three years ago– 

when the wedding service is over, hyukjae is the first to leave the sanctuary. everybody pretends not to notice. 

kyuhyun finds him outside a minute later on his way back from the toilet, leaning against a window sill with his hands in his pockets. hyukjae's not doing anything in particular, and kyuhyun's not in any hurry, so he decides to join hyukjae by the window. initially they talk about recent doings; a new choreography that hyukjae's been working on, a new album that kyuhyun will be releasing soon; but eventually they fall silent, the kind of silent that people who have spent years living together can be comfortable in.

hyukjae looks tired, kyuhyun thinks. perhaps it's been a while since he last slept properly. 

the doors to the sanctuary open and people start filing out; men in their pressed shirts and satin ties, women in their dressy finery, girls with little ribbons in their hair. 

everyone looks happy. 

too happy, in fact. there's the happy pastor, the happy newly wedded couple, the happy families, the happy friends and colleagues and fellow churchgoers. 

there's so much happiness, kyuhyun thinks, that even if he barfs, he'll be barfing sparkles and sunshine. 

then again, it's a wedding, and weddings are supposed to be happy events. 

beside him, he hears the sole of hyukjae's shoe rubbing on the ceramic floor, scratchy and grating, almost indiscernible over the laughter of the happy people. it makes him think of a child he'd once seen wandering around a crowded amusement park with no adult in attendance; just as infinitely pathetic and just as hopelessly lost. 

someone comes through the doors; donghae in his tailored white suit and gelled hair, resplendent, the idealised bridegroom. he could be in an advertisement for bridal boutiques; he could be the hero in a teenybopper movie where the main couple gets married in the end and everyone downloads the background music. 

he stops when he sees them. "i've been looking for you," he says, eyes shifting between them and coming to a stop on kyuhyun. "we're going to take a super junior group photo. come on, kyuhyunnie." 

hyukjae is looking beyond him to the elaborate ribbon and lace-decorated sanctuary; the empty pulpit, the gleaming grand piano, the photographer with his professional-looking camera slung around his neck, arranging the group clustered before the stage. it's something they've seen a thousand times before. if one doesn't look closely enough, one could substitute it for another wedding, another couple.

he follows kyuhyun and donghae silently into the sanctuary. 

in the last moment before the camera clicks, the 'two' in the countdown, kyuhyun glances at hyukjae standing on the left next to ryeowook. hyukjae has his thumbs up, smiling fit to burst. kyuhyun remembers that image for a long time.

they send him a copy when the prints are developed. it's a perfect picture.

kyuhyun throws it away. 


two years and six months ago–

the lights of the city blink back at them as they step out into the balcony. it's cold, but they'll be okay for a while. far below, they see the mini cars moving under the streetlights, the dots of people walking along the sidewalks and the pedestrian crossings; to their right, the lone white light of an office room glares out among dark windows. 

hyukjae takes a deep breath. "if there's anything i envy donghae for, it's this view. it feels like you're somewhere near the top of the world." 

"he paid a lot for it." 

"i would, too," hyukjae says. "sometimes i think i should move."

"move?"

"move somewhere where i can breathe." hyukjae waves his hand over the world. "i've been suffocating and i didn't even realise it." 

kyuhyun stares straight out to the blocks of office buildings outlined against the night sky. he keeps silent because he doesn't know what to say, and hyukjae suddenly looks embarrassed.

kyuhyun wants to tell him it's okay. 

it's okay to be sad.

"why do you think that office is lit up?" hyukjae asks, before kyuhyun has a chance.

kyuhyun looks at the white light. "maybe some employee is stealing from his boss' room."

"maybe he has a presentation tomorrow, and he'll be dead if he doesn't get it done by tonight."

"nobody would be cruel enough to demand a presentation right after christmas day, hyung," kyuhyun laughs.

in the end, they don't arrive at a satisfactory explanation for that lit office window. 

behind them, they hear the merriment of twenty people celebrating inside the apartment. kyuhyun can picture the warm glowing lamps, the scattered paper plates, the presents under the tree and the music and donghae twirling his wife around to the beat of the song. 

in a while, they'll go back. for now, hyukjae rests his hands on the railings and breathes.


two years ago–

on the day that hyukjae leaves south korea to take up a post as a choreographer and dance trainer to idol wannabes in the biggest tokyo idol company, kyuhyun calls to wish him good luck. 

"just for the record, i still think you're insane," he says. "giving up everything you've done here to train kids over in a foreign country." 

hyukjae laughs over the phone. "you can't imagine how happy i am at the thought of a new challenge." 

