Chapter Text
By the time Keonho reached the apartment building, the rain had worked its way through every layer he wore.
It had begun as a thin mist somewhere between the dance studio and the subway station, almost too light to notice. Now it fell in silver sheets, gathering in the folds of his coat and running cold against the back of his neck. His suitcase dragged behind him with one damaged wheel, catching on every crack in the pavement as though even it resented being brought here.
Keonho stopped beneath the building’s narrow awning and looked up.
Six stories of dark brick rose above him. The windows glowed unevenly against the evening sky, each one containing the blurred suggestion of somebody else’s life: a hanging plant, a kitchen light, a television flashing pale blue behind drawn curtains.
The fourth-floor corner apartment was dark.
His apartment, supposedly.
Temporary, Juhoon had said.
Just until the pipes in Keonho’s building were repaired and the water damage was cleared. Three weeks, perhaps four. The apartment belonged to a friend of a friend who was overseas, and Keonho would only have to cover the utilities. It had seemed unreasonably generous, but Juhoon had a talent for presenting interference as an act of sensible kindness.
Keonho had been too exhausted to question him.
That was the mistake, he realized later.
At the moment, standing alone in the rain with an overfilled suitcase and a cardboard box softening in his arms, he was only grateful for the promise of someplace warm.
He shifted the box against his chest and searched his pocket for the key. The movement crushed one corner inward. Something inside clinked.
“Please don’t be the mugs,” he muttered.
The key was attached to a yellow plastic tag with 4B written across it in Juhoon’s compact handwriting.
Keonho looked at it for a moment.
There had been a time when he would have sent a picture of it to Seonghyeon with some unimportant message attached.
New apartment. The key looks like it belongs to a storage locker.
Seonghyeon might have replied twenty minutes later with something dry and unimpressed.
Then don’t lose it.
Keonho would have complained that this was not a sufficiently affectionate response. Seonghyeon would have ignored the complaint, but when Keonho arrived home that night, there would be food waiting on the stove and a spare key already placed inside the shallow ceramic bowl by the door.
That was how Seonghyeon had loved him.
Quietly. Practically. In ways Keonho had not always recognized until they were gone.
Rain struck the awning above him with the relentless hiss of television static.
Keonho curled his fingers around the new key until its metal edge pressed into his palm.
He did not send the picture.
He had not sent Seonghyeon anything in three months.
The first month, he had drafted messages and deleted them. The second, he had forced himself to stop opening their conversation every night. By the third, he had become skilled at pretending that the silence was a choice they were making together rather than a door Seonghyeon had closed in his face.
Keonho pushed into the building.
The lobby smelled faintly of damp umbrellas and old wood. A row of brass mailboxes covered one wall, their labels written in a mixture of printed names and fading ink. The overhead light flickered as he crossed the tile floor.
There was an elevator, but a handwritten sign had been taped over its buttons.
OUT OF SERVICE. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
Keonho stared at it.
Then he looked at his suitcase.
Then at the box in his arms.
“Of course.”
His voice returned to him from the empty stairwell.
The climb to the fourth floor took longer than it should have. His suitcase struck each step with a heavy, uneven thud, and the box grew steadily more difficult to hold as damp cardboard sagged beneath his fingers. By the third floor, his wet hair had begun dripping into his eyes. By the fourth, his shoulder ached and his patience had narrowed to a single fragile thread.
He reached apartment 4B and let the suitcase fall upright beside him.
The hallway was quiet. A wall-mounted light cast a warm circle across the faded green carpet. Someone had left an umbrella in the stand outside apartment 4A, its curved wooden handle polished with use.
Keonho set the box down carefully and inserted the key.
It slid into the lock without resistance.
For the first time that evening, something went right.
He turned it, pushed the door open with his shoulder, and stepped into darkness.
The apartment smelled clean but unoccupied, like dust disturbed from polished furniture. Keonho found the light switch with one wet hand. A lamp in the living room came on, filling the space with a muted amber glow.
It was smaller than Juhoon’s description had suggested, though Juhoon had called it cozy, which was usually the word people used when they meant there was nowhere to stand without touching something.
The front door opened directly into the living room. A grey sofa sat against one wall, facing a low wooden table and a television. Beyond it was a narrow kitchen with cream-colored cabinets. Two bedroom doors stood along the short hallway at the back of the apartment, with the bathroom between them.
Two bedrooms.
Keonho frowned.
Juhoon had mentioned that, hadn’t he?
