The bookshop is a cramped affair, three narrow rows of shelving that stretch back quite far, stacked high with novels and comics, art books and history texts and biographies of musicians and writers that Jiyong has never ever heard of. He finds it during his last year of high school, looking for a book he needs for class – wanders in one day off the street and falls in love with the dimly lit stacks and the comfortable couch hidden in the back by the romance novels. He goes there all the time that first year after finding it, curls up in the back and writes or draws or composes, puts his headphones on and slips into another world, and the older woman who owns the place doesn’t seem to mind him taking up the space. He tries to buy books there as often as he can, though, to make up for it.

But then he goes to college and things get harder. It’s still nearby, but he doesn’t have the time for a break, and things start piling up inside. He wants to write, needs it so badly, but more than that he needs to do well, needs his parents to be proud, needs them not to regret letting him choose music over something more practical. The first two years are strangely the worst, and even the owner notices – badgers him about being so skinny and pale, about wearing so many layers even though her shop is pleasantly warm. She pats his shoulder and reassures him the time she finds him in tears in the art section, and sends him home most days with food he almost never eats. He feels bad about wasting it, gives it to the other boys in his dorm instead, but he never quite shakes the guilt when he goes back to hear her sigh over his gauntness once more.

“You remind me of my nephew,” she says one day, after raising her eyebrows at the now hot pink bangs sticking out from under his beanie.

He asks her why and she won’t explain, but another day down the line she tells him that he’s quiet too, always away in his own world and never worrying enough about his poor ahjumma to eat the food she makes him. Jiyong laughs like it’s a joke but he feels bad about it later, goes into his third year of college trying just a little harder to take care of himself, and hopes it will take the wistful look out of her eyes when he visits. And she doesn’t look at him like that again, when the third year starts up in truth and it’s surprisingly less stressful than the past two, and he isn’t quite so stick thin any longer, and he dyes his hair such a silvery color she laughs and calls him ahjussi. At first he thinks it might really be just that, that she was worried about this boy who’s always in her shop and not anything else – but then she seems so much happier, and he’s confused but it’s hardly his business, so he continues like he always does, writing and composing and taking over the couch in the back to study and buying books every time he can spare the money, until things change around him.

Jiyong goes in one day halfway through the year and the shop isn’t empty – not that it doesn’t see its share of customers, but he rarely ever notices them. Today though, today there is a tall young man leaning on the counter, grinning widely at the owner, dimples in his cheeks and laughter in his eyes. He’s still in his military uniform, down to the hat that covers his close-cropped black hair, and when Jiyong looks away – he shouldn’t stare – he sees the bag propped up against the wall by the door, the little bouquet of flowers forgotten on the shelf with the new arrivals. He sequesters himself in the back so he isn’t interrupting, but he can’t help wondering who this guy is, wishing he’d bothered to ask her for her nephew’s name.

He doesn’t have to wish for very long, though, because Choi Seunghyun is in the shop every day after that – manning the till with his hoodie pulled down so far his eyes are hidden, helping customers with a smile on his face as bright and open as a child’s, checking and restocking the shelves with his long sleeves pushed up to his elbows – and somehow that small stretch of skin is more enticing than anything else, and Jiyong gets distracted by the taper of his wrists, the paleness of his skin, and that’s when he knows he has a crush. It’s just that, he tells himself, leans his head back on the couch and sighs.

They don’t talk – they don’t know each other, Jiyong reminds himself, and Seunghyun says hello politely every time he comes in (Wednesdays and Fridays after 3 and he stays until they close) but that’s all there is, because Seunghyun is working and Jiyong should be studying, but instead he’s drawing. He sits in the back with his headphones around his neck and his silver hair falling in his face and draws while he listens for Seunghyun’s low voice, glances up through his bangs and watches every time the other man goes by, can’t focus on anything at all.

He catches hell from Youngbae, tries to hide his new obsession but it gets dragged out of him when  his friend finds he’s been drawing teddy bears and dark, piercing eyes – and wrists, what’s wrong with him? – instead of taking notes. Finals are creeping up on them and he’s upset that Jiyong disappears twice a week during prime study time and won’t even have the decency to tell him where.

He doesn’t even a little about his crush, though.

It can’t keep on like this forever, though, and one Wednesday Seunghyun is leaving the store just as Jiyong arrives. He doesn’t even glance up when he walks by, and that hits a little harder than it should – the sinking feeling in his stomach that he tries to quash with the firm reminder that you’re the one staring all the time, why should he care who you are? But it still stings. And Seunghyun isn’t there at all on Friday. But Youngbae finally gets through to him that hey, we really need to buckle down, and Jiyong stops going. It’s tough and he can’t think half the time because there’s so much he isn’t letting out and so much tension he’s keeping in but school is still more important than his inner battles so he forces it out of the way and deals with it, and that’s fine.

The blur of summer swallows him up when finals are over, and he almost forgets about his crush. But almost isn’t quite the same as does.

The shop is still there, still waiting, when he starts his final year of college and wanders over in search of books and solitude. The owner smiles and welcomes him back and they talk for a little while before she shoos him away. The couch is just as comfortable as he remembered but now there’s a low table beside it – just as well, he thinks, and spreads himself across as much of the space as he can, notebook and composition paper, sketchpad and computer, and closes his eyes and just thinks.

