Chapter Text
The taxi lets him out near the back gate of Yonsei, where the road narrows and the hill begins. The vinyl seat had stuck faintly to the back of his neck, and the driver’s radio murmured a trot song he didn’t recognise. Evening has settled in slowly, like a tired blanket being pulled over the city. Streetlights glow a soft orange. The air smells faintly of fried chicken drifting from Sinchon and the sharp sweetness of fallen cherry blossoms beginning to rot on the pavement.
Wonwoo pays the driver. The man nods and drives away without looking back.
Silence follows. Not complete silence; there is always movement in Seoul, but a quieter kind. Footsteps. A scooter engine. Someone laughing too loudly in the distance.
Wonwoo stands beside his suitcases for a moment longer than necessary.
He tells himself he is taking in the view. In reality, he is giving his body time to understand that no one will tell him when to move.
He grips the suitcase handles and starts up the hill.
The path is familiar. He used to climb it with headphones in, books pressed to his chest, already tired before the day began. Now his legs carry a different memory. Two years of marching have taught them a rhythm that does not belong here. His steps fall too even, too measured, like he is still following invisible commands.
A group of students overtakes him, rushing uphill with plastic cups of iced coffee swinging in their hands. Their voices bounce off the stone walls. Their laughter is bright and careless. They smell like citrus detergent and sweet syrup.
Wonwoo smells like disinfectant, metal locker dust, and the starch of fatigues.
By the time he reaches the dormitory, his wrists ache from the luggage. The automatic doors slide open with a reluctant sigh. Warm air wraps around him—instant ramen, laundry detergent, old carpet, too many bodies living too close together.
A familiar kind of discomfort. Civilian version.
The receptionist looks up from her desk.
"Jeon Wonwoo?"
"Yes."
She checks a list, hands him a keycard, points toward the staircase. Her tone is polite and efficient. He is processed smoothly. No fuss. No welcome home.
He climbs to the fourth floor. The stairwell is narrow. Someone has stuck a cartoon bear sticker on the handrail. The corner peels loose, curling away from the plastic.
He notices it. He does not touch it.
His room is smaller than he remembers dorm rooms being. Bed. Desk. Wardrobe. A window facing the inner courtyard. Cherry blossom petals scatter across the concrete below, pale and weightless, gathering in corners where the wind can’t reach.
He sets his suitcases down. He doesn’t unpack.
He sits on the bed.
The mattress sinks under him. His body pauses, waiting for instruction.
None comes.
In the military, silence always meant waiting for the next command. Here, silence belongs only to him.
He sits in it anyway.
His phone buzzes.
Soonyoung: You're back, right?? GS25. Now. No excuses.
Wonwoo exhales quietly. The breath feels like permission.
He replies: Give me ten minutes.
He doesn’t need ten. He only needs to look in the mirror once, to make sure the person who returned looks like someone who belongs here.
In the shared bathroom, fluorescent light hums overhead. Someone’s shampoo smells like green apples. Water runs in a neighbouring sink. Wonwoo splashes his face. Droplets cling to his eyelashes. His reflection looks composed. A little too composed. Like a person built to endure things quietly.
He dries his face and leaves.
—
The GS25 sits at the edge of campus like a tiny lighthouse. Fluorescent light spills onto the pavement. Plastic stools line the wall. The hum of vending machines fills the gaps between conversations.
The automatic door chimes as he steps out.
“Soilder Jeon!” Soonyoung calls.
Soonyoung jogs over first, grin wide, movements loose and bright. Mingyu follows, tall enough to block half the store light, already laughing. Jihoon walks behind them, holding a triangle kimbap like it is the only stable thing in the universe. Minghao stands slightly apart, hoodie pulled up, eyes scanning the street like he is reading a scene only he can see.
Soonyoung is already in his space. Mingyu’s arm drops over his shoulder. Jihoon hands him food without asking. Minghao stands close enough that the circle feels complete.
Mingyu slaps his shoulder. “You got thinner.”
“I didn’t,” Wonwoo answers.
“You did,” Mingyu insists. “Military scam.”
Soonyoung shoves a beer into his hand. “Welcome back. Drink.”
“I haven’t eaten.”
“Drink first. Eat later,” Soonyoung declares, as if passing universal law.
Jihoon nods. “Reasonable.”
Wonwoo sits. The stool wobbles. He adjusts his weight until it steadies.
They talk around him. Noise and warmth and easy familiarity.
Soonyoung complains about club recruitment. Mingyu brags about gym numbers. Jihoon mutters about course registration errors. Minghao listens and drops quiet comments that land neatly in the conversation, precise as placed stones.
Wonwoo answers when addressed. He laughs when expected. He says, “It was fine,” when they ask about the military.
