Archive of Our Own

The sound of stew simmering hung between them. The small restaurant two alleys down from the school gate was quiet near the end of the lunch rush, and a wall-mounted TV played variety shows on mute in the corner. Jihoon took off his cap and hung it over the back of his chair. A faint line from his mask still lingered beside his nose.

“The tickets for this Saturday’s match—I saved the best seats. Are you coming this time?”

Sanghyeok split a piece of tofu in half with his spoon. Steam plumed up over his glasses, blurring Jihoon’s face for a second. “I’ve got finals coming up. I can’t go.”

“Oh.” Jihoon let out a short chuckle instead of an answer. He picked up the smartphone lying face-down on the table, lit the screen, and slid it across to Sanghyeok. It was the academic calendar page of Sanghyeok’s university. The finals period was marked as starting in two weeks. “I checked your school’s schedule. Finals don’t start for another two weeks.”

“…I have a study group in between. Too much to prepare.”

“Oh? What about your presentation then? You said last time they overlapped.”

Sanghyeok set down his spoon and picked up the ladle. He scooped up some pumpkin sitting at the bottom, dropped it back in, shoved the green onions to one side, and scattered them again. It was a pointless thing to do. The back of his neck burned. He could feel Jihoon’s gaze sliding slowly down from the crown of his head to his earlobes, but he kept his eyes fixed on the bubbling broth, afraid that lifting his head would force their eyes to meet.

Jihoon pressed no further. He slid his phone back, rested his elbows on the table, and propped his chin in his hands. For a long moment, he just watched Sanghyeok. On the TV, someone must have said something funny because the studio audience laughed soundlessly.

“Hyung, do you hate coming to see me?” His voice was low and flat. Without a trace of his usual joking tone, the question felt heavier.

“When I told you I was going pro, you congratulated me, didn’t you?”

The ladle hit the rim of the pot with a small clink. The center of Sanghyeok’s chest caved in. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been proud. But if he saw Jihoon on stage in a headset, smiling in a place where thousands of people chanted a single name, he felt that the version of himself sitting in some dim corner of the audience would look impossibly small and pathetic. To say that out loud, he would have to lay out every reason behind it, and at the bottom of those reasons was something Jihoon wasn’t supposed to know. Sanghyeok kept his lips pressed together and laid down the ladle.

“Just worry about yourself.” He still didn’t lift his head. His voice was a fraction higher than usual. “You must be exhausted with all these matches lately, so just eat well. Why bother coming all the way out here on your day off?”

Jihoon reached out and slid the rolled omelet—Sanghyeok’s favorite—toward him. “I came to see you. Why else would I drag myself to this cramped little place just for stew?”

“…You could be hanging out with your teammates or your friends. Why do you keep coming to me like this?”

“My teammates I see every day.” Jihoon leaned back against the chair. The corners of his eyes stayed completely devoid of mischief, even as his lips curved.

“And I’m not as glad to see my friends as I am to see you.”

Sanghyeok picked up a piece of the omelet and put it in his mouth. He couldn’t taste a thing. Unable to hide how hot his earlobes felt as he chewed, he reached for his water glass. The water was icy, and the sound of him swallowing it was strangely loud.

In the center of the table, the remaining stew was boiling down. Jihoon glanced down briefly at Sanghyeok’s bowl. The half-bowl of rice and untouched pumpkin remained exactly as they were. “You’ve always avoided my eyes when you lie to me.”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

“When I told you I was dropping out. You said congratulations, but you wouldn’t look at me.”

At that, Sanghyeok finally lifted his head. Jihoon was smiling. It wasn’t an expression of reproach or hurt, but rather the look of someone who had known something for a long time and was only now speaking it aloud. Sanghyeok couldn’t find a single word in response. The ambient noise of the restaurant drifted away, and the air of that evening from long ago slowly flowed back in—the streetlight at the school’s back gate, the dim glow of the phone in Jihoon’s grip, and the words that had climbed all the way up his throat only to be swallowed back down.

/

It was lunchtime in early March. The math club room was a space Sanghyeok had occupied entirely alone for a year. Its only members were a few ghosts whose names lingered only on paper, and Sanghyeok was the only one who dragged his workbook there at noon. Light slanting through the north-facing window caught the corner of the desk at the exact same angle every day. The commotion from the far end of the hallway reached him only as a dull, muffled hum across two walls, leaving the sharp, scratching sound of pencil lead snapping as the only distinct noise. Sanghyeok liked that distance. It was a room sized just right—where no one spoke to him, and no one required him to speak back.

The door opened halfway through the lunch hour. Sanghyeok didn’t look up. Whether it was a teacher’s errand or a freshman lost on their way, they would take a quick sweep and leave. But instead of retreating, footsteps crossed the floor between the desks with a slow deliberation, and the chair opposite his scraped backward against the floor.

A stranger in a gym uniform sat down. Hair that looked soft and fluffy fell over his forehead, and the color of the patch on his chest marked him as a first-year. Jeong Jihoon. Setting a thick stack of printouts down in the corner of the desk, the kid propped his chin on his hand. His gaze moved in turn to Sanghyeok’s workbook, to the fingers gripping the mechanical pencil, and finally up to his face.

Only after finishing a problem to the very end did Sanghyeok speak. “This is disruptive to my studying. Why don’t you go somewhere else?”

“I didn’t make a single sound.”

“Just sitting there watching is noise.”

“It’s not like you rented this desk out.”

Sanghyeok finally raised his head. The face meeting his held no trace of defiance. If anything, it looked unhurried, as though he’d found something good to watch. Sanghyeok pushed up the bridge of his glasses and turned back to his workbook. Instinct told him that engaging with a kid like this would only drag things out. For the next ten minutes, not a single sound came from across the table. When the lunch hour was nearly over, Jihoon gathered his papers, stood up, and tossed out a parting remark from the doorway without looking back.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Don’t.” The door clicked shut. As Sanghyeok swept eraser shavings away with the edge of his hand, he noticed that the opposite chair hadn’t been pushed back under the desk; it sat at a crooked angle. He left it that way for a long time, only reaching out to shove it in right before the afternoon classes resumed.

Jihoon came the next day, and the day after that. At first, he brought a new workbook and planted himself there with breezy shamelessness: “Hyung, they say you’re at the top of the school rank. Just thirty minutes.” Lacking the heart to chase away an underclassman asking for help with his studies, Sanghyeok eventually picked up his pencil. Jihoon was the sort who understood two things for every one explained. Whenever he hit a roadblock, he would rub the back of his neck absentmindedly, letting his hand drop the instant comprehension clicked. When an explanation ended, Jihoon would look at him with eyes untouched by doubt, and before he knew it, Sanghyeok, with that gaze on him, was kindly working through one more line of explanation. Every time Jihoon grinned, a swell of pride rose in him, and he didn’t want it to show on his face.

Before long, banana milk and sports drinks began appearing on the desk. Jihoon claimed they were payment for the tutoring, and every time he picked exactly those two from the bottom shelf at the school store, though Sanghyeok had never once told him he liked them. The desk had held nothing but workbooks, pencils, and erasers for a year, and now things that weren’t his piled up on it one by one. Sanghyeok didn’t mind. On days when five minutes passed after the lunch bell without the door opening, his pencil would circle the same problem. When Jihoon finally dashed in late, Sanghyeok felt a quiet relief and pretended he hadn’t been waiting as he steadied the pencil that had been spinning in place.

Once, Jihoon limped into the club room with a scraped knee after taking a tumble during gym class. Without a word, Sanghyeok pulled a band-aid from the front pocket of his bag. A methodical person always kept such things on hand. Skipping the antiseptic, he wiped the dirt away with a wet tissue, crouched down beside the desk, and pressed the band-aid over the wound. While he pressed down the edges firmly with his thumb, Jihoon didn’t make a single sound.

That band-aid stayed on Jihoon’s knee for days. Even as the edges frayed and gathered dirt, he refused to peel it off. Every time he rolled up his gym pants, Jihoon glanced down at it once, and when Sanghyeok told him, “Take that off already. It’s filthy,” he would brazenly reply, “It still hurts.” You walked in here just fine, Sanghyeok objected, but only in his head.

It was the hour when the corridor lights began clicking off one by one. At the sound of the night-duty teacher rattling his ring of keys, Sanghyeok checked his watch and saw that it was well past nine. As exam season drew near, the two of them leaving together had become a matter of course. No one had explicitly proposed it.

The night air still carried a bite. Sanghyeok buttoned his uniform jacket to the top, clutching his notebook to his chest as he walked. At even intervals, the streetlights sent their two shadows ahead of them and then folded them back behind.

“Question four on the math practice test keeps nagging at me. I need to bring my score up if I want to get into the university I’m aiming for.”

“Your grades are already great, hyung. What are you stressing about?”

“Because I actually have somewhere I want to get into.” It wasn’t something he usually talked about. Saying it aloud seemed to shift the weight on his chest a little to one side. Beside him, he could feel Jihoon shortening his stride to match his pace.

“By this time next year, I’ll be holed up alone in a study room, and I won’t even have time to play with you,” Sanghyeok said with a sigh.

