Howon wrings out the water in his mop and takes a moment to catch his breath.

The floor is gritty and no amount of mopping will make this place clean. There are stains in the toilet bowl and mold on window sills and two of the stalls have broken doors. What do you expect from a washroom in a high school on the bad side of town?

Every evening, after the teachers and the stray students have gone home, Howon shows up for work perfectly on time even if there’s no one checking and he doubt the principal cares, he’s just a necessity on the staff record books to satisfy the town mayor that yes, his dilapidated excuse for a school is running fine. Nonetheless, he’s hired as the janitor and his perfectionist attitude extends to him trying to removing the rust from door knobs and graffiti from the walls.

It’s the worst in the bathrooms, where the delinquents gather to smoke joints of god-knows-what and bullies lock their spindly classmates into stalls as a scare. There are bloodstains and cumstains and condoms clogging the toilets. Howon paints over the stall doors only to find fresh sharpie scrawls of various swear words and sometimes it’s directed at him (always some variation of the janitor who keeps cleaning the writing away, that’s all you’ll ever be good for) and it’s so immature that he wants to kick his mop bucket away and to hell with all of this.

But he always restrains himself and picks up the mop and gets back to work. The clock hung up above the mirrors goes tic, toc and subconsciously his body tenses under the rhythm as he scrubs the tiles and gets a tiny bit closer to the end of his shift.

He’s had it with being reckless. This is good, he tells himself. This job is secure, I show up five days a week at a set time and go home at a set time and I get paid every two weeks. The job isn’t even very hard. Howon used to practice for eighteen hours straight, stopping only for short food or washroom breaks. Now he’s in a deserted building; there are no eyes appraising his every move and no one to impress. It just so happens that the building is a school, when he’d once given up his school for his dreams.

There comes a time when a dream comes to an end, and all that’s left is hollowness and aching joints and a bitter heart. He hates that he sounds like an old man but that’s him, he skipped over his teenage years and became an adult, with nothing to show for it.

He continues his routine of purging the graffiti in the stalls when something gives him pause. There's something else there amongst the insults and the initials of crushes drawn in crude hearts. Someone has scribbled—what is this, a pathetic excuse for an inspirational quote?

Howon stares a bit, mouth agape, and then he quickly glances away.

Imagine and dream. Then the world will change to how you want it to be.

It's hard to describe what he felt at that moment. Bitterness? Disgust? Yet deep inside he understood the heartfelt words on the wall more than anyone.

After all, hadn't Howon once believed the same, when he was just a freshman in high school?

If he was dumb enough to write on school property, he might have written those same characters. The world had looked particularly inviting back then; like determination and hard work could bring any dreams to fruition.

There was once a boy with big dreams. This boy, now a man, only has stories to tell; he wants to impart a last piece of advice for someone who wants to follow in his footsteps. So, instead of covering up the words, he finds a marker and he writes, underneath in tiny but sure letters,

No, it won’t.

It’s not bitterness that compels him to do it; nothing but letters dipped in sincerity, because people do, inevitably, learn from their mistakes.

And for whatever reason Howon wants this bumbling kid--he has to be a bumbling kid, bright smile and false hopes--to learn from his.

/////

He doesn’t think much of it. The next day he’s done sweeping the classrooms and the halls and he’s back in the second floor boys’ washroom. It's kind of a hidden one at the end of a hall that doesn't get much traffic, which is why it gets chosen as a drug joint. The administration at this point is only turning a blind eye at the problems, but it’s not Howon’s problem either. He’s just here to sweep and mop and then lock up; it’s the dead of winter and the night sky has long since fallen.

Some part of him has his feet bringing him to the stall, where has to close the door to read the words on the back.

He doesn’t know what he expects to find, really. How probable was it that the boy would come back to check on what he wrote on a whim? And even so, what did he want out of it? An acknowledgement that the boy had received his advice?

Well, he’d gotten it, alright. Underneath Howon’s writing was a reply as if this damn wall was a chatroom and it cemented Howon’s image of the childish other party.

It will!!! =_=

Whatever, Howon thinks. He can’t say he didn’t try. And maybe this boy will not be like Howon, maybe this boy will make it to his dreams. He doesn’t have a right to crush them.

There’s an odd feeling following him around as he locks up. He could swear someone was watching him, but the school was deserted as it always was. He stuffed his hands inside his coat and quickened his steps out of the school grounds.

/////

That was a Friday, and now that it’s the weekend Howon is lounging at home as per his newfound routine. He was supposed to have called his mother earlier this week but he kept putting it off. He talks to her for a few moments, the customary how have you beens and are you sure you’re eating well and ending with a come home soon. Howon ignores the sudden catch in his throat and mutters that he’s busy but he will when he gets a chance, and to send his regards to his father.  

He ends the call and tosses the phone somewhere on his bed. He internally winces at that being a generally tidy person but he assures himself that he’ll pick it back up later. What he needs is a distraction, but his room is small and you can see the entirety of it at a glance- a single room with the bare necessities and a kitchenette, and a door that led to a simple bathroom.

