Work Text:
What’s more devastating: a dying town in which its inhabitants are doomed to a cycle , or a boy who believes so adamantly that he, amongst all, will break free of it?
There, stood a rusted swing set of a boy at a bus stop with his hood pulled over his head, worn-down blue backpack digging into his shoulders, with his only true possession — a singular sketchbook adorned with intentional stickers that served as subliminal messaging in a town that punished bluntness — tucked under one arm, staring at the empty road while the October cold chewed through the sleeves of his sweatshirt.
The world, or what his world felt like in this small stifling town of 2,000 in the middle of nowhere, held its breath with him as he hummed to the Smashing Pumpkins — a sorry attempt at easing his worries of the day ahead of him.
The worn bench beside him had:
‘’HELL EXISTS. WE’RE IN IT”
carved into the wood in uneven capital letters. Underneath that, someone else had written:
‘’HELL HAS BETTER WEATHER.’’
Seonghyeon mused a tired smile with a small huff.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he murmured, pressing the volume button with force, effectively blasting music in his ears as his phone warned otherwise.
Timely, a truck whose engine whine made Seonghyeon grimace accelerated too fast, rolling over (and effectively, spraying Seonghyeon) a muddied puddle.
His jeans - a once untainted blue besides the occasional white paint streaks on his right leg - was now a canvas with additions of mud at his heel bites and knees.
Seonghyeon didn’t look up at the truck driver for restitution, or any sign of remorse. Apologizing just wasn't a custom here — nor confrontation in any sense.
Amidst a sorry attempt of brushing the dripping remnants off his tired denim, a buzz from his back pocket begged once, then another, and a definitive one more.
With a quick squeeze of the temples to ward off any threat of a headache, he read:
Juhoon
dude (5:44 am)
where are you? (5:46 am)
ik youre upset but dad is still freaking the fuck out (5:46 am)
leaving me to ward him off myself… ur evil (5:48 am)
Seonghyeon sighed, the string of messages inviting memories of the night prior before his departure. His father — a rigid and wallowing man — went on one of his many tangents, consisting of the two very things he never let Seonghyeon forget:
1. That his mother, a ‘’beautiful thing,’’ shouldn’t have died — that Seonghyeon was not an equal trade off, that his death was more warranted than his mothers.
2. That Seonghyeon would amount to nothing with his constant defiance ( a series of teenage angst: getting caught with a pack of malaboros he stole and missing curfew… once every while.)
are we forgetting that im the one he’s mad at (5:52 am)
i gotta put me first man (5:53 am)
just ask martin for a ride, im positive that shit head wouldn’t mind (5:55 am)
Juhoon
ok so die
i textedhim
but he’s probably sleeping
ill just walk. i have late arrival anyways
(5:57 am)
oh he’ll be devastated
bring a jacket, it’s cold
(Read at 6:00 am)
He shoved the phone back into his pocket and looked up at the sky - a slight shiver rushing down his spine as he closed his eyes, cheeks now chafed as wind swept through.
This town had once been beautiful, probably.
You could tell in the fragments it kept in a losing battle against neglect and something far more rooted that adults refused to mention.
Sometimes Seonghyeon imagined the town itself as a person — he liked imagining things as people, or in better words, daydreaming in a world that didn’t rival its possibility.
Rain gutters that cried dramatically for attention as sludge and wettened leaves stifled its plea.
His father called this tendency “useless” and crippling.
“You live inside your own head too much,” he’d snapped once over dinner, an occurrence that him and Juhoon had grown accustomed to— the same response of theirs being a string of ‘’okays’’ and ‘’yeahs.’’
Stonewalling was their attempt at peace, or a version of peace that they could deal with.
‘‘Life isn’t filled with mystic sonnets and appreciations: it’s truth and reality’’
Seonghyeon, amidst stomaching a less than favorable spaghetti dish he had far too many times a week, had wanted to ask: Where else am I supposed to live?
Here? In the corridors of the past and what ifs?
In this wasting town? Accompanying you and your regrets?
Hypocrite. He wanted to scream. His father lived in his imagination far more and frequently than he ever did, scrounging scenarios to torment Seonghyeon with. With imagery of his own mother - disappointed and slouched, or beautiful and taunting.
Buzz. Not Juhoon.
Woobeom Hyung
practice tonight?
8pm. the basement.
(6:03 am)
James, his band's designated drummer whenever he couldn't get laid. Well, it wasn’t really a band as much as it was just four bored-out-of-their-mind teenagers and a busted amp in his uncle’s basement with no name and the occasional 50 person gig.
👍
No beer. I’m not responsible getting your shit-faced home
(Seen at 7:00)
He was so, so tired — a night shift at the only diner in town that attracted all the has-beens and regret. Customer service is a bitch, and his manager more so. A tired smile was cemented on his face, his tongue felt dry with every ‘’my pleasure!’’
Scoffing at his own run through of the night prior, he inhaled the death (an electronic vape he used as accessory) between his fingers once more, half-choking. The artificial blueberry flavor clung to the back of his throat, syrupy and medicinal, something manufactured in a laboratory by people who had apparently never tasted a blueberry in their lives. He coughed into the crook of his elbow and watched the vapor loosen.
With a long mechanical groan and accompanying screech, the bus had arrived — ten minutes late.
Its headlights cut through fog weakly, its folding doors hissing open. A welcoming hello, Seonghyeon figured — the only one he’d probably receive that morning.
Seonghyeon climbed inside, sending an weak smile to the bus driver who averted their eyes in indifference.
The heater blasted aggressively enough to smell faintly burnt in defiance of many chilly mornings and fill the silence of the soundtrack of students fighting shuteye, one yawn inviting the next.
The bus dragged itself through town with the exhausted persistence of something that had long ago ceased believing in destination. Every bump in the road rattled through its metal frame with arthritic complaint, and the windows trembled in their casings whenever the tires sank into the many potholes hidden beneath the puddles that seemed permanent.
Seonghyeon sat near the back where the window latch no longer closed properly, allowing thin ribbons of morning air to slip inside and coil around his ankles, inviting a sea of goosebumps that trailed to his neck.
Outside, everything drifted past in slow motions, fragments blurred by condensation and drizzle.
A gas station with one dead fluorescent letter flickering weakly above the pumps. A laundromat whose windows had been covered from the inside with newspaper after the owner disappeared sometime last February. No asked — no one cared.
Telephone poles leaning at subtle exhausted angles, their wires sagging low. The same man at the same corner, holding his singular possession:
‘’HELLFIRE AWAITS THOSE WHO SIN!’’
‘’SURRENDER YOUR DAMNED SOUL’’
Seonghyeon squinted his weighed eyes, he waited for his eternal sleep.
The morning possessed a strange colorlessness to it, as though someone had washed the entire landscape of every vibrant thing in a violent colonization. Even the trees bended in a lazy manner, though Seonghyeon never saw their bark any less breathtaking. Their leaves, once burning shades of amber and crimson at the beginning of autumn, now clung damply to skeletal branches in mottled and muted browns, collapsing one by one into the gutters where rainwater carried them toward drains clogged years ago.
Seonghyeon rested his forehead briefly against the cold glass. The vibration soothed him, the occasional major hiccup in the road causing his head to stutter with the vehicle.
To occupy his restless mind, he took a quick scan of his surroundings, to see nothing different from any other morning. In the front of the bus, a freshman slept with his mouth open against the window while pale fog bloomed outward from each breath. Two girls beside him whispered and let out a giggle over a cracked phone screen, their eyeliner smudged into shadows beneath sleepless eyes. Near the emergency exit, someone coughed with the crackling persistence of an old man despite looking no older than sixteen.
Everything in this town seemed to age incorrectly. Children inherited exhaustion before adulthood ever arrived for them properly, before their height matched their gaze. Adults, with every aging year, grew antsy and created personal fables to keep themselves absolved of responsibility.
The bus slowed with a prolonged groan of brakes, rain streaked sideways against the windows as more groggy students climbed aboard carrying gusts of wet cold air inside with them. Seonghyeon barely glanced upward, the outline of a boy he knew far too well entering the bus door entering his field of vision. Keonho stepped into the aisle, moving quietly besides the occasional collision with the endless seats, shoulders drawn inward beneath a worn black hoodie soaked dark at the sleeves from rain. One hand gripped the tops of seats as the bus lurched forward again, no apologies or waiting in the air.
His knuckles were split raw beneath half-healed scabs, a feature those around him took as a warning. A bruise darkened the underside of his jaw in diluted shades of purple and yellow that rainwater only made more noticeable as it glided down his chin.
Seonghyeon felt his tongue threaten to ask — inviting the taste of iron, a punishment just for the attempt.
Ahn Keonho was a spectacle, one he forced himself to not notice. Curiosity, a curse that plagued Seonghyeon's every being, had a way of embarrassing people, and embarrassed people in this town felt the response of cruelty — Seonghyeon couldn’t handle the additional pressure.
The seat beside him dipped under sudden weight.
“You smell like mildew,” Keonho murmured, still slightly breathless from climbing aboard.
Seonghyeon snorted quietly and tugged one earphone down around his neck. “Good morning to you too, Keonho.”
A corner of Keonho’s mouth shifted almost imperceptibly before settling again, his eyes flashed a little glint that posed amusement.
Rainwater dripped steadily from strands of dark hair hanging near his eyes.
Up close, in a place Seonghyeon often ventured, he looked exhausted in ways sleep could not repair. The skin beneath his eyes carried faint violet shadows, and his expression possessed that distant carefulness common among people accustomed to monitoring the emotional weather of rooms before speaking inside them.
The bus rattled onward.
Beyond the windows, the paper mill emerged briefly through dead trees beside the river, its smokestacks coughing pale industrial smoke into the low sky. The scent reached even here sometimes — chemical, bitter, vaguely sulfuric — settling over town like another season.
“My stepdad says they’re laying off more workers before Christmas,” Keonho said after a while.
His voice held no outrage, baring only on the flat inevitability of it all.
Seonghyeon watched smoke dissolve upward into fog. “Well —shit, they should just put the whole town down.”
Keonho turned slightly toward the window again, steering borderline eye contact. “It's already happened. They did. Nobody noticed.”
The answer grew a physical weight which settled heavily between them.
Seonghyeon searched to capture his eyes, humming in a resigning agreement. There was always something frightening about how naturally hopelessness fit inside Keonho’s voice, how little resistance remained in it. Most people disguised despair beneath sarcasm or anger or loud self-destruction. Keonho carried his quietly, tucked beneath his ribs in tenure like the many injuries he had stopped attempting to treat blotched across his body.
The bus hit another pothole hard enough to bounce everyone subtly upward from their seats. Laughter burst somewhere near the front and disappeared just as quickly — Keonho held himself and Seonghyeon shoulder to lessen the dip with a singular hand to the seat in front of them.
Seonghyeon adjusted the volume on his headphones absently, a series of guitar static leaked into the air between them.
Keonho rested his temple briefly against the seatback and closed his eyes for several seconds. His throat moved once as he swallowed, and Seonghyeon noticed another bruise near the inside of his wrist where his sleeve had slipped upward slightly.
Again he looked away. And again, he failed to stop noticing.
That was the humiliating thing about him. He noticed everything. The shape of bitten nails. The tremor in voices after people finished crying, the shape of bodies caving in itself as almost as taking the impact of embarrassment. The way certain students flinched whenever teachers raised their hands too quickly while explaining something at the board.
Observing others had become instinctive long ago, developed slowly and instinctively inside a house where survival depended heavily upon predicting moods before they fully surfaced — playing the occasional guessing game with Juhoon.
Outside, the singular church that served as a centerpiece of the town appeared briefly through rain and fog, its white steeple disappearing halfway into low clouds.
Seonghyeon hated churches here, though he stopped attending years ago. Many did. Though in hindsight the same people who gossiped and skipped Sunday morning lectures scowled in disapproval when outed atheists made way.
Every sermon seemed to revolve around endurance. Suffering gracefully — ‘’Company loves Misery’’ Juhoon once put it simply, and Seonghyeon felt nothing bore better words. Just remain humble and grin-faced beneath hardship. How grand.
Keonho opened his eyes again and nodded toward the sketchbook tucked beneath Seonghyeon’s arm. “What are you drawing?”
“Nothing.’’ Seonghyeon deadpanned, only feeling a tinge of regret in the strain of his voice, adding on: ‘’..just landscapes.”
“How interesting,’’ .
’’In my defense, people move too much.’’
Keonho looked at him then — casually and briefly, but with a kind of stillness that made Seonghyeon suddenly aware of the small confined world of the bus seat around them.
The smell of rain trapped in cotton fabric, the heater clicking overhead. The rhythm of windshield wipers dragging across glass.
“Guess they do,” Keonho said quietly as his tone lingered long afterward, a deep sigh escaping his lips.
The abandoned theater downtown passed outside moments later, its cracked ceiling half-collapsed above the sidewalk. Rainwater gathered in the shattered ticket booth windows while faded gold detailing still clung stubbornly around the roofline like remnants of another era refusing erasure, begging for the good days to come back.
Seonghyeon stared after it automatically. “If somebody fixed that place, this town could almost feel alive again.”
Keonho followed his gaze toward the theater and back at Seonghyeon, face full of questioning and interest.
“—yeah. You’re so.. particular Seonghyeon,”
“What?” Seonghyeon turned his head to meet Keonhos eyes, too lazy to push further.
“You hate this place, yet talk like things can still be saved.”
‘’…it’s a bit,, funny?’’ Keonho paused, muttering underneath his breath about ‘’huh, no that’s not the right word.’’ ‘’—it’ll come to me’’
Seonghyeon froze immediately, the accusation had truth to it.
Maybe despite everything — despite his father’s incessant drinking, despite overdue bills stacked beneath magnets on the refrigerator and countertops, despite hearing factory sirens marking another death so often they had begun sounding like part of nature itself — some embarrassing stubborn part of him still believed in restoration, believed there was something worth salvaging.
‘’I—‘’ Seonghyeon started off, just to be abruptly interrupted by the bus hissing into the school parking lot beneath a curtain of cold rain.