There was no reply. When he looked over, Jihoon had come to a halt. Hands shoved deep into his pockets, he stood beneath the streetlight and stared fixedly at Sanghyeok.

“I’m going to the same university as you, though.”

Jihoon pouted. Had he grown taller in just a few weeks? The angle at which he looked up felt steeper than before. Sanghyeok was so dumbfounded that a laugh escaped him. He knew Jihoon’s usual grades, and the hands that gripped a game controller instead of a pencil right up to the eve of exams. “Do you even know what my target school is?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Jihoon took a step closer. The streetlight spilled over his shoulders, casting a shadow across Sanghyeok’s forehead. Despite his nonchalant tone, his gaze didn’t waver for a single second. “If you stick right by my side and keep teaching me, I could even take first place in the whole school.”

“Quit kidding yourself, seriously.”

“I’m serious. If you go off somewhere else, I won’t survive out of sheer boredom.” As if its bulb were spent, the streetlight flickered once. Jihoon tapped the corner of Sanghyeok’s notebook with his fingertip.

“So quit the nonsense about holing yourself up alone somewhere, and take responsibility for getting me in, hyung.”

Sanghyeok had no answer. The eyes behind his lenses blinked wide once, and his arms tightened around the notebook. The word responsibility echoed uncomfortably long inside his ears. He knew it was a joke. Yet even while knowing it, as he scrambled for a reply, a single streetlight moth fluttered into the beam between them and out again.

/

The ambient noise of the restaurant rushed back in. Glancing at the time on his phone, Jihoon pulled his cap down and announced it was time for practice. Before Sanghyeok could even pull his wallet out at the register, a card slid out ahead of him, and the payment chime rang before he could open his mouth.

The final wash of afternoon sunlight was settling over the alley. Jihoon pulled up his mask and nudged the brim of his cap down. Parked by the main road with its hazard lights blinking was his team’s van.

“I’ll come again next time, hyung.”

“…Yeah, get going. Good luck at practice.” Jihoon offered a single casual wave and turned on his heel. Sanghyeok stood rooted at the mouth of the alley, watching his retreating figure. Beneath the loose hoodie, his shoulders looked broader than before. The van doors slid open and shut, and the vehicle soon merged into the flow of traffic. Sanghyeok lingered a moment longer before finally pulling his hands from his pockets and stepping forward.

Sanghyeok’s days followed a predictable, unremarkable rhythm. Mornings found him opening textbooks by the library reading room window; afternoons pulled him into the departmental room to open group project files. By evening, he would review resume-editing requests posted in the job-preparation study chat before returning to his studio apartment. It was a routine strung tight with GPA benchmarks, language scores, and internship notices, growing steadily denser as finals approached. There was never supposed to be room in that routine for a name like Jihoon.

Yet that name was everywhere. The portal’s main sports page featured a photo of Jihoon hoisting a trophy right after a victory, and YouTube recommendations slotted Jihoon’s match highlights into every third row. Just last week, in the department room, he’d watched classmates crowd around a monitor, marveling at a clip of Jihoon. “Dude‘s fucking good, though. I’ll give him that.” Adjusting the strap of his backpack, Sanghyeok had walked past the door without a word. The roar of cheering crowds followed him down the hall for a long time.

He was proud. That wasn’t a lie. Watching Jihoon lock into a match on screen warmed a corner of Sanghyeok’s chest. But in the brief gap between the video ending and the next recommendation rolling over, his own reflection in the library window would catch his eye first. Sitting before a monitor split between a GPA calculator and internship postings, Sanghyeok sometimes looked back and found it hard to believe that he and Jihoon had once shared workbooks at the same desk—it all felt as distant as someone else’s memory. Whenever he tried to measure that distance, the numbers wouldn’t add up. That was why, whenever the invitation to come watch a match arrived, he invariably defaulted to whatever excuse sat closest to hand—exams or presentations. Going there felt like inviting those unquantifiable numbers out into the open.

“Ugh, I seriously don’t want to do this.” Hyeonjoon dropped his mouse and buried his forehead against the table. The final slide of their presentation deck had been sitting as a blank screen for three hours.

“Hyung, can’t we just skip this? Maybe the professor will pretend not to notice. Okay, there’s no way he won’t notice. But then again, what if he doesn’t? Right? A friend of mine last semester didn’t turn in any slides at all and didn’t even lose points. Ah, but that’s probably because his professor was kind of weird.”

“There’s no way he’d let that slide.”

“Come on, why do you always have to be so harsh? You could play along once in a while.” Hyeonjoon muttered against the wood. Sanghyeok scrolled through the slides one by one, hunting for typos. Hyeonjoon was a younger student in the same class; he’d shown up with his share of the research done during their first group project, and they’d ended up sitting together a few times. He talked a lot, but strangely enough, it wasn’t grating. He chattered to himself, laughed to himself, and never harbored hurt feelings when left unanswered, making him easy to have around.

“Just make the conclusion one line and a chart. That’s enough.”

“Oh, that’s it? That’s all I had to do? Hyung, you’re a genius. I owe you a coffee. Wait, is this my fourth cup already?”

“Never mind that, just draw the chart.” Hyeonjoon chuckled and grabbed his mouse again. Sanghyeok let the corners of his mouth lift a fraction. It was like having a puppy yapping away in the next seat; when he was worn out, it was oddly the thing that let him breathe.

By the time they folded their laptops and left the café, the sun had gone down and the streetlights were already on. Hyeonjoon waved goodbye at the subway entrance. Slipping in a single earphone, Sanghyeok turned down the alley toward his apartment.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Seeing the name glowing on the screen, Sanghyeok slowed his pace. “Hello?”

“Hyung, have you eaten yet?” The background was quiet. He seemed to be in his dorm room. Jihoon’s voice was unhurried and loose.

“Not yet. Just coffee while working on an assignment.”

“An assignment? Where?”

“Café by the school.”

“With who?”

The question arrived a beat too fast. Sanghyeok rounded the corner of the alley as he answered. “Hyeonjoon.”

“Who’s Hyeonjoon?”

“Moon Hyeonjoon. I mentioned him before—an underclassman in my department. In the same class.”

“You weren’t even that close with him.”

“…Weren’t we?”

“You only mentioned him once, in passing. And now you’re hanging out with him all the time?”

A chair creaked on the other end of the line. Sanghyeok adjusted his earphone. There were thorns in that tone. Puzzled over what could possibly have put him in a bad mood, Sanghyeok knitted his brows slightly. “Because he’s my junior. We just did a project together.”

“…”

“What’s wrong? Are you mad?”

“I’m not.”

It was the voice of an exceedingly angry person. Without the faintest clue where to begin apologizing, Sanghyeok simply said, “Sorry.” Only after the word left his mouth did it feel even more awkward, since he had no idea what he was apologizing for. A short sigh slipped out from the other end of the line.

“Hyung. I have an off day today.”

“Oh, your day off? Must be nice.”

“I’m coming over to your place.”

“Hey, right now? Wait, I’m not—” The line had already gone dead. Sanghyeok stared down at the screen for a long moment before picking up his pace. The image of a cupboard stocked with nothing but instant ramen flashed through his mind.

Sanghyeok hurried up the stairs and let himself into his room. Since he kept the place tidy by default anyway, there wasn’t much to clear away. He hung his coat on the rack, closed the university textbook spread across the desk and pushed it to one side, and put the two cups left upside down by the sink up on the shelf. Tugging the corner of his blanket straight was the final touch. There was nothing to be done about the hollow, empty refrigerator other than opening it once and shutting it immediately. As he caught his breath, the digital lock at the front door chimed. Beep-beep-beep-beep, four short signals, followed by a heavy click.

The door swung open, and Jihoon stepped inside. Cap in hand, he crouched by the shoe rack to untie his sneakers. Having apparently taken a taxi straight from the dorm, he’d arrived even faster than expected. “What are you up to? Were you frantically cleaning or something?”

“…Should I have changed the password?”

“What would that change?” Jihoon snorted a laugh as he stood, stepped into the room, and draped his hoodie over the back of the desk chair. It was a familiar gesture, executed just as if he were hanging things on his own coatrack. Standing beside the closed textbook, Sanghyeok took in for the first time just how many of someone else’s belongings had crept into this room. The phone charger by the bed was the one Jihoon had left behind; the mug in the corner of the desk belonged to him, too. He had never found any particular reason to clear them out.

“You haven’t eaten dinner, right? Should I order something?”

As Sanghyeok flicked on a delivery app, Jihoon sidled over. Reaching an arm out over Sanghyeok’s shoulder while he scrolled through the menu, Jihoon swiped the phone right out of his hand. He added bossam to the cart and pressed his thumb against the payment button. The confirmation chime sounded before Sanghyeok could stop him.

“Hey, I said I was going to order.”

“I bought it.”

“There’s a limit to mooching off someone younger. Give me your account number. I’ll wire you the money.”

“Forget it.”

“What do you mean, forget it? Give me your account.”