Maybe he’s got an idea when a familiar deep voice reaches his ears and snaps him out of it, but he can’t even think to be angry about it.

“Welcome back,” Seunghyun says quietly, and he sets a coffee down on the table by Jiyong’s notebook – his favorite, he can already see, and from the café down the street he loves so much.

He doesn’t know what to say and his throat has gone dry anyway by the sudden, vivid memory of every moment of the last month and a half of his third year, so Jiyong settles for thanks and curses himself for a long time after Seunghyun smiles and walks away again.

It’s not just a crush anymore now and Jiyong can’t even try to pretend it is, because they talk sometimes – about stupid things, about books he’s buying or how school is going or why Seunghyun keeps hiding more teddy bears around the store or what it was like in the military, but nothing really deep, nothing really significant – and he spends half his time thinking about him and the other half trying not to. He does try to rationalize it, though. He can’t be blamed for finding Seunghyun attractive – especially when the first time he saw him was in uniform – and while they’ve only been talking for a month or so he’s had plenty of time to see how sweet and caring the man is towards his aunt, how helpful he is around the shop, how sincerely happy he is around basically everyone. Factoring in his voice, his smile, the way he doesn’t seem to mind at all Jiyong’s staring or his questions… he tells himself it was inevitable, and he calls it infatuation because he can’t think of what else it could be.

Seunghyun starts being the only person in the shop, his aunt spending more time at home, and Jiyong has plenty more opportunities to realize that this is getting out of hand. He wants that intense gaze focused on himself, he wants Seunghyun to look at him and see him, and it feels selfish and narcissistic but he doesn’t even care because even the small moments he has, the little conversations, when Seunghyun’s dark eyes fix on him and only him Jiyong feels like nothing he’s ever felt before.

He notices that Seunghyun gets him coffee whenever he forgets to bring his own. It seems like a little thing, maybe nothing, so he experiments. For a whole month he ‘forgets’ his coffee and every time he ends up with one anyway. He’s starting to think that, yes, he’s definitely not imagining this, but he tries for one more day anyway – one more day because just maybe it’s all in his head.

He’s scribbling lyrics down in his notebook as fast as his pencil can fly across the paper when he feels the sofa dip beside him and looks up to find Seunghyun smiling at him from behind the thick-rimmed glasses he wears but doesn’t need, holding out a coffee that Jiyong knows without looking is made just the way he likes it.

“You’ve been doing it on purpose,” he says mildly, but the smile stays.

Jiyong grimaces and puts the notebook down, tucking the pencil behind his ear before taking the coffee from him. “Maybe I was conducting an experiment,” he answers, and he tries to sound sure of himself but fails miserably. Seunghyun laughs, though, dimples showing, and Jiyong has to hide the fact that he just his lips without even thinking behind the coffee cup.

“What, to see if I was really going to—”

“Maybe I thought you’d ask me out,” Jiyong forces out, and he knows he’s hiding behind his bangs and his cheeks must be bright red and the tips of his ears are hot but maybe if he just says it he can stop thinking about it, maybe if he just gets rejected now it can all stop.

Seunghyun blinks at him for a moment, that confused look he gets whenever he’s thinking hard about something, and Jiyong almost packs up his things and leaves right then. It feels like a lead weight in his stomach, this silence while he clutches his coffee, the rim of the cup pressed to his lips and his hair in his eyes and catching in his eyelashes when he blinks and he should have kept his mouth shut, frankly, should have just kept being awkward sort-of friends with this incredibly hot guy he doesn’t really know enough to think would even be interested in him at all.

“Alright. Go out with me.”

Jiyong almost drops his coffee but he doesn’t manage to say anything, really, because he forget – he forgets often – that Seunghyun is such a child when he wants something and he doesn’t ever act the way Jiyong expects but just once he thought – well, he thought Seunghyun would say no and walk away. But the small part of him that held out hope thought maybe it would be a little sweeter than that.

Obviously Seunghyun has noticed his expression isn’t exactly encouraging. He pushes up his glasses and backtracks, looking away, fumbling. “Just… let me take you out, Jiyong. To dinner or the movies or… wherever you want to go. Or just keep coming here every week and letting me buy you coffee and…”

He has to do something, because Seunghyun is getting nervous, getting that look that says he just wants to stop talking and Jiyong has to fix that, so he sits up – no longer curled into the arm of the couch, but next to Seunghyun, so close their thighs are touching, and he leans on his knees and sips his coffee.

“I can do that,” he says, a lot more calmly than he feels, and he can feel the tension drain out of Seunghyun. “And maybe we could have dinner tonight or something. I’d like that.”

The older man nods, and his smile is back, wide and foolish. Jiyong thinks he’s probably smiling like an idiot too.

“Yah, Jiyong…”

“What?” he asks, looks up from grinning at the tabletop and everything blurs because Seunghyun is too close and he didn’t expect that, but warm lips press against his and he lets his eyes fall shut and kisses him back without a thought.

He in a breath when they part, suddenly remembering to be startled and confused, but what was that for doesn’t make it past his lips because Seunghyun just sits back on the couch, clearly completely pleased with himself.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

Jiyong frowns but it’s hard, because he’s really smiling.