"one would imagine you'd had enough challenges already." 

"yeah, well…"

"maybe i can visit you in tokyo."

"do that," hyukjae says. 

kyuhyun imagines hyukjae lying on his bed for the last time, looking out of the window at – what? what does he see? come to think of it, he has never been to hyukjae's apartment. 

he suddenly feels unreasonably sad, as though he's bidding farewell to something he should have known was passing him by. 

how strangely easy it had been for them to splinter off into separate lives after super junior broke up; for all the promises of frequent meet-ups and nightly calls to vanish into empty space. for them to never visit each other's apartments.

"think you'll be lonely there, hyung?"

"i'll call you if i am," hyukjae says. 

how strangely easy it is for them to come back. 


one year and nine months ago–

kyuhyun thinks he shouldn't be missing hyukjae so much. 

it's not like they've been meeting up regularly over the past few years, after all. when kyuhyun finished military service hyukjae was always busy with dj and choreography work, and when hyukjae finally got some free time, kyuhyun was busy with recording work. 

they haven't talked much; have seen each other even less.

yet, there's a tendency to miss someone when he's not within reachable distance.

that autumn in seoul is the coldest that kyuhyun has ever known, even though the thermometers and weather reports tell him that the temperatures are actually above yearly averages. 

what do thermometers know, anyway?

perhaps it has something to do with hyukjae scuffing his shoe on the floor; with lost children and idealised bridegrooms and suffocating on top of the world. 

at night, kyuhyun wakes up with that mute appeal in his ears. 


one year and five months ago–

the first thing hyukjae does at the grand moment of their reunion is to trip over his own feet and go sprawling face-first onto the floor. 

kyuhyun laughs at him from across the dressing room, laughs so loudly that miscellaneous staff members poke their heads in to see what's the joke, but after he laughs he picks hyukjae up and hugs him so tightly that hyukjae makes dying noises.

"you clumsy son of a ," he says.

"you rude son of a ," hyukjae says, making a face.

they smile at each other, and suddenly the slight homesickness that kyuhyun has been nursing for the past three days blurs and vanishes. 

just like that.

"you were so good," hyukjae says. "i texted jungsu hyung right after your last song to tell him that the showcase was a success. he was clucking about how you might freeze on stage because it's japan and a foreign environment is a hostile one and blah blah, anyone listening to him would've thought that you're a newly debuted artiste." 

"jungsu hyung clucks. it's all part of his very endearing nature," kyuhyun says. "but i am exhausted. performing all by yourself is the most tiring thing in the world." 

"obviously you haven't spent ten hours training incompetent idol wannabes," hyukjae says dryly. "that, my not so experienced dongsaeng, is the most tiring thing in the world. there is no equal." 

"you have no right sounding so superior," kyuhyun objects. "you tripped over particles of air." 

"for that, you're buying me dinner."

"me? buy dinner? in case you've forgotten, you're the hyung here and you're supposed to be buying me a 'welcome to tokyo' dinner in the first place. in chinese they have a term for that, it means 'washing off the traveller's dust'."

"i didn't say you had to buy me dinner tonight." hyukjae stands up. "let's go before they find some way to detain you. managers are really good at that." 

"i'll slide out of it even if they do," kyuhyun says. "after over a decade, i've learned some effective evasive skills. besides, hyung…" 

he looks up at hyukjae, contemplates saying i've missed you, but it's been too long since any of them have succumbed to sentimentality. 

he settles for something else instead.

"you look skinny."

"i was born skinny," hyukjae says in mock offense, but his eyes are warm. 

sometimes you don't have to say the exact words for the message to get through. 


one year and two months ago–

he still can't read the words on the signboards, the swirls and little curves of the alphabet and the complicated boxes of the chinese characters. he can't understand the words coming out of cashier girls and shop assistants and half the dialogue spoken in the recording studio and backstage rooms is indecipherable. 

but it's okay because hyukjae is beside him, and loneliness doesn't stand a chance when you have a gummy-smiled someone waiting in a car to bring you out for dinner almost every night. 

kyuhyun reflects how interesting it is that even five years after they went their separate ways, the guys who were in super junior with him still feel like family.

in the cold of march, hyukjae brings him to a restaurant famous for its oden. kyuhyun bites into a fishcake and decides that there are perks to being stationed in tokyo for a year. 

"i've been thinking a lot about us lately," he says. 