He tried to remember the conversation. It had happened after rehearsal, when his body had felt detached from his mind and he had been sitting on the studio floor with his back against the mirror.
There’s plenty of room, Juhoon had said.
At the time, Keonho had assumed he meant plenty of room for one person.
He reached for his phone.
There were six unread messages in the group chat, most of them from Martin. Keonho ignored them and opened his private conversation with Juhoon instead.
Keonho: I’m here.
He watched the screen.
The message was read almost immediately.
No reply came.
Keonho’s suspicion sharpened.
Keonho: Why are there two bedrooms?
The typing indicator appeared, vanished, then returned.
Juhoon: Because the apartment has two bedrooms.
Keonho closed his eyes.
Keonho: Thank you. That was extremely helpful.
This time the response took longer.
Juhoon: Get changed before you catch a cold. There should be clean towels in the bathroom cabinet.
Keonho looked down at himself. Water had already begun collecting beneath his shoes, darkening the wood floor.
Juhoon was avoiding the question.
He was considering whether to call when a sound came from deeper inside the apartment.
A cupboard door closed.
Keonho went still.
The noise was quiet, ordinary. It should not have frightened him. Yet every muscle in his body tightened at once, his hand closing around the phone.
“Hello?”
No answer.
He looked toward the kitchen.
There was a reusable grocery bag on the counter.
Keonho had not noticed it when he came in. It was made of dark canvas and filled with groceries arranged so neatly that the tops of green onions and a loaf of bread were visible above the rim.
Beside it sat a black umbrella, still wet.
The apartment was not empty.
A thin current of unease moved down his spine. He glanced toward the bedrooms. The door on the left was closed. The one on the right stood slightly open, revealing the corner of a neatly made bed.
Keonho stepped backward and nearly struck his suitcase.
He opened his conversation with Juhoon again.
Keonho: Who else is here?
The message remained unread.
“Juhoon,” he whispered, the name carrying every ounce of accusation he was not yet able to direct at him.
Footsteps approached from the hallway.
Keonho looked up.
The bathroom door opened.
For one suspended second, nothing in the room seemed to move—not the rain streaking the windows, not the shadows beneath the furniture, not even the breath caught halfway into Keonho’s lungs.
Seonghyeon stood in the doorway.
He wore a dark sweater with the sleeves pushed neatly to his elbows. His hair was shorter than Keonho remembered, cleanly trimmed above his forehead. A dish towel rested over one shoulder, and his expression held only the mild distraction of someone interrupted in the middle of an ordinary task.
Then he saw Keonho.
Whatever softness had existed in his face disappeared so quickly Keonho might have imagined it.
The silence between them did not feel empty.
It felt crowded—with three months of unanswered messages, with a key left on a table, with an argument that had ended long after both of them had stopped saying anything useful.
Keonho’s fingers loosened around his phone.
“Seonghyeon.”
He had not spoken the name in months.
It came out more quietly than he intended, stripped of every defense he had practiced in private. The sound of it seemed to expose him. He felt suddenly aware of his wet clothes, his disordered hair, the pathetic cardboard box by his feet.
Seonghyeon’s eyes moved from Keonho to the suitcase and then to the key still hanging from the lock.
His expression did not change.
“What are you doing here?”
The question was delivered without surprise now. Seonghyeon’s voice was low and level, sharpened by a restraint Keonho recognized too well.
Keonho tried to answer, but his thoughts had scattered.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Seonghyeon pulled the towel from his shoulder. He folded it once, aligning the corners as if Keonho’s presence did not warrant his full attention.
“I’m staying here.”
“So am I.”
Seonghyeon stopped folding.
His gaze returned to Keonho’s face, steady and unreadable.
“No.”
It was only one word. He said it with such quiet finality that it seemed to settle over the entire apartment.
Keonho gave a short, disbelieving laugh. The sound held no humor.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean you’re mistaken.”
“I’m not mistaken.” Keonho lifted the key from the lock and held it out between them. “Juhoon gave me this. My apartment has water damage. He told me I could stay here until it’s repaired.”
Seonghyeon’s attention dropped to the yellow tag.
Something hardened in his expression.
“Martin gave me the same key yesterday.”
Of course Martin was involved.
Keonho looked at his phone again. The six unread messages in the group chat suddenly seemed less like background noise and more like evidence of a crime.
“Did he tell you anyone else would be here?”
“No.”
“Neither did Juhoon.”
Seonghyeon took his phone from the kitchen counter. His movements remained controlled, but Keonho knew him well enough—or had once known him well enough—to recognize the anger in the rigid line of his shoulders.
