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The cold winter wind hits Hongbin’s face, making him shiver and hug his legs close to his chest, the day left and the night came, but he’s still at the same place he was since classes were over, climbing up on rooftops of random places all over the city is something that became part of his daily routine.
It’s not that he likes to look like one of those delinquent teens that go around the city at night doing what they’re not supposed to, it’s just that somewhere that isn’t his house feels at home and that’s the worst thing he could admit, but it’s been so long since he started to stay away from it as much as possible that he doesn’t even care about it anymore.
He lifts his head slightly and looks at the closed door, he’s leaning against the grid. He always hopes that someone would appear, but it never happens, Hongbin assumes that all the decent kids are at home, having dinner with their families happily, not at this kind of place, with a pair of headphones on and reading a book.
Hongbin often wonders if that’s what he wanted since the first time he ran away from home right before dinner and climbed up the stairs that led to the rooftop, not going back into the apartment his family lives until dawn, he didn’t get any sleep nor did he feel tired, the only thing he did was observe the buildings and the vast city in front of his eyes, on that day he told himself that he’d go around the whole city - Seoul is a big place -, spending most of his time there, though, sometimes he goes back home for dinner, but to be honest, nobody’s home, his mother is probably out there, at one of his escapades he saw her entering a building, he didn’t stay to see what was it about, and his dad, well, he doesn’t know about him.
He doesn’t think too much about it, he doesn’t want to think too much about it anyway, he just thinks about graduating high school this year and leaving to somewhere else, he doesn’t want to bother his parents anymore, it’s not like they’d care about him leaving, they barely stay at home.
He flips the last page of his book and sighs, time to pass by the library tomorrow.
Looking up at the sky, he makes a wish, one just one.
○☾○
Sanghyuk closes his eyes as he spins all over the place, the breeze that passes by him is cold, but he tries to not be affected by it. His parents are inside the house, discussing something about his future or something like that, it’s not like he cares anyway, they talk about it like it’s their own business not his.
Dance, that’s all he wants to do, yet, they still insist on taking it away from him, he thanks the heavens that they hate the rooftop, it’s the only safe place for him. Tomorrow he has to attend his violin classes and piano right after, his parents could just turn him into a robot.
Sanghyuk wishes they wouldn’t care about it too much, it gives him headaches every time they mention it while they’re having a meal, it’s been happening daily nowadays, he hates the fact that he’s going to graduate high school so soon.
But maybe he can try to go study abroad, Germany? England? France, maybe? He just knows that his parents can afford it and if they allow it, he’ll stick to this option.
He shakes his head, it’s not time to think about it, right now it’s the time that he forgets about everything that makes him sad and upset, he repeats the routine he choreographed himself, he started to practice a lot more ever since Hakyeon moved to study somewhere far away, America!, he said excited and all Sanghyuk could do was smile and wish him the best, the Cha’s were moving along with him, so this meant that he probably wouldn’t be back to Korea after he graduates from college, his only friend was gone.
Sometimes Sanghyuk hates studying at a private school, the kids there suck, well, aside from his lab partner that insists on being friendly, chaebol Yook Sungjae acts like he ate something suspicious as breakfast and Sanghyuk just doesn’t care that the others dislike his almost friend and keep on talking behind their backs, at least someone treats him nicely.
He cuts his thoughts short once again, with a sharp movement of his right leg and arms, his hair flows with the wind and he accidentally hits the rail, opening his eyes and looking down at the street, he sees nothing.
He resumes to going back at dancing, thanking his parents for something, even if it’s something so frivolous, he thanks them for his allowance, it’s because of it that he pays for his jazz classes without them knowing.
He laughs to himself, as long as it doesn’t interfere on his grades, violin or piano classes, they don’t care at all.
He makes another turn, but trips on something, he falls silently, he doesn’t want his parents knowing of his ‘secret’ hideaway.
He makes a note to not dance with his eyes closed in the dark anymore, he just sprained his ankle and it’ll be a little hard to get out of it with an excuse to his parents.