Don’t get him wrong; there’s nothing really to complain about his living conditions. It’s cramped but it’s clean and affordable with his meager wage and the landlady is nice. Howon told her he was a college student and she gave him a hefty discount. He turns on the small TV set instead and watches some drama he had seen bits and pieces of. It’s a rom-com with a human and an angel or something, overwhelmingly cheesy but it gets his mind off other things.

Right now, on another channel, they’re surely broadcasting the music show. Howon is not going to go down that train of thought.

He makes some ramen for a late dinner and goes on the internet for a while, until some account he follows on Twitter posts about the newly debuted quintet INFINITE and he logs out. It’s dumb. It’s been six months and he’s supposed to have moved on by now.

But he lets himself slam his laptop shut and snuggle into bed soon after, drifting off into an uneasy, dreamless sleep.

/////

How long has it been since he’d danced? He’s so out of practice, so out of it, period.

Every time the familiar notes float up from his mp3, he freezes and presses [stop].

His breath is haggard and his heart beats too loudly against his ribcage.

He throws on a hoodie and leaves. He’ll go to work earlier today; the decrepit school is better than the stifling silence of his home.

/////

Because he’s early, there’s still a few kids loitering around, none looking like a friendly bunch. This school’s environment is and it’s readily apparent to anyone who takes the slightest glance at it, but there have been no big incidents so no one cares enough to do anything about it.

He hasn’t had to clean blood off the tiles very often, so that’s something, he supposes. His mind flashes to the thought of the boy he’d had half a conversation with on the washroom wall. He seems out of place in a place like this. Howon reminds himself that it’s none of his business, and gets to work.

He starts on the second floor today. It doesn’t take long before he finishes sweeping the hallway and ends up in front of the washroom again with his cleaning supplies.

Howon tries not to think much of it, but he checks the stall anyway. It’s strictly not disappointment he swallows down when he finds the same messages on the wall with nothing new added to it. What was he trying to do there? He was supposed to clean the bathroom, not exchange messages in it.

It’s been awhile since he’d had an actual conversation, though. He’d cut off contact with his friends and moved to a part of town where no one would find him, citing he’d wanted a fresh start, and done the same to his parents. Sometimes he caught a teacher as they were leaving and made some polite greetings, and sometimes he said a few words to the clerk at the supermarket. He missed his friends, he really did, but they reminded him too much of everything he had worked towards--everything he’d failed to achieve. His dream.

When he’s finished for the day, he has worked up a slight sheen of sweat but it’s nothing like what he’s used to. His feet are aching with a temptation to move and he experimentally does a spin on his way back to the janitor’s closet. His steps are loud in an empty hall and meaningless.

He drops off the cleaning sprays and the broom, stopping in his tracks when he sees, behind the door inside the tiny closet, the words inscribed upon it.

It’s a string of numbers, recognizable as a local phone number, and the words ‘Call me!’

And followed by another ‘=_=’.

Okay, so washroom vandalism, Howon can understand. How did this kid end up writing inside the janitor’s closet, which Howon is pretty sure he keeps locked at all times? He briefly goes out and tests the lock; it works perfectly well. Moreover, how did the kid know who he was?

It’s ing creepy, to say the least. It’s like the plot in the horror movies Sungjong used to rent at the end of a long day of training--

Anyway, he’s not going to call the random number. He wonders if he should be consulting the principal of the possibility of the master keys being stolen, but the man seems stuffy and he might take offense to that. Howon can’t risk it, not yet. It doesn’t look like anything was stolen, so he hopes this won’t be a repeat incident.

His hand shakes a bit as he locks up for the day, once again feeling the pressure he felt as if someone’s eyes followed him out.

The number on the door serves as a permanent reminder. The next day, he shows up to work with the numbers underlined in bold, twice. The day after that, the entire message is emblazoned in a huge heart.

Everything was in permanent marker, and it was getting harder to ignore. He supposes he’s lucky that the school is relatively ungoverned, or an administrator would probably inspect the janitor room and he’d land in a ton of trouble. Fed up while facing the multitude of hearts how ornating the walls inside as well, he pulls out his cell phone and dials the freaking number.

It rings once on the other end before going silent.

“Hello?” Howon tries, craning his neck, but there’s not even a breath on the other line.

What the hell, was this a prank? He was going to end this kid once he found out who it was.

He hangs up the line, and slips his phone back into his jeans pocket when he suddenly feels a presence at his back.

He slowly turns around. Howon had been standing at the closed door. Like a horror movie, someone is standing there in the room with him.

A guy with a dyed head of blond hair and a blinding smile grinned at him. Howon faintly noticed that he had a cell phone in his hand, with Howon's own number lighting up the screen as an incoming call.

“Hi. It took you long enough to call,” the man’s voice was deep and emanating a warmth that shook Howon out of his stupor.

“You’re a stubborn one,” he was still talking, stepping closer to Howon as he introduced himself. “I’m your resident god of love, Woohyun. So? Am I better than what you imagined in your dreams?”

Howon’s muscles finally caught up with his mind. He winds his arm back and punches the horror movie ghost in the face. Considering how his fist made impact with the sharp cheekbone, Howon decides he wasn’t a ghost after all.

Ah. Well, the punch was kind of stress relieving, anyway.

/////