Keonho almost said so.
He almost said, You’re angry.
The thought hurt in an old, familiar way. During their relationship, naming Seonghyeon’s feelings had often made things worse. Seonghyeon treated the observation like an accusation, especially when Keonho was right.
Now Keonho no longer had the right to identify anything in him.
Seonghyeon called Martin.
The call rang once before connecting.
“Seonghyeon?” Martin answered with an unnatural brightness. Music and overlapping voices could be heard behind him. “Did you get settled in?”
Keonho watched Seonghyeon’s mouth flatten.
“Why is Keonho standing in the living room?”
There was a pause.
Not a surprised pause. A guilty one.
“Is he?”
Seonghyeon’s eyes closed briefly.
Across the room, Keonho lowered his head and rubbed water from his forehead. He might have laughed if humiliation were not pressing so heavily against his ribs.
“Put Juhoon on the phone,” Seonghyeon said.
“I don’t think—”
“Martin.”
The background noise shifted. Someone whispered. There was a muffled protest, then Juhoon’s voice came through the speaker.
“Seonghyeon.”
The solemnity in his tone made it clear he had been prepared for this moment.
“You knew,” Seonghyeon said.
Keonho looked up.
Juhoon released a quiet breath over the line. “Yes.”
The word struck the room with more force than it should have.
Keonho felt something inside him sink.
Seonghyeon’s anger, in contrast, became colder.
“How long?”
“Seonghyeon, before you decide anything, will you let me explain?”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Martin told me his place wouldn’t be available for at least a month. Keonho’s building has extensive water damage. This apartment was the only reasonable option for both of you.”
“So you lied.”
“We didn’t exactly lie,” Martin called from somewhere near the phone.
Seonghyeon’s stare shifted toward the middle distance with the distinct intensity of someone imagining murder.
Juhoon continued quickly. “Neither of you would have agreed if we’d told you.”
“That should have been your answer.”
Keonho folded his arms, partly against the chill and partly to hold himself still. He disliked the small thread of agreement he felt with Seonghyeon. He disliked even more that their friends had forced this moment on them and left them to stand in its wreckage.
“You had no right,” Keonho said, raising his voice toward the phone.
Juhoon went silent.
Seonghyeon glanced at him. It was the first time since the call began that they had looked directly at one another.
For half a heartbeat, they were aligned.
Then Seonghyeon’s expression closed again.
“You’re right,” Juhoon said at last. “We should have told you. But the situation is what it is. The owner has already left the country. Both rooms are paid for through the end of next month. Neither of you has another place ready.”
“I can find one,” Seonghyeon replied.
“On no notice?” Martin asked. “In this neighborhood? For less than twice what you’re paying now?”
“I’ll stay in a hotel.”
“For five weeks?” Juhoon sounded tired rather than judgmental, which somehow made the question more irritating. “That isn’t realistic.”
Seonghyeon’s jaw tightened.
Keonho turned away from him and stared through the rain-streaked window. His reflection floated faintly in the glass: pale, exhausted, visibly stranded.
He could call someone.
Soobin’s apartment was too small, and Soobin’s cousin was visiting. James had relatives staying with him. Juhoon was having his kitchen renovated. Martin—
Martin could not be trusted.
Keonho could book a hotel for a few nights, but not indefinitely. The repairs to his apartment had already drained more of his savings than he wanted to admit.
He hated that Juhoon was right.
He hated that Seonghyeon was here.
Most of all, he hated the part of himself that had not reacted with horror quickly enough.
Beneath the shock and humiliation, beneath the instinct to protect himself, there had been something else when Seonghyeon stepped into the living room.
Relief.
It had been brief and ruinous, opening inside Keonho like a window in a burning room.
Seonghyeon was here.
For three months, Keonho had missed him in ways that had made ordinary life feel hostile. He missed him in grocery stores when he passed the brand of rice Seonghyeon preferred. He missed him after rehearsals when his muscles ached and there was no message asking whether he had eaten. He missed him when he woke from dreams in which the breakup had never happened, only to reach across the bed and touch cold sheets.
He had trained himself not to show it.
Now he stood ten feet away from the person he had been trying to forget, and his body remembered him with humiliating ease.
The exact slope of his shoulders beneath the sweater.
The way he pressed his thumb against the side of his phone when he was irritated.
The almost invisible furrow between his eyebrows.
Keonho forced his gaze back to the window.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Juhoon said. “All of us. No tricks this time.”