"us?" hyukjae says, snipping at an egg with his chopsticks. 

"super junior, i mean. being a solo artiste means i get fans all to myself, and there's a lot of glory and everything, but in the end i think i was happier being with all of you."

hyukjae digs out the yolk and puts it aside. "we had something special going on there for twelve years. i always think that it was great we lasted as long as we did. and that we've still managed to move on." 

"yeah? you know, hyung, sometimes i wonder. i feel like i haven't moved on, not really. i still wake up in the morning thinking ryeowook hyung will be making us breakfast and sungmin hyung will be on his guitar and heechul hyung will be making a lot of noise in the living room. and you'll be tripping over chairs in the kitchen." 

hyukjae laughs. 

"don't you get hit by all that, sometimes? and then you feel like you can never really move on?" 

hyukjae's eyes slide past kyuhyun to a table of uproarious salarymen behind. they're toasting someone, probably a new employee or an employee about to leave. "people are always going in and out, kyu. we just have to deal with it." 

"i would like for the people to stay," kyuhyun says. 

hyukjae looks back at him and smiles. "i wish people would stay, too." 


one year and one month ago–

it takes four months before kyuhyun finally loses patience with donghae's phone calls. "hyung, if you're so concerned over whether hyukjae hyung is doing well and not overworking himself and eating properly and etc., etc., you should call him yourself instead of pestering me for reports." 

there's a long pause, and kyuhyun wonders if he might have hit a nerve. 

"he didn't give me his japan number," donghae says. "i got it from jungsu hyung, but he doesn't pick up when i call. maybe because i don't show up on his caller id." 

"maybe," says kyuhyun. he doesn't mention that hyukjae picks up every call he receives, caller id or not, because any call might be a job request.

"so, um. the next time you see him, tell him that i'll be waiting for his call?" 

"yeah, okay." 

"take care of yourself, kyuhyunnie. congratulations again for that single making the number one on the weekly chart. youngwoon hyung and i have downloaded the online version about fifty times." 

"thanks, hyung. i really appreciate it." 

he drops his phone onto the sofa when he's done with the call. he's not sure if he wants to be a part of what's going on, but your own business has always been everyone's business in super junior and he remembers, vaguely, the few nights hyukjae had vomited his dinner into the toilet basin a month before the group broke up.

he remembers, more clearly, that had been around the time that donghae had started seeing his current wife. 

nobody on the 11th floor had told the 12th floor inhabitants about hyukjae's vomiting because they all knew instinctively that it wasn't something you were supposed to talk about or even, for that matter, to know. 

kyuhyun thinks he won't be passing on donghae's message, after all. 


eleven months ago–

yesterday it was cold and rainy, today it's the height of summer. hyukjae says they've chosen the perfect day for visiting kyoto. 

"i think it's too hot," kyuhyun says. it's thirty two degrees in the shade. 

"could you be anymore cheerful?" hyukjae says, disgruntled. 

the shinkansen moves so fast that kyuhyun's ears are blocked almost the entire way. they're lost in the kyoto train station for ages before hyukjae finds the line that they're supposed to transfer to, and kyuhyun remarks that after a year in japan you'd imagine that hyukjae would be able to read japanese decently. 

"urusai," hyukjae tells him, and the meaning is clear even if kyuhyun doesn't know the word. 

they squeeze with half a hundred schoolchildren on the bus to the famous kiyomizu temple and kyuhyun shouts across to hyukjae that this doesn't seem worth it, but he shuts up once they reach the slopes of the temple. hyukjae wants to buy everything in sight, pretty chopsticks for his mother and triangular-shaped sweets for his father and scented fans for his aunts and a mirror for heechul and kyuhyun leaves him to it, lets him talk to the shop assistants in broken-sounding japanese while he lingers around outside the stores with his camera.

they climb up a couple of flights and hyukjae insists on taking a picture with a slowly swaying shop banner. a kimono-clad woman assisted by a man walks past them just as kyuhyun's focusing and hyukjae rushes out of position, grabs the camera from kyuhyun and surreptitiously snaps pictures of the couple. 

"hyung, you are so embarrassing," kyuhyun says, retreating from hyukjae. 

