The clouds opened to flood rain over steel and glass and asphalt.  

The scream of traffic had a note of fury; as water thrummed against the glass, blaring honks protested its injustice. Gayoon had her nails sunk into the upholstery, bleeding her anxiety into its cracks.

“Now?” she hissed. “Just why does it have to rain now?”

Jongin’s response was wordless: he reached across the seat and took her hand, as if he knew it would calm her. It worked; most of her anger ebbed, and the noisy, thunderous world around her fell away into one that had only his voice.

“It’s alright,” he said, though he sounded equally as worried.

“We’ll never reach Kyungsoo in time before he leaves.”

“We will.” In his eyes was total conviction.

She forced herself to believe him.

When they got down at the airport, humanity pressed in with almost vengeful persistence. They had to swim through designer coats, scream for each other through the clacks and taps and rumbles of heels and wheeled suitcases. Jongin took to holding her hand permanently, cleaving a path with his elbows and shoulders.

Their passage was by no means easy, and neither were they left unscathed. Twice, Jongin hissed for a crushed toe and jabbed rib. She bit tongue over jarring collisions and an aching shoulder. But he was a capable anchor and an even better watchtower; he pulled her onto the escalator not more than five minutes later, staggering.

“Alright?”

“Yeah.” She puffed out a breath and returned a displaced lock of hair to its place. “Just great.”

“I haven’t gone into military service yet,” he said as they began their slow uphill ascent, “but I’m sure I have a bit of an idea of how war is going took like.”

“I would laugh, Jongin, but I can’t think straight right now.”

“Hey now.” He squeezed her hand gently. “We’ll reach him. Don’t worry.”

She hoped he was right.

It turned out that Jongin’s prediction was uncannily accurate; as they neared the departure gate, she saw a head of dark hair bobbing its way frantically through the crowd.

They stopped short upon sighting each other. Kyungsoo was a mess: coat ed, collars uneven, hastily done. He carried two large suitcases and a ticket between his lips. Though his expression was rather inhibited by the cut rectangle of paper shoved between his lips, his surprise showed through his eyes.

For many agonising seconds it was only her and him amidst the and press of humanity. She felt a hand on her shoulder, Jongin’s gentle push, and then she found herself in Kyungsoo’s arms, weeping.

“You selfish bastard,” she gasped into the lapel of his coat.

Kyungsoo held her as how her mother would. The flutter of his fingers against her hair coaxed more tears. His words against her ear brought both relief and pain. 

“I’m sorry,” he kept saying over and over again. “Gayoon, I’m sorry.”

“It’s going to take a lot for me to forgive you for this.”

“I had no choice,” he said sadly. He pulled her away, studied her at arm’s length. His eyes held deep sorrow to match her tears. “I really hate seeing you like this, you know.”

“You’re more than a best friend to me, Soo. I love you like a brother.” She rolled her eyes. “And you’re certainly as insufferable as one too.”

Despite the waterworks he still managed to smile. “Yeah? Now you found someone better.”

She turned, looked where he had his eyes fixed on over her shoulder. Jongin lingered a little ways away, patient. He watched them quietly, sagely, with the look of one who understood goodbyes only too well.

“Don’t compare yourself to Jongin. Both of you mean differently to me.”

She was used to hearing Kyungsoo sigh, but rarely one painted with so many layers of sadness. He nodded over her head once, gaze straying away, mouthing words, beckoning.

“Let me talk to him for a while,” he said to her, once he was done.

“Don’t threaten him, Soo.”

“I won’t. I promise. It’s just guy stuff.”

She stuck her hands in her pockets and pouted despite herself. “Alright.”

She retreated while looking over her shoulder. She watched Jongin approach, slow and tentative. She watched Kyungsoo’s lips part into the first words of their conversation.

Over the din and ruckus, she heard nothing.

“First and foremost, I’m sorry for doing this to you.”

Kyungsoo’s eyes were large, moist and dark. He wore his guilt plainly. Through his eyes Jongin saw how it broke him.  

He was unsure how to respond. The words that came to him were crude and unfiltered, his thoughts throughout his observation of their heart-rending exchange.

“She really loves you, doesn’t she?”

Kyungsoo smiled tenderly. “I suppose she does.”

Jongin shifted his eyes to the ground for a while, unsure how to phrase the question that had been playing in his head since the first time he saw them laugh together. “Do you love her?”

A short silence, and then Kyungsoo chuckled. Jongin found it unexpected and unbidden. “Yes. But not like that. Not the way you do.”

“I –”

“Don’t bother with a lie.” Kyungsoo grinned. “You’re just like her. Transparent.”

Jongin blushed, but kept silent. He didn’t think it was worth it trying salvage anything any more.

