If Jihoon’s life were a movie, “You’re Going To Get Married First” would be a title on the soundtrack. Not as the opening or his theme song, but like how the Imperial March plays in Star Wars. Jihoon would be the hero, Luke in this situation, and Vader all his friends.

This “first to marry” label was born during an otherwise uneventful lunch, senior year of high school. Said conversation had started with Soonyoung, like it usually does, bounding over in great leaps and strides while barely managing to keep the Gatorade balanced precariously on his styrofoam tray upright. He pulls out his phone while shoving a couple of curly fries in his mouth and pushes the fluorescent screen into Jihoon’s face so close that he goes cross eyed for a moment. “Lee Seokmin” the contact reads, followed by a series of star emojis. There’s a possibly legit cell number entered in under “Home,” one of Jihoon’s pet peeves, right beneath the name.

The table erupts in a flood of depreciating comments about Soonyoung’s size and questions regarding his standing with Seokmin, the junior that a) Soonyoung was surprisingly fond of and b) Jihoon was unsurprisingly unaware of. It wasn’t a good feeling when people told him he was untrustworthy or when he was left out of these conversations, but at the same time it was a pain in the keeping track of what everyone wanked to this week. On par with keeping their favourite ice cream flavours on file, or how many blades of grass were kept in their front yards. Seokmin stories were exhausted nearly immediately, because that was a subject Soonyoung would apparently not shut up about, and Jeonghan could only listen to Soonyoung’s dramatic retellings once before he lost interest.

“What about you then?” Jeonghan asks, turning over to Jihoon with an expression that would be more alarming did the guy not have mustard smeared on his cheek. This is why Jihoon prefers to meet people over food.

“I got an A on the pop quiz.” Jihoon shrugs in response; Wonwoo groans and starts pulling papers out of his bag, but Jeonghan just tsks and refuses to be distracted.

“C’mon, you can’t still be thinking about school. We’re graduating in two weeks and Soonyoung’s going to be too busy ing that junior to drag your out into the sun.” Jeonghan replies, and Soonyoung gargles around a mouthful of Macoroni and Cheese in protest. “I’m sorry, do you prefer getting ed?”

Maybe it’s because Jeonghan’s right and there are only two weeks of high school left. Maybe it’s because Soonyoung refusing to let him in on secrets strikes closer to home than Wonwoo doing the same, or maybe his nachos that day had been drugged. But Jihoon figures it’s best said as anti-climatically as possible, so he wipes his mouth and uncaps his Arnold Palmer before speaking. “I just don’t see the point. It’s not going to go anywhere.”

“What?!” Even Joshua reacts sputtering as he sets his water bottle down. “Wait, what are you saying?” Their surprise is both a relief and disappointing.

“I’m going off to uni next year. Does it matter if I have a crush? Nothing’s going to happen.” Jihoon says flippantly.

“Well what was your excuse freshmen year?! Sophomore year? Last year?” Mingyu questions, boring holes into the older like he’s seeing him for the first time. “And are you into anyone?”

“I mean freshmen year I had a crush on that thing.” Jihoon gestures towards Soonyoung and pointedly looks down at his tray right afterwords. Go big or go home, right? “Which god have mercy ended quickly. And then some other girl for another month, some other guy for two. If I just ignore it for long enough it goes away.” Soonyoung had known about freshmen year, unfortunately, because Jihoon would like to see him scrambling to keep a hold on his best friend card.

“So you are into someone right now?” Jeonghan repeats, and Jihoon shrugs in response.

“It’ll go away.”

“Of course it’ll go away! You can kill anything if you try hard enough.” Jeonghan groans, rolling his eyes.

“Well then what’s the point? On the off chance we actually date or something, whatever it is will just die just like the Soonyoung thing.”

“If you leave a plant out to dry it’ll die in a few days.” Wonwoo interrupts, looking up from chem notes. “But if you keep watering it and watching it, it’ll keep growing.”

“Aromatic compound reactions are on the quiz.” Jihoon retorts, just to watch Wonwoo fling himself back into his notes.

