With shortened days come longer bouts of darkness. The stars burn out as the moon continues to illuminate the streets of a concrete metropolis. The shadows of skyscrapers fall overtop the moving bodies of the anonymous citizens filing through the haze of cigarette smoke and halting figures just attempting to find their way in the world.

Minseok stumbles out a bar at 1:46AM and is greeted by the sound of sirens and the smell of stale urine.

A homeless man is sleeping underneath a cover of clouds and whiskey. A scrappy dog lies beside him and gives each passerby a pleading look. There’s an empty cup beside the man that reads spare a penny, save a life.

Sighing, Minseok continues to tumble his way through the dimming twilight of an early Sunday morning. Buildings blur as he sees the lights of the city stalk him from the side of his viewpoint. Suddenly, he begins to feel the fatigue of an oncoming hangover wash over him and struggles to make his way to the nearest bench before he passes out in a puddle of his own shame. The bench is rotting, wooden, and at the moment, extremely comfortable. Minseok lays his head down. However, instead of feeling the chilled metal bars that maintain the bench’s structure, he feels the texture of frayed denim and the soft padding of a stranger’s thighs.

At the moment, he’s too drunk on the aura of the night-time breeze to comprehend the situation as it is. He doesn’t see the look of shock that crosses the stranger’s face, or the look of recognition that floods his features as he whispers Minseok’s name. The stranger begins to smooth Minseok’s hair as he hums an unnamed lullaby to the ever listening ears of the winter chill. With a warmth in his chest and a head without a thought, Minseok falls asleep with a smile playing across the contours of his lips.

-----

He is awoken to the smell of coffee and the sweetly scented linen of an unknown bedroom. He looks down and finds his clothes to have been replaced by a large t-shirt and baggy sweatpants. The walls are a calming shade of gray and lined with surrealist art-prints by Dali and Picasso. He hears the shower running in the attached bathroom and decides to take a walk around the place and see the kind of person he apparently spent his night with.

When he leaves the bedroom, he finds a dark hallway that leads into a room filled with windows. The sky is overcast and the clouds are daunting. The windows are cold to the touch and the street below looks deserted. This is Minseok’s favorite type of weather. While many find it gloomy, he finds it to be peaceful and melancholy. On days like this, he can simply stay inside and read a book and no one is able to tell him he needs to do anything different.

There’s a clock on the wall that says the time is half-past nine in the morning. The rest of the day is truly up for the taking. Turning away from the window, his sight becomes set on the canvas paintings that cover the walls. He could have sworn he has seen them somewhere before. Most of them are consisted of abstract figures painted in swooping, black brush . Almost all have an undertone of sorrow.

There’s a bookshelf that lines the opposite wall of the apartment. Afterdark by Haruki Murakami and This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald are the first titles to strike his fancy. Both books have worn covers and broken spines. These were two of Minseok’s favorite books as a teenager. Wherever he is and whoever he’s with, he’s suddenly completely fine with it.

Turning away, he decides to walk into the kitchen to get some of the coffee he smelled earlier in the morning. His body freezes at the sight he finds when he enters the room. That messy stock of brown hair. Jongdae; That was the only person it could be.

Minseok continues staring until the man in front of him begins to turn around. Suddenly, they’re face to face and both are unable to break the grip of their own inability to believe their eyes as they’re awake and really seeing things as they are. Minseok’s eyes begin to water and in a matter of seconds he finds himself in the comfort of Jongdae’s arms. Swaying from side to side, they stay this way for a few minutes as Jongdae hums a song that only Minseok will ever hear. When they break apart, Jongdae takes Minseok’s hand in his own.

“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

Minseok nods his head in affirmation until he realizes he’s shivering. Looking down at his attire, he runs to the bedroom to find other clothes. Being back in that room, he begins to recognize all the furniture that he once thought he’d never see again. The bureau that they carved their names into as children and the bed frame that had spent countless hours supporting their weight.

Opening the closet door, he’s welcomed by the familiar smell of Jongdae. He grabs an old v-neck from the hanger and helps himself to a pair of pants. Walking out of the room, he finds Jongdae sitting on the couch waiting for him with a pair of keys in his hands and his shoes half-way onto his feet. They walk together toward the door, and without noticing, entwine their fingers. With Jongdae, Minseok will always feel at home. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he knew exactly who he was with when he woke up this morning. Despite his foggy mind, somehow, he’d like to believe he wouldn’t have just stayed with anyone.

The air is nipping and just the way they both like it. Jongdae leads them down a couple of side streets and into an empty café. He orders for both of them, black americano for himself and a chai tea for his companion. The nostalgia is beautiful as Minseok's heart skips with each fleeting touch of skin. The moment they sit down, Minseok can’t stop himself from asking the question that’s been on his mind since they met again this morning.