“I’m the only close friend she’s ever known. Her grief is for the loss of a protector and a confidant, nothing more and nothing less.”

“I beg to differ,” Jongin found himself saying. “You do mean a lot to her. Certainly her feelings for you extend further than simple attachment.”

Kyungsoo tilted his head at him. “Jongin, are you mad at me?”

“No,” Jongin replied.

But Kyungsoo saw through him anyway. “You don’t agree with what I did, do you?”

“Well, it was somewhat harsh, if a little irresponsible,” Jongin confessed. “You didn’t see how she broke down.”

“Not my wisest of decisions, I know.”

Jongin didn’t have the heart to say the rest of his thoughts. Kyungsoo was as broken as Gayoon, but he was a better pretender. Jongin could only imagine the extent to which his heart bled. 

“Do me a favour, Jongin. Don’t make her cry like how I did.”

Jongin nodded slowly. He felt the weight of Kyungsoo’s request, the gravity of the promise he had to make.

“If you do, I will end you with my own fists.”

Kyungsoo’s glare of death, his flat tone and his lacking stature made for a very comical, if lethal, combination. Once, Jongin’s insides would have shrunk. Now, he couldn’t help himself from laughing.

“I’d expect nothing less.”

Kyungsoo’s transition from tight-lipped belligerence into a fond smile on an expression edging into sweetness wasn’t really what Jongin expected. He touched Jongin’s shoulder, a friendly pat to accompany an openhearted blessing: “You’ll do okay. I trust you.”

Jongin smiled awkwardly. “Your mood-swings are somewhat fearsome, you know.”

“She loves you.” It came too suddenly; Jongin gaped, speechless.

“Not the way she loves me.” Kyungsoo shook his head. “No, definitely not like that. She loves you.” Kyungsoo smiled. “So, do your best to take care of her, will you?”

“I will,” Jongin promised.

He meant every word of it.

“You did threaten him, did you?”

“I did not.” He made a show of widening his eyes, feigning innocence. It would have been believable if it hadn’t been too overdone.

“I can read your expressions from a mile, Kyungsoo. You said something.” She narrowed her eyes. “What was it?”

He waved his hand, dropped his façade. “What I said to him isn’t important. Jongin is unscathed, I assure you,” he added, when he found her mistrustful still. His voice grew softer. “He’s a good guy.”

“Yes,” Too broken and too good. 

He pulled his hands out of his pockets, clasping them together, holding each on the wrists in turns, thoughtful and nervous. “Listen, there’s something I should apologise for.”

“Besides this lunacy?”

He smiled at that. “Haven’t you already forgiven me?”

She punched him on the shoulder. He laughed, reached out catch her arm before she could withdraw. He looked into her eyes and spoke earnestly. “Remember that day when I told you Baekhyun might be in love with you?”

“One of your most outlandish theories, I’ll give you that.”

“I told you there were two reasons for Jongin to get mad over it. I bet my stakes on only one, that he feared for Yeonjoo’s heart.” He held her steady, by both hands and eyes. “I thoroughly neglected the other: that he’s angry that Baekhyun took yours. Jealousy is a resentful manifestation, and it was written plainly in him. My only mistake was my misinterpretation of its direction.”

Abruptly, he turned, stared at the blinking board that broadcasted arrival and departure times. He suddenly grew anxious.

“I have to go, Gayoon,” he said, fumbling with the ticket he’d stuffed haphazardly in his pocket. With meticulous care, he read the printed words, eyebrows scrunching.

“Is this really goodbye, then?”

He looked up, his eyes gentle. “Yes, Gayoon.”

She willed away her tears and threw herself into his arms again. His scent, the fragrance of cinnamon and flour, its allusion to a past of laughter and secrets, warm hands held for a game and for comfort, overtook her. He pulled away with watery eyes.

“Bye.”

“Goodbye, Soo.”

He touched her hair, favoured her with a smile for one last time before he truly pulled away. He didn’t look back as he was pulling his suitcase, ticket grasped between tight fingers.

Hands cupped her shoulders. Jongin pulled her gently away.

“It’s time to go.”

Her tears fell. “I’ll miss him.”

“Me too,” he agreed softly.

Despite his conviction, Kyungsoo did turn, though it was only much later, by means as inconspicuous as possible. He watched Gayoon crying in Jongin’s arms.

He smiled dolefully, though his heart was twisting, aching for the friend whom he could never replace.

She’s in good hands though, he thought gladly. At least you can count on that, Kyungsoo.

And so he took one step, another. The human tide washed over him, a deluge of fabric and skin. It took him into the sea, and although Kyungsoo felt wetness on his cheeks, he swam in further, until they were no more but figures of memory.

