male a curious glance before turning all of his attention back to Kihyun and the book he holds. “Minhyuk and Joohenn just tried to beat me with Minhyuk’s copy of that.” Kihyun’s arches brow is enough incentive to continue, so Changkyun nods as he leans back and makes himself comfortable. “Not to spoil the book or anything, but they’ve decided we’re Hazel and Gus.”

Kihyun’s quick to pop the cap off his marker again, strokes fast and messy as he hurries to respond. His eagerness is exciting, and it makes Changkyun smile that much wider. Hazel Grace and Augustus. I’ve read it before.

“Ahh,” he says, laughing. “Alright then, Mr. Smarty Pants. Which one are you?”

Kihyun stills, eyes remaining fixed on Changkyun for a long moment before a devious smile pulls onto his lips. Take your pick. Osteosarcoma and a prosthetic leg or stage 4 thyroid cancer.

Changkyun taps his fingers against arm of his chair, humming thoughtfully. “Is the thyroid cancer discovered three months after I successfully jack off for the first time?”

Kihyun leans forward, lips pursed and smile gone as he reaches out and flicks Changkyun on the forehead. Hard. While Changkyun recoils, rubbing the spot and whining aloud, Kihyun drags his palm across the board to clear away the previous message. You’re a pig, is what it reads when Kihyun turns it around again. You can be Augustus.

Changkyun finds himself grinning despite the message, and he reaches out a hand, fingers wiggling invitingly in the air. Kihyun eyes it a moment, wary, before allowing himself to take it. All it takes is seconds for Changkyun to twist his hand, their fingers slotting together and filling the spaces that had been left behind. It’s a perfect fit, and Changkyun doesn’t need to see Kihyun’s face to know he’s smiling.

“Alright,” he agrees, voice soft. “I’m Augustus, and you’re my Hazel Grace?” When Kihyun nods, Changkyun’s smile slowly widens. “Great. So does that mean we get to have really awkward sex while you’re connected to an oxygen tank?”

Kihyun is fast as he releases Changkyun’s hand and swipes at him with his whiteboard, but Changkyun is seconds faster, and he jerks just out of reach with a delighted cackle. “I guess that’s a no?”

Kihyun doesn’t even bother writing on his board, crossing his arms in the form of an “X”. It’s clear enough to Changkyun, but it doesn’t manage to knock the smile from his lips.

“That’s fine,” he relents. And then his hand is back out there, fingers wiggling in invitation. This time Kihyun hesitates before taking it. But the spaces between them are the same, and they fit the same, and Kihyun’s hand is warm around his, and Changkyun sighs because he wishes he could keep this moment forever. But he can’t, no matter how badly he might want to.

“How is he?” Changkyun asked, tilting his head toward Hoseok. “Is he still sleeping off everything from yesterday?”

Kihyun nods, and he shifts to precariously balance the whiteboard in his lap so he can scribble a reply to Changkyun’s question. He attacked someone this morning. Thought they were a monster coming to kill him. It took two nurses to hold him and sedate him.

Kihyun turns away then, just enough to be noticeable, and it takes Changkyun a moment to piece it all together. “He attacked you.” It’s not a question, but a statement, and Changkyun’s heart drops into his stomach when Kihyun flinches. He rubs his thumb over Kihyun’s knuckles, trying to reassure him, but it’s so hard when they both know the reality of Hoseok’s situation.

There’s no cure for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and there’s no way to stop Hoseok’s brain from turning into a sponge. There’s nothing they can do but be there for him, but even that is difficult when Hoseok’s brain tricks him into thinking that they’re one of the monsters he’s afraid of. It’s that much harder for Kihyun than the rest of them, because they may have all met in the hospital, but Kihyun’s known Hoseok since childhood, since they were pre-teens smoking stolen cigarettes and sipping on illegally bought beers.

Changkyun knows the story well, having heard it from Hoseok many times before during his various moments of lucid dementia, and he wishes things could be different. He wishes they could be different, all of them, living better lives somewhere, happy, and healthy, and whole.