No one asks about home. No one needs to. They understand without saying it: some things are better left unspoken until someone chooses to open the door themselves.
The night cools. The plastic stool hardens under him. Condensation gathers on his beer can and runs down his fingers in slow trails.
Minghao checks his phone, then slides it back into his pocket.
“Now that you’re back,” he says, “you’re going to have to catch up. Second-year courses don’t wait for soldiers.”
Jihoon nods. “You’ll need to pick electives carefully. Some upper-year classes fill fast.”
Mingyu leans back on his stool, stretching his legs. “You could take third-year courses straight away. Show off a little.”
Soonyoung points at Wonwoo. “He absolutely will. Look at his face. Already calculating.”
Wonwoo blinks once. He isn’t, but he lets them believe it.
Minghao continues, voice even. “One of the first-years did exactly that last semester. Took a third-year project class.”
Soonyoung perks up immediately. “And aced it. Polite too. Like, suspiciously polite.”
Mingyu laughs. “He apologised to a chair yesterday. I watched it happen.”
Jihoon adds, “He’s competent. And annoyingly good-looking.”
Wonwoo listens. He nods at the right intervals. His fingers stay wrapped around the can, steady and unmoving.
“What’s his name?” he asks.
The question leaves him before he considers it. Just a social reflex. Proof of participation.
Minghao answers without ceremony.
“Wen Junhui.”
The name lands, like a key turning in a lock that has not been opened since he was sixteen.
Sound thins around him. The laughter flattens. The hum of the vending machine grows too loud. The beer can in his hand feels colder than it should.
Something else moves forward instead. A stairwell that smells of rubber mats. A third-floor practice room with a flickering fluorescent light. A boy sitting at a piano bench, sleeves rolled up, fingers smudged with graphite. A quiet voice shaping Korean syllables carefully, as if each one must be handled with care. His own name spoken softly. Once. Like it mattered.
Wonwoo does not move.
He keeps his face neutral. Polite. Present.
“Oh,” he says.
The word sounds correct. The right tone. The right weight.
The others keep talking. Mingyu and Soonyoung argue about gym memberships. Jihoon corrects them without raising his voice. Minghao looks down at his phone again.
Wonwoo hears them. Technically. But behind his eyes, a narrow hallway has opened. At the end of it, a boy hums an unfinished melody, ink-stained fingers resting on ivory keys.
Wonwoo closes the hallway gently.
He takes a sip of beer. It tastes warm.
—
Wonwoo does not call his parents that night.
He tells himself it is because it is late. Because they will already be asleep. Because there is nothing new to report. All of these are true. None of them are the reason.
He sits at his dorm desk instead, laptop unopened, hands folded loosely. The chair creaks every time he shifts his weight. He makes himself sit still.
He thinks about the house he stayed in for the past two weeks.
The marble floors that never held dust. The living room where no one raised their voice. The long dining table where conversations were negotiations disguised as concern.
His father had poured him a cup of tea the day after discharge. Not because he wanted to. Because that was what fathers did when sons returned as men. His mother had smiled, proud and tired. His younger brother had asked if the army was scary. Wonwoo had said no.
His father had asked about plans. Just like someone confirming a delivery schedule.
Internships. Graduate school. The company. The family’s expectations moving forward.
Wonwoo had nodded at all the right places. He had learned the timing years ago. When to agree. When to say nothing. When to swallow something that might have been a different life.
He had gone to bed that night in his childhood room, where the shelves still held trophies he didn’t remember winning. He had stared at the ceiling and felt the old air settle over him, thick and familiar.
That was when he decided to return to university early. The collar of his shirt had felt too tight at the dinner table, the air too polished, the curtains too heavy.
Back in the dorm, he opens the orientation pamphlet he was given earlier. He flips through it. Maps. Cafeteria hours. Counseling services. Emergency numbers.
He lingers on none of it.
He closes the pamphlet.
He thinks, without intending to, of a boy sitting in a practice room when he was sixteen, sleeves rolled up, fingers stained with pencil graphite, saying:
“I don’t think I want to live like that.”
Wonwoo had laughed at the time. Had said something clever. Something safe.
He understands now that it was the first confession he ever ignored.
He leans back in his chair and lets his head rest against the wall.
Tomorrow, he will resume being a student. Tomorrow, life will move forward again.
He does not yet know what is already waiting for him in that tomorrow.
But his chest feels tight anyway.
—
Wonwoo wakes before his alarm again.
The dorm is quiet. His roommate’s breathing rises and falls evenly. Outside the window, the courtyard is damp from overnight rain. Cherry petals cling to the ground in small, stubborn clusters.
He dresses without hurry. Jeans. A plain shirt. A light jacket. Civilian clothes still feel like costume, but less than yesterday. He checks his timetable once, then again, as if repetition will make the day predictable.