"it's not every day that we get to see geisha," hyukjae argues.

later on, when they pass by a shop advertising its ability to dress ordinary women up in kimono and geisha makeup, kyuhyun laughs so hard at hyukjae that he has to pause for his sides to stop aching before he can continue walking. 

when they finally reach the temple, lines of tourists snaking out of the entrance and exit, the city of kyoto lies beneath them half-obscured by greenery and kyuhyun takes a picture of hyukjae without him noticing, of hyukjae looking at the mountain and trees and a distant pagoda sitting away from the world. 

they have time to visit the beautiful arashiyama bridge and for hyukjae to barge in on kyuhyun's otherwise landscape-perfect photograph before they're on the shinkansen again, heading back to the noise and fashionable crowds and multi-coloured lights of tokyo. 

they're both tired and silent, and so kyuhyun's slightly surprised when, half an hour into their journey, hyukjae leans in towards him and says, "donghae and i always wanted to come to kyoto together." 

"why didn't you?"

"there was never the time," hyukjae says. "first we were working too hard to get away for a proper holiday, and then we broke up and had to go into the army, and after that…why should he go with me when he has nayoung?"

kyuhyun keeps his eyes on the seats before them. beside him, hyukjae shuffles around a little. 

"strange how things don't work out," he says. "i always thought donghae and i could move here when we retired. it's so idyllic. among the geisha and temples and bridges and trees." 

"except that most of the geisha are now fake," kyuhyun says. 

"yeah," hyukjae says, laughing amid a sigh. "everything turns out fake after a while." 

he sleeps the remaining part of the way to tokyo, and kyuhyun looks at the pictures in his camera, at hyukjae looking at mountain and trees and the far sitting pagoda. 


ten months ago–

"did i train you for two years just so you could completely forget how to dance at thirty three years old?" hyukjae grouses. 

"blame the army. drilling takes the dance out of you," kyuhyun says, still breathless on the floor. he can't feel his right arm.

"i went through drilling too, and it didn't take the dance out of me."

"why don't you dance, then? i'll just sit here and watch, and admire appropriately. don't mind me. "

"you will admire," hyukjae says. 

it's late evening before they finally leave the practice room in search of dinner. hyukjae says he wants curry, and kyuhyun doesn't object. 

that night, kyuhyun still sees hyukjae dancing. still finds himself catching his breath at the beauty of it.


eight months ago–

they walk side by side down the crowded shibuya walkways, past the girls sipping coffee in starbucks and the flashing advertisements on the giant screens and the blasting of the week's latest oricon chart hit. hyukjae says there's something cathartic about shibuya. it lessens your desire to scream. 

"you don't have to go back if you don't want to," kyuhyun says. "you could just say you're busy." 

he looks at hyukjae, so usually upbeat, so deadpan now.

"you're so happy in tokyo, hyung. i don't see why you have to go back to seoul to be less happy." 

"do you think i'm selfish?" hyukjae says. 

"i think you're just trying to breathe." 

hyukjae looks at a store display. this season's stockings. mannequins taller than the average japanese. "maybe that's selfish, too." 

they go back to seoul together on korean air. hyukjae rented out his apartment when he moved to japan over a year ago, so kyuhyun puts him up, challenges him to a competition of see who can make the most edible korean dinner. 

"ten years ago you'd have been making me play starcraft," hyukjae chortles. he eventually wins, because kyuhyun has always been at cooking. 

they attend the super junior reunion the next day at jungsu's house. jungsu's almost portly now, "prosperous-looking" according to kyuhyun, and his eldest daughter refuses to let go of hyukjae. 

"i've always been good with kids," hyukjae says smugly. 

"kids do like funny things," kyuhyun says. 

there's heechul with his arm around his eleventh girlfriend in ten years, youngwoon with his twin boys treating the sofa as a trampoline, jongwoon with his shy wife so quiet that jungsu says jongwoon must have bullied her into silence. 

"she's not so quiet at home," jongwoon says. 

ryeowook still laughs with his hand over his mouth, donghee still makes crude jokes, sungmin still likes talking about wine, kibum still likes smiling more than talking. kyuhyun thinks he's caught in some kind of weird time warp, except that he's always beside hyukjae now and youngwoon says they look sappy enough together to be a second donghae and nayoung.

kyuhyun's hand finds its way to hyukjae's knee even as he says, "hyukjae hyung won't get pregnant for me, unfortunately." 

"i didn't know you were planning that far ahead already," jungsu teases. 

hyukjae congratulates donghae and nayoung once before they leave. "boy or girl, i hope the baby turns out more like you," he says to nayoung.

nayoung laughs. "will hyukjae oppa agree to be the baby's godfather?" 

"you don't want him as a godfather," kyuhyun interrupts. "he'll forget the baby's birthday on a regular basis and buy you diapers and formula milk when the baby's already on solids." 