Students rose immediately, crowding the aisle with backpacks and damp hoodies and the sour smell of wet denim. Seonghyeon remained seated another second longer than necessary, watching water slide down the windows in trembling uneven lines.
“coming?” Keonho asked from the aisle.
For a moment, absurdly, the question felt larger than itself.
Seonghyeon stood quickly, nodded passively, picking up his heavy backpack with a huff, following him off the bus.
Cold struck like an open hand to the face, leaving the blood in Seonghyeons face to group in the apples of his cheeks.
Rain had intensified into something fine and relentless, coating the parking lot in reflective silver beneath the weak morning light. Their High School stood ahead of them with all the exhausted dignity of an institution surviving long after belief in it had disappeared. Parts of the brick exterior had darkened from water damage. One floodlight near the football field blinked incessantly even during daylight hours, stuttering pale yellow against the fog.
Students drifted toward the entrance in clusters, shoulders touching beneath shared umbrellas. Smoke curled from behind the gym where seniors huddled against the wall passing cigarettes between them before first bell.
Somewhere across the lot, a truck backfired loud enough to startle birds from the telephone wires.
Keonho shoved his hands deeper into his hoodie pockets as they crossed the sidewalk. Rain darkened the fabric around his shoulders almost black.
The closer they moved toward the school entrance, the louder the building became.
Lockers opening and slamming,wet sneakers that encored squeaking against linoleum, and the occasional announcements about the subpar athletic program crackling uselessly overhead through speakers blown-out years ago.
Inside, yellow fluorescent lights buzzed faintly above crowded hallways that smelled of wet coats, cafeteria grease, cheap body spray, and industrial cleaning chemicals. Everything carried the washed-out fatigue of places occupied too continuously. Posters advertising homecoming still peeled from walls weeks after the dance had passed — no one ever bothered to remove them anyways. Trophy cases displayed decades-old photographs of football teams whose expressions all carried the same small-town certainty that life would eventually begin elsewhere.
People glanced at Keonho as they passed, staring with the same foreseeing assertion that decided the trajectory of his life,scheming, merely waiting for confirmation.
Teachers lowered their voices around him instinctively. Guidance counselors spoke with cautious rehearsed patience usually reserved for wounded animals. Rumors followed him through the building constantly, attaching themselves to his name with the permanence of stains.
He was a cliche: Troubled, adrift, felt with violent tendencies, and carried accusations that he, like many, would end up just like his father.
People loved inheritance — the thought of an inherited gene dooming us provided a sense of justification behind their actions. The town treated personality as bloodline, that young boys were doomed to become their fathers, confined to the job as a factory worker.
Though Seonghyeons swapped soot-filled lungs and employment for an oozing bitterness that arrested his development, his life essentially, to an aching indented couch.
Near the stairwell, Martin leaned against a locker scrolling through his phone while Juhoon stood beside him drinking burnt cafeteria coffee from a styrofoam cup. The second Juhoon spotted Seonghyeon, his entire face shifted — a feign smile, an attempt at a faux scowl.
“You left me alone with him,” he accused dramatically.
“You survived.”
“Barely — he begged me to stay home, to go visit mom, again”
‘’—whatever that means to him’’
Martin snorted, nudging against Juhoon. “Your dad looked at me like he wanted to kill me when I picked him up.”
The smile disappeared from Juhoon’s face instantly. He elbowed Martin hard enough to silence him, though the statement had already landed at the burrows of Seonghyeon's ribs. Seonghyeon felt his stomach tighten reflexively.
Even miles from home, even in the safe yet empty confinement of the schools, he could feel the sneer etching itself on his skin.
His father remained lodged somewhere inside him like shrapnel — the induced pain coating his every decision.
Juhoon noticed the change immediately and softened, sending a glare towards Martin's remorseful retreat.
“He fell asleep again shortly after.”
‘’Nothing happened— don’t worry,’’ Juhoon reasoned.
Students moved around the four of them in noisy currents while first bell warnings echoed overhead, the sound of sneakers squeaking filling the weighted silence held.
Keonho had gone quiet beside him.
Seonghyeon wondered suddenly what his own bruises looked like to outsiders — not physical ones, but the invisible domestic wreckage people carried unconsciously in his posture and speech. Maybe damaged kids recognized one another through instinct alone. Perhaps that’s why Keonho, who he barely knew, stuck. The same way stray dogs circled carefully before deciding whether proximity meant danger.
‘’Martin could drive us later—there was no reason for you to walk home in the rain to practice,’’ Juhoon asserted, Seonghyeon nodded reluctantly as he knew there was no option provided in the proposal.
‘’—hey! you guys gotta pay some gas money,’’ Martin shook his head.
Then, lowering his voice slightly as students brushed past them, Juhoon asked:
“Are you coming home after?”
The question lingered too carefully between them, from the blurred glance Seonghyeon stole, Juhoon stood frozen in place — as if his response would change the trajectory of his life.
It was once. Once. I ran away.
Seonghyeon wanted to say, but knew Juhoon would wince in a far too deep way at the mention. The weeks following the incident still remained stinging.
Seonghyeon looked away toward the rain outside, “Eventually — don’t stay up waiting though, I got my keys.”
The morning passed in the peculiar way school mornings did when Seonghyeon was exhausted enough to feel detached from his own body.
Juhoon nodded once, ruffling Seonghyeon's hair as he trailed off with Martin's murmuring complaints becoming absorbed by the surrounding noise as they passed.
That was how they loved each other now — quietly, through constant forms of acknowledgement, around the edges of larger uglier things. In a way that survived the subliminal messaging needed to navigate a house in which the smallest hiccup tore at its foundation.
The warning bell rang again, unleashing surges of hormonal teenagers in the poorly renovated halls.
For one brief second amidst all the noise and fluorescent light and rain-streaked windows, Seonghyeon became sharply aware of Keonho standing beside him, damp hair curling slightly from the weather, bruised knuckles disappearing beneath hoodie sleeves, eyes distant with whatever private storms he carried around inside himself — unwavering presence, a noble showcasing of solidarity in his terms.
Keonho caught his eyes, gestured a checking nod: Good?
Seonghyeon closed his eyes and hummed: Good.
—Enough.
The lie passed between them easily. Most things did here. Everything functioned almost entirely on mutually agreed performances, each person carrying their own version of suffering quietly enough to preserve the illusion that everybody else was coping better-wearing it better. Hallways swelled around them with noise and movement as students pushed toward classrooms in uneven currents, locker doors slamming shut with metallic finality while fluorescent lights buzzed overhead in tired spasms, but for a strange suspended second Seonghyeon remained aware only of Keonho standing beside him — eyes carrying that same restrained watchfulness that made him seem perpetually braced for impact.
Then the moment broke with a push.
A sophomore shoulder-checked Keonho accidentally while rushing past with his headphones on, muttering a distracted “move,” without looking up properly, and Seonghyeon watched the change happen instantly. Not outwardly dramatic or explicit — that was the unsettling part.
Keonho didn’t shove him back or snap or glare— a tendency he grew in style recently. He simply stiffened in ways that in Seonghyeon's proximity, felt devastating—jaw tightening once beneath the skin, shoulders locking, his entire body going still with the kind of control that looked painful.
The boy kept walking obliviously, disappearing into the crowd, while Keonho stared after him a second too long before forcing himself forward again toward class.
Seonghyeon followed without thinking.
“You okay?” he asked quietly once they reached the stairwell landing.
Keonho blinked as though surfacing from somewhere far away, patting Seonghyeon on the back. “Mhm.”
“You looked like you were about to kill him.”
A humorless smile flickered briefly in disruption across Keonho's stoic manner. “Thought about it, but…”
The response should not have made Seonghyeon laugh, but it did — one short startled sound escaping him before he could help it, and immediately something shifted in Keonho’s expression at hearing it.
It was small to those who hadn’t spent hours dissecting every micro expression and hint of emotion— but Seonghyeon had.
Seonghyeon caught it; the way tension loosened subtly from his shoulders, the way his eyes softened with something more than the edges of distance—the instinctual need to meanmug.
They climbed the stairs together in silence after that, shoes squeaking faintly against the old tile floor still damp from rainwater tracked in by hundreds of students. Someone farther down the hall shouted obscenities loud enough for a teacher to bark back immediately, lockers slammed in rapid succession like gunfire, and beneath it all the building groaned softly around them with old pipes and bad insulation settling against the cold.
Keonho stopped outside his first period. English Literature — a subject he had clearly voiced a faux dislike for, hiding moments in which his poems were treated with utmost royalty and care by teachers across the department.
Seonghyeon shifted his backpack higher on one shoulder. “You have Diamond first?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Damn—condolences dude, condolences.”
“He assigned a five-page essay on symbolism in The Scarlet Letter, think he personally survived the Puritans.”
“That man gets hard over public suffering—actually correction: everyone does here.”
Keonho let out a quiet snort through his nose, glancing down briefly before looking back at Seonghyeon in that same intense half-distant way that had begun unsettling him recently. Keonho listened with his entire body when Seonghyeon spoke, storing away every careless thing said to him with frightening precision. Most people in town barely listened at all; conversations here usually consisted of waiting for your turn to complain or to sneer. But Keonho noticed things. Remembered them too.
“You hate this place that much?” he asked suddenly, his eyes averting Seonghyeon's gaze.
Seonghyeon leaned back against the wall beside the classroom door, considering, really considering.
‘’I think,” he started slowly, “if I stay here too long, I’ll become somebody I don’t recognize anymore.”
The hallway noise seemed to grow strangely quiet around them and in a quick jerk, Keonho’s gaze found his face.
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
‘’Seonghyeon—you have the biggest chance of leaving this shithole out of any of us.’’
‘’And when you eventually do, forget me—forget everyone here. Never look back. For my sake, and for your own.’’
There was something immediate in the answer that made Seonghyeon’s stomach tighten unexpectedly. Keonho spoke with certainty so rarely that when he did, the words landed harder than intended — that Seonghyeon could only respond by holding his gaze. Before Seonghyeon could force his mouth open, the classroom door opened behind them and several students filtered inside complaining loudly about assigned busy-work reading.
Seonghyeon found himself across the door of his own room, forgetting to say goodbye to Keonho in a frenzy. What?
The thought followed him into the classroom before he could even decide what exactly he was questioning, his hand still hovering uselessly near the strap of his backpack as the door swung inward and a stream of students carried him along with it. He glanced over his shoulder once, almost involuntarily, expecting to catch Keonho still standing there, perhaps watching him with that same unreadable expression that had begun to feel increasingly difficult to withstand, but the hallway had already swallowed him.
There were bodies everywhere, shoulders brushing past shoulders, wet jackets steaming faintly beneath the overheated fluorescent lights, voices overlapping into the particular kind of meaningless noise that made Seonghyeon feel as though he were drowning while everyone else had somehow learned to breathe underwater.
He took his seat near the back window and dropped his backpack beneath the desk with more force than necessary, the worn canvas making a dull sound against the floor. His sketchbook stayed tucked beneath his arm for several seconds before he finally slid it onto the desk, fingers lingering against its battered cover as though the familiar weight might anchor him to something more comprehensible than the conversation he'd just left behind.
‘’For my sake, and for your own’’
Keonho had said it so simply, so gently. That was the part that bothered him. There had been no accusation in it, no dramatic plea to stay, no attempt to make Seonghyeon feel guilty for wanting something beyond this place. It had sounded almost like permission, and somehow permission hurt worse than being asked to suffer alongside.
‘’Seonghyeon. Seonghyeon—?’’
‘’What does this mean?’’
Seonghyeon looked up, blinked once, and answered that he didn't know. The class laughed softly, all giving Seonghyeon that knowing look that screamed ‘’Typical.’’
Seonghyeon winced, Fuck you too.
The teacher moved on, Seonghyeon’s head soon found solace on the desk and found himself staring through the window instead.
Rain gathered in trembling lines against the glass, distorting the football field beyond it until the goalposts looked crooked and distant, the bleachers half-dissolved beneath the gray weather. Somewhere beyond those buildings was the road that eventually became the highway, and somewhere farther than that was everything Keonho had spent months talking about in scraps and half-finished sentences—the revered New York City, cities with train systems that ran past midnight, universities with brick buildings covered in ivy, galleries where nobody would know his father or his mother or the exact street he'd grown up on. A life where his history wasn't waiting around every corner like a debt collector.
Seonghyeon lowered his eyes to the page in front of him and began drawing without realizing he'd started, sketching the classroom window first, then the frame around it, then the warped reflection of his own face caught faintly in the glass. He erased it. Drew it again. Erased it harder until the paper began to roughen beneath the graphite. He could hear Keonho's voice in the back of his mind anyway, irritatingly calm, insisting on a future as though the future were something that could be spoken into existence simply by believing hard enough.
You have the biggest chance of leaving this shithole out of any of us.
Seonghyeon pressed his pencil down until the lead snapped. The sound crackled throughout the room, however, no one showed a moment of care to acknowledge it.
He stared at the broken graphite tip sitting between his fingers, then slowly closed his hand around it.
He wondered what Keonho was doing, wondered whether he listened in class or simply endured it — as seonghyeon found easiest.
Whether he was sleeping with his head against folded arms right now, dark hair falling over bruised eyes while teachers pretended not to notice because exhausted boys frightened adults less than angry ones did.
The thought settled warmly and strangely inside his chest. Humiliating.
By lunch the entire school seemed infected with restlessness.
Rain trapped everyone indoors, swelling hallways beyond capacity while cafeteria workers shouted themselves hoarse over the noise. The lunchroom carried its usual scent of fryer grease, bleach, ketchup, and something vaguely sour beneath it all — old milk maybe, or hundreds of teenagers existing too closely together.
The cafeteria smelled like fryer oil and wet coats, the kind of smell that permanently embedded itself into the walls of public schools until even the idea of leaving town seemed synonymous with leaving that smell behind. Seonghyeon sat at the far end of one of the long tables with his tray untouched, picking apart the corner of a napkin while Juhoon sat across from him, elbow propped against the table and his phone balanced precariously in one hand. Martin was beside him, half-listening to something on his headphones while scrolling through his phone with the vacant concentration of someone who had already decided there was nothing worth paying attention to.
Juhoon looked up eventually, eyes narrowing as he studied his brother's face.
