“I just don’t think we know each other well enough.”

Jihoon wasn’t looking Hansol in the eyes. Hansol tried to remember what Jihoon’s eyes used to make him feel.  Hansol couldn’t say Jihoon was wrong in what he’d said, they had long given up on making each other happy.

It had started with a mutually forgotten anniversary. Lying in bed together, and sweaty and dizzy, when Jihoon’s phone broke the grieving silence with Soonyoung asking how they were celebrating. They ended up “celebrating” with a bottle of five dollar wine Hansol won from a raffle at a charity event back from when he knew how to be enthusiastic about things. They only got a third the way through the bottle before Jihoon silently left the kitchen and went back to bed. Hansol waited until he knew Jihoon would be asleep before going in the bedroom himself.

In all honesty, Hansol was surprised that Jihoon had been the first to drop the relationship pretence. They hadn’t truly been dating for a few weeks, when they stopped pretending that they cared for each other anymore. They knew they had to formally break up eventually, but if they didn’t have it in them to love each other, they certainly didn’t have it in them to leave each other. The honorary title of ‘boyfriend’ was suffocating, but it was convenient. It was easier when family asked – and they did - or when they just wanted to pretend they had their life sorted out.

If Hansol wanted, he could play along, play the heroic boyfriend willing to wipe Jihoon’s tears and tell them that they could fix this. The idea made him smile more than Jihoon had made him smile for a while.

Hansol had never been good at reading people, he couldn’t tell if Jihoon wanted him to play along or to simply agree with his statement and end it quickly. In looking at Jihoon to figure it out, he realised how much Jihoon had changed. His ear piercings had closed up and he had a hickey on his neck that Hansol didn’t recognise. He decided it was no longer his place to ask, or notice. Jihoon spoke again before Hansol could put up an act.

“I had hoped you’d give up first. Let me have something to blame you for.”

Hansol nodded, eyes moving from his feet to the opposite platform of the train station they were sitting at. It was night time, morning probably, and they were the only ones there. The station only had two platforms and two tall lights, but they were sitting on the furthest bench down the platform they could, away from the amber fluorescence. Hansol thought it would be a lot more dramatic if it was raining and he could put his coat around Jihoon. He dumped the thought when noticing that Jihoon was wearing a big coat, whereas Hansol himself was in no more than a hoodie and jeans.

Long minutes were spent with Hansol trying to think of something to say. Jihoon wasn’t leaving, so he must have been waiting for Hansol to speak. Hansol thought lots of things and said none of them.

This was the train station they met up at for most of their dates before they moved in together. Neither of them we keen on learning to drive, so they’d meet up at the train station and travel together. They’d joke about taking turns picking each other up with their chauffeured train rather than a car, Hansol didn’t really understand how they found that funny at the time, but he doesn’t understand many things that have changed between them.

“You’ve changed the most.” Jihoon says in a toneless voice. Hansol doesn’t understand. He’d thought he was the only thing to be left behind in the world which changed around him. “You got selfish.” Hansol realised that as Jihoon said it.  He let the thought drag.