Chanyeol sneezed before the gates of the Byun family manse, beneath a sunless sky of pitch black. His fingers were gloved, his arms and torso cased in a jacket, but the chill still seeped, through thread and leather and skin. Though the manse sat far from the veins that ran to the city’s heart, the forbidding air prevailed through claps of thunder, through cracks and hisses of the weather’s impressive temper.

He thought they took much too long fiddling with the controls, and when the gates opened his bike whirred, roared. He coasted down the driveway like a madman unleashed, slim and stylish and sleek.

He was deeply relieved when he reached the porch, when the roof he was promised lingered safely over his head. He killed the engine, pulled off the gloves, and patted his beast of a machine in a loving caress. His helmet he perched on his seat, his jacket draped over it, and soon he was scurrying up the steps, reaching for the front door.

He was too used to Baekhyun’s expansive hallway to take it to stock, too accustomed to the maid running a cloth over polished wood and silver to gawk and grin at her. He rushed. In his urgency he jogged up the steps two at a time, his vision tunnelling. One more step to the landing –up and up –a small jump to make the top.

Baekhyun’s voice floated to him amidst silence, pushed between cracks, forced through the solidity of an oak door. Chanyeol neared it with a raised fist, ready to knock, but he heard Baekhyun’s tone and he stopped. He listened closely, carefully. Baekhyun’s outrage wore thorns of despair.

“Is it so much to ask for? It’s not a limb or a liver. All I wanted was you.”

Silence, long enough for a voice to respond to his fury.

“You keep asking me to give you more time. I’ve given you all the time in the world –chances, every time you cancel a date, refuse my company. You’re the one who has none to spare me.”

Chanyeol winced. Baekhyun, although not without a temper, rarely did ever argue so passionately. He had a reasonably high tolerance for the world and its vices, human beings and their weaknesses. It must have been stretched very thin for him to fight back.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think you’ve ever loved me.”

Succeeding that impetuous statement was enduring silence, which Chanyeol took as the result of a call ended. He knocked twice, waited for no reply, and barrelled in.

Sophistication was the prevailing theme in the design of Baekhyun’s room, and Chanyeol still hadn’t quite gotten used to the grand piano sitting right in the very middle, a grandiose heart for a chamber of musical relics and a young boy’s past. Baekhyun was pacing before it, shaking and seething, fire in his eyes, ice in his blood and bone.

“You won’t mind if I beat your high score in Mario Kart while I’m here, will you?”

  “You heard that didn’t you?” Baekhyun’s eyes burrowed into him. Chanyeol found no strength in him today to lie.

“Yes. I was standing by your door.”

Baekhyun’s laugh had a jagged edge to it, as sharp as the knife that cut its shape. “Then you know I’m no longer dating her.”

And then he sighed. Fatigue crept into his eyes, settled on his hunched shoulders and twisting fingers. “It was getting rocky anyway. I guess it’s for the best.”

“Are you upset?”

“Not as much as I’m angry. And I’ve been angry for a very long time, Yeol.” He closed his eyes, as if reminiscing an old memory. “It only ebbs when I’m with Gayoon. I don’t see much red anymore with her than I do moons and stars in her eyes.”

Chanyeol studied him, and then stood abruptly. “I should go.”

“What? What about Mario?”

“It can wait.” Chanyeol shrugged and stretched his lips into the widest smile he could manage, which was quite wide if he might say so himself. “See you, Byun Baek.”

“Chanyeol,” Baekhyun said, his expression darkening, turning guarded. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Chanyeol stared at the floor. “I’m sorry. Your chance… I don’t think you’ll have one anymore.”

“What? With Yeonjoo? Yeol, you know I –”

“With Gayoon.”

That made him still. Little by little his eyes grew darker, until all Chanyeol saw were walls of thorns and shadows and cracked foundations.

“I saw her in the movies with Jongin. They were rather… intimate. I saw how he looked at her, and she him.” Chanyeol his lips nervously. “I think they were on a date.”

“Well, that sums up a beautiful day,” Baekhyun announced loudly, laughing madly at the walls. “Lost one girl and was told the one that I liked loved another.”

Then suddenly all pretention fell, and Chanyeol saw a boy destroyed, a damaged heart of holes from slipped knives. “Love sure does know how to play me for a fool.”

“Baekhyun…”

“My Xbox is in the cupboard. You know where the games are.” He gestured absently to everything. “Help yourself. I think I need some air.”

“But Baekhyun!” Chanyeol called, as the latter swiftly crossed the room, to make for the balcony. “It’s raining.”

Baekhyun shrugged. “I know.”

There was very little Chanyeol could do to stop him as he pulled the glass door open, stepped onto the cold tiles, and tipped his face up, raindrops gushing, running over his cheeks and jaw –down the corners of his eyes.