Jihoon’s brow knitted tightly. The movement with which he handed the phone back to Sanghyeok was rougher than usual. Dropping down onto the edge of the bed, he tilted his head slightly as he looked up at Sanghyeok. He looked sulky, his lips set in a faint pout, and his eyes stayed fixed on Sanghyeok like someone waiting for an answer. “I make good money.”

“I know. Even so—”

“Even if you never work a day in your life, I could keep you fed forever. Why do you have to be so stubborn about it?”

The room went quiet for a beat. The refrigerator motor hummed low. Holding his phone, Sanghyeok forced a smile. “…You talk a good game. I’ll take you up on that if I ever go completely broke.”

Jihoon didn’t answer. Though nothing had happened, the air in the room seemed to have dropped half a degree. Ignoring it, Sanghyeok walked to the kitchenette and pulled down two mugs.

The delivery arrived in twenty minutes. While they ate the pork wrapped in greens, Jihoon talked about the team. The coach had drawn up a new strategy that nobody understood, leading to a whole hour spent standing in front of a whiteboard, he recounted; Sanghyeok let out a soft laugh and spooned a bit of fermented shrimp onto Jihoon’s plate. In the interim, the chilled atmosphere quietly thawed. Only after taking a spoonful of soup did Jihoon’s shoulders relax.

Once they finished eating, Sanghyeok gathered the empty containers and carried them to the kitchenette. While he ran the tap and rinsed the dishes, the sound of the blanket rustling came from behind him. Jihoon had stretched out at full length across the bed. His feet dangled past the edge, visible in the reflection of the small window above the sink.

For a while, only the sound of running water filled the room. Jihoon was staring up at the ceiling. A few glow-in-the-dark star stickers, left behind by the previous tenant, still clung to the plaster up there.

“When you graduate, hyung.”

Sanghyeok didn’t pause the hand washing the plate.

“Should I move out of the dorm and live with you?”

“…”

“I need to find a place in Seoul anyway, and you live alone, so you never eat properly. Even now, all you’ve got at your place is ramen.”

A plate slipped from Sanghyeok’s fingers and clattered against the bottom of the sink. Catching it, he resumed rinsing and cranked the faucet higher. His heart slammed twice against his ribs. It was his usual tone. Tossed out like a joke. Yet the words sat there so flat and devoid of any forced weight that he couldn’t find an opening to brush them off as banter.

“Stop talking nonsense.” His voice came out firmer than intended. Sanghyeok turned off the water and grabbed a dish towel. “Why on earth would I live with you?”

No reply. When he turned around, wiping his hands on the towel, Jihoon was still lying there looking up at the ceiling. It wasn’t the look he’d worn at dinner a moment ago. The amusement had drained from his face, leaving no trace of a joke, and he looked as calm as someone picturing the person who would be under the same roof when he woke up in the morning. For Jihoon, this wasn’t a hypothetical; it looked more like one more slot in a schedule that was already set.

Sanghyeok couldn’t keep looking at that face for long, and turned away again, pretending to hang up the towel. Behind him, the blanket rustled as Jihoon shifted on the bed.

/

It was the second day of the new semester. Because air conditioning renovations had kept the math club room smelling faintly of dust through the whole break, Sanghyeok had relocated his spot to a corner of the second-floor library reading room. Having somehow found out, Jihoon was sitting right across from him from day one. He’d propped his workbook open, but didn’t solve a single line.

Perhaps because he’d pulled an all-nighter the night before, the letters began blurring about thirty minutes in. Gripping his pencil, Sanghyeok managed two more lines of equations before feeling his hand stall over the paper on the third. Not like this, was his last coherent thought. He didn’t remember the exact moment his forehead met the corner of the workbook.

When he opened his eyes, the lunch hour was almost over, and the sunlight on the desk had crept across the page. A deep indentation from the corner of the book was pressed into his cheek, and his glasses had slid down the bridge of his nose, leaving one lens crooked. Feeling as though his lips might have parted, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. As he pushed himself up, something slid off his shoulder. A navy gym jacket. On the chest, the name patch read Jeong Jihoon.

Across the table, Jihoon was staring at his workbook. To be precise, he was pretending to stare at it. He was biting the inside of his lip, his shoulders trembling minutely, and that tremor amplified the instant Sanghyeok picked up the jacket.

“…How long were you watching?”

“Watching what?”

“Me sleeping.”

“I was doing my math problems.”

“I can see you holding back laughter.”

Jihoon finally dropped his forehead onto the desk and laughed without a sound. Every time his shoulders heaved, someone across the reading room looked up. Pushing up his glasses, Sanghyeok noticed the blank space at the bottom of his scratch pad. Handwriting that wasn’t his was there, and his own mechanical pencil lay beside Jihoon’s pencil case.

　hyung looks so goofy when he sleeps (jk)

He had even been considerate enough to close the parenthesis. Sanghyeok stared down at that line for a long time. His brain insisted he ought to be angry, but the corners of his mouth betrayed him first, lifting upward. When he tried to suppress it by pushing his glasses back into place, he only gave himself away.

With his forehead still pressed to the wood, Jihoon muttered, “That pouty lip thing was seriously funny, though.”

“…Shut up.”

“Oh, come on, you laughed too.”

“I did not.”

He threw the gym jacket at Jihoon’s head. The smell of detergent clung to his shoulders for a long time. Sanghyeok thought about tearing that page out of the pad, but turned to the next one and started on the next problem.

Before that week was over, Jihoon’s name was making the rounds of the school hallways. Two girls in his year had waited at lunch with letters in the first-year hallway, people said; he’d been confessed to behind the gym and turned the person down on the spot. The stories reached all the way to Sanghyeok’s class. Sanghyeok let them go in one ear and out the other, and only thought of them on the day the AC work finished and he went back to the club room and opened his workbook.

Jihoon, sitting in the opposite chair, hadn’t even bothered opening his workbook; he had his arms folded on the desk, chin resting on top, so that he sprawled halfway across it. His eyes tracked the tip of Sanghyeok’s pencil. “Word is you’re pretty popular among the freshmen?”

To keep the scratch of his lead from stuttering, Sanghyeok deliberately kept his eyes glued to the problem. A veneer of playfulness at the corners of his mouth ought to be enough, he figured. “Why don’t you try dating someone instead of turning everyone down?”

No response. When Sanghyeok finished a line of calculation and looked up, Jihoon’s gaze hadn’t shifted an inch. It wasn’t the pencil tip he was watching; it was Sanghyeok’s face. The light from the north-facing window broke thinly across Jihoon’s eyebrows, and his chin shifted once, slowly, against his folded arms.

“There’s no one prettier than you, and no one smarter than you.” Jihoon spoke without a trace of a smile.

“Why would I date anyone else?”

The lead snapped. With a sharp snap, a black dot sprayed across the paper. Wiping away the broken splinter with his thumbnail, Sanghyeok muttered, “You’re out of your mind,” though his voice came out shallower than intended. Feeling heat rush to his cheeks, he started to raise a hand before checking himself and dropping it. He couldn’t even confirm whether Jihoon had caught it.

“Oh, and.” Lifting his chin from his arms, Jihoon leaned back against the chair. This time, the corners of his lips were turned up—at an angle too ambiguous to tell whether he was joking or not.

“If I ever like someone, you’re the first person I’ll tell, no matter what. So you do the same. Until then, just hang out with me.”

“…Why do I have to tell you?”

“Is that a promise?”

“Just do your math problems.” For the next ten minutes, Sanghyeok erased and rewrote his equations twice over the exact same problem. Across from him, Jihoon unfolded his workbook as if nothing had happened, rolling a pencil between his fingers while absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck.

That night, Sanghyeok opened his scratch pad and stopped at a page near the front. At the bottom margin, the handwriting that wasn’t his, parenthesis and all, was still there. He had flipped past that page again and again for days without tearing it out. Only now did he understand: it wasn’t that he hadn’t torn it out. He couldn’t. Under the light of his desk lamp, he held a finger pressed against that line for a long time before closing the pad. Girls had waited for him with letters, and someone had confessed to him behind the gym. He'd turned them all down, yet every lunch hour he came here and lay with his chin on his folded arms, watching Sanghyeok's pencil move. A strange feeling rose first, and another sensation followed right behind it. Somewhere along the way, a layer had peeled off the eyes that saw him only as a younger kid. The unnamed feeling from beneath the streetlight months ago finally got its name that night.

The shift began in late October.

The moment the dinner-break bell rang, Jihoon, who usually stuck to the study hall window, vanished. The cafeteria table where they used to eat dinner together sat empty, and replies to his texts began arriving an hour late. The banana milk on the desk shifted from every other day to once a week. The chair opposite in the club room remained tucked beneath the desk all afternoon, looking just as Sanghyeok had shoved it in that morning. For the first time, he felt an urge to pull it out and sit in it, though he didn’t.

Was I just getting my hopes up? The thought scribbled itself across the margin of his scratch pad before he scratched it out. The things Jihoon used to say while propping his chin on the desk sometimes felt like pure phantoms in hindsight. It must have been a joke. Jihoon was probably the kind of guy who said those things to anyone. Even after reaching that conclusion, Sanghyeok found his eyes pulled toward the door every single time footsteps passed down the hall.