He has to try.
○☾○
Hongbin opens his eyes and the only thing he sees is the dark, it’s still midnight, he just fell asleep.
He gets up and dusts his clothes, shoving all of his belongings inside his backpack and walking towards the emergency stairs, time to get home, shower, eat something and lay down in bed until it’s time to go to school.
After a ten minutes walk, he reaches his building, the front door was left open again, it’s not like someone would enter to rob it though. He takes the stairs and opens the door with his keys. It’s silent, maybe it’s because the apartment is absolutely empty.
He takes a quick shower and cooks what he seems in front of him first, which ends up being a pack of instant noodles. Swallowing it all even quicker than his shower, he washes the dishes and jumps on top of his bed, staring at the ceiling and closing his eyes. He ends up falling asleep once again.
School was boring, everything was boring, his classmates are boring, but maybe that’s just what he thinks, maybe they’re great people, but he’s not interested, at least he got the new book at the library.
He passes by the grocery shop today, getting himself some of those triangle shaped kimbaps and water.Hongbin wonders if he should just chose a place to frequent regularly, it saves him the bother of meeting someone he knows while he’s wandering around the streets, that’s the last thing he wants to happen.
That’s it, tonight he’s going to find a permanent place for him to go every day after classes until he graduates and goes somewhere that isn’t here, he can just gather all the money he managed to make back to when he still had a part time job and go live overseas.
He passes by a drugstore and walks a few more blocks, until he stops in front of a pc room, the place looks okay, if he gets hungry, he can go down and enter the 24 hours grocery store next to the building that’s right in front of it. The place is still open, but nobody’s going to notice him walking to the side of it and climbing up the emergency stairs, everybody’s too busy to spare a glance.
When he’s successfully up the rooftop, Hongbin places his backpack on the ground and sits down, taking his notebook out and reading over his notes, studying for his finals and finishing his calculus homework.
○☾○
Sanghyuk managed to make an excuse after classes were over - bearing with the pain silently through his day -, telling his mother that he fell during physics education and ended up twisting his ankle, that’s how he discovers that he actually broke something and now he’s walking with the aid of crutches and a cast on his left foot, painfully going through a nagging moment, having to hear his mother lecture him about how this is dangerous and that he has to be careful, because what if he broke his arm or something?
(Thanks for worrying about me.)
When he’s home, all he does is go straight to his room to rest, at least that’s the excuse to make his mother stop talking, she agrees, rest so you’ll get better soon.
He ends up sat on his bed, staring out at the window and observing some random kid that got up in the rooftop of his favorite place after the rooftop of his own building.
Sanghyuk wonders if the boy feels lonely, because it looks like, though, he may be mistaken because he lives on the fourth floor and he can’t see perfectly from where he is.
He lays down and stares at the ceiling, maybe do what he told his mother he’d do and just sleep, he doesn’t have any homework anyway. With a sigh, Sanghyuk closes his eyes and forgets about everything.
Sanghyuk wakes up with his mother shaking his arm, telling him that dinner is ready and that he should get up quickly or it’ll get cold. He wishes he could just jump out of bed and run to the dining table, but his broken foot is holding him back. Rubbing his eyes, he looks out at the window, it’s already dark, since winter is approaching, the night falls earlier and it also means that it gets colder quickly, he looks down and sees that the boy from before is still there.
He’s crazy.
Taking the crutches and leaving the bed, Sanghyuk makes his way to the living room slowly, his mother is already sat, same for his dad, both smiling at him, sometimes he wishes that he could capture that in a picture and frame it, but he can’t just ask them for a photo like that because it reminds him of the days that they weren’t going hard on him about his future, they’d get mad at his explanation.
He sits down as well and eats quietly.
After a long shower, especially because of the cast, Sanghyuk eyes his bed and even though he slept ever since he got home, he’s just going to lie down and sleep some more, he can’t go up in the rooftop tonight anyway.