Seonghyeon ended the call without replying.
The apartment became quiet again.
Rain rattled against the glass. Water continued dripping from the hem of Keonho’s coat, marking his place on the floor.
Seonghyeon set his phone on the counter.
“Take off your shoes.”
Keonho looked at him, caught off guard by the familiar command.
Seonghyeon pointed toward the puddle forming beneath him.
“You’re ruining the floor.”
The familiarity vanished.
Keonho looked down.
“Right.”
He bent to untie his shoes, but the laces were wet and knotted. His fingers felt clumsy beneath Seonghyeon’s attention. After struggling with one lace, he pulled the shoe off without loosening it properly and nearly lost his balance.
Seonghyeon did not move to help him.
Once, he would have.
The thought arrived before Keonho could stop it.
Once, Seonghyeon would have crouched beside him with an annoyed sigh, taken the wet lace from Keonho’s hands, and worked the knot free. He would have complained about Keonho’s lack of patience while doing the patient thing for him.
Now he stood at the kitchen counter as though they were strangers forced to share an elevator.
Keonho removed the second shoe and placed both beside the door. His socks were damp. The discomfort gave him something small and immediate to focus on.
“Which room is yours?” he asked.
“The one on the left.”
Keonho looked toward the hallway. “You chose already?”
“I arrived yesterday.”
“So that means you get first choice?”
Seonghyeon’s gaze sharpened slightly. “Would you prefer that room?”
The question sounded less like an offer than a challenge.
Keonho remembered another bedroom from another apartment. Seonghyeon’s books had been stacked on the left side of the bed. Keonho’s clothes had migrated across every available chair. They had argued about the open window in winter and the alarm Keonho snoozed too many times.
He remembered Seonghyeon asleep with one hand curled beneath his cheek, his anger temporarily absent.
“I don’t care,” Keonho said.
Seonghyeon studied him for a moment.
“Then don’t make it an issue.”
The words landed exactly where they were meant to.
Keonho’s exhaustion flared into anger. “I asked a question. Not everything I say is the beginning of an argument.”
“No. Sometimes it’s just an excuse.”
The room seemed to contract.
Keonho stared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Seonghyeon picked up the grocery bag and began removing its contents. A carton of eggs. A bundle of spinach. Two onions. He arranged each item on the counter without hurry.
“It means exactly what I said.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I’m not going to do this tonight.”
“Do what?” Keonho stepped farther into the room. Anger warmed him more efficiently than the apartment’s heating. “You’re the one making comments and then pretending they don’t mean anything.”
Seonghyeon placed the carton of eggs in the refrigerator.
When he straightened, his face was calm. That calmness had always frightened Keonho more than shouting. It meant Seonghyeon had gone somewhere unreachable, somewhere every word was measured before it was sharpened.
“I’m saying I don’t want to talk to you,” he said. “Not tonight. Not about the apartment, and certainly not about anything else.”
Keonho felt the rejection like pressure against a bruise.
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“How should I say it?”
There was no raised voice. No dramatic cruelty. Seonghyeon looked at him with an exhaustion so complete that Keonho almost wished for anger instead.
Keonho swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the problem.”
The words were quiet.
They split something open anyway.
Keonho looked down at the floor between them. Three months ago, during their final argument, Seonghyeon had said something similar.
You never know, Keonho.
He had been standing by the front door then, holding the spare key in his closed fist.
You don’t know when to stop. You don’t know what’s inappropriate. You don’t know why it hurts unless I explain it perfectly, and when I can’t, you act like that means it shouldn’t hurt at all.
Keonho had tried to defend himself.
The messages had been harmless. The invitations had been friendly. The men Seonghyeon disliked were dancers Keonho had worked with, people he had known through rehearsals and mutual friends. There had been jokes, late-night conversations, coffee after practice. Nothing secret. Nothing romantic.
But Seonghyeon had seen flirtation where Keonho saw warmth.
Keonho had insisted that trust should have been enough.
Seonghyeon had heard that as a refusal to care.
They had both left the argument believing the other had accused them of something unforgivable.
Now Keonho stood in a different apartment with another key in his hand and felt the shape of that night repeating itself.
“I wasn’t trying to start anything,” he said.
Seonghyeon’s face remained unmoved. “You’re here because our friends manipulated us into the same apartment. That doesn’t mean we have to revisit the past.”
“I didn’t say we did.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Keonho’s head lifted. “You don’t get to decide what I’m thinking.”
“No. That was always your habit.”