‘’You look like shit,” he said, and the corner of his mouth twitched upward when Seonghyeon immediately lifted his eyes with a glare. There was enough amusement in his expression to make it obvious he'd been waiting for the reaction, his thumb absentmindedly rubbing the cracked edge of his phone case.
“—Like, respectfully,” he added after a second, raising one hand in a weak attempt at surrender when Seonghyeon's stare sharpened.
Seonghyeon leaned back against the battered chair, folding his arms across his chest as he looked between Juhoon and Martin.
“Thanks,” he muttered, his voice dry enough to make Martin glance up from his phone. He rubbed his thumb against the side of his index finger beneath the table, a nervous habit he'd had since childhood, and tried to ignore the strange pressure building behind his ribs.
Martin pulled one headphone off his ear and squinted at him. “Did something happen?” he asked, his eyebrows lifting slightly as his gaze moved between Seonghyeon's face and Juhoon's. “You look... weird.”
“Apparently I look like shit and weird,” Seonghyeon said, reaching for the carton of milk on his tray and turning it slowly between his palms. “Great day so far.”
Juhoon snorted, lowering his phone onto the table. “You know what I mean.”
Seonghyeon sighed, he did.
Martin continued on abruptly describing an argument between two chemistry teachers with dramatic hand gestures while Juhoon picked apart cafeteria fries with visible distrust.
“I’m serious,” Martin insisted. “Ms. Smith is sleeping with Mr. Diamond.”
Juhoon snorted. “Honestly?…..”
“Probably,’’ Seonghyeon agreed, listening only partially.
His gaze kept drifting unconsciously toward the opposite side of the cafeteria where Keonho sat alone near the windows, one earbud in, hood pulled low despite being indoors.
He picked at food more than actually eating it.
Every once in a while somebody approached his table — usually athletes attempting performative friendliness for reasons Seonghyeon never fully understood — but conversations never lasted long. Keonho answered minimally.
Isolation followed him naturally, more than anyone, Seonghyeon knew it was not because he demanded it, but purely because everyone else did.
“You’re staring again,” Juhoon muttered suddenly.
Seonghyeon nearly inhaled his water, releasing him to a guttural coughing fit — a short but fitting death on his part.
“What?”
Juhoon lifted one fry accusingly. “You keep doing that weird tragic yearning thing.”
“I literally do not.”
Martin glanced between them immediately, delighted. “Oh my god, are we talking about Keonho?”
“No,” Seonghyeon said far too quickly.
“Dude,” Martin grinned. “You look at him like Victorian kids look at moldy bread — drooling..”
Juhoon barked out laughter loud enough to earn several irritated glances.
Seonghyeon wanted the floor to collapse beneath him instantly — his face plastered in permanent red.
“You both need hobbies.”
“We have hobbies,” Juhoon informed him, sticking out his tongue. “It just seems yours is not occupying you enough.”
Martin nodded solemnly, continuing to munch down on the lunch he called disgusting a second ago. “Mine is witnessing whatever this appears to be.”
Before Seonghyeon could threaten violence properly, movement across the cafeteria caught his attention again.
Keonho stood.
Even from here he looked tired and caved in that specific quiet way Seonghyeon had begun associating entirely with him — shoulders slightly rounded inward, expression distant beneath fluorescent light that washed everybody pale and ghostlike.
Their eyes met briefly across the room.
Keonho paused each time to capture Seonghyeons to its fullest.Then, almost imperceptibly, tipped his chin once toward the cafeteria doors.A non-verbal language only they understood: You alive?
Seonghyeon exhaled slowly through his nose and mirrored the gesture: Barely.
Something softened momentarily around Keonho’s mouth before he disappeared into the hallway. Martin stared after him dramatically, a sour frown overcoming his creases.
“Oh, you both are sickening.”
Keonho walked beside another student, listening to whatever they were saying with an expression of vague amusement, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows and his hair still slightly damp from the rain.
Seonghyeon looked down immediately.
A slow, suspicious understanding began to form across Juhoon’s face. Seonghyeon kicked him beneath the table.
Juhoon winced, his hand dropping instinctively toward his shin. “What the fuck?” he hissed, rubbing the spot while trying not to laugh.
“Nothing,” Seonghyeon answered too quickly, keeping his eyes fixed on the milk carton as though it had suddenly become the most fascinating object in the entire cafeteria.
Martin looked between them, breaking away from the same food he called ‘’poison’’ , visibly confused. “Yo what did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Juhoon repeated, though the grin spreading across his face made the word completely useless. He leaned closer across the table, lowering his voice as though sharing a secret. “Our boy's just—”
Seonghyeon kicked him again.
Juhoon stopped himself with a strangled laugh, grabbing the underside of the table for balance while Martin stared at them like they'd both finally lost whatever remained of their minds.
A few seconds later, footsteps slowed beside their table.
Seonghyeon felt his presence and musk scent before he looked up.
Keonho stood there with one hand hooked around the strap of his backpack, the other holding a plastic bottle of water he'd apparently bought from the vending machines. Up close, the bruising along his knuckles was more visible than it had been that morning, faint yellow bleeding around the edges of darker purple marks. His gaze moved briefly over Juhoon and Martin before settling on Seonghyeon, and something softened around his eyes.
“Hi,” Keonho said, but there was a slight hesitation tucked into the word, his fingers tightening around the backpack strap as though he'd suddenly forgotten how introductions worked. He gave Seonghyeon a crooked little smile, then immediately looked away toward the empty seat beside him. Seonghyeon smiled back, ‘’Hi..’’
His smile widened just slightly before he looked down at the floor, almost sheepish, and Seonghyeon felt that same uncomfortable little tightening beneath his ribs.
Juhoon leaned back in his seat, watching them both with the deeply entertained expression of someone who had just discovered free entertainment.
Keonho cleared his throat and nodded toward the empty space beside Seonghyeon. “Can I sit here?” he asked, shifting the bottle between his hands while his eyes briefly flicked toward the seat before returning to Seonghyeon's face. “Or is this, like, a sacred table situation? I can go. I don't want to intrude.” Seonghyeon looked at the empty seat. Then, very deliberately, he moved his backpack off it and placed it on the floor.
“It's fine,” he said, his voice quieter than he'd intended.
Keonho's shoulders loosened almost imperceptibly as he pulled the chair out, the legs scraping softly against the cafeteria floor before he sat down. “Cool,” he murmured, setting his bottle beside his tray and adjusting the pins on his backpack where they'd shifted against the table. “Thanks.”
Martin watched him for another moment before finally pulling the second headphone from his ear. ‘’So…I guess I never properly introduced ourselves. Thought you were a friend of Seonghyeons.’’
‘’—my name is Martin, and you probably know Seonghyeon's older brother, Juhoon’’
Keonho turned toward him, eyebrows lifting. “Am— yeah, I do,’’ holding Juhoon’s gaze before turning back to Martin.
Martin nodded slowly, as though confirming something with himself. “I've heard about you.”
Keonho's expression immediately became wary in a way that made Seonghyeon glance sideways at him.
“Good things, I hope,” Keonho said, laughing under his breath as he picked at the label on his water bottle.
Martin shrugged. “Depends.”
Juhoon groaned into his palm and Seonghyeon felt himself almost smile again against his propped hand.
It was strange how quickly the table had changed with Keonho sitting there, how the air seemed slightly less stale, how the usual cafeteria noise became background rather than something pressing directly against his skull. Keonho wasn't doing anything particularly remarkable. He was just sitting beside him, twisting the bottle cap between his fingers while Martin interrogated him about where he'd gotten one of the pins on his backpack, answering with exaggerated seriousness before admitting he couldn't remember.
‘’Name 5 Radiohead and Mk.gee songs you liar’’ Martin challenged and just Keonho laughed in response, his eyes crinkling in an impossibly beautiful manner.
‘’Okay—uh, I can tell you my favorites instead. Lonely fight and Lift are pretty up there for me.’’
Seonghyeon listened without joining in, and yet every so often, Keonho's shoulder brushed his, and neither of them moved away.
It happened again when Martin leaned too far across the table to steal one of Juhoon's soggy fries, his elbow knocking against Keonho's arm hard enough that Keonho shifted instinctively, and for half a second the side of his shoulder pressed warm through the thin fabric of Seonghyeon's hoodie. Seonghyeon felt it immediately, the same stupid awareness that had been following him around since Keonho had started appearing in places he had no business appearing in, and he kept his eyes on the condensation gathering around the bottom of his bottle as though there were something particularly interesting about the way the water crawled down the plastic.
Across from him, Martin was still talking, something about a song he'd found at three in the morning that apparently changed the entire trajectory of his life, while Juhoon had gone back to looking half-dead over his food, but Seonghyeon found himself catching only snippets of each dilemma because Keonho's knee had bumped his beneath the table and stayed there for a second longer than an accident should have allowed.
Keonho seemed to have noticed him noticing because the corner of his mouth twitched as he looked down at his own hands, though he didn't move away either, and when Martin finally stopped talking long enough to breathe, Keonho turned slightly toward Seonghyeon with the same open curiosity he'd had all afternoon.
‘’You listen to them too?’’ he asked, nodding vaguely toward Martin's phone, where the album cover had been pulled up beneath a spiderweb of cracked screen glass, and there was something almost careful about the question despite how casual he made it sound.
Seonghyeon shrugged one shoulder, picking at the torn corner of the label on his water bottle before admitting, ‘’Sometimes. Depends what mood I'm in,’’ and Keonho gave him a small, thoughtful hum as if that answer actually told him something, his thumb rubbing absentmindedly over one of the pins attached to the strap of his backpack.
‘’That's kind of… real,’’ Keonho said, though he was smiling when he said it, and Seonghyeon finally looked over at him properly, catching the little crease that formed beside his eye whenever he was trying not to laugh. He wanted to say something sharp enough to wipe that expression away, something easy and defensive that would put the distance back where it belonged, but the words never quite made it past his throat.
Instead he muttered, ‘’You asked,’’ and Keonho's smile widened just enough that Seonghyeon immediately regretted giving him anything at all.
The lunch period began thinning around them after that, chairs scraping back across the cafeteria floor in waves as people started throwing away their trays, and the room slowly regained its usual shape of movement and noise. Someone at the far end of the room shouted for a friend; a carton of milk hit the floor and burst beneath somebody's shoe; one of the teachers near the doors called after a group of boys who were trying to leave before the bell. Seonghyeon watched all of it with the strange sensation that he was standing slightly outside himself, as though the afternoon had developed some kind of soft distortion around the edges, and when he looked back at the table Keonho was already pulling his backpack onto one shoulder, the pins along the strap catching briefly beneath the fluorescent lights.
‘’You heading out?’’ Keonho asked, glancing toward the doors and then back at him, and Seonghyeon nodded while reaching for his own bag beneath the table.
‘’Yeah. I have somewhere to be.’’ It was technically true, although the place was only the library for forty minutes before his shift, biting his bottom lip as he wondered why he even bothered making it sound like there was more to his afternoon than there actually was.
Keonho seemed to accept it anyway, shifting his backpack higher onto his shoulder as Martin started complaining that everybody was abandoning him, and the three of them began gathering their things in the slow, reluctant way teenagers did when they knew the bell was about to force them apart anyway.
Seonghyeon stood last, tugging his hoodie down over his wrists as Juhoon disappeared into the crowd ahead of them, and for a moment he thought Keonho had already gone too. Then he heard the soft scrape of sneakers beside him and found Keonho walking at his pace, hands shoved into his jacket pockets, his backpack hanging crookedly from one shoulder. Neither of them said anything for several seconds, and Seonghyeon could feel the question sitting somewhere between them without knowing which one of them was supposed to ask it.
‘’You always walk this slow?’’ Keonho finally said, and Seonghyeon glanced sideways at him, catching the faintest trace of a grin before looking forward again.
‘’Ouch— you always talk this much?’’ he returned, and Keonho laughed under his breath, ducking his head as they moved through the crowded hallway. The sound stayed with Seonghyeon longer than it should have, following him beneath the fluorescent lights and out through the front doors where fall had already begun settling over the town, cold enough to sting the inside of his nose.
Outside, the sky was the color of muddied wool, low clouds hanging over the football field and the distant rows of houses that all seemed to have been built from the same tired blueprint. Seonghyeon adjusted his backpack and started toward the sidewalk, expecting Keonho to turn toward the parking lot, but after a few steps he realized the footsteps beside him were still there. He looked over once, suspiciously, and Keonho only shrugged as though he hadn't noticed anything unusual about it.
‘’You going this way?’’ Seonghyeon asked, and Keonho nodded. ‘’For now.’’ There was something deliberately vague about the answer, enough to make Seonghyeon narrow his eyes in annoyance, but Keonho had already started talking about Martin's ridiculous music challenge again, waving one hand as he tried to defend himself from accusations that he was lying about Mk.gee.
‘’—it seems the call is coming within the house on that one?’’
Seonghyeon listened, occasionally answering when he had to, and somewhere between the school doors and the corner where their paths should have separated, he realized he hadn't once felt the urge to leave.
That realization followed him for the rest of the day, irritating and quiet, lodged somewhere underneath his ribs where he couldn't reach it.
By the time his shift at the diner began, the sky had gone completely dark, the windows reflecting the fluorescent interior back at itself until the outside world looked like it had disappeared. Seonghyeon stood behind the counter with a rag over one shoulder, wiping down the same patch of laminate for the third time while an old radio crackled softly above the kitchen pass-through. The diner smelled like burnt coffee and fryer oil, the kind of smell that settled into clothes so deeply that he had stopped noticing it years ago, and the bell above the front door gave a tired little jingle every time somebody wandered in from the cold.
He was halfway through refilling a ketchup dispenser when the door opened again.
Seonghyeon looked up automatically, already preparing himself for another old man ordering coffee he would nurse for two hours, and then stopped when he saw the familiar backpack first, its collection of mismatched pins catching the light before Keonho's face came into view beneath the hood of his jacket.
For a second Seonghyeon just stood there, waiting for the other to notice his staring.
Keonho spotted him almost immediately, and the expression that crossed his face was so pleased and so ordinary that it somehow made the whole thing worse. He lifted a hand in a small wave, walking toward the counter as though this were the most natural place in the world for him to end up.