It’s a dream he has, one that visits him nightly, dreams of himself and Kihyun, of Hoseok, of Minhyuk and Jooheon, of the two other patients he and the others had befriended in their many months of visits and stays, the ones now missing and presumably at rest.

Changkyun thinks that maybe there’s a world like that out there somewhere, a world where he and the others are happy, where Minhyuk can eat what he wants and Jooheon’s genius doesn’t kill him, where Hyungwon hadn’t been pressured into starving himself to death for success and Hyunwoo’s body hadn’t given out on him and cost him his freedom and life. He thinks maybe there’s a world where Hoseok can smile and mean it, where he doesn’t have to be afraid of monsters that exist only in his head. He thinks there’s a world where Kihyun can still sing, and a world where he’s not afraid to commit to saying I love you.

Changkyun thinks there’s a world out there where they’re all healthy together and happy, and he’d like to think maybe that will be their life. Some day.

For now, however, and for however long their “now” happens to be, they have this life. And really...

Really, Changkyun thinks, with Kihyun’s hand warm against his as they hang in the air between their chairs, this isn’t so bad.

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities, and they always will be, but Changkyun thinks he’s lucky that his infinity and Kihyun’s both happened to coincide.

***
life 23

Changkyun is getting tired of this, of the way life always seems to set him up to fail, doing everything in its power to steal his happiness away from him before he can even have so much of a taste of it. It’s exhausting on its own, after all. All of it is, the entire process of living life after life after life and knowing that he’s only ever been happy a handful of times, and that he has no idea how long it’ll go on – how long he’ll go on – living each new life as it’s given to him as he searches for the one person that has any meaning to him and hopes that Kihyun hasn’t fallen in love with someone else in the time it’s taken Changkyun to find him.

Sure, sometimes it works. Sometimes Changkyun finds him. Sometimes they’re happy together.

And then sometimes, like this time, Changkyun is too late, and he’s forced to watch Kihyun fall in love with someone else. Again. All over again.

This time it’s Hoseok.

And Changkyun shouldn’t be surprised any more. Kihyun and Hoseok are good together, close friends and constant companions in every life Changkyun has ever shared with the both of them. But sometimes... Sometimes Changkyun wishes they weren’t. Sometimes Changkyun is selfish and wishes that Kihyun would look at him like he always looks at Hoseok, he wishes that Kihyun would be drawn to him and his life in the same way Changkyun is always drawn to Kihyun.

But those selfish urges only ever come to him in the dead of night when he can hear noises from the apartment next to his. Sometimes it’s Kihyun’s laughter that does him in. Sometimes it’s the sounds Kihyun and Hoseok make when they fall into bed with each other late into the night after Hoseok returns from his shift at the bar and Kihyun abandons his coursework to spend time with his boyfriend.

Regardless of the how and why, Changkyun is still forced to smile at them come morning when the three of them head to breakfast together to meet Minhyuk and Hyunwoo. He smiles and he plays pretend and ignores the selfish want to be in Hoseok’s place, to return from his late night labs to a lit apartment and Kihyun singing  arias as he shuffles around their kitchen and cooks dinner for the two of them.

Changkyun is tired of it.

Changkyun is so tired of pretending.

But somehow, inexplicably, Changkyun perseveres.

This time, he moves away the day after graduation, taking a job in the United States. It keeps him busy for the next several weeks. And then those weeks turn into months, and the months into years. And then somehow Changkyun is thirty-three, and it’s been ten years, and he doesn’t understand where the time went or how it went so fast, but it’s gone.

Kihyun is an idol back in South Korea, his name one screamed by thousands of girls that swoon over each and every thing he says. He’s a household name, as is his company, and his private life is blown so wide by paparazzi and nosy fans that he might as well not have a private life. And Hoseok is gone.

But Changkyun doesn’t dare go back and try to play pretend.

For the rest of his life, he wonders what could have been.

***
life 24

Changkyun is fourteen when he realizes that he fucked up in his last life.

He’d had a chance with Kihyun there at the end, remote as the chance might have been, and rather than moving back to Korea and innocuously inserting himself back into Kihyun’s life, Changkyun had chosen to stay in America, focusing on his job and the few things in his life that he could control that still made him happy.