"he won't," donghae says. "hyukjae would be a model godfather." 

hyukjae looks at donghae full in the eyes for the first time since the reunion dinner started. they smile at each other, and kyuhyun feels something in his chest drop. 

"take care of yourself," donghae says, and pauses for a moment. "give me a call sometime when you're free. i miss talking to you." 

"let me know when the baby is born," hyukjae says. 

that night, they drive around the city centre of seoul three times before hyukjae finally stops at a deserted car park, rests his hands on the wheel and stares fixedly at the empty lots. kyuhyun would say something, but he doesn't know how to in the face of such grief. 

in the end, they go silently back to kyuhyun's apartment, and two days later they're back home in tokyo. 


six months ago–

there's something wrong with the sound system in the first verse, his voice coming out ragged at the levels, but the technician adjusts it and the distraction goes away. 

he looks out at the empty seats in the auditorium, passes over the upper galleys and the seats at the far back and when he finally meets hyukjae's eyes on the first row, he smiles in the last few words of the song.

hyukjae comes up to him as he kneels at the side of the stage, takes a few sips of mineral water. 

"you mispronounced 'narareru' again," hyukjae says. "or rather, you sound like you've got cotton in your mouth when you sing that word." 

"narareru," kyuhyun echoes. 

they have five minutes before the rehearsal of the next song. 

"will you come up on stage tonight, hyung?" kyuhyun asks. 

"if you ask me, you'll have to ask jungsu hyung and youngwoon hyung and sungmin hyung and jongwoon hyung and donghae," hyukjae says, ticking off his fingers. "oh, and ryeowookie, too. you'll never hear the last of it if you asked me up but not them." 

kyuhyun grins at the thought of the guys, a couple of wives and girlfriends included, taking up an entire row. "what if i explain that you're the one i really want up on stage with me?" 

"kyuhyun-sshi," says the stage director, popping out of the wings, "please take up your position in thirty seconds. we're starting the next song." 

hyukjae smiles, standing back. "no," he says. "the stage belongs to you, kyu. you shouldn't share it with anyone tonight." 

kyuhyun doesn't want to admit it to himself, but he thinks that with hyukjae's belief he could face a company of charging north korean soldiers. 

it's a one night only, cho kyuhyun's long awaited tokyo winter concert, and it's a sellout success. jongwoon says kyuhyun has to be one of the best vocalists to have come out of south korea in a while. everyone pools their money to hold the biggest after-party that kyuhyun has ever been to. jungsu cries when kyuhyun raises his wineglass to toast "the super junior hyungs who've been with me every step of the way, even when i didn't ask them to".

but all that happens after. when he returns to the dressing room, exhausted and damp after the last encore, people shouting congratulations and praise at him, stagehands bowing and clapping, hyukjae's waiting for him inside with a tremendous bouquet of flowers. 

"viva la kyuhyun," he says, and kyuhyun laughs until he's breathless, loud round bursting laughter, and hugs him until hyukjae makes dying noises. 


five months ago–

during christmas they decorate a mini-tree in kyuhyun's apartment, lavish each other with a dozen small unwanted gifts until they come to the proper ones. hyukjae borrows a shabu shabu hotpot from one of his students and they cut thin slices of beef together, wash the shiitake mushrooms and dice the tofu and kyuhyun thinks he has never laughed so much in his life before. 

he doesn't allow himself to remember that in three weeks, he'll be headed back to seoul. 


four and a half months ago–

the silence stretches for longer than kyuhyun expects. 

maybe hyukjae won't say anything at all. maybe he thinks silence is an adequate way of saying 'no'. 

maybe he should kiss hyukjae instead.

but hyukjae speaks before he can move. "kyuhyun-ah," he says, "i'm not in any shape for a relationship right now. i'm more messed up than you can imagine…and i'm not sure that…even now…i can fall for another person."

"do you intend on staying alone all your life, then?" 

hyukjae looks up at him, open and honest, and kyuhyun has to fight to stay where he is. "i don't want to hurt anyone," he says. "i know how it feels when the person you love walks away from you." 

"i don't want any children," kyuhyun says. "i'm not interested in waking up in the middle of the night to feed a baby. i don't want to go through a boy's rebellious teenage years and have him hating me at the end of it because his friends understand him better. i don't want to have an expensive wedding and i would kill something if i had to stand for hours saying polite things to relatives i've only seen maybe five times in my life. i don't want a wife." 

