The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

-Julius Caesar; Act I, Scene 2

Sunggyu disappears from campus, disappears from Howon’s life. He stops going to class, stops walking down the hallways, stops sitting at the cafeteria during lunch. It seems as if he just simply stopped existing.

Howon asks around, but no one remembers seeing a boy with dyed brown hair named Kim Sunggyu. No one remembers softly curved eyes, soft pink lips, soft smiles. Everything about Sunggyu is soft, and perhaps even his existence. Perhaps he has always been a bit out of focus, soft and blurred, and Howon misses his softness.

Autumn comes and goes, and slicing wind blows through. Howon misses the gentleness of autumn, of Sunggyu, of sunsets. Howon misses the comfortable silence of sitting around, the quiet scritch-scratch of Sunggyu’s pen on notebook paper, the small sighs he would release as he wrote. Howon misses the orange he had always associated with Sunggyu.

Without even knowing, Howon realizes that he had given a part of his soul to Sunggyu, a part of his heart, and in turn, Sunggyu had given him his. Had Sunggyu known? Had he realized and loved as Howon had? Had he cared?

Howon lets his heart shatter into pieces amongst the twirling snowflakes, and he lets the cold seep into his body. Sunggyu was warm, but now he’s gone. Sunggyu was Howon’s life for one brief period in time, and Howon hates him.

He loves him.

He falls asleep, wrapped in blankets that don’t compare to Sunggyu, and he dreams.

He dreams about Sunggyu.

He dreams about a man named Kim Sunggyu, a man who walks through time, fixing hearts that are broken. He dreams about a boy named Kim Sunggyu, a boy who committed a sin so terrible, he was forced to fix others in place of himself. He dreams about a man he loved, a man named Kim Sunggyu, a man who would never return to his life, could never be seen again.

Howon dreams about a boy called Sunggyu, a boy who possesses the softest smile the world has ever seen, a smile filled with centuries of pain, decades of longing, and above all, two months of love.

Howon wakes up in tears.

and we came crying hither.