And he regrets it now. He regrets it all now, and if he could go to Kihyun, he would. But it’s too late.

In this life, Changkyun is the middle child of five and the second of three boys, and none of his siblings are related to him by blood. The oldest of his siblings, a female, is an addict. The second eldest, his brother, is a drunk. Changkyun is the most normal of the lot, or so he imagines, and he’s just as fucked up as the rest. And his younger siblings... As far as strange twins go, they’re pretty normal, but the girl doesn’t speak out loud and won’t look anyone but her brother in the eyes, and her brother has temper issues and has been called to his elementary school’s office on two occasions for being involved in fights during school hours.

His parents, if that’s what Changkyun can call them, aren’t much better. His mother is an addict – like mother, like daughter – and to support her habit before acquiring more foster children and their checks, she had sold her body and then the body of her eldest foster child. His father is an addict, too, but he’s also violent and abusive, and Changkyun’s body will forever bear the marks of his father’s rages.

If that were everything, Changkyun could probably handle it.

But it’s not.

School is hell. His peers ignore him. And those that don’t ignore him hate him. His teachers are dismissive and live to pretend he’s not even there in the classroom with them. He has no friends, no one to rely upon when things get rough. His older siblings may attend his school, but they never actually attend class, and his younger siblings are at a school of their own.

Changkyun is alone. Changkyun is so fucking alone.

It almost comes as a relief when he decides to kill himself.

Between his elder sister’s drugs, his elder brother’s booze, and one of his father’s razors, Changkyun knows he could do it.

But he holds off. Changkyun gathers what he needs, hiding it beneath his bed and in the back of the closet in the room he and the twins share, and he waits. Why?

Because maybe this will be the life. Maybe this will be the final life. Maybe this is the life Kihyun comes to him first, where he tries to convince Changkyun that they’re meant to be together, that they can fight and survive it all together. Maybe this is the life where Changkyun can come home to Kihyun singing arias in the kitchen.

But the days drag on. They drag on, and they turn to weeks, to months, and then another year.

Changkyun is fifteen, and it’s his birthday, and he’s nursing a broken nose and a broken wrist, and it’s then that he thinks that maybe Kihyun isn’t coming for him in this life. That maybe he doesn’t exist at all in this life.

Days turn into weeks, and months, and then into another year, and the thoughts stays with Changkyun that entire time, taunting him and preying upon his weaknesses until, at long last, Changkyun gives up.

Changkyun is fifteen when he digs the half-empty bottle from the depths of his closet and recovers the pills he’d hidden in a hole he’d ripped into the underside of his mattress. He throws it into his backpack and sneaks out in the dead of the night.

Changkyun is sixteen when he dumps the pills into his mouth and nurses the contents of the bottle until exhaustion finally overcomes him.

For once, it’s as easy as going to sleep.

***
life 25

It’s been over a year since Changkyun first walked into the room where the remaining No.Mercy trainees had been enjoying their meal. It’s been a year, and yet Changkyun still remembers their expressions, the shock, and disbelief, and the bitterness of betrayal they’d worn. He’d been briefed to a degree, of course, because he had never been part of a televised survival show like No.Mercy before, his previous experience with Nu’Bility notwithstanding.

So really, in theory, Changkyun knew what he was stepping into. He’d been told about the trainees that had just been cut and how the balance needed to be shifted back to a more even distribution between vocalists and rappers. He knew, and yet he had no idea how much the other trainees would hate him for coming in as late as he did. And really, Changkyun can’t blame them. He can’t. Even now, a year later, he can’t blame them for their disbelief and they way they’re treated him in the following months.

But that was a year ago, and things have improved drastically since then.

While their group dynamic isn’t always perfect -- Hyunwoo is a bit soft as a leader, sometimes lacking the severity needed to keep the rest of the group in line; and Minhyuk can be a bit overwhelming when it comes to setting the mood, sometimes even at the expense of others; and Kihyun can sometimes be so soft and thoughtful and then just as cruel moments later -- they’re getting better at it. They’re getting better with each other. It’s easier to play around now, easier to just be and exist with each other without the constant need to snipe at weaknesses.