It was mid-November. When Sanghyeok pushed the door of the teachers’ office open halfway with a stack of handouts for the math teacher, he caught sight of a familiar back standing before the homeroom teacher’s desk. The shoulder line of the school uniform looked straighter than usual.

“I’m almost done persuading my parents. Leaving school won’t be a problem.”

The teacher said something in reply, but the words didn’t register. Clutching the stack of papers to his chest, Sanghyeok pulled the door shut. So much of his concentration went into making sure it didn’t make a sound that he only realized his hands were shaking once he was standing out in the hallway. The corners of the pages were crumpled.

He kept the words down and got through the day, but the next day at lunch, the moment the club room door opened, his mouth moved before he could stop it. “Are you dropping out?”

Jihoon stopped short on the threshold. His hand went up to the back of his neck, and this time, even when comprehension arrived, his hand didn’t drop. “…Hyung, I was going to tell you later. It wasn’t certain yet.”

“And once it was certain, then what? Were you going to tell me on the day you quit?” His voice came out colder than he’d intended. What hit Sanghyeok even faster than the realization of his own anger was the sickening certainty that he had no right to be angry in the first place. Jihoon parted his lips as if to say something, then clamped them shut; for once, he looked genuinely rattled. It was an expression he’d never worn before. Faced with that look, Sanghyeok opened his book anyway, despite the words waiting on the tip of his tongue.

“Get out. I need to study.” It was the first time he’d told him to leave since the day they met. Back then, Jihoon had stubbornly held his ground; this time, Jihoon closed the door and left without a word.

For the next few days, no words found a home anywhere. At lunch, Sanghyeok bypassed the club room for the top floor of the library, and every study hall break found him burrowed deep inside his workbooks. Dropping out or whatever, it’s his own life. What’s it to me? To him, I’m just an older guy he’s close to. Repeating those lines to himself ten times a day, he gripped his mechanical pencil harder. All through those days, Jihoon walked past the front of Sanghyeok’s classroom more often than usual. He didn’t speak. If Sanghyeok didn’t look up, he simply kept walking. Once, when Sanghyeok opened his locker, three cartons of banana milk were stacked inside. Without a note, without anyone to drink them, the expiration dates simply ticked away inside the dark metal box.

Jihoon’s final day of school was a Thursday in the second week of December.

During study hall break, the back door of Sanghyeok’s classroom creaked open. Amid the hallway noise, a name was called once. Sanghyeok looked up. Jihoon was standing there. The corners of his mouth were turned up, just like always. But he kept one hand on the door as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.

“Hyung. It’s my last study hall today—come ditch with me.” The tail end of his sentence rushed out half a beat too fast. While he waited for an answer, Jihoon’s gaze managed a fragile lock with Sanghyeok’s eyes. The hand on the knob clenched and loosened once.

The area around the back gate was deserted. The streetlights glowed at regular intervals, and the chill of winter caught in the iron gate turned their breath into white plumes. Jihoon was clutching his phone. A dim light, flickering as if the screen might die at any second, leaked between his fingers. Sanghyeok didn’t ask where the call had come from.

For a long while, neither of them spoke. Jihoon nudged the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “Hyung, I’m really going to do well.”

Sanghyeok didn’t look at Jihoon’s face. He looked at the toe of Jihoon’s shoe.

“I’ll make it, and I’ll come back as someone you can be proud of.”

Sanghyeok couldn’t answer. A tangle of words rolled around inside his mouth. Don’t go surfaced first, then Why didn’t you tell me first? and behind that trailed Do I even have the right to ask? Not a single one of them made it past the tip of his tongue. Sanghyeok parted his lips, closed them again, and pushed his glasses up his nose. Though he knew Jihoon’s gaze was resting on the top of his bowed head, he couldn’t bring himself to look up.

As the silence stretched, Jihoon’s smile began to flag. Out of the corner of his eye, Sanghyeok watched the corners of his mouth—lifted into the shape of a joke—slowly sink back to their natural line. That sight hit Sanghyeok harder than any words could have. This kid was standing here waiting for an answer, and right now, he was about to give up on it.

“…”

“Hyung?”

“…Come back?” His voice cracked, forcing him to swallow hard before dragging it out again. “What’s there to come back from? Just keep in touch.”

Only after speaking did he realize what those words implied: he was accepting the dropout. What he’d just said wasn’t an attempt to hold him back; it was a send-off.

The tension drained from Jihoon’s face. His shoulders dropped, and his eyes curved into crescents. Sanghyeok watched someone who had been frozen stiff for days melt all at once. Beaming, Jihoon stepped a full pace closer. “What about my congratulations, then? You haven’t said it once.”

Beneath the streetlight, a moth batted against the bulb before dropping away. Sanghyeok forced a passable imitation of a smile onto his lips.

“…Congratulations.”

“Once more.”

“I said congratulations.”

Jihoon let out a genuine laugh, and the whole time he listened, Sanghyeok dug his fingernails into his palm. He pressed hard enough to leave marks, yet felt no pain at all.

“Then I’ll go grab my bag. You wait here.”

“…I’ll go with you.” Only after saying it did he realize he was the one who had moved first. Sanghyeok waited in the hallway while Jihoon ducked into his classroom, and when he came out, he had his backpack slung over one shoulder. It looked impossibly lighter than usual. Sanghyeok realized only then that he must have cleared out his locker days ago. They passed through the empty hallways of study hall hour, stepped out the front entrance, and walked in silence along the edge of the playground. Jihoon tried to open his mouth a few times before giving up, and each time, Sanghyeok kept his eyes rigidly straight ahead, pretending not to notice.

At the back gate, Jihoon came to a halt. The iron gate stood half-open, and beyond it, the streetlight’s glow stretched long across the pavement. From inside the security guard’s box, the low murmur of a radio leaked out.

“I’ll call you. For real.”

Sanghyeok gave a small nod.

“And don’t be slow to reply, either, hyung.”

“Got it. Go on.”

Jihoon smiled once, raised a hand in a quick wave, and turned around. The sound of footsteps slipped past the gap in the iron gate and down onto the pavement. Sanghyeok’s feet remained frozen just inside the boundary of the gate. It was a distance of a single step, yet that single step felt heavy enough to cleave the inside of the school from the outside world.

Jihoon’s retreating figure shrank as it crossed from one streetlight to the next. Halfway down, he glanced back once, and upon confirming that Sanghyeok was still standing there, gave a wide wave with his whole arm. Sanghyeok raised his hand halfway before letting it drop awkwardly back to his side. Even after Jihoon rounded the corner and vanished from view, Sanghyeok stayed planted in that spot for a long time. The bell signaling the second period of study hall rang out.

/

Inside the quiet room, only the laptop screen glowed brightly. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Sanghyeok watched the third game play out to the very end on the screen propped on his knees. A single text message sent before the match remained frozen on his phone screen: Make sure to watch today’s game. He hadn’t replied, but by opening the broadcast stream right at start time, he’d given his answer anyway.

The final teamfight ended, and cheers erupted. The camera followed Jihoon’s face as he pulled off his headset. His bangs, crunched crookedly to one side by the headgear, were shoved back roughly with his fingers, filling the screen. The scene shifted immediately to the interview stage. When the reporter with the mic asked how it felt to win, Jihoon offered a self-conscious laugh before looking straight into the camera lens.

“I told someone to be sure to watch today. I wonder if they did.”

The reporter asked, “Who?” and laughter rippled through the crowd. Without answering, Jihoon let the corners of his mouth curve upward. “Just like I promised, I won.”

Sanghyeok closed the laptop. The click of the lid sounded louder in the room than he’d expected. Long after he lifted his hand, he kept it resting on top of the plastic casing, feeling the cooling whine of the internal fan gradually slow to a stop beneath his palm. Like I promised—he had never made any such promise. Yet the memory of a finger tapping lightly against his notebook beneath the streetlight rose unbidden. Take responsibility for getting me in, hyung. That was followed by what Jihoon had said while propping his chin on the desk in the September club room: If I ever like someone, you’re the first person I’ll tell, no matter what. So you do the same. Until then, just hang out with me. Jihoon in his school uniform and Jihoon staring through the lens just now overlapped like two sheets of translucent film before slipping out of alignment.

This kid could scramble a person’s peace of mind just as easily then as he could now. Thinking that, Sanghyeok gave his head a small, dry shake. It was just because that was the kind of person Jihoon was—affectionate, fearless, and reckless with his words toward anyone he cared about. The lingering attachment of childhood hadn’t worn off yet. Rehearsing that line once more, Sanghyeok flicked off the light. In the dark, his phone vibrated once. Three words: Did you watch? Sanghyeok stared at the screen, then tapped back: I did. Good job. The moment it sent, he closed his eyes.

Three days later, a text arrived:

⠀Hyung i finally got a day off, eat with me

Sanghyeok rolled his thumb back and forth over those words. If he saw in person the face he’d watched on that screen, he had no idea how far the composure he’d barely gathered would come undone. Still, he tapped back: Yeah, i’m free. Not one line of refusal came to mind.