He looks at outside from the window again and the crazy kid is still there. Sanghyuk wonders if he’s cold or something, because it looks like he is.
○☾○
Hongbin ends up leaving earlier, after finishing his homework and eating all the kimbaps he bought, it’s past dinner time of course, but it’s relatively early compared to the time he left yesterday.
The weather is also colder than the previous days, so he decides that he’s not up to get the flu.
It’s a perfect place, Hongbin likes it, it has everything he’d probably need around it, he casually pays the grocery store a few visits to buy something to eat when he’s too hungry to wait until it’s time to go home.
If he ever decides to come back to Seoul once he leaves, he’ll make sure to visit this exact place and smile at the memory of the place that felt like home at least for a while. He also discovers that a little ahead, he can find a covered place in case it decides to rain, most of the places he’d been didn’t have it.
It comes in handy because it starts slow, almost imperceptible, but it gradually gets hard and stronger, the droplets of water fall heavy against his skin, soaking him wet and Hongbin has to run messily with his things in arms before it all gets ruined.
He spends the day watching the rain fall whilst he eats the snack he got earlier, the sound of the water hitting the pavement is calming - incredible calming -, even making Hongbin wish that it would rain more often, to wash away the sadness.
The rain doesn’t stop when it’s past midnight, the only thing Hongbin can be grateful is that tomorrow is Saturday and he doesn’t have to rush to his home and shower before running towards the school that’s quite far from where he lives.
In the meantime, he just closes his eyes and heaves a sigh, maybe a rest is a good choice, it’s hard to read in the dark after all.
○☾○
Sanghyuk hates how he was clumsy and careless the other day, that resulted as him not being able to go up to the rooftop for over a week, but the week that he stayed indoors was enough for his foot to heal quickly, the doctor took the cast away, he still can’t dance freely, but at least the bother of those annoying crutches is away.
He had been observing out of his window nowadays, he doesn’t have much to do, so he resumes for doing that, it’s not something super exciting, but it’s not super boring too. Sanghyuk’s not sure if the kid he saw the other day used to come to the rooftop of the pc room before or it’s something recent, but he’s always there and it looks like he’s already used to it, he assumes that he just didn’t pay proper attention to it until now.
Since he doesn’t have anything to do, Sanghyuk goes to bed early, he does his homework at the school library so the only thing that he does at home is play the piano and practice violin, he doesn’t know why his parents decided to put him into violin classes, if playing the piano ever since he was six is not enough, he doesn’t know what is.
He was already asleep, soundless breathing and covered comfortably with a blanket up to his neck, there’s loud lightnings outside and he jolts awake, startled, looking outside to see the even darker night sky and water running down the window, he hugs himself and pulls the blankets close, just now that he noticed how his room got colder due to the weather itself.
His gaze unconsciously fly to the rooftop, there’s nobody there, he releases the breath he didn’t know he was holding, at least that crazy kid is not going to get a cold or something.
He lies down once again and tries to sleep, but something at the back of his mind tells him that that boy is possibly still there.
He wakes up with his mind somewhere else and to take the weight out of his conscience, Sanghyuk changes his pajamas to some normal clothes and wears his sneakers, grabbing a umbrella and a bag, quietly walking to the living room and peeking at the kitchen, he’s just so glad that his mother doesn’t wake up early on weekends, he enters the kitchen and puts a few snacks into it, making sure to choose the ones he likes, if his mother or his father asks, he went to play at the pc room and he doesn’t care if he has a laptop himself, he prefers the pc room anyway.
Greeting the janitor who’s walking around the lobby with a broom, he exits the building and opens the umbrella - he hears the sound of water hitting plastic immediately -, looking around and noticing that even if it’s raining, the street is still particularly full of people going from side to side and not paying attention at him.
He crosses the street and looks up at the building that he knows too well, after all the hours that he spent inside it, it’d be weird if he didn’t.
It’s already open, but since he’s not going to play there today, Sanghyuk makes his way to the side stairs he knows that are there, looking around before closing the umbrella and walking quickly up there.