‘’Oh,’’ Seonghyeon managed, setting the ketchup dispenser down a little harder than necessary. ‘’You're here.’’
Keonho glanced around the nearly empty diner, then back at him, a quiet smile pulling at his mouth as he shrugged off his backpack. ‘’Yeah. Apparently.’’ He slid into one of the stools at the counter and rested his forearms against the laminate, looking at Seonghyeon for another second before adding, ‘’—you work here?’’
Seonghyeon stared at him, raising an eyebrow. Keonho responded with a smile turned sheepish, his fingers beginning to pick at the edge of one of the pins on his backpack. ‘’I know. I forgot.’’
‘’Right. Right.. You forgot I work at the only diner in town?’’
‘’I forget a lot of things.’’
Seonghyeon didn't know what to do with that, so he reached for a menu instead and slid it across the counter, muttering that the coffee was terrible but free refills were free refills.
Keonho looked down at the menu, then back up at him with a small smile that made something in Seonghyeon's chest tighten.
‘’I'll take the terrible coffee.’’
Seonghyeon rolled his eyes, but he was already reaching for a mug. ‘’Be my guest.’’
Seonghyeon poured the coffee into a chipped ceramic mug, watching the black stream disappear beneath a thin layer of steam that smelled faintly burnt even from where he stood. The diner had grown quiet, the slowest day he’d have by far. Even fluorescent lights seemed louder than the people beneath them and every little mechanical noise had room to settle into the walls: the refrigerator humming behind the counter, the occasional click of the crackling ceiling fan struggling through another rotation, rain ticking steadily against the windows as though somebody outside had been throwing handfuls of gravel at the glass for hours. He nudged the pot back onto its burner and wiped the few drops that had splashed across the counter with a rag that had long since surrendered to the color of old dishwater, then glanced toward the booth by the window where Keonho had been sitting for what felt like both ten minutes and an entire afternoon.
Keonho had taken off his backpack at some point, leaving it beside his leg where the little collection of pins caught the weak overhead light whenever he shifted. Seonghyeon could see a faded Sonic Youth pin near the top, something that looked like a tiny hand-drawn album cover beside it, another one he couldn't recognize, and a small metal badge that had been scratched enough that whatever had originally been printed on it was nearly illegible. Keonho had been turning one of them between his fingers absentmindedly while staring out at the rain, his chin resting against the heel of his palm, and when Seonghyeon finally carried the mug over, he looked up as though he'd forgotten anyone else was in the building.
‘’You want this?’’ Seonghyeon asked, setting the mug down carefully in front of him and sliding the little plastic container of sugar closer with two fingers. His eyes moved toward the coffee for half a second before returning to Keonho's face. ‘’It’s terrible, just so you know.’’
Keonho looked down into the mug, then back at him with the faintest crease appearing between his eyebrows, as if he were trying to determine whether Seonghyeon was joking. ‘’I remember,’’ he said eventually, wrapping both hands around the ceramic despite the heat.
‘’My sister used to bring me here sometimes after school.’’
His thumb traced the chipped rim absentmindedly, and something in his expression softened as he looked around the diner, taking in the faded red booths and the laminated menus curling at their corners. ‘’—You were always here.’’
The observation landed strangely. Seonghyeon leaned one hip against the counter rather than immediately walking away, folding the rag between his hands until the damp fabric became a narrow strip beneath his fingers. He remembered those afternoons vaguely, mostly as disconnected images of before they grew distant with time and life roles to fulfill : Keonho sitting across from him in a booth too big for either of them, both of them swinging their legs beneath the table while Seonghyeon finished homework he hated and Keonho drew in the margins of his worksheets.
Back then the diner had seemed almost warm, though perhaps that was only because he had been fourteen and hadn't yet learned how many years a person could spend standing in the same place.
‘’Yeah,’’ Seonghyeon murmured, looking toward the windows. ‘’I started working here around then.’’
Keonho's eyebrows lifted, his fingers tightening slightly around the mug. ‘’Seriously?’’
‘’Dad knew the owner.’’ Seonghyeon shrugged, the movement small beneath the black work shirt that had begun to feel permanently attached to his body after enough shifts. ‘’Apparently that was enough qualification.’’
A laugh escaped Keonho, and Seonghyeon found himself looking at him again before he could stop himself. There was something different about hearing Keonho laugh now, something that made the memory of him at twelve and the person sitting across from him seem briefly connected. It wasn't exactly the same laugh, it grew weighted. Keonhos voice had gotten deeper, his face sharper, his hair longer, but there was still some recognizable softness around his eyes when he smiled, some leftover piece of the boy Seonghyeon remembered running through the elementary school playground with a scraped knee and a stolen juice box. Before…. Before…
‘’That explains a lot,’’ Keonho said, lifting the mug to his mouth. He took a cautious sip and immediately pulled a face, the expression so genuinely offended that Seonghyeon had to turn away to hide his own smile. ‘’Jesus Christ.’’
Seonghyeon pressed the rag against his mouth for a second, shoulders moving with a quiet laugh. ‘’Told you.’’
‘’This tastes like someone just lit a cigarette and poured over lukewarm water.’’ Keonho pushed the sugar container toward himself and began adding packets with the concentration of someone performing emergency surgery. ‘’How do you drink this?’’
‘’I don't.’’ Seonghyeon looked down at his own hands. ‘’I just pretend I do because otherwise people ask questions—I hate coffee, energy drinks all the way.’’
Keonho paused with the sugar packet halfway open, studying him over the top of it. The look lasted just long enough for Seonghyeon to become aware of it, and he reached for another mug that didn't need cleaning simply because he needed something to do with his hands.
The conversation drifted after that, without either of them deciding to keep it going. It moved through school first, through teachers they both hated and assignments neither of them had finished, through Martin's habit of pretending every minor inconvenience was a personal attack from God and Juhoon's ongoing belief that he could get away with sleeping through anything as long as he looked sufficiently apologetic afterward.
Keonho talked more than Seonghyeon expected him to, leaning forward over the table whenever something genuinely interested him, his fingers unconsciously tapping against the mug in time with whatever song seemed to be playing inside his head — seems to rival the pop slop that haunted seonghyeons dreams after each shift.
At one point Seonghyeon asked about one of the pins on his backpack, mostly because he'd been staring at it long enough that pretending otherwise had become ridiculous, and Keonho immediately reached down beside his chair to pull the bag onto the seat next to him. He turned it around carefully, pointing out the different pins as though each had a story attached to it, even though half of those stories were apparently just things he'd bought because they looked cool.
‘’This one’s from some guy who makes weird little prints online,’’ Keonho explained, running his thumb along a crooked enamel pin shaped like a hand holding a cigarette. ‘’I don't even remember his name anymore. I found him at, like, two in the morning and ordered this because I thought it looked sick.’’
Seonghyeon looked closer, resting his forearms against the edge of the table. ‘’That’s your reasoning?’’
‘’Usually.’’ Keonho smiled, lowering the backpack again. ‘’You think everything needs to have some deep reasoning behind all this?’’
Seonghyeon glanced at the pins, then at him. ‘’A little.’’
‘’That's embarrassing.’’ Keonho laughed quietly and rubbed the back of his neck, though the pleased look that followed made it obvious he didn't entirely dislike the assumption.
‘’—yeah, yeah alright, poser. drink your coffee.’’
Outside, a truck rolled through the intersection, its tires sending a sheet of dirty water against the curb. The diner lights reflected across the wet pavement in long, trembling smears of yellow and red, and for a while neither of them said anything. Seonghyeon stood behind the counter with his hands resting against the edge while Keonho looked through the window, his reflection layered faintly over the darkness outside.
The clock above the kitchen doorway moved quietly through the evening while Seonghyeon worked around him, wiping tables that were already clean, refilling napkin dispensers, carrying dishes into the back, checking the register whenever the bell above the door sounded even though fewer and fewer people came in as the rain worsened. Keonho stayed in the booth. Sometimes he looked at his phone, sometimes he drew little shapes with his fingertip through the condensation gathering along the window, sometimes he watched Seonghyeon work with an attention that felt too direct whenever Seonghyeon happened to catch it.
Eventually they started talking about music again, and that conversation lasted longer than either of them seemed to realize.
Keonho mentioned an album Seonghyeon had never heard of, then another, and soon they were arguing quietly over whether something could actually be called good if it sounded miserable enough. Seonghyeon disagreed mostly because Keonho was being irritating about it, though he couldn't remember exactly when the argument stopped being an argument and became something closer to sharing songs they thought the other person might understand.
Keonho pulled out his phone and showed him a playlist with an embarrassingly specific title, scrolling past songs while Seonghyeon leaned against the counter and made faces whenever he recognized something he hated.
‘’You have way too much Elliott Smith,’’ Seonghyeon said eventually, squinting at the screen.
Keonho glanced up, offended. ‘’That's literally impossible.’’
‘’It is when you’re trying to survive—do you want to kill yourself? .’’
‘’That's why I have Elliott Smith.’’ Keonho tucked his phone back into his pocket, his smile lingering as he looked down at the table. ‘’See? You don't understand art.’’
Seonghyeon rolled his eyes, though the corner of his mouth betrayed him.
By the time he looked toward the clock again, the hands had somehow moved past seven.
The realization came with a small, unpleasant jolt. He stared at the numbers for a moment, trying to remember when exactly the evening had disappeared. The rain had darkened the windows completely now, turning the glass into mirrors. The diner looked different at night, smaller somehow, every booth reduced to a pool of dim light surrounded by darkness.
Keonho had gone quieter.
Seonghyeon noticed it first through the small things. His knee had started bouncing beneath the table, stopping whenever he caught himself and beginning again a minute later. He checked his phone without opening anything, thumb hovering over the screen before he locked it and set it face-down. A few minutes passed, and he picked it up again. His eyes wandered toward the clock above the kitchen doorway more than once.
Seonghyeon noticed because there was nothing else to notice.
‘’You waiting for somebody?’’ he asked eventually, folding the rag over the counter and smoothing it flat.
Keonho looked up quickly, almost startled by the question. ‘’What? No.’’ He glanced toward the clock as though he'd only just remembered it existed, then rubbed his thumb across the side of his phone. ‘’I—should probably go.’’
Seonghyeon nodded, though something about the answer stayed with him. He checked the clock again.
7:23. Band Practice starts soon.
The thought came slowly with a sigh that escaped Seonghyeon's lips, dragging the rest of the evening into focus. Martin was supposed to pick him up at eight. Juhoon would probably already be there. The basement would smell like dust and old carpet and whatever somebody had spilled near the amp last time. They had a gig coming up Friday, which meant they were technically supposed to rehearse like people who wanted to avoid humiliating themselves in front of fifty bored teenagers.
Seonghyeon looked back at Keonho.
Keonho was watching the rain again, his hands folded loosely around the coffee mug. There was something almost restless about him now, some contained energy beneath his stillness, like he had somewhere to be even if he couldn't quite bring himself to say where.
‘’Practice tonight,’’ Seonghyeon said, mostly to himself, reaching beneath the counter for his phone. He checked the time and slipped it back into his pocket. ‘’Martin’s picking me up at eight.’’
Keonho turned toward him. ‘’Oh,’’ and it was quiet enough that Seonghyeon nearly missed it.
He looked toward the windows again, toward the rain swallowing the street beyond the diner, then down at the empty coffee mug sitting in front of Keonho. Something about leaving him there suddenly felt strange, though Seonghyeon couldn't explain why. The diner would close soon. Keonho would have to walk home through the rain, and Seonghyeon knew enough about the town to know there wasn't anywhere else for him to go that didn't involve sitting alone under fluorescent lights.
He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the counter, thinking for longer than the question deserved.
‘’You can come with us if you want,’’ he said finally, keeping his eyes on the register instead of Keonho, hoping.
‘’Martin and James are probably gonna get shit-faced anyway, so I might need another pair of hands.’’
Something shifted softly as Keonho straightened, his expression changing in a way Seonghyeon deliberately refused to examine too closely. He reached down for his backpack, pulling the strap over one shoulder and adjusting it until the pins knocked quietly against one another.
‘’You trust me with them?’’ he asked, the amusement returning to his voice.
Seonghyeon finally looked at him, the smallest smile pulling at his mouth. ‘’—More than I trust Martin with James, they’ll eat eachother alive. I guess I need you.’’
Keonho laughed beneath his breath, looking down as he zipped his backpack shut. The clock continued its slow movement above them, indifferent as ever, and somewhere beyond the windows a pair of headlights appeared through the rain, growing brighter as the car turned onto the street outside.
Seonghyeon recognized Martin's shitty old car immediately. He pushed himself away from the counter, reaching for the keys hanging beneath the register while Keonho stood beside the booth with his backpack slung over one shoulder, both of them watching the headlights crawl across the wet glass. The diner suddenly felt smaller than it had five minutes ago, as though the evening had folded itself inward around the two of them and neither had noticed until now. At 7:57, Martin's headlights stopped outside, Seonghyeon's eyes watering as it made eye contact, with the sound of the car's speakers felt with every beatdrop.
Martin’s car smelled like old McDonald fries (given in the cupboards, Seonghyeon knew there was some mysterious fast food leftover), the vanilla scent of a e-vape, and the faint chemical sweetness of whatever air freshener had been hanging from the rearview mirror for so long that it had probably become part of the upholstery, and Seonghyeon had barely gotten the passenger door shut before Martin started complaining about the amp. He dropped his empty guitar case carefully between his knees and pulled the seatbelt across his chest, still cold from the diner despite the heater coughing warm air toward his ankles, while Martin settled one hand over the steering wheel and used the other to fuss with the volume knob on the dashboard like there was some chance it might suddenly become responsible for every problem the band had ever had.
“You brought the good guitar, right?” Martin asked, squinting at the battered case as though he had personally watched Seonghyeon choose the wrong instrument, and Seonghyeon looked down at it too, thumb dragging absentmindedly over the worn plastic latch before he turned his head toward Martin with an expression that was already tired of the conversation.