By eight thirty, he is walking across campus. The air smells of wet stone and coffee. Students move in loose streams toward lecture halls, umbrellas dripping, backpacks slung low.
He finds the building easily. He has walked these paths before. Memory fills in the shortcuts.
The lecture hall door is already open. Inside, rows of seats rise in gentle tiers. The room hums with small conversations, chair legs scraping, pages turning. A projector displays the course title in blue text on a white screen.
Wonwoo steps in and pauses near the back.
Most seats are taken. First-years cluster toward the front, eager or anxious. Upper-years sit farther back, relaxed, familiar with the rhythm of semester starts.
He chooses a seat near the middle. Not too visible. Not too hidden.
He sits and takes out a notebook. He uncaps his pen. The small, familiar actions settle him.
Around him, voices drift.
“So this class is hard, right?”
“I heard the professor is kind.”
“Do we need the textbook?”
Wonwoo listens without participating. He is good at this. Being present without drawing attention. Existing like a quiet piece of furniture.
Then the door opens again.
He hears it before he sees it.
A voice, clear and even, saying in careful Korean, “Is this seat taken?”
Wonwoo’s pen pauses mid-air.
He looks up.
Wen Junhui stands in the aisle, one hand resting lightly on the back of a chair. His hair is damp from the rain. A strand sticks to his forehead. He wears a simple hoodie and jeans, nothing remarkable, and yet the room seems to adjust around him, subtly, without anyone meaning to.
The student he asked shakes their head quickly. “No, go ahead.”
Junhui smiles. Polite. Easy. A smile that does not demand anything in return.
He sits two rows in front of Wonwoo, slightly to the left.
Wonwoo does not look away.
Not immediately.
He catalogues, without intending to, observation stacking neatly on observation the way he organises everything else that might otherwise spill.
Junhui’s shoulders are broader than they used to be. His posture is straighter. His movements are slower, more deliberate. His hands are clean now. No ink stains. No bitten nails. His Korean sounds natural. The careful shaping of syllables is gone. Only a faint trace of an accent remains, soft at the edges.
And yet.
The way he lines up his pen and pencil on the desk. The slight tilt of his head when he listens. The habit of tucking damp hair behind his ear.
Familiar gestures. Muscle memory surviving time.
Wonwoo blinks once and looks down at his notebook.
The professor enters. The room settles. The lecture begins.
Words flow. Slides change. Pens move across paper. Laptops click.
Wonwoo writes. He listens. He copies diagrams. He underlines key terms. His handwriting stays steady. His notes are neat and usable. He does not miss content. He has always been good at functioning while thinking of other things.
And yet, his attention returns, again and again, to the figure two rows ahead.
He observes the way Junhui’s brow furrows when concentrating. The way his shoulders relax when he understands something. The brief moment he glances around, as if checking whether he belongs in this room.
Wonwoo understands that glance.
Halfway through the lecture, a memory arrives without invitation.
A practice room. Third floor. A piano bench. Junhui sitting cross-legged, hoodie slipping off one shoulder, saying in halting Korean, “This place is too quiet.”
Wonwoo writes another line of notes.
The memory fades.
The lecture continues.
By the time the professor dismisses the class, Wonwoo’s notebook is full. Margins clean. Structure intact. Everything in its proper place.
Students stand. Chairs scrape. Bags zip.
Junhui gathers his things efficiently. He stands, slings his backpack over one shoulder, and leaves the room with the same quiet ease he entered with.
Wonwoo remains seated for a moment longer.
He closes his notebook.
His hand rests on the cover, steady.
He thinks, with a quiet kind of surprise, that he did not expect this.
Not the coincidence of the same university. That much had been inevitable.
Not even the same class. Universities are full of shared corridors and overlapping timetables.
What he did not expect was the way his body had remembered first. The pause of his hand. The careful counting of breaths. The sudden clarity of a name spoken aloud.
He files the observation away, as he always does.
Later, he tells himself, he will decide what it means.
He leaves the lecture hall later than most.
He takes his time packing his notebook, aligning the edges of his papers, zipping his bag fully closed. The room empties around him in waves. Voices fade down the stairwell. Doors swing. Close. Silence returns in pockets.
When he steps into the corridor, it is already crowded. Students flow in both directions, umbrellas closing, phone screens glowing, backpacks bumping shoulders. The air smells of wet concrete and coffee lids snapped shut.
He walks toward the staircase.
Halfway there, he stops.
Junhui stands near the wall, slightly apart from the current of bodies. He is looking at his phone. Two other first-years stand nearby, one talking animatedly while the other listens in quiet amusement. Their voices rise and fall like background music.
Wonwoo does not know how long he stands there before Junhui looks up.
Their eyes meet.
No surprise crosses Junhui’s face. If there was any, it has already been stored away. His expression is open, neutral, polite.