The meeting spot was a shabu-shabu place near the dorm. Jihoon sat with his mask pulled down beneath his chin, lifting a hand the moment Sanghyeok walked in. His cheeks looked a bit hollower than two months ago. As the broth began to bubble, Jihoon used the ladle to scoop up beef and bok choy and drop them into Sanghyeok’s bowl. He chatted about how his dorm roommate snored in his sleep, and how the coach had tumbled right out of his chair during practice; Sanghyeok chimed in with small laughs, dropping mushrooms into the pot. Through it all, his heart stayed surprisingly calm, calm enough to make him think that if it stayed like this, he’d be fine.

“I got offered a blind date this Saturday, and I’m thinking of going.”

Sanghyeok’s chopsticks froze mid-air. A single drop of broth fell from the lifted slice of beef onto the table. Pressing a napkin down over it, Sanghyeok kept his head down. “A blind date?”

“Jaehyuk hyung kept nagging me about it. Says she’s his friend’s younger sister, so I should just go once.”

“That’s great.” His voice came out completely normal. His smile had slid into place before he could stop it.

“Have you ever been on a blind date?”

“…No. I’ve never done that kind of thing.”

“I see. Then there’s no point asking you.” Muttering, “What am I supposed to wear?” Jihoon dunked more bok choy into the broth. Sanghyeok picked up his chopsticks. He put a piece of meat from his bowl into his mouth, but couldn’t taste a thing.

Sleep wouldn’t come all week long.

Right, it’s time he dated and met people like anyone else. By what right am I feeling hurt? Every time he tried to reason himself into order, it ended right there. Pulling the blanket over his head brought back a haunting chorus of other voices: Even if you never work a day in your life, I could keep you fed forever. When you graduate, should I move out of the dorm and live with you? Topped off by Just like I promised, I won.

Back then, he’d told himself it meant nothing, but his heart had fluttered all on its own anyway.

Idiot.

He wanted to cry.

/

By Wednesday night, his throat had begun to prickle. The weather had turned abruptly chilly, and Sanghyeok had brushed it aside as nothing. Thursday brought a persistent headache, and by Friday, the palm gripping the subway handrail felt feverishly hot. He staggered back to his apartment without even taking medicine and collapsed. Waking up Saturday afternoon, he found his limbs weighed down as if sandbags hung from every joint. Fever had blurred his vision, and the star stickers on the ceiling rippled as if underwater. The energy to walk as far as the pharmacy didn’t exist anywhere in his body.

His phone buzzed monotonously beside his pillow. Every time the screen blinked on and off, a pale blue light washed across the room.

⠀Hyung, did you eat today?

⠀I’m here a bit early. She should be here soon.

⠀Why aren’t you replying? Are you asleep?

Buried halfway into his pillow, Sanghyeok stared at that light. The thought that he ought to reach out crossed his mind, but the impulse refused to travel down into his arms. The vibration died and started up again. This time it wasn’t a text, but a sustained, unbroken hum. Sanghyeok had no idea how his thumb managed to find the call button.

“…Hello?” His voice cracked and rasped so badly it didn’t sound like his own.

“Hyung? Why haven’t you been answering? Is something wrong?” Jihoon’s voice was pitched a notch higher than usual. Before his question could even finish, the next words tumbled over it. “Wait, why does your voice sound like that? Are you sick? Since when? Did you take medicine?”

In the background, a murmur of public noise hummed along. Beneath the breathless, tumbling torrent of words, Jihoon could be heard trying, and failing, to keep his voice down. It was urgent, and worry dripped from every word. Inside a head loosened by fever, that voice echoed strangely loud. Sanghyeok closed his eyes and pulled his knees up tight beneath the blankets. He couldn’t tell if he wanted to cry or if he was simply in pain. He couldn’t even place where this room was anymore.

“…Jihoon-ah.”

“Yeah, hyung. Is it a cold?”

“…Can’t you skip the blind date?”

The words came out first. They weren’t filtered through thought. His fever-hot mouth simply shoved whatever had been crushed down inside him out into the open. Only after saying it did Sanghyeok comprehend his own words.

The other end of the line fell silent. Even the rustle of clothing and clinking dishes in the background had vanished. Sanghyeok heard the frantic hammering of his own heart inside his ears. A chill crept up the length of his spine. Whether that silence lasted five seconds or twenty, there was no way to tell. Then came the hitch of Jihoon drawing in a breath to speak.

I’ve lost my mind. What must he think of me?

“…My fever is so high I’m out of my mind.” His fractured voice rushed to patch the gap. “I was talking nonsense, so forget it. Have a good date.”

“Hyung, hold on—”

Sanghyeok hit the end-call button. As the screen went dark, the room grew another shade gloomier. The phone slipped from his limp fingers and landed with a dull thud on the floor, but he lacked the strength to retrieve it. Sanghyeok pulled the comforter up over his head. His cheeks burned, though he no longer cared whether it was the sickness or something else. Only his own ragged breathing echoed beneath the blankets until, at some point, even that sound drifted away.

/

The coffee machine hissed once more through a burst of steam. Holding the phone to his ear with the call severed, Jihoon sat frozen at a table by the window. The screen still read Call ended 0:47, and his lips remained parted in a vague, unfinished shape.

Can’t you skip the blind date?

It had been Sanghyeok’s voice. A voice frayed and shredded by fever, its trailing edge swallowed up as if burying itself in a pillow. Jihoon turned those words over and over in his head, but they slipped cleanly past every corner without catching on anything. Sanghyeok was a man who drew clear boundaries around other people’s business. He told people to have a safe trip wherever they went, never reached out first, and never asked for favors. Yet that same man had just asked him not to go. And he’d done it right after saying Jihoon’s name out loud.

He hit redial. The tone rang six times before cutting off, and when he dialed again, it went straight to voicemail. The phone he’d dropped somewhere by the bed must be ringing on top of the blanket. Hyung didn’t even have the strength left to pick it up. That precise tableau bloomed behind Jihoon’s eyes with unnecessary vividness—the darkened studio apartment, the bundled figure beneath the comforter, the phone lying face-down on the floor.

The bell above the glass door chimed. Jihoon lifted his head. The face he’d only seen in photos hesitated on the threshold before locking eyes with him and offering an awkward wave. Though he still had roughly five minutes before the agreed time, Jihoon flipped his phone face-down on the table and stood up. “Hello. I’m Jeong Jihoon.”

“Oh, hello. Wow, this is surreal. I’ve only ever seen you on screen.”

Smiling, she took the seat opposite him. Jihoon unfolded the menu and slid it toward her, then walked up to the counter to collect two iced Americanos. Jaehyuk had drilled a few specific instructions into him: Just go once, don’t hurt her feelings, and don’t make a mess of things. Jihoon moved mechanically through those instructions, ticking them off one by one. His body went through the motions, but he felt strangely detached from everything he touched.

“I don’t really follow matches, so this might be a rude question, but how many hours a day do you practice?”

“…About nine hours.”

“Really? That much? Are your wrists okay?”

“Yeah. I keep them managed.” Her voice sounded as though it were filtering up through deep water. He understood the shape of her words, but their meaning failed to penetrate past his eardrums. Another sound occupied that space instead: ragged breathing. The rustle of a comforter. A voice sinking softly away as it called out Jihoon-ah. Jihoon spun the ice-laden glass once, brought the straw to his lips, and pulled away again. Catching himself drumming his fingertips against the edge of the table, he dropped his hands into his lap—only for his gaze to drift immediately to the wall clock.

Had he taken medicine? Was there even any medicine in that house? The image of Sanghyeok’s apartment flashed to mind. When he’d visited last time, the only things in Sanghyeok’s drawer had been a few band-aids and an old pack of digestive pills. What was his temperature? Had he drunk any water? Was the front door locked? Questions marched out in an unbroken line, refusing to wait their turn, slamming all at once against his ribs. Beneath the weight of them, his chest throbbed with a persistent, hot ache. Jihoon couldn’t fathom why things had escalated to this pitch. “Worry” was the wrong size for it, and he had no confidence to stick any other name on it either. The only sensation clear and absolute was that remaining seated in this chair was no longer an option.

“Is something the matter?”

“…Pardon?”

“You don’t look well.”

For the first time, Jihoon looked squarely at the face seated before him. Her expression held genuine concern. She was completely innocent in all this. The ice in her glass was half-melted, the water level rising; without taking his eyes off it, Jihoon slowly stood up. “I’m sorry. Something urgent came up and I have to leave right now. I’ll take care of the bill. I’m truly sorry.”

When he bowed and straightened up, she sat blinking with her mouth half-open. He knew he owed a fuller excuse, but not a single other word would come. Sliding his card across the register, Jihoon apologized a second time, and offered a third as he pushed past the door. He was entirely unsure who the last two apologies had even been intended for.

The air outside was cold. At the pedestrian crossing, the signal was red, but Jihoon caught sight of the pharmacy sign across the street and stepped right down into the roadway at the first break in traffic. A long blast of a horn shrieked behind him. He didn’t look back.