It’s no longer a competition or rivalry to be the best, but a team effort to make each other and the group as a whole the best that they can be. It’s easier this way, too, having each other to lean upon as they work toward a better self as a whole for the Monbebes. And truthfully, it’s something that Changkyun never thought he’d have, especially after Nu’bility disbanded.

And yet here he is, sixteen months later, shooting their sixth music video and preparing to promote the first part of their X Clan saga with All In.

And for once, for the first time in a very long time, Changkyun isn’t alone.

“What are you doing?”

Changkyun glances up, blinking at Kihyun in mute surprise before a slow, syrupy smile pulls onto his lips. “Hyung.” He scoots over, making room for Kihyun before returning to his phone. When Kihyun sits down and scoots in to peer over his shoulder, Changkyun doesn’t bother to hide his screen. After all, he’s not ashamed of it. Not any more.

“You’re watching that again?”

Changkyun’s smile widens ever so slightly, but he doesn’t look away from the screen where he watches the other members and the other No.Mercy contestants react to his addition to the show. The animosity is visible on their faces, especially the faces of those that have since become his members, and Changkyun feels more than sees the way Kihyun shifts in discomfort next to him. When Kihyun’s commentary plays, Kihyun physically draws back, and Changkyun doesn’t needs to see his expression to know he’s troubled.

“I didn’t mean that,” Kihyun says after a moment, guilt making his voice so much softer than it usually is.

Changkyun shakes his head, humming softly beneath his breath. “You did. At that moment, you meant it. You all did. I don’t blame you; I would have been upset, too. You all worked so hard from the very beginning, and then I was thrown in at the very end. Suddenly you had one more person to compete with just to debut, and it was a stranger that had taken the place of someone you’d come to be good friends with. You had every reason to be upset.”

But Kihyun doesn’t look appeased. If anything, he looks that much more bothered by Changkyun’s validation. “You just wanted to debut, Changkyun. It’s not your fault that the company put you in the competition with us. And we knew that. We did. We just...”

It’s hard to explain, but Kihyun doesn’t have to. Changkyun understands.

“I know, hyung,” Changkyun murmurs. Because he remembers. He doesn’t need to watch the video to be reminded. “You’d lost Minkyun the day before, and you lost Kwangji and Yoosu before that. You weren’t the only one unhappy with me.”

Kihyun flinches again, and Changkyun feels nothing but guilt for causing it. “I know. Hoseok was particularly cruel to you for a while after that. We were all mean, but Hoseok...” Hoseok had been hurt by the loss of Minkyun and Kwangji, as they all had been, and he’d taken it out on Changkyun for months following his introduction. And Changkyun had let him, resigned to the treatment as long as it meant he had a chance to debut and live his dream.

“But it’s over now,” Changkyun reminds Kihyun, voice soft as he stares out across the filming area. True to usual form, Hoseok and Jooheon are goofing off in front of the cameras while Minhyuk and Hyungwon practice for one of  their scenes together. They look like the children they often are around the dorm, and it brings a small smile to Changkyun’s lips. “Hyung and I are okay now. All the hyungs and I. We’re okay now.”

Kihyun follows his gaze, and Changkyun can see from the corner of his eye as Kihyun unconsciously begins to smile as well. It softens his expression in a way that little else does, and Changkyun wishes the fans could see this side of Kihyun, the one that worries about everything and doesn’t have to put up a front for the cameras. It’s the side of Kihyun that Changkyun has come to like the most, the one only he and a Hoseok are often privy to.

“Jooheon took it hard,” Kihyun admits. “He and Minkyun were close.”

“Gunhee was hard on him, too.”

Kihyun is quiet for a moment, and when Changkyun glances over at him, he finds that Kihyun is staring at him, an unreadable expression on his face. It’s an expression that is overwhelmingly familiar, but all at once foreign. It brings to mind evenings spent curled up together, legs tangled and voices pitched low as they wait out the hours of the night.

But that’s impossible, because Changkyun and Kihyun had never done that. Kihyun is always with Hoseok, and Changkyun splits his time between the two of them and Jooheon. He doesn’t spend much time alone with Kihyun save for when he helps the elder with cooking dinner at the end of each day. And even then, one of the the other members is often there with them, providing a running commentary to what they’re doing or surfing Twitter or their fancafe to share the cute things their Monbebes are saying to and about them.