For a moment, Keonho could only look at him.
Seonghyeon turned back to the groceries.
The dismissal hurt more than the insult.
Keonho laughed once beneath his breath, the sound thin and bitter. “I see you haven’t changed.”
Seonghyeon placed the onions in a cabinet. “You wouldn’t know.”
The answer came without hesitation.
That was when Keonho understood how the next several weeks would be.
Not with explosive arguments or accusations shouted loudly enough for the neighbors to hear. Those would almost have been easier. Anger could be met. Anger demanded a response.
Seonghyeon’s indifference offered him nothing.
It reduced Keonho to an inconvenience—wet shoes by the door, a suitcase in the walkway, an unexpected name on a lease.
Keonho bent to lift the cardboard box. The bottom sagged dangerously beneath its contents.
“I’ll stay tonight,” he said, focusing on the box rather than Seonghyeon. “I’ll find somewhere else tomorrow.”
“You should.”
Keonho’s fingers tightened against the damp cardboard.
Some foolish part of him had expected a pause. Not an objection, exactly, but some sign that the prospect of Keonho leaving affected him at all.
Seonghyeon did not even look up.
The box slipped.
The bottom tore open with a soft, wet sound, and its contents crashed onto the floor.
Two books landed first. A bundle of charging cables followed, then a framed photograph wrapped in a T-shirt. A ceramic mug struck the wood and broke cleanly in half.
Keonho froze.
It was dark blue, nearly black, with a small crescent moon painted near the handle.
Seonghyeon had given it to him years ago after Keonho complained that every cup in the dorm belonged to somebody else.
Now you have one, Seonghyeon had said.
It had survived three apartments, two tours, and more careless mornings than Keonho could count.
Now it lay between them in pieces.
Neither of them spoke.
Keonho lowered the damaged box to the floor. His throat felt painfully tight.
“It’s fine,” he said, though Seonghyeon had not asked.
He crouched and reached for the largest piece.
The broken edge sliced across the pad of his thumb.
Keonho hissed and pulled back. A bright bead of blood appeared almost immediately.
“Damn it.”
Seonghyeon moved, but only to pull a small trash bin from beneath the sink. He set it near the scattered pieces.
“Don’t pick them up with your hands.”
His tone was flat, practical.
Keonho pressed his thumb against his palm.
“I know.”
“Apparently not.”
The remark was unnecessary. That was what made it effective.
Keonho looked up at him from the floor. “You don’t have to treat me like I’m stupid.”
“I told you not to use your hands.”
“I heard you.”
“Then why are you arguing?”
“Because of the way you said it.”
Seonghyeon stared at him.
The rain filled the silence they left behind.
Keonho’s anger began to collapse under the weight of everything else. He was tired. He was wet. His thumb was bleeding, his possessions were scattered across the floor, and something that had once belonged to the private language of their relationship was now waiting to be swept into the trash.
He turned away before his face could betray him.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He took the ruined T-shirt from the floor and wrapped it around the broken ceramic. The framed photograph had remained covered. He did not check whether the glass had cracked. At that moment, he could not bear one more broken thing.
Seonghyeon stepped around him and opened a drawer. He removed a small first-aid box, placed it on the table, and pushed it toward the edge.
“There are bandages in there.”
Keonho stared at the box.
The gesture was so impersonal it hurt. It was the kind of thing Seonghyeon might have done for a coworker—or a guest he disliked but did not want bleeding on the furniture.
“Thanks,” Keonho said.
Seonghyeon did not answer.
Keonho cleaned the remaining pieces with a dustpan he found beside the refrigerator. He placed them in the trash one by one. The crescent moon disappeared last.
When the floor was clear, he gathered his books and cables against his chest.
He left the first-aid box unopened.
The bedroom on the right was narrow but clean. A double bed occupied most of the space, with a small wardrobe against the far wall and a desk beneath the window. The curtains were pale grey. The room contained no decoration, nothing to suggest Keonho belonged there or ever would.
He placed his things on the desk and returned for his suitcase.
Seonghyeon was still in the kitchen, washing vegetables beneath the tap.
Keonho dragged the suitcase down the hallway. The damaged wheel struck the floor in uneven beats.
At the bedroom door, he stopped.
He should have gone inside.
Instead, he looked back.
Seonghyeon stood with his profile turned toward him. The kitchen light illuminated the sharp line of his cheek and the movement of his hands beneath the water. There had been evenings when Keonho would come up behind him and rest his chin on Seonghyeon’s shoulder, ignoring the inevitable complaint about being in the way. Seonghyeon would tell him to move. Keonho rarely did.