The bell on the pharmacy door chimed. When the pharmacist asked about his symptoms, Jihoon explained that someone was running a high fever and losing their voice—only to freeze with his mouth hanging open when asked who the patient was. Hyung. Pulling out that single word took an uncomfortably long time. He loaded fever reducers, cold medicine, and a digital thermometer onto the counter all at once. Next door at the convenience store, he grabbed rice porridge, sports drinks, and an ice pack. His hands moved on autopilot, yet not a single item he picked up was wrong.

Sliding into the back seat of a taxi with the two plastic bags clutched in his lap, Jihoon realized he’d left his cap behind. He pressed his forehead against the side window. The glass was freezing cold.

Just drop off the medicine and leave. Bringing medicine to someone who’s sick is no big deal. Hyung said it was just fever nonsense anyway, so I’ll just do that and get out.

Even so, the words wouldn’t let go. Closing his eyes, Jihoon replayed the memory once more, and this time, beneath the fever-shredded rasp, he caught the heavy undertone of how long those words had been crushed down before breaking free. It was purely an ungrounded guess. To brush it aside, Jihoon began counting the streetlights flashing past the window. Around the seventh one he lost count and started over from one.

Whatever. I just need to see his face.

The moment the taxi pulled up to the mouth of the alley, Jihoon handed his fare to the driver and grabbed the plastic bags before the door had even fully swung open.

/

He rang the doorbell twice, but drew no response from within. Pausing at the threshold, Jihoon readjusted the plastic handles in his grip and pressed his ear directly against the door. Absolute silence. The heavy quiet from the moment the call had dropped earlier seemed trapped right here behind the wood. The darkened room, the bundled figure beneath the comforter, the phone lying face-down on the floor—the scenes he’d conjured in the taxi solidified with terrifying clarity.

He didn’t press the doorbell a third time. Flipping open the lock cover, Jihoon laid his fingers across the keypad. Beep, beep, beep. On the third digit, a dull thud echoed from inside the apartment. Jihoon froze with his finger hovering over the final number.

The lock mechanism slid back with a slow mechanical whine, and the door swung open halfway.

Sanghyeok’s face appeared first through the gap. He stood clinging to the doorknob with a comforter half-draped over his shoulders, a few strands of fever-damp hair stuck to his forehead. His cheeks were flushed and his eyelids so heavy that it took him a long time to recognize Jihoon. Even after he did, he just kept blinking, as if he couldn’t believe it.

No invitation to enter followed. Sanghyeok’s gaze traveled from Jihoon’s face down to the bags in both hands, then drifted back up to his eyes. The words he’d spilled over the phone earlier seemed to be lingering right here on the threshold. He couldn’t bring himself to ask why Jihoon had come, and that only left his eyes with nowhere to rest.

“…What about the date?”

Jihoon didn’t answer. It would be more accurate to say he didn’t know what to answer. Instead, his brow furrowed of its own accord. He couldn’t explain why he was standing here right now, but the sight of the face before him eclipsed every other thought. Turning his shoulder sideways, he squeezed into the gap between the door and Sanghyeok. Sanghyeok’s body tipped against the wall, and as their forearms brushed, a wave of dry heat radiated right through their clothes.

Dropping the bags to the floor, Jihoon turned and pressed the palm of his hand directly to Sanghyeok’s forehead. It was a hand still chilled by the outdoor air, but the moment it made contact, the skin beneath it warmed at once. Jihoon’s expression twisted into an outright scowl. “What is this—you’re burning up.”

Unable to find words, Sanghyeok simply looked up at him. The knitted brows, the sharp edge in his eyes—all of it swam into focus one piece at a time. He looked furious, yet at the same time profoundly distressed. Wrapping a hand around Sanghyeok’s arm, Jihoon pulled him deeper into the room. When Sanghyeok stumbled, Jihoon unceremoniously half-pushed him down onto the edge of the bed, shoved his shoulder back to lay him flat, and yanked the tangled comforter up to his chin. He reached down, scooped up the phone lying neglected on the floor, and set it on the nightstand. The screen still showed his two missed calls.

“Don’t move, just stay put. I’ll get water and medicine.” His voice was low, brooking no argument. Striding into the kitchenette, Jihoon found a glass, poured water, and ripped open the fever reducer package with practiced familiarity.

Beneath the blankets, Sanghyeok watched Jihoon’s back as he moved around the kitchenette. It wasn’t the casual clothes he usually wore. It was a neat shirt, its sleeves hastily shoved up and left hanging awkwardly around his elbows, with the top button undone. Sanghyeok had never seen him in anything like it. His hair, clearly styled with care that morning, was thoroughly ruffled from his dash over, stray locks tumbling across his forehead. Looking at him, Sanghyeok knew with certainty that all of this had started with his own mouth. A man who’d gone out on a date had turned up in this room with a pharmacy bag, all because of one line said in a fever. The tips of his ears burned beneath the blankets. It wasn’t because he was sick. The embarrassment and guilt of having wrecked a younger friend’s day with a sick excuse, after all the years he’d spent hiding his crush, pressed on him before the heat did.

When Jihoon returned with the glass of water and pills, Sanghyeok was pushing himself up onto his elbows. He had made up his mind, and he met Jihoon’s eyes squarely.

“…You should just go back.” His voice cracked, forcing him to swallow before dragging the words out again. “Once I take some medicine and sleep, I’ll shake it off fast. What I said on the phone earlier really was just me out of my head from the fever, so don’t overthink it—just go back. Okay?”

Jihoon’s hand, halfway through setting the glass down on the nightstand, froze. The water inside sloshed once against the rim.

He was right. Feverish nonsense was what he’d been told over the phone, and if that were true, a sick hyung had simply talked gibberish and the one who’d heard it could pretend he never had. Yet a scalding surge of frustration boiled up from his chest. Why he’d walked out on a blind date and sprinted all the way here was a tangled knot he couldn’t untangle himself, yet Sanghyeok was neatly drawing a sharp, clean line right through it. Without understanding why he was suddenly so angry, Jihoon glared down at Sanghyeok.

“Hyung.”

Sanghyeok’s gaze wavered, then slid down to the edge of the blanket.

“Do you really want me to go back to that place right now?”

Sanghyeok didn’t answer. He lifted his gaze, dropped it before their eyes could meet, and his fingers folded and unfolded the edge of the blanket over and over. Only the low hum of the refrigerator filled the room. The flush of fever had turned his skin even redder, and his breathing trembled shallowly. Watching that sight stripped away whatever remaining irritation Jihoon had left; the anger that had been burning there sank away, absurdly.

After a while, Jihoon let out a long breath. He swept a hand up over his forehead and put the pills and the water into Sanghyeok’s hands. “…Whatever. I don’t even know why I’m arguing with a sick person.”

Their fingers brushed briefly against the rim of the glass before separating. “Just take your meds and rest. I’m not going anywhere, so cut the nonsense.”

Sanghyeok’s heart pounded away, oblivious to the situation. The energy to push him away had evaporated entirely. Dropping the pills onto his tongue, he washed them down with water, handed back the empty glass, and pulled the comforter up beneath his eyes. In Jihoon’s pocket, a phone buzzed in a long vibration. The name on the screen when he pulled it out was Jaehyuk, and Jihoon simply flipped it face-down on the nightstand. The vibration stuttered twice more before dying out for good.

As the fever medicine began to take effect, Sanghyeok’s breathing slowly deepened. The jittery, rattling rhythm smoothed out, and his hunched shoulders relaxed beneath the weight of the blankets. Turning off the harsh overhead light, Jihoon left on only the small light by the kitchenette.

Pulling himself down to the floor beside the bed, Jihoon rested his spine against the frame. After an hour or so, he shifted, pressed a palm to Sanghyeok’s forehead, and upon confirming the heat hadn’t broken yet, rose to wet a towel in cold water. Wringing it out, he folded the ice pack he’d bought at the convenience store into the towel and laid it gently across Sanghyeok’s brow, wiping away the stray moisture tracking down his temple with the back of his hand. Every time his fingertips brushed skin, the heat radiating from it felt far more intense than normal.

Tending to a sick person was something he’d done before when teammates caught the flu; this was no different. Rinse the towel, replace it, check the clock. But when he reached for the towel the second time, Jihoon’s hand stalled against Sanghyeok’s face.

The sleeping face lay right below him. Flushed cheeks, slightly parted lips, damp strands of hair clinging to his brow. Without his glasses, he looked younger than he had by daylight, and with his usual sharp edges softened by sleep, the lines of his face were almost disarmingly gentle. Clutching the damp towel, Jihoon stared down at him for a long time.

His hand moved before his mind could catch up. With the tip of his finger, he brushed the damp bangs away from Sanghyeok’s forehead. The strands slipped between his fingers, and the fever-heat transferred straight into his fingertips. Every single point of contact felt startlingly sharp and vivid. Unable to pull his hand away, yet lacking the nerve to push closer, Jihoon stayed frozen in place. The sound of his own heartbeat filled his ears.