“The good guitar is the only guitar I have—also Juhoon is bringing it. Can’t go home,” he said, and the corner of his mouth moved when Martin's eyebrows drew together in exaggerated concern, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel as though Seonghyeon had just confessed to something deeply embarrassing. “Unless you bought me another one while I was working.”
Martin gave a short laugh through his nose, easing the car away from the curb. “You know what I mean.”
“No, actually.”
“You know what I mean.”
Seonghyeon leaned his head against the window, watching the diner fall away behind them in the reflection, the warm rectangle of its windows shrinking until it was swallowed by the dark. “Then explain it.”
“I mean the one that doesn't sound like somebody dragging a chair across the floor or .. like… I don’t fucking know,” Martin said, and he made a little twisting motion with his wrist as though he were turning an imaginary amp knob, his mouth curling at the memory of it. “The black one.”
“That’s your amp.”
Martin glanced over, offended enough that his eyes widened before he had to turn them back toward the road. “My amp sounds fine.”
“Your amp sounds like shit, dudeee ”
A quiet laugh came from the backseat. Oh right, Keonho. It was barely more than a breath, but Seonghyeon heard it anyway.
He looked into the rearview mirror and found Keonho smiling behind them, one hand resting loosely over the strap of his backpack while the other picked at the edge of one of the pins attached to the canvas. He seemed almost surprised he'd laughed out loud, lips pressing together for a second as his eyes dropped toward his knees, and something about the smallness of the reaction made Seonghyeon smile before he could stop himself.
Martin caught the reflection too.
“You agree with him?” he asked, tilting his head slightly toward the mirror, the corner of his mouth already betraying him.
Keonho's eyes lifted. He considered the question for a moment, thumb rubbing slowly over the chipped enamel of one of his pins. “I think….. I'm still gathering evidence.”
‘—I’m a bystander.’’
Martin stared at him through the mirror for a beat, then nodded with the grave acceptance of somebody hearing an entirely reasonable legal argument. “Okay. That's fair.”
Seonghyeon turned slightly in his seat, looking between them. “You're being nice to him.”
Martin's eyebrows rose. “I'm always nice.”
“You called me a dickhead before we even left.”
“That was affectionate—you’re my seonghyeonnie.”
“You told me to go fuck myself???.”
Martin's mouth twitched as he tried to keep his eyes on the road, one hand sliding lower on the steering wheel. “Again….Affectionately.”
Keonho's laugh escaped before he could catch it, and this time he ducked his face into the collar of his jacket, shoulders giving one small shake. Seonghyeon watched him in the mirror for a second longer than he meant to, noticing the way his hair had fallen forward around his face, the soft crease that appeared beside his mouth when he smiled, before Martin reached over at the red light and nudged Seonghyeon's shoulder with two knuckles.
“See?” Martin said, keeping his voice low like he had just proven something important. “He gets me.”
Seonghyeon rubbed the spot where Martin had hit him, even though it hadn't hurt, and gave him a sideways look. “He's been in the car for five minutes.”
Martin's grin widened. “Sometimes that's all it takes.”
Keonho leaned his head back against the seat, still smiling, and Seonghyeon turned toward the window before the expression on his own face became too obvious.
The town passed in familiar pieces, the gas station sign buzzing over the intersection, the laundromat's fluorescent lights trembling against the glass, a plastic Halloween skeleton hanging crookedly from a telephone pole and turning slowly in the wind. Seonghyeon knew every road without thinking about it. He knew which houses had dogs behind their fences, which streetlights flickered, which intersections stayed empty long enough that you could roll through them without touching the brakes. There was something strange about having Keonho sitting behind him while all of it went past, like two different versions of his life had somehow been forced into the same small car.
“You ever been to the basement?” he asked eventually, twisting around just enough to see Keonho without having to raise his voice.
Keonho looked at him, blinking once as though he'd been somewhere else in his head. “Basement?”
“Yeah.”
Keonhos fingers paused and curved over the pin on his backpack. “No—yeah, no I don't think so.”
Seonghyeon nodded, turning forward again as Martin took the next corner. “You're in for a treat.”
Martin immediately made a noise beside him, something between a laugh and a warning, and Seonghyeon glanced over.
“Don't tell him that,” Martin said, shaking his head as he reached over to turn the heater down a notch. “He's going to expect something.”
Keonho leaned forward between the seats, resting one forearm against the back of Seonghyeon's seat. “Wait. What am I supposed to expect?”
Martin looked at him through the mirror, lips pursed as though he were seriously considering how much information to give him. “I don't know. A real studio?”
Keonho's eyebrows lifted. “You guys don't have a real studio?”
“We have a basement.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
Martin's shoulders started shaking with laughter before he even answered. “It has walls…food occasionally and our set material. What more could you ask for?’’
Keonho waited.
Martin glanced at him.
“And?”
“It has electricity.”
Seonghyeon laughed under his breath, dropping his forehead briefly against the cold window. “That's basically all you need.”
‘’We’re poor. A cover band. Wish we were paramore typa special though.’’
Keonho settled back again, the smile lingering in his voice when he said, “reassuring.”
“There’s a drum kit,” Seonghyeon added, looking down at the guitar case as the car bumped over a pothole hard enough to make the latches rattle. “James found it somewhere.”
“James?” Keonho asked, and his head tilted slightly, curiosity sharpening his expression.
“Woobeom Hyung,” Martin corrected immediately, lifting one finger from the steering wheel as though he were issuing an important warning. “He'll correct you if you call him James.”
Keonho's mouth pulled into a small smile. “He's going to correct me?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Seonghyeon glanced back at him. “He's weird about it—gets a real kick out of age play.’’
“not weird about it,” Martin said, turning his head just enough to give Seonghyeon an irritated look before facing forward again. “He just has standards.”
“You called him James yesterday.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“—I was angry, ” Martin paused, his fingers tapped twice against the steering wheel.
Keonho laughed softly, looking down at his lap as he shook his head. “I'm starting to understand the hierarchy here.”
“There isn't a hierarchy,” Seonghyeon said, although the automatic way the words came out made Martin smile.
“There absolutely is,” Martin said, leaning back into the seat with the satisfied confidence of someone who had just caught him lying.
Seonghyeon looked at him. “Shut up.”
Martin grinned, fingers tapping again on the wheel. “See?”
Seonghyeon let his head fall against the window again, but he was smiling now.
The conversation drifted after that, breaking apart and reforming in pieces as the roads grew darker. Martin asked Keonho what he listened to when he wasn't pretending to have good taste, and Keonho answered without hesitation, his fingers absentmindedly tracing the edge of one of the pins on his backpack while he named a few artists. Martin recognized one and immediately started arguing about which album was better. Keonho disagreed with him so mildly that it somehow became more irritating, and Seonghyeon listened to them from the passenger seat, occasionally offering an opinion when they dragged him into it.
It was strange how quickly Keonho seemed to understand the rhythm of them, fitting beautifully.
He didn't talk over Martin. He didn't force himself into the conversation. He waited for the spaces that naturally opened, then slipped something into them that usually made one of the others laugh. Even when he was quiet, he seemed present, his attention moving between whoever was speaking and the road outside, occasionally catching Seonghyeon's reflection in the mirror before looking away.
When Martin asked him whether he was actually going to come to the party Friday, Keonho looked toward Seonghyeon first.
“I mean,” Keonho said, rubbing his thumb along the strap of his backpack, “if you guys want an audience.”
Martin laughed. “We absolutely need an audience.”
“We need a miracle,” Seonghyeon muttered.
Martin reached over and lightly smacked his arm without looking away from the road. “You shut up.”
Keonho smiled.
Then, after a second, he leaned forward again, his chin hovering near the top of Seonghyeon's seat as he asked, “Are you guys nervous?”
Seonghyeon looked back at him. “No.”
Keonho's eyes dropped briefly to the way Seonghyeon's fingers were worrying at the edge of his guitar case.
“You're doing that thing with your hand—you’re nervous. That’s ok.”
Seonghyeon immediately stopped.
Martin saw it in the corner of his eye and laughed.
“Fuck you,” Seonghyeon muttered, looking down at his hand as though it had betrayed him independently.
Keonho's smile widened, but he looked away before it could become too obvious. “I didn't say anything bad..’’
“You did.”
“I observed.”
“Yeah— same thing.”
Keonho leaned back, pulling one knee up slightly as he settled into the seat. “I'll be a good demo audience member.”
Martin glanced at him through the mirror. “What's that supposed to mean?”
Keonho considered it, then gave a small, solemn nod. “I'll clap. I’ll boo if you guys suck. ”
Martin barked out a laugh, causing Seonghyeon to look over his shoulder at him. “Wow. Woah—Generous.”
“I can nod along too,” Keonho added, his expression growing more serious in a way that made the joke worse. “Maybe I'll even look impressed.”
Martin slapped the steering wheel once, laughing hard enough that his shoulders shook. “Okay, he's definitely coming Friday.”
Seonghyeon looked out the window again, pretending the warmth creeping into his face had anything to do with the heater.
The first yellow light from windows of the house appeared between the trees, the start of a long, long night. Martin slowed as they turned into the driveway, tires crunching over gravel, and Seonghyeon felt something in himself settle as the basement windows came into view beneath the house. The guitar case rested heavily against his knees. Keonho's reflection appeared faintly in the glass behind him, watching the same yellow light.
For a few seconds, nobody said anything.
Then Martin killed the engine, and the sudden quiet felt almost too large, urging Seonghyeon to reach for the door handle. Behind him, Keonho shifted his backpack higher onto his shoulder.
The basement smelled exactly the way Seonghyeon remembered it smelling every time he came down the stairs: damp carpet, dust warmed by old electronics, somebody's forgotten laundry detergent, and the faint metallic tang of cables that had been coiled and uncoiled so many times their rubber jackets had begun to crack. Martin shoved the door open with his shoulder while carrying two cases at once, nearly dropping one when his foot caught on the bottom step, and Seonghyeon reached out automatically to steady it before it could slam into the wall.
“Jesus, dude, you ever think about cleaning this place?” Martin muttered, readjusting his grip with a grimace as he nudged the door shut behind them, his eyes sweeping across the cluttered room with exaggerated disgust even though he'd spent nearly every week for the past year sitting in the exact same mess.
Seonghyeon followed him down the final steps, his guitar case knocking lightly against his knee as he looked over the familiar wreckage of the room. “You ever think about shutting up? Can’t complain this late into the game after I said this since last month.’’ Seonghyeon returned, dropping his own case carefully beside the amp before tugging his sleeves over his wrists, and the faint curve of his mouth gave away that he wasn't nearly as irritated as his voice suggested.
Martin gave him a tired middle finger without turning around, the gesture lingering just long enough for Seonghyeon to snort before Martin's attention shifted toward the staircase again.
Keonho came down behind them with one hand sliding along the wooden railing, his gaze moving slowly across the basement as though he'd walked into something unexpectedly intimate rather than a damp room filled with battered equipment. The drum kit sat crookedly against the far wall, cymbals dull beneath the weak yellow lightbulbs , while several tangled cables sprawled across the carpet like vines.
“This is it?” Keonho asked, stopping briefly at the bottom step, his eyebrows lifting as he took in the mismatched amps, the microphone stand held together near the base with black electrical tape, and the stained couch that looked as though someone had dragged it out of a condemned house. There was amusement tucked into his expression despite the faint uncertainty in his voice.
Martin dropped one of the cases onto the floor with a heavy thud and glanced back at him, wiping his palms against his jeans before folding his arms. “What, disappointed?” he asked, raising his eyebrows as though Keonho had just insulted the entire history of the band.
Keonho's mouth twitched as he stepped farther into the room, his backpack brushing against the wall. ‘’No, I just thought there'd be... less mold,” he admitted, looking toward the dark patch spreading behind the amplifier with an expression that suggested he was genuinely trying to determine whether it was supposed to be there.
“There isn't mold,” Martin said immediately, his defensive tone arriving far faster than necessary as he crouched beside the amp and peered toward the corner Keonho had indicated.
Seonghyeon pointed toward the wall without even looking up from his guitar case. “That's mold,” he said, his voice flat with the confidence of somebody who had already had this argument several times.
Martin followed his finger, stared at the dark patch for a long second, then slowly looked back at them. “That's nice..’’ he decided, lifting one shoulder as though he'd successfully defended the room's interior design.
Keonho laughed quietly, ducking his head as he set his backpack beside the couch, and Seonghyeon felt that stupid little warmth return beneath his ribs at the sound of it. He looked away quickly, crouching beside his guitar case and working the latches open while Martin continued complaining about the room as though he hadn't been practicing there for months.
The basement filled gradually with preparation noises: cables dragged across carpet, amp switches clicking into place, the dull thump of drumsticks being tested against a knee, and the sharp metallic sound of a guitar string being tuned too tightly before being loosened again. Somewhere upstairs, a television murmured through the floorboards, occasionally interrupted by the distant movement of somebody crossing the kitchen.
The basement door flew open seven minutes later.
James stumbled down the stairs with a plastic grocery bag swinging from one hand, his jacket hanging halfway off one shoulder and three cans of beer already visible beneath his arm. He caught himself against the railing before he could miss a step, then looked around the room with the loose confidence of someone who had already decided he was doing better than he actually was.
“You guys are fucking early,” James announced, pointing vaguely toward the room as though the clocks themselves were witnesses to his punctuality.
Martin slowly lifted his head from where he was plugging the microphone into the amp, his expression flattening as he glanced toward the clock. “You're twelve minutes late,” he said, checking the cable connection again with a pointed little tug.
James stared at him for a moment, blinking as though the information had arrived in a language he didn't speak, before looking toward Seonghyeon for confirmation. “Am I?” he asked, eyebrows drawing together with genuine confusion.
Seonghyeon glanced at the clock, then back at him, his mouth tightening around the beginning of a smile. “Yeah.”
James considered this information, nodded once, and lifted the beer slightly as though the answer had settled the matter. “Clock's wrong,” he decided, his expression becoming completely serious before he turned toward the drum kit.
Keonho covered his mouth with his hand to hide a laugh.
James noticed immediately.
He squinted at him from across the room, his eyes narrowing with drunken suspicion before one finger slowly lifted in Keonho's direction.
