*Chapter 48 was posted on 26/2 and Chapter 49 was posted on 27/2 (๑>ᴗ<๑)

Here Is Where We Meet, Again

Present Day.

The day after that, you were there once more, but we never met, again. It’s stupid, huh? I was there at the train station but I was so scared you would find out I was really just some boring kid who would make things awkward for you and your best friend, so I didn’t show my face.

After that particular tomorrow, you never were there at the Woonmyung train station again. I was left standing there alone on the cold mornings and fate wasn’t nice to us—I never caught the same train as you and out of a cohort of thousands, I guess it’s unsurprising we never saw each other again.

I went back to waiting fruitlessly at 7 at Woonmyung station, wondering when you took the train to school. Both Jaebum and I got into the basketball team while you entered the school’s publishing team. When I found out, I couldn’t help but think you must have been disappointed, since you wanted both of you to be in the same club.

Then, Jongin hit me with the basketball on our first practice and broke my spectacles. He brought me to cut my hair as an apology gift and told me to get contacts. Yoochun didn’t seem happy with the idea but he got them for me anyway.

I was still the scrawny quiet boy from that Wednesday morning but it seemed just my looks were able to change what word went about. Somehow, girls started taking a liking to me. Guys started talking to me on their own accord, joking with me that my quiet self was perhaps just a facade to seem mysterious and attractive.

Time passed and I found my own friends. Jaebum never did find out I was that hilarious kid whose name you got wrong, the one who you waited for twice to no avail. Between the scarce basketball practices for our first few months, I stayed away from him as I didn’t want him to ever learn who I was—some weird kid who stood up his best friend. If he knew, perhaps he would tell you, and I didn’t dare face you because I knew you would be so furious with me for making you wait yet not turn up.

It was a few weeks later from our first meeting that I saw you again in the throng where I’d loitered at Hyunyoung station, wondering if you took the earlier train or the later train. The days before I saw you again were always like that—a bit too optimistic, though I knew in reality if I did see you, I would run as far as I could.

Somehow, I managed to catch sight of a little boy amid the many upperclassmen with his best friend that day. Yet still, I feared. I was afraid what a horrible person you thought I was for ditching you and maybe now, you would say I was right. Nobody would want to be friends with some snobbish, quiet student who refused to make friends even though he complained about having none.

So that was how my days went till that one Tuesday afternoon. I would lag behind in the crowd, watching you and Jaebum talk about everything under the sun. I would stand far enough so you would never see me.

I wasn’t sure what stupid freshman me wanted. On one hand, I hoped you would turn back and light up, waving me over and introducing me to Jaebum as the boy who didn’t know how to go to school on his own. On the other hand, I hoped you never would look back, because I didn’t want to see you scowl at me and complain to Jaebum that I was the kid who left you waiting in the chilly dawn.

It took one month for us to meet eyes again amongst the bustling throng of passengers separating us. You’d been alone that afternoon, glancing around as you held on to the handle bars, and I had been gazing at you from the corner of the cabin. We’d ended up leaving school around the same time and boarded the same train.

And painfully, it took just one second for me to realise you didn’t recognise me anymore. Though my breath hitched and my heart raced, mind whirling with thoughts of whether I should churn out a smile, you simply blinked at me and turned back to watching the scenery.

You’d forgotten about me. Maybe it was because I no longer had those choppily cut bangs or those thick-rimmed spectacles, but I was now simply one of the many faceless people in the crowd. Though you found me out of the many people rushing for the next train, because I didn’t have the courage to stand by your side, I faded back into the countless strangers you never spared another glance at.

I’d lost my chance.

Over the years, Jaebum stopped going to school with you. With how open he was, I always counted on him to know what was happening with you—where you two were going on the weekends, what games you two were going to buy, which movie you two would catch tomorrow. I was by then just what people thought to be another teammate listening in on the conversation, amused with how much Jaebum talked.

It was funny. While Jaebum beamed that you won first prize at an arcade game, I would smile along. When Jaebum fumed that some classmate of yours had the cheek to say you looked disgusting just because of your weight right to your face, I got angry together with him and hoped you weren’t affected by what that bastard said. 

Then, you two started drifting apart, and I didn’t hear stories of you anymore. On some days, I saw you. On some days, I didn’t. It was in this space of time, between fleeting glances and your distant laughter, that I became acquainted with hope.

Hope, that we would be friends again. Hope, that maybe one day you’d turn to me and realise I was the stupid kid you took care of when I got lost trying to find my way. Hope, that perhaps there’ll be a time where one of your many dazzling smiles would be for me.

At the end of freshman year, I found out Jongin came up to me because of you. Jongin admitted outright he thought I was weird and Jaebum had noticed me hiding by the bleachers while we all waited for tryouts to start.

He’d gone off afterwards to find you and Jongin was heading