Unable to trace where that sound was coming from, he cast his eyes around the room. The mug on the nightstand, the plastic grocery bag on the floor, the charger trailing from the edge of the mattress. None of them held his gaze for long. When his eyes drifted back to Sanghyeok’s face, a scene from long ago slotted itself seamlessly into place.

It had been an early-November afternoon in the library. Because homeroom had ended ages ago, the reading room held only the rhythmic clacking of the librarian’s keyboard. Having practically pulled an all-nighter at the practice room before coming to school, Jihoon had rested his forehead against his folded arms at a corner desk just to shut his eyes for a second.

The quality of the light falling across his face shifted mid-nap. The sunset pouring through the window bled a deep crimson right through his eyelids, causing him to knit his brows, before suddenly, that red glare thinned out to a shadow. Jihoon cracked his eyes open.

Sanghyeok sat opposite him with his workbook propped upright. One hand tilted the edge of the open book toward the window to cast shade over Jihoon’s face, while the pencil in his other hand moved slowly across a notepad. It was a finals-prep workbook. He looked absorbed in his problems, but the arm holding the book never budged. The cuff of his school uniform shirt hung down right in front of Jihoon’s nose, carrying a faint scent of soap. The shadow cast by the book’s edge drifted slowly across Jihoon’s cheek.

Sanghyeok noticed he was awake and spoke softly. “You can sleep more.”

He hadn’t asked why. He hadn’t questioned why Jihoon was running himself ragged or where he kept disappearing to. He’d simply stayed right there, holding the book aloft.

Instead of answering, Jihoon had closed his eyes once and opened them again. Even with sleep pouring over him, he hadn’t wanted to lower his eyelids. He’d wanted to watch the sunset spread thinly along the rim of Sanghyeok’s glasses until the very end.

The face sleeping here with dry sweat on its brow and that face from back then overlapped into a single, seamless image. Lowering the towel he’d been clutching, Jihoon let out a slow breath.

Outside, the window was turning a pale, washed-out grey. The yellow glow of the small light over the kitchenette was losing its strength, and Jihoon sat cross-legged on the floor with his head pillowed against the wooden bed frame. Whether he’d dozed off or not, he couldn’t tell. The towel had long since gone lukewarm, and the ice pack had melted into a soft, sagging pouch of water.

A rustle of fabric snapped him awake.

He turned and saw Sanghyeok curled up tight beneath the comforter. The sweat on his forehead had finally cooled, drying his hair, but the fever’s break had brought on a sudden wave of chills. Jihoon scrambled to his feet, pulled the comforter higher to seal around his neck, and grabbed an extra fleece blanket from atop the wardrobe to layer over the top. The trembling didn’t stop.

“…Cold.” It was barely a mumble, halfway to a sleep-talk. His eyes stayed shut.

Standing beside the bed, Jihoon couldn’t move for a long beat. He could turn the heating up, lay on another blanket, or warm some fresh water. But Sanghyeok’s shoulders gave another violent shudder beneath the layers. Jihoon swallowed hard.

Sharing body heat is just first aid. That’s what you do when someone has the chills. Having built that excuse for himself, he sat down on the edge of the bed. His hand lifting the corner of the comforter was strangely slow. A flicker of panic—What if he wakes up?—flashed through his mind, instantly countered by If he wakes up, I’ll just tell him then.

The mattress dipped on one side. While the interior of the blanket retained a pocket of thick heat, the outer air bit sharp. Jihoon lay on his back at first, facing the ceiling, then turned onto his side and slid one arm carefully beneath Sanghyeok’s shoulders. The moment they touched, the trembling came straight through his shirt.

Sanghyeok moved first.

Acting on some deep-seated bodily instinct that recognized warmth nearby, his shivering shoulders leaned directly into the heat. Beneath the blankets, a hand fumbled blindly upward until it clutched the front of Jihoon’s shirt. Burying his forehead directly beneath Jihoon’s collarbone, he burrowed deeper into his chest. A ragged, pained sigh puffed out hot against the cotton.

Jihoon hovered his arm in midair, completely at a loss for where to put it. Only after a long moment did he lower that arm, wrapping it securely around Sanghyeok’s back. Through the fabric, every knob of his spine was distinct. With every inhalation, Sanghyeok pressed himself closer, and Jihoon figured that at this distance, his hammering heart must be echoing loud and clear. He thought, what if it’s heard, and then thought it didn’t matter if it was.

Gradually, Sanghyeok’s shivering began to subside. Jihoon felt the shift through his arm first—the intermittent, jagged vibrations lengthening and smoothing out into long, even breaths. In time, matching his pace to that rhythm, Jihoon tightened his hold just a fraction, letting Sanghyeok settle comfortably against his chest. It was like a piece set into the gap made for it, with no space left anywhere.

It felt strangely peaceful. Even though his heart kept hammering away, a profound quiet settled over him, washing away the frantic jagged edges that had clawed at his mind until moments ago. The wall clock at the blind date and the car horn at the crosswalk outside the pharmacy felt like things from another life. Only now did Jihoon realize how deeply satisfied he felt holding this weight and warmth against him. It felt like a place that had been empty for days being filled, and only now did he see that it had been empty far longer than that.

Sanghyeok’s hair brushed against his chin. Without thinking, Jihoon pressed the tip of his nose softly against the crown of his head, before freezing dead the instant he registered what he’d just done.

Oh.

It slipped out as a quiet puff of air. Jihoon traced that single syllable back to its origin, and once he found it, realized the road had only ever run in one direction. The phone he reached for the second a match ended, the eyes that scanned the audience before every game—everything had always been about waiting for one specific reaction. Whenever replies came slow, his tone had turned prickly; whenever Sanghyeok mentioned someone else’s name, the inside of his ear had gone cold for no reason. He hadn’t made promises about the future so easily because it was a joke; it was because that was the first picture that came to mind. Because he’s hyung, because he’d looked after me for so long, because he’s comfortable. He’d stuck those reasons on every time, but he’d never once followed them to see where they pointed.

There was no sudden shock of realization. It was more like a man who had wandered lost for ages and finally turned into the alley in front of his house, every muscle going slack. Resting his chin atop Sanghyeok’s head, Jihoon closed his eyes. Outside, the sky was turning a clear, pale blue. The hand clutching his shirt showed no sign of letting go, and Jihoon had no intention of asking it to.

/

The light pressing against his eyelids was blindingly white. Morning sunlight slicing through a crack in the curtains lay in a thin line across the edge of the blanket, and as Sanghyeok blinked it into focus, he noticed that his body felt strangely light. The sandbags had vanished from his joints. His throat still rasped, but his head was clear. The fever had broken.

Then he registered his right hand.

His fingers were tangled in fabric. A heavily crumpled shirtfront, right where a steady, rhythmic thud thrummed against his palm. Shifting his gaze upward, he caught sight of a collarbone, then a sharp jawline, and finally Jihoon’s face, eyes still closed in sleep.

Sanghyeok didn’t move. He took stock of the details one by one: his forehead was almost touching Jihoon’s chest, Jihoon’s arm lay across his back, and their legs were tangled together under the blanket. Heat climbed back up from the tips of his ears. Memories of the previous night came back only in jagged fragments—the word blind date, the front door, the cool palm pressed to his brow. He’d been cold, someone had peeled back the covers, and it had been warm. Everything after that was a blank slate.

Slowly, carefully, he tried to unfurl his fingers from the shirt. He did it without a sound, striving not to rustle a single thread of cotton. Just as the second finger slipped free, his wrist was caught.

Whether Jihoon had been awake before or woke at that exact second, he couldn’t tell. The grip on his wrist wasn’t strong, but it left no room to slip away. The Jihoon he’d seen in the doorway last night had stood there with a furrowed brow and the face of someone who couldn’t say why he was there. Now those eyes rested on his face, steady, like those of someone who knew exactly what he had to do.

“Fever’s gone down, looks like.” Jihoon pressed the back of his hand against Sanghyeok’s forehead before pulling away. His voice was gravelly with sleep.

“…Yeah. did you stay up all night? Sorry about that—”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Cutting him off with flat calm, Jihoon kept his hold on Sanghyeok’s wrist and propped himself up slightly on one elbow. The comforter slipped down his shoulder; the shirt he’d worn out yesterday was hopelessly rumpled, with one button undone.

“You know I ran out on that date yesterday, right?”

“…”

“I’m sure now. Why I ran all the way here.” Jihoon’s gaze never wavered from Sanghyeok’s face.

“Hyung, take responsibility for me.”

Those words made his chest thud once, hard. Responsibility. The word overlapped with the fingertip tapping the corner of his notebook beneath the streetlight. Take responsibility for getting me in, hyung. The words he hadn’t managed to take hold of back then seemed to have been picked up and held out to him by Jihoon this time. Maybe, a thought rose, and heat spread again behind his ears. He tried to pull the comforter up to hide it, but with his wrist caught, he couldn’t.