“Who the fuck is that?” he asked, the question carrying less hostility than confusion as he looked between Keonho and the others.
Keonho straightened slightly, glancing toward Seonghyeon before looking back at James, his fingers curling around the strap of his backpack. “I'm Keonho,” he said, giving a small, almost awkward smile as he took a step forward. “Nice to meet you.”
James looked at the offered hand, then at Keonho's face, then back toward the hand as though he were considering whether shaking it required more energy than he currently possessed.
“James,” he finally said, taking Keonho's hand with a loose grip before immediately letting go, his attention already drifting toward the drums. “Or Woobeom. Whatever. People fuck it up.”
“James is fine,” Martin muttered from beside the microphone stand, his mouth twitching with amusement as he watched him.
James turned his head slowly toward Martin, his eyes narrowing. “I didn't ask you.”
Seonghyeon rubbed his forehead, suppressing a laugh as he leaned back against the amp. “You literally introduced yourself as James.”
“Yeah,” James said, looking at him as though that somehow proved his point. “—Exactly.”
Keonho's smile widened slightly as he stepped back toward the couch, clearly deciding that this was something he could watch unfold rather than involve himself in.
Juhoon arrived shortly afterward carrying two guitar cases and a paper bag balanced precariously against his chest. He kicked the basement door shut behind him, nearly dropping the bag when Martin reached out automatically to catch it.
“Careful,” Martin said, steadying the bag against his hip while Juhoon adjusted his grip on the guitar cases. “You trying to kill us before the gig?”
Juhoon looked at him over the top of one guitar case, breathing slightly harder from the stairs, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “I brought food,” he said, shifting the case carefully onto the floor.
Martin's expression softened immediately as he looked down at the bag. “I take it back,” he admitted, reaching toward it with unmistakable interest.
Seonghyeon watched them exchange a small smile before Juhoon finally looked toward Keonho, surprise flickering briefly across his face.
“Oh,” Juhoon said, setting his guitar down beside the amplifier as he nodded toward Keonho. “You came.”
Keonho nodded, giving him a small smile while adjusting the strap of his backpack higher over his shoulder. “Apparently,” he replied, his eyes flicking briefly toward Seonghyeon before returning to Juhoon.
Juhoon caught the glance.
His eyes moved toward Seonghyeon.
Seonghyeon immediately looked down at his guitar.
Juhoon's mouth twitched with amusement, but he wisely said nothing, instead turning toward Martin and opening the paper bag.
James had already cracked open another beer.
Martin noticed, his shoulders dropping before he could open his mouth.
“No,” Martin said, pointing toward the can while staring at James with exhausted disbelief. “You said you were only having one.”
James looked down at the beer in his hand as though he'd forgotten he'd been holding it, then raised his eyebrows innocently. “This is my second,” he said, taking another drink before Martin could respond.
Martin stared at him, his jaw tightening as he dragged one hand down his face. “That is not better.”
James shrugged, setting the beer beside the drum kit before sitting down behind it. “It's practice,” he said, picking up the sticks and tapping them lightly against the snare as though alcohol somehow counted as preparation.
Seonghyeon glanced toward Keonho, who was watching James with a mixture of amusement and concern.
“Does he always do that?” Keonho asked quietly, leaning slightly toward Seonghyeon as he lowered himself onto the couch, his hands folding loosely between his knees.
Seonghyeon looked toward James, who had begun tapping a rhythm against his thigh while humming under his breath. “Pretty much,” he murmured, settling his guitar against his leg.
Seonghyeon bit his tongue—it felt too early to introduce Keonho to James bag of worms, the reason why’d you rarely see him sober. He wanted to defend the other, mention how beautifully existential and good at banter and wisdom he was—when he wasn’t drinking.
Keonho pressed his lips together, trying unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “Okay.”
“Don't encourage him,” Seonghyeon added, giving him a sideways glance.
“I didn't say anything,” Keonho replied, looking down toward his hands with an innocent expression that was ruined by the tiny smile still lingering at the corner of his mouth.
“You were smiling.”
Keonho glanced back at him, his eyes bright with amusement. “Sorry.”
Like always, practice began badly.
James came in too fast, Martin missed the first line, Juhoon's guitar went slightly sharp halfway through the opening chord, and Seonghyeon nearly laughed when Martin stopped everything with a frustrated groan, his fingers tightening around the microphone stand.
“Again,” Martin said, rubbing both hands over his face before dropping them heavily to his sides, his shoulders rising with a slow breath. “Just—again. Please.”
James lifted one drumstick from behind the kit, his beer resting precariously on the floor beside his foot. “That sounded fine,” he argued, his eyebrows raised as though the rest of them had somehow misunderstood what music was supposed to sound like.
“We’re a team—we need to sound together. We sound so…unorganized,” Martin replied, turning toward him with both hands spread helplessly at his sides.
James nodded once, entirely serious. “That's energy.”
“That's fucking panic,” Martin shot back, dragging a hand through his hair before turning toward Keonho as though he needed somebody neutral to confirm his sanity.
Keonho had been sitting on the couch with his elbows resting on his knees, watching them with concentrated attention. When Martin's eyes landed on him, Keonho immediately lifted one hand in a small gesture of reassurance. “You guys are good,” he said, his voice careful enough that it almost sounded apologetic. “Seriously.”
Martin stared at him for a second, then rubbed the back of his neck. “You don't have to lie,” he said, giving a crooked smile as he looked toward the floor.
“I'm not,” Keonho replied, shaking his head slightly, and the sincerity in his expression made Martin's shoulders loosen despite himself.
James leaned forward from behind the drums, resting one forearm against his thigh as he looked at Keonho. “He's lying,” he said with complete confidence, his hair falling messily over his forehead.
“Thank you, James,” Martin muttered, closing his eyes for a second as though asking the universe for patience.
Keonho laughed quietly, and Seonghyeon found himself looking at him again.
“Okay,” Martin said eventually, exhaling through his nose as he stepped closer to the microphone. “One more time. And nobody fucks up.”
James lifted his beer in a loose salute, his wrist wobbling slightly before he caught it.
Martin stared at him with an unreadable expression (though, everyone but Keonho understood what it meant), and James slowly lowered the can, his lips pressed together in a conflicted grin.
They started again—and perhaps it was Keonhos magical words of encouragement—this time, it worked.
The music filled the basement in a way that made the room feel temporarily larger, guitar lines vibrating through the old floorboards while Martin's voice climbed above the drums. Seonghyeon fell into the rhythm almost immediately, fingers moving across the strings with the familiarity of muscle memory, his own voice slipping beneath Martin's during the chorus. Juhoon's guitar threaded beside his, rougher around the edges but familiar enough that their parts fit together naturally.
Keonho watched from the couch at the edge of his seat, and Seonghyeon tried so desperately not to look, but curiosity got the best of him—Keonho was smiling.
It wasn't the polite smile he used at school or the amused one he'd given Martin in the car. It was more devestating than that, absentminded and brash, his eyes following Seonghyeon's hands over the guitar before lifting toward his face when their voices joined.
Seonghyeon missed a chord.
His fingers stumbled against the strings, the mistake barely audible beneath Martin's voice, but Seonghyeon felt it immediately.
Martin glanced toward him without stopping.
Seonghyeon recovered quickly, cheeks warming beneath the basement lights.
When he looked toward the couch again, Keonho was still watching him.
The next song went better and they were achieving a sense of groove as the hour blurred into another.
Eventually practice stopped feeling like practice. The pressure of Friday's party loosened as the songs became less precise and more familiar, until Martin stopped correcting James and James stopped pretending he was sober enough to care. The basement settled into the loose rhythm of teenagers who had exhausted the thing they were supposed to be doing and had finally admitted they wanted to sit around instead.
James finished another beer and opened one more.
Martin sighed, no longer bothered arguing, Juhoon rubbing circles on his back.
“You're gonna hate yourself tomorrow,” Martin said eventually, dropping backward onto the carpet and stretching his legs out in front of him, his voice carrying the exhausted amusement of someone who had already accepted the inevitable.
James leaned back against the drum throne, squinting at him through his hair. “Tomorrow isn't here.”
“That's your philosophy?”
“—Currently.”
Juhoon laughed quietly from the couch, and Martin turned his head toward him with a grin that softened almost immediately.
Seonghyeon eyed the pair — Juhoon and Martin had gravitated toward each other without ever announcing what they were doing. Martin sat closer to him than anyone else. Juhoon always seemed to know when Martin wanted something before Martin asked. Their shoulders bumped whenever they leaned over the same phone, and every time Martin laughed, Juhoon's eyes found him almost instinctively.
It’d be a lie to say he hadn’t grown fond of it because there was something reassuring about watching his brother find somebody who made him lighter.
Seemingly, Keonho had noticed too.
Seonghyeon realized it when Keonho followed his gaze across the room, watching Juhoon say something beneath his breath that made Martin laugh hard enough to duck his head.
“Your brother likes him,” Keonho murmured, his voice quiet enough that Seonghyeon had to lean slightly closer to hear him over the faint hum of the amplifier.
Seonghyeon glanced toward Keonho, then back at Juhoon and Martin. “Yeah,” he said, resting his head against the wall behind him. “I— honestly think he does.”
Keonho's eyes stayed on them for another moment before returning to Seonghyeon. “You okay with that?” he asked, one hand absently tracing the edge of a pin on his backpack.
Seonghyeon's mouth curved faintly, the absurdity of the question causing his octave to raise. “Why wouldn't I be?”
Keonho shrugged, his shoulder brushing against the back of the couch. “I don't know. You seem protective of him.”
“He's my brother,” Seonghyeon replied, his voice softer now as he looked across the room again.
“That doesn't answer it,” Keonho said, turning his head toward him, and something about the way he said it made Seonghyeon look back.
Their eyes met with neither of them said anything, the sound of the hammering both drumsticks into the kit by James overpowering every other sense.
The cymbal crashed violently through the room, making Martin curse and Juhoon laugh.
Seonghyeon looked toward James with a tired expression before turning back in which he found Keonho was already looking at him.
“What?” Seonghyeon asked, shifting his guitar farther against the wall while his fingers picked absently at the edge of his sleeve.
Keonho's mouth curved slightly as he leaned back against the couch, eyes remaining on Seonghyeon's face. “Nothing.”
“You're looking at me…?’’
“So are you,” Keonho replied, his voice quieter than before, mischief barely concealed beneath the words.
Seonghyeon opened his mouth, then closed it again when he realized there wasn't really an argument he could make.
James began hammering out another drunken rhythm behind them, completely oblivious, which Keonho smiled at.
Seonghyeon's eyes narrowed, though the expression couldn't quite hide the smile threatening at the corner of his mouth. “You're annoying.”
Keonho's shoulders shifted with a quiet laugh as he lowered his gaze toward his hands. “You've said that already.”
“—Because it's still true?.”
“Okay,” Keonho murmured, looking back up at him with that same small, knowing smile. “I'll work on it.”
“Yeah. Okay bro. You won't.”
“No,” Keonho admitted, his smile widening slightly as he settled deeper into the couch. “—Probably not.”
Across the room, Martin glanced up. His eyes moved from Keonho to Seonghyeon, then lingered for half a second too long before he looked toward Juhoon instead, hiding whatever amusement had begun forming behind the rim of his drink.
Seonghyeon pretended not to notice, strumming mindlessly, ignoring Martins nagging of ‘’not paying attention to synergy’’ or whatever the fuck he usually says to salvage their crumbling dynamic.
The basement lights hummed overhead, the old walls trembling faintly beneath the drums, while rain whispered against the tiny windows near the ceiling and the rest of the town disappeared into darkness beyond them. For once, Seonghyeon didn't think about the road out, or his father's voice, or the house waiting somewhere beyond the streetlights— he only just sat there, guitar against his knee propped up in an uncomfortable manner, watching Keonho watch him, the callouses on his hands forming harder while James hammered away at the drums like he was trying to keep the entire rotten town from falling silent.
By the time practice finally began to unravel into the slow, reluctant process of packing everything away, the basement had become unbearably warm despite the cold that pressed against the tiny windows near the ceiling, the air thick with the sour combination of sweat, dust, old carpet, overheated electronics and the faint chemical sweetness of whatever somebody had spilled beside the amplifier weeks ago and never properly cleaned, and Seonghyeon could feel the ache settling into his fingertips as he wound the guitar cable around his palm for what had to be the fourth time because he'd somehow managed to make the same simple loop increasingly complicated. James had already abandoned any pretense of productivity, slouched backward against the drum kit with his hair sticking damply to his forehead while Martin sat cross-legged on the floor arguing with Juhoon about whether they had actually improved or whether everybody had simply become too tired to hear the mistakes anymore, their voices blurring together beneath the quiet electric hum of the amplifier, and somewhere in the middle of it Seonghyeon realized Keonho was still watching him.
He had been doing it all night, apparently, although Seonghyeon had spent most of the practice pretending he hadn't noticed, which was becoming increasingly difficult considering the particular quality of Keonho's attention, never quite invasive enough to call out but persistent enough that Seonghyeon could feel it even when his back was turned, a strange pressure between his shoulder blades that followed him whenever he moved across the room.
The first time he'd caught him looking, he'd assumed Keonho was watching the guitar, because that was easier and infinitely less humiliating, and the second time he'd told himself Keonho was probably just bored, because there wasn't much else to do in a basement while four people butchered the same Title Fight song for the sixth time, but the third time their eyes had met directly and Keonho had looked away with such immediate embarrassment that Seonghyeon had missed an entire chord, his fingers slipping against the strings with a sharp metallic buzz that made Martin glance over with an irritated expression before Seonghyeon muttered something about the guitar being fucked and continued playing as though nothing had happened.
Now, with the noise beginning to settle, Seonghyeon found himself doing everything he could to appear occupied, checking the tuning pegs even though the guitar was perfectly in tune, straightening the strap, picking up a guitar pick from the floor only to put it into the case and then taking it back out because he'd apparently forgotten why he'd picked it up in the first place, all while Keonho sat on the arm of the battered couch with his elbows resting against his knees and watched him with that same quiet, almost curious expression.
