Shift

Jinhwan had a thought, when there's an almost gentle grip on his forearm courtesy of Mino, and Hongseok and everyone are ahead of the line for lunch, just about seven people away. They were laughing about something that Jiwon said, and it was a calming sight somehow, something that soothed the slight fold on Jinhwan's forehead. He was glad that his friends were able to laugh and snicker around, were able to go on their lives like normal. He desperately wanted to be with them, but he couldn't, not like this, not when it was against the rules to cut in line, not when there was a hand around his arm that held him back, and definitely not when he had too much on his shoulders and couldn’t shed any. No, even if he could, he wouldn't dare ask his friends to shoulder some of his burdens. They didn’t deserve that. 

What was happening exactly was that he was slowly being into this hole that Mino and Seunghoon made for themselves. Mino's figurative grip on him was tight and he wouldn’t let go. 

The pair was a quiet storm. Jinhwan hadn't noticed way back when, but the two posed an authority on pretty much everyone. He had heard from Mino that Seunghoon was filthy rich, and that his families had made quite unnecessary donations to the school which the institution liked him for, so he couldn’t be reprimanded when he did things against the system. His parents held expectations for him, and that explained Seunghoon's good grades. 

Regardless, with Seunghoon's academic standing and Mino's no-s-given attitude, they could get any table in the cafeteria if they wanted. People also looked at them with adoration because they were both tall, had long legs and dressed well. Mino's tanned skin contrasted prettily against Seunghoon's pale complexion. They had an exclusive air about them that made anyone look their way when they passed. But not Jinhwan. They weren’t half bad but never Jinhwan. He had Hanbin back then. 
 

Then.

The rooftop as Jinhwan saw it now bared a lot of remarkable…improvements, and he winced at the word. There was color, a lot of it, and it was striking, so much so that his jaw dropped when he first took it all in. 

The sun was red, setting below buildings of pale yellow and gray and everything else, casting pink and orange rays up the sky. Above him were dark clouds that moved through as though in a hurry, threatening to break out into cold rain. It was already drizzling, breaking the smoke that pooled at his feet. 

The place was empty though: no legs dangling off the edge, no black coats and umbrellas, no anything against the dark gray of that rooftop, just air and wind and drizzle.

And it scared Jinhwan, sent a dull ache all over his body. The feeling wasn’t at all new. It was one of those things he welcomed because he knew he could get over it. It would pass. But he knew he was at fault. If he hadn’t pushed the boy’s buttons, he wouldn’t have left. Then Jinhwan wouldn’t have been alone now, though a part of him laughed at that thought. Was he just sad that he had no company for once? Or was he actually concerned for the guy whom he didn’t know much about but had been a lot of help, which only brought him back to the first question.
 

Was he just sad because he was alone?
 

It had been a little more than two weeks since he remembered dreaming, and he really did think that the boy would’ve showed up by now. He was nowhere in sight though.
 

In his periphery, he saw a bright flash of light, then the sound of thunder followed, and he knew that the rain would fall any minute now. When he turned though, his eyes landed on a cloudless part of the sky: a glitch in the pink-purple sky that seemed to stretch on forever.
 

There was a hole up there that was void of anything except for the cracks surrounding it, and it was nothing that Jinhwan had seen on a sky before. He only saw those cracks on pavements in apocalyptic movies. There came lightning around it, and Jinhwan saw it the moment it happened: the moment part of the sky fell down and left the same darkness. It was similar to the darkness that the boy left behind that last time Jinhwan saw him. It elicited in Jinhwan the same fear.
 

Branches of the lightning fell down—to where, he had no idea—and the thunder followed. And then the rain fell.
 

Jinhwan automatically backed away from where he stood. Something unexplainable was happening, and he knew that he had to find the boy, ask him for answers, or warn him.
 

But when Jinhwan opened the door to the stairs, he only woke up from his dream.

The boy came back some days later.
 

Jinhwan didn’t notice him at first, but he had his umbrella with him as expected (though this time it was folded), eyes fixed on one part of the sky as he rested his face on his hand.
 

Jinhwan realized that it wasn’t actually the sky, but the hole, that the boy was observing. It was just as he left it although it had been a few days. He didn’t know whether to be delighted at that piece of news. What he was glad about though, was that the boy had finally come back.
 

He sighed, just as Jinhwan situated himself beside the boy, a little closer than usual.

The boy.

He didn’t know when he started referring to him as that, but ‘the stranger’ seemed a bit off, because at one point in time, he stopped being one.

Jinhwan wanted to speak, to ask him where he’s been, but the other made no move to indicate he acknowledged Jinhwan’s presence so the latter felt that it wasn’t his place to ask. If there was one thing he knew about the boy, it was that he didn’t like being pried into.

Jinhwan didn’t mean to stare, but he did. 

He hadn’t had a lot of chances to do this because they weren’t exactly people who conversed a lot. All they did was just…be.

“Aren’t you staring too much?” The boy said straight-faced, voice with the slightest tinges of mischief and cockiness.

Flustered, Jinhwan looked away as the boy’s mouth curled up in a smirk.

“What are you talking about?”

The boy turned his back on the rails and kicked a stone that Jinhwan didn’t notice was there until it skidded away.

“How are you?”

The boy asked, and Jinhwan looked up at him in surprise. He didn’t think of a response until the boy lifted an eyebrow up in impatience.

Jinhwan could almost forget the times that this same person said all those harsh—but truthful—words to him. It seemed