And yet the thoughts are there, as real as if they’d happened, as if they’re memories themselves.

“--kyun? Changkyun?”

Changkyun jolts, fixing Kihyun with a look of surprise that soon melts into sheepish confusion. “Yes, hyung?”

Kihyun’s expression is oddly worried, and when he leans forward to press the back of his hand to Changkyun’s forehead, Changkyun doesn’t shift away, lost in thoughts that feel too much like memories.

Kihyun’s palm against his forehead, his fingers against his temple, brushing sweaty hair away from his eyes as Changkyun attempts to cough up a lung. Kihyun watching him over a messy kitchen table, food around them and room otherwise dark. Changkyun at his desk and Kihyun in the doorway, telling him that it’s okay to be a little late, you’ll still graduate even if you don’t finish the paper in time. Kihyun in an awkward position, red everywhere, pain everywhere, and ranting in his ears as the world fades and mutes around him. Kihyun hesitating in the doorway before he leaves and doesn’t comes back. Kihyun watching him just like this as Changkyun struggles to explain why the slavery in their society bothers him so damn much, and why he’d been instantly attracted to Kihyun when no one else had ever managed to capture his attention.

It’s a lifetime of memories, lifetimes of memories, and yet they can’t possibly be Changkyun’s.

But somehow, somehow, Changkyun thinks, inexplicably, they are.

And still Kihyun watches him. The Kihyun of this life watches him with concern in his eyes, a concern that Changkyun recalls in so many of those memories-that-can’t-quite-be, the memories that somehow are.

“Changkyun?”

Kihyun leans forward, hand sliding around to brush through the short hairs at the back of Changkyun’s head as their foreheads meet.

They’re close like this, so close, and when Changkyun opens his eyes, he’s struck with the inexplicable urge to kiss Kihyun until he’s stolen the breath from the male’s lungs.

Changkyun closes his eyes again and breathes out.

He waits until he’s begun to shake, until his lung burn with the need for oxygen, before he dares speak again.

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

Changkyun thinks back to his thoughts, to the memories that might have been, and he wonders. And then somehow, inexplicably, Changkyun knows exactly what he needs to do.

Changkyun moves slowly, giving Kihyun time refuse or pull away as he reaches out and pulls Kihyun to him. Their lips brush once, and then again, before Changkyun pulls away, mindful of anyone that might be watching.

For a moment, it’s like the world around them is frozen.. Kihyun’s eyes are closed, lips parted just enough to breathe, and Changkyun can hear it, the way his breath hitches on each inhale.

And then, just like that, the world continues on with Hoseok and Jooheon screwing around, and Hyunwoo talking to their manager, and Hyungwon and Minhyuk bickering for another camera about how they want to do their scene.

Kihyun’s eyes flutter open again, pupils dark and blown wide enough that Changkyun thinks he can see galaxies in them. And Changkyun is reminded of another memory, of the moment when he realized that some infinities were bigger than others, and that he was just grateful to have one infinity with the boy of his dreams. Truth be told, he still is.

Kihyun watches Changkyun silently a moment, expression inscrutable, then leans in to kiss him again. It’s little more than a repeat of Changkyun’s, a mere brushing of their lips, but Changkyun doesn’t care, because this is everything he’s ever wanted.

This, Changkyun thinks dimly as Kihyun’s fingers drop to curl around the base of his neck, as he pulls back after a second with a flustered smile. Kihyun is beautiful like this, and Changkyun wants to lean in again, to kiss him until he’s breathless and flushed a pretty pink.

He settles for allowing their foreheads to rest against each other, for smiling to himself and Kihyun, and murmuring a muted hi, because it’s like finding someone again after years upon years of searching.

And it’s the moments like this one, where they’re happy, and healthy, and whole, that he finds himself willing to fight for. In this life, and the next one -- if there is a next one -- and any that may follow.

Because this, Changkyun thinks dimly, distracted by the way Kihyun’s fingers scratch gently against his scalp, is how it was always meant to be.