Eventually Seonghyeon looked up and caught him again, and this time neither of them moved immediately, Keonho's eyes lingering on his face for one long, stupid second before his gaze dropped toward the guitar case in Seonghyeon's hands, a faint flush appearing high along his cheeks as though he'd been caught doing something embarrassing, and Seonghyeon immediately looked away too, pretending to be extremely interested in the zipper. His ears felt hot. He hated that. He hated that his body seemed determined to make everything obvious before he'd even decided what he was feeling.
Martin was the first to break the silence, lifting himself from the floor with a groan that sounded genuinely painful as he stretched his arms above his head, shoulders popping audibly beneath his shirt while he looked around the basement at the mess of hot fries and music lyrics they'd created.
“I think that was actually decent,” he said, rubbing one hand over his face and squinting toward the rest of them as though the room might provide some kind of objective confirmation, and James immediately snorted from behind the drums, leaning forward to retrieve one of his sticks from the floor with a lazy flick of his wrist. “You—dude—you say that every time,” he muttered, his voice rough with exhaustion, and Martin turned toward him with an offended little crease forming between his eyebrows, insisting that this time was different because they had “aura” or whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean, while Juhoon laughed beneath his breath and started gathering empty cans from around the equipment.
Keonho laughed too, quiet enough that it almost disappeared beneath the others, but loud enough that Seonghyeon looked over before he could stop himself, catching the way Keonho had lowered his head while smiling, one hand covering his mouth as though he was trying to keep the sound contained, and something about seeing him like that made Seonghyeon feel strangely warm despite the heat already clinging to his skin.
“Don't encourage them,” Seonghyeon murmured, looking down as he finally managed to close his guitar case, his thumb dragging along the worn edge of the handle as though concentrating on it would prevent him from looking back over, but Keonho's voice came softly from across the room anyway, carrying just enough amusement to make Seonghyeon glance up again.
“I'm not,” he said, and there was a small smile on his face when he said it, something almost shy hidden beneath the casualness of the words that made Seonghyeon's stomach tighten for no reason he wanted to acknowledge.
They continued packing in the loose, inefficient way did when nobody actually wanted to be the first person to leave, cables were coiled badly and then redone, guitar picks disappeared beneath couches and were rediscovered, James complained about somebody stepping on his shoe, Martin insisted he had not stepped on it despite the evidence being literally underneath his foot, and Juhoon eventually disappeared upstairs with two empty cans balanced precariously between his fingers, calling over his shoulder that he was getting the car started. Seonghyeon remained behind for another minute, pretending to make sure the guitar case was properly latched while Keonho stood near the bottom of the stairs with his backpack already hanging from one shoulder, his fingers absently worrying at the edge of one of the pins as he looked between Seonghyeon and the doorway. The basement suddenly felt larger without everyone talking, the silence filling the spaces their voices had occupied until the only sounds left were the low electrical hum of the equipment and the distant muffling of Martin and Juhoon arguing upstairs about who had stolen the aux cable. Seonghyeon adjusted the guitar strap against his shoulder and finally looked over.
“You waiting for something?” he asked, trying to make it sound careless, though the question came out quieter than he'd intended, and Keonho glanced toward him with a tiny pause that made it obvious he'd been caught waiting for something, his shoulders shifting beneath the hoodie as he looked briefly toward the staircase and then back again.
“Maybe,” he answered, and the corner of his mouth lifted when Seonghyeon frowned at him, almost as though he knew the answer was irritating. “Maybe what?” Seonghyeon asked, rubbing his thumb along the edge of the guitar case while refusing to move any closer, and Keonho gave a small shrug that looked almost helpless beneath the dim basement light. “I don't know,” he admitted, and Seonghyeon let out a quiet breath through his nose, shaking his head as though the answer was stupid enough not to deserve further attention, even though he was suddenly far too aware of how close Keonho was standing.
They began moving toward the stairs together, neither of them quite acknowledging that they'd fallen into step beside each other until Keonho spoke again, his voice quieter now that the others were upstairs.
“Are you heading home?” he asked, and the question was simple enough that Seonghyeon should have answered without thinking, but something about the wording caught beneath his ribs, because home had never really meant a place to him so much as an accumulation of doors slamming, bottles knocking against countertops, his father's voice traveling through walls, and memories that seemed to know exactly where to find him no matter how far he walked. He shook his head almost immediately, eyes dropping toward the basement floor as he tightened his grip around the guitar case.
“No,” he said definitively, almost too quickly, and then, because the answer had come out with more certainty than he'd meant to give it, he added nothing else, simply staring at a dark stain in the carpet while Keonho watched him from the corner of his eye.
There was a small silence between them, awkward in the way only teenage silences could be, filled with all the things neither person quite knew how to ask without making them real, and then Keonho shifted his backpack higher onto his shoulder and looked at him again.
“No?” he repeated softly, not challenging him so much as making sure he'd heard correctly, and Seonghyeon nodded once without looking up, his jaw tightening slightly as though the motion itself were enough of an explanation. “No,” he repeated, quieter this time, and immediately his phone vibrated in his pocket.
The sound cut through the basement.
Seonghyeon froze for half a second before reaching for it, already knowing who it was, and when the screen illuminated his face the name at the top of the notifications confirmed what he'd expected, his father's name sitting above a growing string of messages that had begun appearing one after another while they'd been practicing.
Where are you. You said you'd come home. Answer me.
The messages were stacked beneath one another, increasingly impatient, the familiar punctuation of someone trying to turn concern into control, and Seonghyeon stared at them without opening the conversation, his thumb hovering over the screen while another notification appeared almost immediately beneath the others. Don't ignore me.
He locked the phone, shoving it back into his pocket, trying to faux some sort of normalcy that was escaping his grasps.
Keonho hadn't said anything, but Seonghyeon could feel his eyes on him again, not the curious attention from earlier this time but something quieter, more careful, and that somehow made the whole thing worse because Seonghyeon suddenly felt as though he had been seen in a way he hadn't agreed to. He looked toward the staircase instead, swallowing once as he adjusted the strap of his guitar case against his shoulder, and when Keonho finally spoke his voice was almost hesitant.
“You really don't want to go home, huh?” he asked, and Seonghyeon gave a short breath of a laugh that held almost no humor, eyes fixed somewhere beyond Keonho's shoulder.
“Not particularly,” he murmured, and Keonho nodded slowly, as though the answer made sense even though there were probably a hundred questions sitting behind it.
Another vibration came from Seonghyeon's pocket.
He ignored it—buzz.
Another. Buzz—his jaw clenched.
Keonho's gaze flickered down toward the pocket and back up again, and for once he seemed to understand that asking would only make Seonghyeon retreat, so he didn't, simply standing there with his hands tucked into the front pocket of his hoodie while the silence stretched between them and the basement seemed to hold its breath around them.
Upstairs, Juhoon's voice called his name, asking whether he was coming, and Seonghyeon finally lifted his head, his expression settling back into something deliberately blank as he called that he would be there in a second, though his eyes remained on Keonho for a moment afterward.
Keonho shifted his weight, rubbing his thumb against the seam of his sleeve. “So— where are you going?”
Seonghyeon looked away again, his gaze falling toward the stairs as though the answer might be written there somewhere. “I don't know,” he admitted, and there was something almost embarrassing about how honest it sounded, how little effort he had left to dress the truth up into something more convincing.
Keonho seemed to consider that, his head tilting slightly as rainwater ticked faintly against the basement window wells above them, and then he looked back at Seonghyeon with that same expression he'd been wearing all night, attentive and careful and far too interested for Seonghyeon's comfort.
“I could come with you,” he said eventually, the words arriving slowly, awkwardly, with a tiny pause between them as though he'd nearly decided not to say them at all.
“If you want. I mean—if that's weird, you can just… forget I said it.” He gave a small, embarrassed laugh afterward, looking down at the floor while his fingers tightened around his backpack strap, and Seonghyeon stared at him for a moment, caught somewhere between the instinct to make a joke and the much more dangerous urge to simply say yes.
His phone buzzed again, something that built in the pits of his stomach knew that he didn't look at it this time.
Instead he shifted his guitar case against his side, glanced toward the stairs where Juhoon was undoubtedly waiting and probably already beginning to wonder why it was taking him so long, then looked back at Keonho with his eyes lowered just slightly, the faintest trace of a smile threatening at the corner of his mouth despite himself.
“Yeah,” he said, voice quiet beneath the hum of the basement lights, and after the smallest pause he added, “—Okay.”
Keonho looked up at him then, something warm and almost disbelieving passing briefly across his face before he nodded, and together they started toward the stairs, leaving the phone buzzing unanswered in Seonghyeon's pocket as the basement door opened above them and cold air spilled down into the warmth they had left behind.
“We could go down by the tracks or something,” Keonho suggested, his voice carrying that casual uncertainty he seemed to use whenever he was offering Seonghyeon an escape without wanting to make it sound like one, and Seonghyeon glanced at him from beneath the shadow of his hood, watching the way Keonho’s hands disappeared farther into the sleeves of his hoodie as though even the suggestion of leaving town’s immediate orbit had made him suddenly conscious of himself.
The tracks.
Seonghyeon hadn’t been there in months, not since the weather had still been warm enough for the gravel to radiate heat through the soles of his shoes and the weeds along the embankment had stood taller than his knees, before fall had stripped everything down to brittle stalks and long cold nights.
Old rails cut behind the edge of town near the river, where abandoned train cars sat crooked on unused lines and rust spread over their sides in long orange wounds, half-swallowed by overgrown brush and years of neglect.
Teenagers went there sometimes to drink cheap beer out of paper bags, smoke until their clothes smelled like ash, kiss people they would pretend not to know at school the following Monday, complain about their parents and teachers and the town itself, break bottles against the rocks just to hear something shatter in a place where so much else had already broken quietly. Mostly, people went there because it was one of the few places in town where you could convince yourself, for an hour or two, that nobody knew where you were.
The idea settled into Seonghyeon with startling relief, immediate and physical, like his lungs had been waiting for permission to expand.
A reprieve. A delay.
Breathing room.
“—Okay,” he heard himself say, and his mouth almost twitched when he imagined Juhoon’s betrayed face, the particular expression his brother had perfected over the past year whenever Seonghyeon made some decision that suggested he had deliberately chosen the more complicated option, which was happening often enough now that Juhoon had begun looking personally offended by it.
Something unreadable crossed Keonho’s face at the answer, there and gone so quickly that Seonghyeon might have missed it if he had been looking anywhere else, the faintest softening around his eyes before his usual composure settled back over him. He gave a small smile, almost shy, then seemed to realize he was smiling and immediately schooled his expression, turning his face slightly as though checking whether Seonghyeon had caught him doing it.
“Cool,” Keonho said, and the word came out shakier than it needed to, accompanied by a little shrug that tried unsuccessfully to make the entire exchange seem ordinary.
They started walking almost immediately, Keonho falling half a step ahead as though he already knew the route by instinct, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure Seonghyeon was still there without ever asking him to catch up. The town looked different after school, quieter somehow despite the traffic moving along the main road, as though exhaustion had settled fully over everything by late afternoon and even the buildings had grown tired of holding themselves upright.
Storefronts glowed weakly against the gathering dusk, fluorescent signs buzzing behind dirty glass while puddles collected along broken curbs and reflected fractured neon in trembling colors, and the wind dragged damp leaves across the sidewalks in scraping clusters that gathered briefly around their ankles before scattering again.
Neither of them spoke much at first, the silence between them carrying none of the strained quality Seonghyeon had expected, and every so often their shoulders brushed beneath their shared quiet, a sleeve catching against another sleeve, the contact so insignificant that either of them could have stepped away from it without making a scene.
Seonghyeon became painfully aware of every accidental point of contact anyway, of the warmth that lingered for half a second after Keonho’s arm moved away, of the strange rhythm they had fallen into where they walked close enough to touch without either of them acknowledging that they were doing it — neither moved, neither strayed.
The route toward the tracks cut behind downtown where older buildings leaned subtly toward one another with age and neglect. The abandoned theater emerged gradually through fog ahead of them, its broken marquee hanging crooked above shattered ticket windows.
Ahead of them, the abandoned theater emerged gradually through the fog, its broken marquee hanging crooked above shattered ticket windows, the surviving letters spelling JOOY-RIDE THEATER in a miserable half-word that looked almost embarrassed to still be there. Rainwater dripped steadily through holes in the rusted awning, gathering along the ledge before falling in thin silver threads onto the pavement.
Seonghyeon slowed without meaning to, the gravel underneath his shoes settling.
Even ruined, the building carried something so beautiful about it. Old detailing curled stubbornly around the roofline beneath years of grime, decorative stonework blackened by rain and soot, while massive faded posters remained trapped behind cracked glass cases near the entrance, old movies from decades ago staring outward toward a town that had forgotten them.
The theater looked as though it had been waiting for someone to remember what it had once been, a single harsh and powerful wind probably would’ve caused it to cave.
Keonho noticed him looking and slowed too, turning his head slightly until his eyes followed Seonghyeon’s gaze.
“—You love this place,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting as he tucked his chin farther into his hoodie against the cold, sounding less like a question and more like an observation.
“Not love,” Seonghyeon murmured, rubbing his thumb absently over the frayed cuff of his sleeve while his eyes remained on the ruined marquee. “Maybe—maybe mourn.”
Keonho looked at the theater again, his expression changing almost imperceptibly as he studied the collapsed awning and broken windows, then back at Seonghyeon.
“Same thing sometimes,” he said, and there was something so matter-of-fact about the answer that Seonghyeon didn't know what to do with it, nodding along.
The tracks waited farther ahead beyond a line of skeletal trees, their bare branches tangled together overhead like veins against the darkening sky.
Wet gravel crunched beneath their shoes as they climbed the small embankment beside the rusted rails, and the metal gleamed dark silver beneath the weak evening light while weeds pushed stubbornly upward between rotting wooden ties, refusing the season in the same lingering way everything in town seemed to refuse to disappear quietly.
Everything smelled like rain and cold dirt and distant industrial smoke.. Admittedly, Seonghyeon urged for a puff, an urge he bit down in hopes of salvaging the moment.