“When did you get in town?”

Jongdae’s eyes light up in a smile that doesn’t quite reach his lips. “Yesterday.”

“How did I find myself waking up in your apartment this morning?”

Jongdae chuckles. “You passed out in my lap on a park bench outside my apartment building last night at 2AM.”

Minseok feels the heat rising to his cheeks knowing the state he must have been in when Jongdae found him. Covering his face in his hands, he mumbles incoherently. Minseok struggles to recall the fated meeting beneath the mist of the morning moon. He can honestly say he remembers nothing past midnight. For that matter, even what little he recalls from before midnight is vague and questionable.

He’d gone to a bar to drown out his sorrows with a bottle of warm gin and the hardened gaze of a frowning bartender. It had been months and still, he had found no inspiration to continue living his life within the solitary confinements of his withering aspirations. He spends what little money he has on alcohol and in the end doesn’t have much left for food, or anything else for that matter. He looks gaunt and almost as though he’s slowly dying away from the undiscovered disease of self-hatred. Had Jongdae not showed up, he would have surely gone down a darker path than the one to which he had awoken.

He tells Jongdae this. Halfway through his monologue, both begin to feel the tears welling up behind their eyes. After Minseok finishes, they sit in silence for a couple of minutes with the weight of the world on their minds. Minseok’s tears begin to fall onto the table where the names of people he’ll never meet have been carved and dated to let the universe know that there is in fact something left behind to prove they were alive once too.

Together, they walk out of the café leaving behind them only empty memories and luke-warm drinks where there were once cold stares and grimy tabletops. When they’re back on the streets, they again entwine their fingers, but this time Jongdae’s grip is much tighter. More than anything, he wants to let Minseok know that he’ll never leave him alone again, like he did in their youth. Although it wasn’t necessarily his decision to begin with, he can’t help but believe Minseok’s state of being today is somehow his fault.

They’d grown up together behind the chant of promises that they once believed would truly become their reality. At 17, both had confessed to one another on the night before Jongdae’s departure to the faraway lands of an unknown country by the sea. When he left, the only image that remained with him was Minseok’s body standing in the driveway of his home in the rearview window of the car. Even from afar, he could see the tears that decorated the lines of Minseok’s cheekbones and couldn’t control the sobs that eventually awakened themselves from his heart’s inner consciousness.

-----

He had promised Minseok he would keep in touch and call everyday, and in the beginning he did. However, as the weeks slowly began to turn into months and the bitter cold was melted against the summer breeze, the phone calls stopped along with any other form of contact. As Jongdae continued on with his life of careless happiness, Minseok began to drown in a ocean of his own misery without any idea of how to bring his head above the tides of listless forget-me-nots. The echoing of the phone that had once brought on a wave of butterflies, now only brought about a suffocated air of depression. Yet still, he awaited the call that never came.

In college, Minseok had flings, but nothing lasting. Most of them were purely physical, while a few almost blossomed into something greater. The only thing that ever stood in the way was Minseok’s unwillingness to accept the fact that he was no longer wanted by the one person that ever had a real passion for him. So, that's how he ended up as he was when Jongdae rediscovered the truth behind that facade of broken smiles and forced laughter.

As they continued walking down the cracking grey pavements of yesterday's future, both were bombarded by feelings that had never ceased their hiding in the darkest corner of their innermost thoughts. As though those years of suffering and forgetting we're obliterated beneath the warmth they both felt in their chests at the sight of the other's blushing cheeks and stuttering responses. Minseok's years of uncertainty and misery drifted away with the morning clouds. A new day had begun and with it the memories of the old were suppose to float away along with the winds of change that caused the leafless tree branches to quiver beneath their strength.

Jongdae's every word was lined with a hinting undertone of apology, yet Minseok knew had he not coincidentally passed out in Jongdae's lap the night before, he would still himself be only a fleeting memory of a time in the faraway land of Jongdae's youth: the first love that never materialized and the first heartbreak that's scars never truly healed.

Despite all these reasons to leave Jongdae’s side as he had his, Minseok simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. Through mumbled promises and half-lidded eyes, the heart that was once so fragile finally broke underneath the weight of the past. Yet, with this final break came a greater cause to heal. As Sunday morning strolls became everyday affairs enshrouded in the twilight of the winter stars, Jongdae and Minseok started again. The chants of tomorrow that had plagued their youth reintroduced themselves, as the future that was once so out of reach became ever closer to the present. As winking eyes met blushing cheeks, and racing hearts met starry eyes, a second chance was given that should’ve never been lost in the first place.