Those memories belonged to another version of the room.
Another version of them.
“Seonghyeon.”
The water stopped.
Seonghyeon did not turn around.
Keonho’s rehearsed defenses abandoned him. What remained was quieter and more honest than he wanted it to be.
“I really didn’t know you would be here.”
“I believe you.”
The answer should have been reassuring.
It was not.
Keonho waited, unsure what else he had hoped to hear. Perhaps he wanted Seonghyeon to say he was equally trapped. Perhaps he wanted him to admit that the arrangement was difficult for reasons beyond inconvenience.
Seonghyeon reached for a kitchen towel and dried his hands.
“Close your door if you’re going to play music,” he said. “The walls are thin.”
Then he carried the vegetables into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.
The click of the latch was almost gentle.
Keonho remained in the hallway.
His thumb had begun bleeding again, a dark red line reaching the base of his palm. He looked at it with detached surprise.
In his bedroom, he sat on the edge of the unfamiliar bed and opened his phone.
The group chat had grown to twenty-three unread messages.
Martin had sent several apologies, followed by a sticker of a bear bowing so low its face touched the ground. James had asked whether either of them had committed murder. Soobin wanted to know if Keonho needed somewhere to stay for the night, then clarified that his sofa was too short but his floor was available.
Juhoon’s message was the only serious one.
Juhoon: I’m sorry. I know you’re angry. But neither of you has to decide anything tonight. Sleep first. We’ll work out another arrangement tomorrow if this is impossible.
Keonho read the message twice.
Another arrangement.
He should have accepted immediately. He should have told Juhoon that living with Seonghyeon was impossible, that no amount of saved rent could justify five weeks of being treated like an unwanted memory.
His finger hovered over the keyboard.
From the other side of the wall came the faint sound of a wardrobe door sliding open.
Seonghyeon was close enough for Keonho to hear him moving.
After three months of unbearable distance, a thin wall was all that separated them.
Keonho hated himself for noticing.
He typed a response.
Keonho: I’ll stay tonight. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.
He sent it before he could reconsider.
Then he set the phone facedown and finally opened the first-aid box he had carried in without realizing it.
Inside were antiseptic wipes, gauze, painkillers, and a row of neatly arranged bandages. Keonho wrapped one around his thumb, though he did it too loosely the first time and had to start again.
Outside, the rain continued washing the city into indistinct shapes.
He unpacked only what he needed: dry clothes, a toothbrush, his phone charger. Everything else remained in the suitcase. There was no point making the room his own when he intended to leave.
At least, that was what he told himself.
Much later, after the apartment had gone quiet, Keonho lay awake beneath a blanket that smelled faintly of detergent. Light from the street slipped between the curtains and stretched across the ceiling.
He turned onto his side.
The wall beside the bed was the same wall Seonghyeon slept behind.
Keonho could hear nothing now. No footsteps. No moving drawers. No breathing. The silence was so complete that he wondered whether Seonghyeon was awake too, staring into the darkness with the same old argument lodged between his ribs.
He stopped the thought before it could become hope.
Seonghyeon had told him clearly: the past would not be revisited.
For Seonghyeon, there was apparently nothing left to say.
Keonho pulled the blanket higher and closed his eyes, but memory had already found him.
Seonghyeon standing by their old front door.
Seonghyeon placing his key on the table.
Seonghyeon’s voice breaking only once when he said, I shouldn’t have to beg you to make me feel chosen.
Keonho had been angry then. Defensive. Wounded by the accusation.
He had answered with the worst possible thing.
I can’t keep apologizing for something I didn’t do.
By morning, Seonghyeon was gone.
Three months later, fate—or more accurately, Martin and Juhoon—had placed them beneath the same roof again.
Keonho opened his eyes.
Beyond the wall, a floorboard creaked.
He held his breath.
No other sound followed.
The apartment remained divided into two bedrooms, two closed doors, and the narrow hallway between them.
Keonho stared at the wall until his eyes burned.
Tomorrow, he would find another place.
Tomorrow, he would gather the pieces of his pride and leave before Seonghyeon could make it clear again that he was no longer wanted.
But tonight, with the rain striking the window and Seonghyeon sleeping only a few feet away, Keonho allowed himself one weakness.
He pressed his bandaged hand against his mouth and whispered the truth into the dark, so quietly that not even the walls could carry it.
“I missed you.”
There was no answer.
And somehow, that hurt most of all.