He inclines his head in a small bow.
Wonwoo returns the bow. The movement is automatic, ingrained.
Junhui nods once more. Not hurried. Not lingering.
Then Seungkwan calls his name. Junhui turns toward him. He smiles lightly at the others, says something Wonwoo does not catch, and walks away with them into the flow of students.
He does not look back.
Wonwoo remains where he is.
People pass around him. A shoulder brushes his arm. Someone mutters an apology. The corridor continues breathing, moving, living. The strap of his bag bites into his shoulder.
He stands still for a moment longer.
Then he adjusts the strap of his bag and walks in the opposite direction.
His pace is steady.
No one would guess anything has shifted at all.
—
Wonwoo does not plan to walk toward the practice building.
His feet simply choose the path. Downhill, past the staircase where freshmen still pose for photos, past the café fogged with breath and espresso, past the stone wall where ivy claws upward slowly. The sky darkens in layers. Campus lights come on one by one, as if keeping watch.
The practice building door is propped open. Warm air leaks out, carrying the faint scent of wood polish, dust, and old sheet music.
He stops outside.
A piano plays inside. Not a performance. Practice. Someone repeating a passage, stopping, correcting, trying again. The sound is thin but persistent.
Wonwoo closes his eyes.
—
He is sixteen again.
The building is newer then. The rubber mats in the stairwell smell sharp and clean. He is leaving the gym, towel around his neck, earbuds in, sweat cooling on his skin.
On the third floor landing, a door stands open. Piano notes drift out, uneven and stubborn.
He pauses. Looks in.
A boy sits cross-legged on a bench, sleeves rolled to the elbow, hoodie slipping off one shoulder. His fingers are stained with graphite. Sheet music is scattered around him like fallen leaves. He presses a key. Frowns. Presses it again.
Wonwoo taps the doorframe with his knuckles.
The boy startles, looks up, eyes wide and dark. He says something in Mandarin first, then switches to careful Korean.
“Ah. Sorry. Is it too loud?”
His accent is noticeable. His grammar slightly off. His voice soft but steady.
Wonwoo shakes his head. “It’s fine.”
The boy hesitates, then gestures to the bench. “You… want to listen?”
Wonwoo should say no. He should go home. He should not step into random rooms with strangers.
He steps in anyway.
—
He is seventeen.
They sit on the stair landing between gym and practice rooms, plastic cups of vending machine coffee cooling between them. Junhui pronounces Korean words slowly. Wonwoo corrects him. Junhui repeats until satisfied.
“What’s your name in Chinese?” Wonwoo asks.
Junhui takes his finger and traces a character on Wonwoo’s palm. The touch is light, careful, as if he is writing on something that could vanish if pressed too hard.
He begins with a tiny dot at the top. Then a horizontal line. A slanting stroke falling away. Another line crossing through the centre, anchoring the shape.
“This is Wen,” Junhui says. His fingertip rests briefly at the crossing point, where the character feels balanced.
He shifts closer, hand never leaving Wonwoo’s skin. This time the motion is more intricate. Two strokes form the outline of a standing figure. Shorter lines build inside it, layered and precise.
“And this is Jun,” he says quietly.
His finger continues beside it, drawing a new structure. A small spark of strokes at the top. Lines assembled carefully underneath, patient and deliberate.
“And this,” he finishes, voice softer still, “is Hui.”
The strokes tickle. Wonwoo does not pull his hand away.
—
He is seventeen, later.
Junhui leans against him on the late bus ride home, half asleep, breath warm through thin fabric. Wonwoo holds himself still, afraid movement will break something fragile.
Outside, Seoul rushes by in neon streaks.
—
He is almost eighteen.
They sit on the rooftop of Junhui’s building. Plastic chairs. Convenience store snacks. Junhui’s Korean is fluent now. He speaks without stopping to search for words.
“Wonwoo. Jeon Wonwoo. I like you,” Junhui says, staring at the city instead of at him. His voice is small. His hands rest on his knees. Still.
Wonwoo hears the sentence. Understands it. Files it away carefully, like something too precious to handle roughly.
He says, "Junhui, me too".
Junhui smiles.
—
The piano inside the building falters. Stops. Starts again.
Wonwoo opens his eyes.
The hallway is empty. The present waits where he left it.
He tells himself that was long ago. That they were young. That first feelings grow dull with time.
He repeats it quietly, like a line memorised for an exam.
I do not love him anymore.
The sentence sits in his mind, neat and complete.
He tests it once more.
I do not love him anymore.
Something shifts behind his ribs, subtle and dangerous, like ice cracking under steady weight.
He does not go inside. He turns away, hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed, expression composed.
From the outside, he looks like a man walking home. From the inside, he is moving carefully around a memory that has just become real again.