Nayoung's read enough books to hear that sunsets are supposed to be beautiful.

Nayoung doesn't like books, and all for good reason. There's the dashboard of Jeonghan's father's car, and there's the cut-up horizon of Seoul, and beyond that's the sunset that's pointedly not beautiful. It's mid-September and almost eight, and there's more blue than anything else. It's the color of a nasty bruise that appeared on her knee after she banged it into the end table someone always moved around after vacuuming. She rubs at the phantom pain.

Jeonghan doesn't like books either, but he's always been better at tolerating things than Nayoung was. He runs a hand through his hair all the way down to his shoulders like he's not used to where it ends now, cropped close to his neck and short enough to fall into his face from tucked behind his ears. Nayoung doesn't look at him, but she knows.

His hair still smells like the shampoo he's used since they were in high school. That was when Jeonghan started growing his hair out. Now, they're out of university and Nayoung has split ends and Jeonghan has the hand that's not on the wheel resting on his knee, drumming a beat against his baby blue jeans.

He's humming a song when he says it. Jeonghan always has to go first. "The sunset's not much of a looker today, is it?"

Jeonghan always has to read her mind, too. It's annoying, just like he's been since they were in middle school, and Nayoung wishes she were anywhere else than stuck in the car with him.

"Sure," she says. Jeonghan glances at her for a moment before turning back to the road.

Nayoung doesn't look at him, but she knows.

Nayoung's thought about this thing a lot.

This thing starts in someone's house. Someone's – a friend's, probably. Mutual. There's music playing but it's not loud enough to make Nayoung want to leave. It's dark, and there are people talking loudly somewhere else in the house, but where Nayoung is, it's like all the noise has been funneled out until it's only a fraction of the full blast.

There's a window open. Outside that window is a tree, and below that tree is just a deep dark nothingness.

Nayoung's always wanted to climb out a window, reach for a sturdy branch, and hit the soil with her bare feet. But Nayoung also doesn't trust her own feet, and she's scared of the dark, and she's never climbed a tree before.

Nayoung leans out the window, and the nearest branch is far away, and she's just stuck thinking about how much she wants to move but can't.

That's where this thing ends.

Nayoung dated this guy named Seungcheol back in freshman year.

Seungcheol was nice. Seungcheol held open doors for her and gave her his sweaters when she sneezed and had this dopey grin that Nayoung found endearing. He'd kiss her when she lifted her coffee cup away from with a trace of whipped cream stuck on her upper lip. It made her blush, and she'd tell Nayeon about it in Chem lab.

Nayoung liked Seungcheol until they broke up, and maybe a little after that, too.

That November, Jeonghan dyed his hair lavender, and Nayoung found the silvering strands of it in the bathtub for months.

"Hey," she frowns the one day she thinks she's had enough. Jeonghan doesn't look up from whatever he's watching on his laptop screen but fishes an earbud out from behind the curtain of his hair. "Can you pick up your hair after you shower?"

Jeonghan hums. The door frame digs into Nayoung's shoulder. There's this splinter that's been there since she and Minkyung moved into the room that Jeonghan's roommate's, Jisoo's, friends used to occupy. "Okay," he says, putting aside his laptop to get up.

Nayoung takes a step back. She realizes she's been picking at the splinter the whole time. "Cool," she says, walking back to her room.

She doesn't slam the door.

When Nayoung was ten, she thought she had magic.

It was drizzling that day and Nayoung was walking back across the field while the rest of her classmates ran, hoods pulled up over their heads.

"I think I'm magical," she told her best friend at the time as they changed their shoes. "I walked through the rain and didn't get wet."

Her friend frowned. "That's not magic." She shook her hair out of the ponytail she was always wearing it in before pulling it back to retie it again. "My mom says that when the rain is light, sometimes you can't feel it."

Nayoung's twenty-one and staring at the grade on her recent accounting exam when she realizes magic doesn't really exist.

Jeonghan's eyes meet hers from across the room. His lips curl up into that slightly uneven smile of his as he gets up from his seat. Nayoung really wishes he'd stop leaving his hair in the drain after they'd talked about it.

She gets up and leaves before he reaches her desk.

There's freshly cut hairs littering the nape of Jeonghan's bomber.

Nayoung's never had short hair since she was born. Or maybe she did, but she was too young to fully remember what it felt like to not have her hair curling around her shoulders like something alive.

Minkyung's girlfriend Kyungwon cuts her hair to her chin the summer before Nayoung's last year in university.

"It looks good on you," Nayoung tells her, and she means it. Minkyung says the same and turns it into some sly comment about how hot she finds Kyungwon now. Nayoung rolls her eyes.

It's always been like this: Nayoung's long hair. Wearing shirts that she's owned since she was in her first year of high school until holes showed up in the armpits or the collars frayed. She'd lay them out on her bed, staring, before balling them up into the trash can. It was like a funeral for clothes.