"kyu…"

"but if you still want," kyuhyun steps closer, "i wouldn't mind moving to kyoto with you when we retire. even if there's nothing there but fake geisha." 

despite himself, hyukjae smiles. 

"i wouldn't mind fighting society for you," kyuhyun says, softer. 

"i'm not in love with you," hyukjae says. "not yet." 

"but you're almost there." 

when hyukjae lifts up his hands, palms facing upwards, kyuhyun doesn't hesitate. 

"almost there," hyukjae says when they pull apart, dazed from the pleasure of their first kiss. 

"we've got lots of time," kyuhyun says. 


two months ago–

they make love on the first night of hyukjae's visit to seoul, slow and passionate in the cool darkness of kyuhyun's room. everything falls into place. the sensuality makes them gasp, whisper words against each other's skin, leave marks on necks and shoulders, and when they it's "kyuhyun" that hyukjae sighs and "hyukjae" that kyuhyun moans. 

in the early morning hyukjae makes coffee and they sit at either end of the bed, their feet entangled as they watch the dawn come in. 

"you look happy," kyuhyun says. "your gums are tired from all your smiling." 

he expects hyukjae to retort, but hyukjae simply looks up from his mug with a look so coy and blatantly provocative that kyuhyun instantly hardens.

"you look pretty happy too," hyukjae says, looking pointedly at the bulge under the blanket. 

that afternoon hyukjae whispers 'kyuhyun' over and over in his ear, and kyuhyun thinks that maybe this moment, this super saturation, this brilliance and gratitude, is how it feels when someone you love falls in love with you. 


one week ago– 

hyukjae calls right smack in the middle of dinner, and zhou mi gives him a dirty look until he mouths that it's hyukjae on the line. 

"i've been thinking," hyukjae begins immediately, without the usual pleasantries, "and i've decided that maybe it's time for me to move back to seoul permanently." 

kyuhyun stops searching the kimchi jiggae for more tofu. "yeah?" he says. "go on. don't stop." 

"i've been talking to a couple of programme directors in kbs fm and they say that they could bring back my previous show…maybe even give me a new one on top of it, if i can pitch a working idea to them." 

"so that means…" 

"i might even open a dance studio. go back to my choreography work for films and music videos. i've got overseas experience to add to my resume now." 

"right. you'll be able to make it here again, definitely."

"the horizons are wide."

"the opportunities are endless." 

"we can buy an apartment bigger than your measly one right now. something that has a good view."

"so we can breathe." 

"and big enough for us to hide from each other if we ever decide to quarrel." 

"what are you waiting for, then?" 

"i'm not," says hyukjae with perfect complacency. "i quit my job last month. my notice is up today, and i'm coming back to seoul in three days." 

zhou mi says later that he'd never heard kyuhyun shout like that on the phone before. kyuhyun doesn't remember shouting. he does remember being so happy that breath itself seemed to choke on the joy in his throat. 


four hours ago– 

they're making love again. kyuhyun has lost count of the hours they've spent in bed since hyukjae came back, decadent and spoiled and ridiculous, but he doesn't bother going back to count. 

being here with hyukjae, being inside hyukjae, matters more. 

he shudders as hyukjae scratches his fingers lightly along the curve of his back, shapes words that he can't make out but can guess. 

"did you ever think that one day you'd be in love with me?" hyukjae says. 

"no," kyuhyun says. "but it worked out, didn't it?" 

he pushes a little harder, a little deeper, watches hyukjae's eyes slide close in pleasure.

"strange how things work out," hyukjae says. 


now– 

hyukjae's still asleep. kyuhyun doesn't want to wake him up, but he's lying in three wet spots and he thinks they should really get out of bed.

it's late afternoon, judging by the slant of the sunshine coming in through his windows. 

it reminds him of the sunshine in tokyo, the black-suited salarymen and the tittering schoolgirls and the old people on bicycles and hyukjae smiling at him over steaming oden. he'd like to go back someday. 

life for them starts tomorrow. he'll have to record his new single. hyukjae will have to attend meetings. they'll have to start house hunting, and they'll have to find ways to maintain the romance in their lives, find humour and strength together in the face of society. 

he kisses the curve of hyukjae's cheek before he wakes him up. 

perhaps there'll always be a space in hyukjae's heart for donghae. perhaps he'll never really be over donghae completely, the way you're never really over the first person you fall passionately in love with. 

but it's okay. 

what's more important is the here and now, and tomorrow their life begins.