For a while they simply walked parallel to one another, close enough that Seonghyeon could hear the uneven rhythm of Keonho’s footsteps whenever the pebbles shifted beneath him, and every so often their hands brushed accidentally at their sides before retreating again, both of them pretending the movement had happened because of the uneven ground.
The town looked smaller, something of the far past with paper mill smokestacks rose faintly against the horizon, their smoke flattening beneath the low clouds, while church steeples and water tower punctured the skyline in uneven silhouettes. Seonghyeon eyes trailed the cars that sat abandoned farther down the line, their sides covered in layers of graffiti and rust, windows smashed inward years ago and left open to weather.
Seonghyeon shoved his hands deeper into his sleeves, shoulders hunching instinctively against the cold.
“My dad’s probably awake now,” he admitted suddenly, and the thought arrived with such immediate pressure behind his eyes that he blinked hard and stared at the rails instead of looking toward Keonho. His eyes watered randomly, causing him to shift in position, hoping the other doesn’t think he’s crying but rather experiencing dry eyes.
“—Sure, He’ll either pretend nothing happened, or apologize in that weird self-pitying way where somehow I end up comforting him instead,’’ His laugh came out thin and humorless, barely surviving the wind.
“Sometimes I think he hates me for surviving instead of her.’’
‘’Fuck him—what does he know. I’d switch positions any day, I fucking held her in my arms.’’ Seonghyeon spiraled.
Keonho stopped walking so abruptly that Seonghyeon took another step before realizing the sound of footsteps had disappeared beside him.
Seonghyeon turned, already expecting some sarcastic comment or awkward attempt to change the subject, but Keonho was standing completely still several feet behind him, his hands still buried inside his sleeves and his face stripped of the casual composure he usually wore around everyone else. His jaw tightened once, a small movement that seemed to carry more emotion than anything he could have said.
“Don’t say that,” he said quietly, and the firmness in his voice made Seonghyeon look away.
“It’s true,” Seonghyeon answered, his fingers curling inside his sleeves.
“No,” Keonho said, stepping closer again, his voice remaining low even as the wind moved through the dead grass around them. “It isn’t.”
The certainty of it startled Seonghyeon more than the words themselves. Keonho said it as though he could simply reject the thought on Seonghyeon’s behalf, as though the thing Seonghyeon had carried around for years could be placed on the ground and declared false because somebody else had finally bothered to look at it.
Wind moved through the dead grass around the tracks with a sound like distant waves.
Seonghyeon looked away first, his gaze settling on the rusted rail disappearing into fog.
“—My bad,” he muttered automatically, rubbing the back of his neck with one cold hand.
Keonho frowned, the expression pulling his eyebrows together as he watched Seonghyeon retreat into the familiar habit.
“Why are you apologizing?” he asked, and there was no accusation in it, only genuine confusion.
Seonghyeon shrugged because he hadn't known either, because explaining it would require opening some ugly little drawer in his head that he had no intention of touching today, and Keonho seemed to understand that answer even though it wasn't one. They resumed walking after that, slower than before, their steps occasionally falling out of rhythm and then settling together again as though neither wanted to be the first one to reach the end of whatever strange reprieve they had created for themselves.
Dusk deepened gradually around them, the clouds lowering until the entire sky looked bruised, purple-gray spreading across the horizon while the last scraps of daylight caught in puddles between the tracks. Somewhere far away, a train horn echoed mournfully through the fog, long and hollow enough to make Seonghyeon’s chest ache unexpectedly, and beside him Keonho pushed his cold-reddened hands deeper into his hoodie sleeves, shoulders drawing inward against the chill.
“—Ahem.. guess it’s my turn to ask you this,” Seonghyeon said eventually, turning his tired eyes toward him. “Do you ever think about leaving?”
“All the time,” Keonho answered, and his response came so quickly that Seonghyeon could tell he had been thinking about the question long before it was asked.
“Then why don’t you?”
Keonho smiled without humor, looking toward the distant lights instead of at him.
“With what money?”
The answer lingered between them alongside countless others neither voiced aloud, all the questions that lived beneath the obvious one, all the invisible weights that made leaving sound simple only from a distance: with what future, with what guidance, with what belief that somewhere else would actually want them, with what father to steer Keonho away from his inheritance of a beer belly and a throat gone hoarse from screaming, with what proof that escape was something a person could actually achieve rather than death.
The tracks curved eventually toward the river, where the old theater loomed again through drifting mist, larger from this angle and somehow sadder, one side entrance hanging partially open behind collapsed fencing.
Keonho tilted his head toward it: “Wanna go inside?”
Seonghyeon looked toward him sharply, eyebrows lifting despite himself.
“Seriously?”
“You said it deserves mourning,” Keonho replied, giving him a small sideways look as he nudged a loose stone off the embankment with the toe of his shoe. Then, after a pause long enough for the joke to dissolve into something quieter, he added,“—Let’s mourn.”
With a nod as response, something painful and warm unfolded slowly inside Seonghyeon’s chest.
They crossed carefully through the broken fencing, stepping around warped sections of metal and puddles gathered beneath the weeds, until they reached the side entrance and slipped through the opening. The theater smelled like wet dust and rotting wood, the air colder inside than it had been outside, carrying the faint mineral scent of old plaster and rainwater that had soaked into the building for years.
Darkness swallowed them almost immediately, interrupted only by pale evening light filtering weakly through holes in the ceiling and gaps around boarded windows. Their footsteps echoed softly across ruined tile floors littered with plaster fragments and damp leaves blown inside over years of neglect, and somewhere above them a loose piece of metal shifted in the wind with a slow groan that made Seonghyeon instinctively glance toward the ceiling.
Then he looked around properly.
It looked like decay trying desperately to remember glamour.
“Oh,” Seonghyeon whispered, and the word escaped before he could decide whether he wanted to say it.
Keonho watched him instead of the theater, his expression softening as Seonghyeon slowly stepped farther into the lobby.
“You okay?” he asked, lowering his voice as though the building itself required quiet.
“Yeah,” Seonghyeon answered, and his voice sounded reverent even to him.
They wandered slowly through the lobby, letting the theater reveal itself piece by piece, everything creaking softly around them as rainwater dripped somewhere distant inside the building and wind threaded through broken upper windows, carrying cold autumn air along the dark hallways. Seonghyeon brushed his fingertips lightly against a ruined velvet curtain near the old concession stand, feeling the damp fabric give beneath his touch.
“I.. uh, used to come here with my mom,” he admitted after a while, and the confession slipped out more easily than he expected.
Keonho stayed beside him quietly, close enough that Seonghyeon could feel his presence without having to look.
“She loved old movies,” Seonghyeon continued, rubbing his thumb across the worn velvet. “Like—embarrassingly loved them. Black-and-white films, shitty romances, all that. I spent so many hours pretending to enjoy them. ”
‘’—think smile lines came in before 10.’’
He smiled faintly at the memory, the expression appearing almost against his will.
“She used to cry over literally everything,” Seonghyeon continued, his eyes tearing up as a result.
Keonho’s mouth twitched.
“What kind?”
“Happy endings,” Seonghyeon said, glancing at him. “A good underdog stoy—anything that made our daily bleak seem temporary.”
The answer lodged itself heavily in the dark as Keonho looked down for a moment, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the flooring before looking back toward him.
“I think I would've liked her,” he said, and something about the confession made Seonghyeon swallow hard.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “I think she would've liked you too.”
For a moment they both smiled, and the laughter that followed was small and strange and almost embarrassed, the kind that came from imagining a life that had never happened: his mother sitting somewhere in this ruined lobby, complaining about the lighting in some old Charlie Chaplin film while Keonho watched beside her and Seonghyeon pretended to be annoyed, the three of them temporarily protected from the ugliness outside.
Eventually they found the auditorium through heavy double doors swollen from years of water damage. Rows upon rows of collapsed red seats stretched downward toward a massive torn screen, their fabric shredded and faded, while dust drifted visibly through weak shafts of evening light filtering from holes high above the balcony. The stage curtains hung shredded and motionless in the dark, and the enormous room seemed to hold onto its silence with almost deliberate patience.
It felt holy or sacred somehow, like entering the skeleton of something once beloved.
Seonghyeon moved slowly down the aisle between ruined seats, his fingertips occasionally grazing the backs of chairs as though he were checking whether they were real, while the theater breathed around them with settling wood and distant rain. Keonho followed a few steps behind, letting Seonghyeon decide where they went until they reached the front rows.
Seonghyeon stopped near the front row, his fingers curling loosely around the torn fabric of a seatback as Keonho came to stand beside him, close enough now that Seonghyeon could feel the faint warmth of his presence despite the cold. Rain whispered overhead through the damaged roof, and somewhere beyond the theater walls thunder rolled low across the town, making the windows tremble faintly in their frames.
Seonghyeon became acutely aware of everything at once: the dampness still caught in strands of Keonho’s dark hair, the faint scar near his chin he had never asked about, the bruising beneath his jaw, the careful stillness he carried around people as though affection itself might startle them, or even himself, away if handled incorrectly.
“You scare me sometimes,” Seonghyeon admitted before thinking, his voice barely carrying across the ruined auditorium.
Keonho’s expression changed immediately, a small furrow forming between his eyebrows as he studied Seonghyeon’s face. “Oh,” he said quietly, and there was something almost wounded in the way the word left him, his shoulders drawing back a fraction before Seonghyeon could explain himself.
“No—not like that,” Seonghyeon rushed to clarify, heat climbing into his face as he looked down at the floor. “You just… you notice too much.”
Keonho stayed quiet for a moment, rubbing his thumb absently against the side of his hand as though trying to decide whether saying what he was thinking would make things worse. When he finally looked back at Seonghyeon, his expression had softened into something strangely serious, stripped of the sarcasm he usually used whenever a conversation became too close to something real.
“You’re kind,” he said, almost reluctantly, his eyes dropping briefly toward the ruined carpet between them. “You don’t know it. But you are.”
Seonghyeon blinked at him, caught so completely off guard that his first instinct was to laugh, though nothing came out. His mouth opened slightly before closing again, and he looked away toward the darkened stage as if the torn curtains might offer him some kind of explanation for what Keonho had just said.
“I’m really not,” he muttered eventually, pulling at the cuff of his sleeve until the fabric bunched around his knuckles.
Keonho gave the smallest shake of his head, almost smiling, but there was no teasing in it. “Yeah, you are.”
The words settled more heavily than Seonghyeon expected.
He didn't know what to do with kindness when it was directed at him so plainly, especially from Keonho, especially here, with the whole ruined theater surrounding them like evidence of everything they had both spent years learning to leave untouched.
The distance between them suddenly felt impossibly small, filled with every conversation they had avoided and every glance that had lasted a second too long. Seonghyeon could hear Keonho breathing, could hear the rain striking the broken roof, could feel his own pulse beating too hard beneath the skin of his wrist.
Keonho looked away first, his voice had grown quieter.
“I think about you constantly.”
Seonghyeon forgot what he had intended to say. Keonho seemed to realize what he had admitted only after the words had already left him, exhaling sharply and rubbing one hand over the back of his neck as his gaze dropped toward the floor.
“Sorry,” he muttered, almost frustrated with himself. “Fuck. I didn't mean to just—”
“No,” Seonghyeon interrupted softly, and when Keonho looked up again, Seonghyeon was already watching him.
The rain intensified against the roof.
“I think about you too.”
The honesty frightened him immediately after saying it aloud, but Keonho didn't laugh or make some clever remark to rescue either of them from the vulnerability of it. He simply stood there, eyes fixed on Seonghyeon, something unbearably tender passing across his face before he lowered his gaze again.
Neither of them moved for a long moment, the sounds of their breath drumming along with the sounds of creaking throughout the building. The theater seemed to hold its breath with them, the broken chandeliers motionless overhead and the rain filling every empty space between the seats.
Keonho took one careful step closer, stopping well within the small distance that had formed between them, his expression uncertain in a way Seonghyeon had never seen before. His hand shifted at his side as though he wanted to reach out, then stopped, fingers curling loosely against his palm.
Seonghyeon looked at him and understood the question without either of them saying it. For once, neither of them seemed in any hurry to escape the silence, but rather, relished in it.
Outside, the dying town carried on without them, traffic moving somewhere beyond the theater walls, the paper mill breathing smoke into the bruised evening sky, distant voices disappearing beneath the weather, while inside the ruined auditorium Seonghyeon stood beside the boy who had somehow become the one place his mind kept returning to, and for a few suspended minutes, with rain coming through the ceiling and the past surrounding them in fragments, fragments that felt less defining than ever.
His voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Can I kiss you?”
Keonho's voice grew dry at the end of the question — wincing as if to lessen the impact of rejection and sudden realization.
However — an exhale later, Seonghyeon nodded before fear could intervene, Keonho clothed an awkward pause.
One hand lifted hesitantly toward Seonghyeon’s face before stopping midway, giving him every opportunity to pull away. His fingers looked rough from cold weather and recent fights, knuckles scarred and split beneath fading bruises.
When Seonghyeon leaned into the touch first, something in Keonho’s expression nearly broke.
The kiss itself happened gently, painfully slow and tender.
Keonho kissed him like he was afraid of damaging him — one hand resting hesitant against Seonghyeon’s jaw while the other remained curled tightly inside his hoodie pocket as though restraining himself from reaching further.
Seonghyeon shivered slightly, Keonho’s touch was incredibly warm despite the cold, which Seonghyeon fought every atom in his body to not melt against.
Seonghyeon felt the exact moment Keonho realized he was being kissed back, a tiny startled inhale and twitching grin.
Clumsily, and after what felt like an eternity of muffled smooches, Keonho pulled away, his hands rubbing Seonghyeon's neck in reassurance, eyes dilated and blown and with lips that glistened in the dark.
With each synchronized breath and peck, the thunder rolled yet again throughout their dying town — however, this time, Seonghyeon barely noticed its presence and aching call for attention.
All he could feel was Keonho and his devastating hestiant pecks all over, kissing away the tears he didn’t notice had fallen off the apples of his cheeks.
Beneath dust and rain and years of inherited ruin, Keonho kissed him with such unbearable tenderness that Seonghyeon suddenly understood how dangerous hope could become once given a beautiful face with whispered reassurances.
Buzz. Buzz.