When he’s already up, he opens the umbrella once again, the rain didn’t stop even for a minute and it doesn’t matter if it’s light at the moment, if he catches a cold he just knows that his mother is going to scold him for, at least, a week.
To his disappointment, the place is empty, he walks around, the wet sound of the water against the sole of his shoes as he roams the whole place, he sights a hand and tries not to laugh, trying to get a better view, he does the obvious, he carefully walks to the covered area, he forgot that part existed, he had only been to this rooftop thrice.
He tightens his grip on the umbrella and puffs his cheeks, what should he do? The boy looks like he’s sleeping and he doesn’t know how he would react if he went closer and shook him awake, what if he’s one of those delinquent kids that go around and join gangs? But he doesn’t look like it, he looks too peaceful with his eyes closed to be someone like that, maybe he just got lost or the rain got too hard that he had to hide somewhere, but then, Sanghyuk remembers that he’d been coming here for more than a week already.
While he thinks about what he should do, the boy yawns and opens his eyes, breaking Sanghyuk’s line of thoughts and making him take a step back, worried of what he might do once he sights him.
“It’s still raining,” the boy whispers and ruffles his own hair, Sanghyuk watches as it falls back into place and tries to hide himself behind the umbrella when the boy’s eyes fly up to his figure. “Hello?”
“Sorry for bothering,” Sanghyuk laughs awkwardly and takes another step back. “I don’t know how I ended up here, I’m going to take my leave.”
“I’m Hongbin,” the boy shouts and Sanghyuk stops on his tracks, gulping and considering turning back and introducing himself as well. “Why would you accidentally end up here?”
Sanghyuk pursues his lips, that sounds plausible.
It’s early, his parents won’t miss his presence, he turns and nears the boy, Hongbin.
“I-” Sanghyuk stutters, not used to talking to strangers that climb random rooftops, he tries to stand still, but his hands are shaking slightly. “I saw you here and thought that maybe you’d be hungry or cold or that maybe you got lost, but I saw you the other days.”
Hongbin stares at Sanghyuk with his mouth opened a little, nodding and bringing his legs close to his chest, something that Sanghyuk noticed to be an habit due to his observations, but he doesn’t say it out loud, it’d sound creepy.
“I brought food,” he takes courage and gets closer, blinking out of nervousness and sitting down on the spot that isn’t wet with the rainwater that’s still falling. “Are you hungry?”
○☾○
Hongbin is not used to people offering things and being too nice, he doesn’t say much, he knows how to control his words to not look nervous, different from how the kid in front of him looks right now.
“I’m Sanghyuk,” the kid says as he sits next to him, taking the backpack away from his back and putting it on his lap, Hongbin only observes. “I-I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Hongbin asks concerned, maybe he did something he didn’t see.
“For just appearing out of nowhere.”
Hongbin doesn’t say anything else, they just remain silent, sat side by side, and Sanghyuk opens a pack of something and makes munching noises and Hongbin looks to the side, curious.
With his mouth full, Sanghyuk extends the hand that’s holding the pack and Hongbin cautiously reaches out.
It’s awkward, so so awkward, after days and months wishing that someone would appear, he thought it’d never happen, so Hongbin never planned anything to be said, but now that it did, he’s just thinking to himself, what should I do?
Sanghyuk probably notices his uneasiness and gets up, handing the opened pack on his hands and taking something out of the bag that he brought with him, he hands a bottle of juice and hands him a box of sandos, Hongbin stares up at him.
“I-I have to go, my parents will be up soon,” Sanghyuk traces lines with his left foot on the cement and Hongbin nods at him slowly, he knew it wouldn’t last long, nobody actually enjoys his company. “I-, see you next time.”
Sanghyuk bows and turns his back at him, starting to walk away before Hongbin can reply anything, he watches as Sanghyuk climbs down the emergency stairs with a light feeling inside his chest.
He can live with the see you next time, wishing that it won’t take long for it to happen.
((Especially since his wish was granted.))