It's always been like this: Jeonghan's loud laughter. Breaking his arm in their sixth year of primary school after jumping out of a tree instead of climbing down. Nayoung wrote serves you right on the cast underneath the cat she drew.

It's always been like this: Nayoung's thought about this thing a lot.

Nayoung liked Jonghyun first, but it doesn’t matter.

Nayoung could cry over a lot of things. Instead, she sits on the tiny two-person couch shared between the four of them and reads a book.

It's a week after their graduation ceremony and her lease is almost up and Kyungwon's boxes are piling up in her and Minkyung's room, reminding Nayoung that she needs to move. It's a week after her parents and Jeonghan's parents made them stand together in front of the plaque at the gates of their university and snapped a picture of them.

Jonghyun recommended her this book, and Nayoung wonders if she's being petty if she lets herself admit that she hates it a few pages in. So she sits there, reads the book, and keeps scanning over the same sentence for hours trying to figure out what she's reading.

Jeonghan walks in at some point. Sits down on the armrest near Nayoung's toes. If Nayoung hasn't started packing yet, it's ten years too early for Jeonghan.

"Did you know Jonghyun's – "

"Yeah," Nayoung says. Nayoung's thought about this thing a lot. "I know." She turns to a new page in the book though she never finished reading the last.

They're at Mingyu's house. A friend. Jeonghan sits there on that armrest, and Nayoung sits there, reading that book. Mutual.

"I think I'm gonna cut my hair," Jeonghan says. Nayoung, stuck thinking about the sentence she'd been looking at for hours before she flipped the page, finally makes sense of it.

And then they're back to the beginning.

Nayoung's thought about this thing a lot.

It starts at someone's house. Mingyu knows Jeonghan through people and Nayoung knows Mingyu through Jeonghan. There's music playing but it's not loud enough to make Nayoung want to leave. It's dark, and there are people talking loudly somewhere else in the house, but where Nayoung is, it's like all the noise has been funneled out until it's only a fraction of the full blast.

There's a window open. And there's a tree beyond it, or at least Nayoung thinks.

Nayoung leans out the window.

That's not where this thing ends.

Jeonghan lays down on her floor instead of helping her unpack her boxes.

"Are you serious?" Nayoung sighs. Jeonghan rummages through his pockets for his phone, and his lips curl into a smile when he finds it.

"You're just going to reorganize whatever I do," he points out.

Nayoung's not adventurous. She thinks moving out from her parent's is the biggest thing she's ever done, and Incheon to Seoul isn't even that far.

She mimes stepping on Jeonghan's stomach when she passes by him with her arms full of bedding. He balls up on his side to avoid it. The window's open in what's supposed to be her bedroom when she dumps the box on the floor and then Nayoung thinks about Mingyu's and the tree and the darkness and where this thing begins and where it should end, but hasn't.

Jeonghan's there.

It's always been like this.

"Hey," Jeonghan says from where he's in the tree when they're in primary school, right before he comes falling down.

"Hey," Jeonghan says when Nayoung passes by him on campus, and she only responds fast enough to turn to look at him look at her before they keep walking.

"Hey," Jeonghan says right before he smiles, lips curling up easily at the corners.

Nayoung presses that smile against her own mouth.

Nayoung's thought about this thing a lot.

It's night by the time Nayoung's settled in and Jeonghan finally peels himself off the floor to get going.

"Thanks," she tells him. She means half of it. The other half, she's trying to think of how to put into words.

Jeonghan's father's car's windshield is dusty and unclear on the outside. It's always been like this:

"Hey," Jeonghan says suddenly. Nayoung startles from where she was watching the tree branches twist into the yellow of the nearby street lamp.

Jeonghan always has to go first. "Are we going to keep pretending that nothing happened?"

Nayoung's thought about this thing a lot.

Nayoung doesn't believe in magic or getting drunk at house parties or climbing trees in the day or the dark. Nayoung doesn't like books, and all for good reason because they tell her about sunsets so beautiful that the main character discovers something while she sits in Jeonghan's father's car's passenger seat, already knowing the answer.

Nayoung dated this guy named Seungcheol back in freshman year and liked Jonghyun later on.

"You know," Jonghyun tells her after he's turned her down. "Jeonghan's had a thing for you since ever."

Nayoung leans out the window, and she reaches her arm out. The nearest branch is far away, but she stretches a little further.

She's always had long limbs.

She holds her breath. "No."

That's where this thing ends. With Jeonghan's short hair and Nayoung's long, and they just look at each other, and Nayoung doesn't walk away.

Jeonghan’s double eyelids crease so deep that he looks almost sleepy. "Okay.”

This time Nayoung doesn’t know anything but this:

It feels like a beginning.