But before he could go any further, other scenes pushed in first. His own face reflected in the library window, the man whose name was called out on monitors, the screen with the GPA calculator and internship postings open. Even if these words meant what he secretly wanted them to mean, he still couldn’t picture himself standing at that man’s side. As if he’d missed a step on the stairs, he jolted back to himself, and the familiar bitter taste pooled in his mouth again, one he’d held there so long he no longer called it a taste.

Sanghyeok forced a smile. He had no way of knowing whether the corners of his mouth were lifting right. “How am I supposed to take responsibility for you?”

He applied a bit of pressure, trying to pull his wrist free. Jihoon’s hand didn’t budge an inch. “We’re standing in completely different places. I’m still just a college student, and you’re a pro gamer. What on earth could I possibly offer you—”

His voice cracked. The fever was gone but his voice was still thin, and the things he hadn’t meant to say leaked out through the gaps. He knew it was wretched to say aloud, in front of Jihoon, the distance that couldn’t be measured in numbers, yet he couldn’t stop.

Without releasing his grip, Jihoon leaned in closer. Their faces closed to within a hand’s width. Sunlight spilled from behind Jihoon’s shoulders, casting deep shadows beneath his eyes. “What does it matter if we’re in different places?”

There was no anger in his voice. It came fast and low, carrying the weight of something long suppressed. “Did you really think me making good money and getting famous would turn me into a different person? Every single time I walked out on stage, I looked for you in the audience first. Whether thousands of people were screaming my name or not, none of it meant a damn thing if you weren’t there.”

Sanghyeok couldn’t answer. His eyes wavered slightly.

“There’s only one thing you can do for me, hyung. Just stay by my side. Stop running away and using me as your excuse.”

His pulse hammered loud against the wrist Jihoon held. Sanghyeok couldn’t tell whether that frantic rhythm belonged to his own blood or traveled up from Jihoon’s fingertips.

“And what you said yesterday. That wasn’t just the fever talking, was it? Even if you tell me to forget it, I can’t.”

The room fell deathly still. The refrigerator motor kicked on once, then clicked off. Sanghyeok stared straight into the depths of Jihoon’s eyes. He saw injury there, impatience, and underneath both, a raw, unshakeable certainty that hadn’t been there yesterday. The stubborn corners of Jihoon’s mouth were trembling by a fraction. The words about running out of the blind date echoed back through his head. The rumpled shirt he’d worn straight from the café, the pharmacy bag on the floor, the lukewarm ice pack pressed to his brow—this kid hadn’t budged from this room all night long. That all of it had started with a few words of his own didn’t bring guilt this time; it settled into his chest in a different shape. His eyes stung.

Sanghyeok stopped pulling against the wrist. A long, trembling sigh leaked from his lips. “…You really are impossibly stubborn, Jihoon-ah.”

“You’re the one who made me like this.” Jihoon’s forehead dropped down to rest softly against Sanghyeok’s. Their noses brushed, and their breaths tangled between their faces. Their foreheads were still faintly warm.

“Don’t ever tell me to leave again. I’ll actually get mad.”

Instead of answering, Sanghyeok let out a wet, shaky exhale. At that sound, the tension drained from Jihoon’s shoulders. Sliding his head down, he buried his face against the side of Sanghyeok’s neck. Hot breath puffed directly over his collarbone. The frantic rhythm of Jihoon’s heart transmitted straight through the fabric right into Sanghyeok’s chest.

A moment later, Sanghyeok’s free hand moved. Slipping out from beneath the blankets, his fingers crept up to cradle the back of Jihoon’s head. His fingers threaded into the messy strands of hair, and beneath his palm, Jihoon’s shoulder shuddered once.

“…I won’t run anymore.”

Jihoon pulled his head back.

They were inches apart. Sanghyeok’s cheeks remained flushed despite the fever’s retreat, his eyes damp and shining, the edges of his lips slightly chapped. Looking as though he wanted to swallow every detail at once, Jihoon lifted a hand. His large palm cupped Sanghyeok’s cheek, trailing slowly down along the line of his jaw. His thumb brushed lightly over the corner of Sanghyeok’s mouth. Sanghyeok dropped his gaze, then lifted it again.

Their lips met.

At first, it was light, exploratory—checking if any heat remained, testing whether resistance waited behind the touch. They brushed, parted, and brushed again. When Sanghyeok wound his arm around the back of Jihoon’s neck and closed his eyes, the kiss changed. Jihoon’s hand migrated to the nape of his neck, tilting his head slightly to deepen the angle, drawing him in closer. Sunlight through the curtain gaps burned red against their closed eyelids. Beneath the heavy comforter, their breathing tangled into a single, erratic rhythm. Sanghyeok had never heard such a sound in this room before. The moment their tongues parted, Jihoon gently drew Sanghyeok’s lower lip into his mouth. His other arm tightened around Sanghyeok’s back, as if to keep him from escaping. For once, Sanghyeok didn’t mind the trap at all.

When they finally broke apart, both of them were breathing hard. With their foreheads still pressed together, they waited for their breaths to settle. Covering his reddened lips with the back of his hand, Sanghyeok averted his eyes, ducking away from the sudden wave of shyness before giving Jihoon’s chest a weak shove. “…Seriously. What kind of stunt is that to pull on a sick person?”

Jihoon let out a small, delighted laugh. The chest beneath Sanghyeok’s hand didn’t retreat an inch. Instead, leaning down, he pressed two more brief, lingering kisses—first to Sanghyeok’s cheek, then to the corner of his mouth—before burying his face back against his neck. “You said you wouldn’t run.”

“…Enough already. Get off me a little. When the medicine wears off, my fever will come back.”

“Don’t wanna.” The muffled reply came straight out against Sanghyeok’s collarbone. After lingering there a moment longer, Jihoon finally pushed himself up with an expression of profound reluctance. Smoothing back his unruly hair with one hand, he sat on the edge of the mattress and checked Sanghyeok’s forehead one last time.

“I’m going to go boil some porridge. Just stay put.” Standing up, Jihoon padded toward the kitchenette. The sound of pots rattling and water running filled the small apartment. Pulling the comforter up to his eyes, Sanghyeok listened to the clatter of the empty fridge opening and Jihoon’s small muttered complaints, letting out, bit by bit beneath the covers, the laugh he’d held back for so long. Then he closed his eyes. It was a sight he would grow used to, in a shape it had never had before.

/

The entrance to the stadium was already choked with people. A steady river of fans in team jerseys flowed in a single direction, and among them, Sanghyeok felt the hand gripping his ticket grow slick with sweat. He wasn’t wearing his cap. He’d thought about putting it on, but ended up leaving it behind on the shoe rack.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Twenty minutes until match time.

⠀I caught your cold. Take responsibility, hyung.

A second line followed immediately:

⠀If we lose today, it’s 100% your fault.

Standing right in the middle of the crowd, Sanghyeok burst out laughing. A passerby cast a curious glance his way, but he paid it no mind. He’s the one who stuck to my side all night, and now he’s blaming me? Even as he thought it, his fingers were already moving across the screen. Drink some warm water if your throat hurts. The moment he hit send, the read receipt lit up instantly. Jihoon must have had his phone welded to his hand. Clutching his ticket a bit tighter, Sanghyeok strode through the gates.

His seat offered an unobstructed view of the stage and both teams’ rows of player desks. As the caster’s voice rang out over the speakers, a collective roar surged through the hall. Light cascading down from the ceiling swept across the tiers of seats, the sheer volume of the crowd’s cheers vibrating right up through the floorboards. For nearly a year, that sound had been the exact thing that scared him into hiding behind excuses. Sitting here now, listening to it in the open, he realized his heart was simply beating a fraction faster—tilted far more toward excitement than fear.

The players walked out. Jihoon emerged third in line. He’d said he had a cold, but he looked fine. Before taking his seat and pulling on his headset, Jihoon lifted his chin by habit to scan the audience. From the back left toward the front right, sweeping row by row just like a broadcast camera. When his gaze landed on the third row from the front, it stopped dead.

The expression on his face wasn’t entirely clear from this distance. Yet Sanghyeok could clearly trace the corners of his mouth curving slowly upward into an arc. It was a shape distinct from the grin he wore when joking around, and different from the media smile he flashed for the cameras. Keeping his eyes fixed squarely on that spot, Jihoon pulled the headset over his ears. A teammate leaned over to say something, and only then did Jihoon break eye contact to turn his head.

The match wrapped up in two quick games. When the Nexus shattered and the victory banner blazed across the screen, applause shook the rafters. He looked completely unfazed, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Jihoon packed up his gear, stood, and did his victory celebration for the cameras. Cheers and spotlights converged entirely on a single person. Sanghyeok watched the scene unfold without a trace of alienation. Seeing him shine so effortlessly up there felt entirely right—it suited him down to the ground.

As the players filed single-file toward the exit tunnel, Jihoon lagged a step behind the others, glancing back out toward the audience one last time. This wasn’t a search. He’d known precisely where to look from the very start. Their eyes locked across the distance, and Jihoon’s mouth curved upward once more. Sanghyeok smiled back.

Sanghyeok, too, hurried to join the crowd streaming out. He wanted to hear Jihoon’s voice, and soon.