Aromatic compound reactions aren’t on the quiz.

The pestering continues for a better half of the lunch hour, until Jihoon just continuously responds with random formulas still stuck in his head from the Physics SAT test and they get bored since he isn’t reacting. Joshua brings up graduation plans, and it seems they’re temporarily distracted with discussions on whether not they’d actually be expelled if they were under the robes, but when Poker Face starts blaring through the speakers as a “hip” replacement for a traditional lunch bell, Jeonghan’s on him again.

“You’re going to get married first.” He declares, and Mingyu nods in agreement.

“What are you even talking about?” Jihoon retorts.

“That’s how the universe works.” Jeonghan shrugs, tossing his tray into the garbage before throwing an arm around Jihoon and dragging him through the cafeteria. “You’re allergic to feelings, not looking for love, and one day it’s going to hit you like a meteor. Like the dinosaurs. And you’ll be dead.”

“And you’ll be married.” Mingyu corrects, coming up on Jihoon’s other side. He tries to throw an arm around Jihoon too, but gets kicked in the shin as soon as his hand comes up, so gives up. “To some, I don’t know. A nice looking guy. A tall swimmer or something.”

“Where the hell is this coming from?” Jihoon asks, and pointedly doesn’t picture Junhui in swim trunks. Dammit.

“Irony is one of the laws of the universe. Like gravity. And time, or something, I don’t know.” Jeonghan shrugs, squeezing Jihoon’s shoulder. “But just watch—or don’t, because that’s when it’s going to happen.”

Because it’s Jeonghan with his short attention span and Mingyu can barely direct his own two feet sometimes, let alone a conversation, they lose track and end up on the subject of dinosaurs, trying to cast their friends as characters from The Land Before Time, but Jihoon has one more hurtle to cross before he can just sit in US History, safe.

“It’s Junhui isn’t it.” Soonyoung whispers, in the seat behind him, before class has officially started. “The guy in your chem class that you on.”

Jihoon could just not respond, ignore the whispering, and Soonyoung would purse his lips and fill his cheeks with hot air in annoyance, but it’s not as if he’s new to being ignored. If he never confirmed it Soonyoung would eventually be distracted with more exciting events, more promising tales of high school , and lose interest, if not completely forget. But Jihoon blames it on Jeonghan egging him on, on this Seokmin guy that Soonyoung likes enough to keep from his best friend, on those goddam nachos when he turns around in his chair and meets Soonyoung’s eyes, face blank, and then nods.

“, I knew it! I won’t tell anyone okay I knew it I knew it.”

Everyone knows by the end of the next day.

They graduate that next Saturday, and Jihoon doesn’t remember graduation as the end of high school but rather as the beginning of having way too much ing time on his hands before uni. Mingyu has his devious smile and nervous cackle in play when he asks Jihoon to buy him Chinese food, but Jihoon is literally so bored he accepts without another question and that’s when he sees Junhui—behind the counter, sneaking a mouthful of glass noodles, and nearly choking when they make eye contact.

Jihoon eats more Chinese food in the following two months than he does for the entirety of the rest of his life. Ignoring Mingyu’s giggles and Jeonghan’s initial jabs, Jihoon feels like a different person when he sits at a table, squinting at the menu like he hasn’t read it cover to cover at least a thousand times. This is what they in cinema screens, in love songs, in those books Wonwoo reads. They find their crush working at a movie theatre, a coffee shop, a library, and they go back just to watch, just to take in. A noisy Chinese diner, where children are crying, the chefs are always screaming in Cantonese, and the decisive sound of a cleaver coming down on a duck carcass can be heard ringing through the room at all times is decisively less romantic than any of the previous three locations, but Jihoon takes that as a good thing. The role is already ill-suited. This is something people like Mingyu do, people who social skills do, people who are distinctly not vertically challenged teenages boy who wear sweats year round and avoid their own gaze in the mirror do.

(Someday, not far enough in the future for today-Jihoon to even imagine, Junhui will hear these things and respond with “When I drove my mom to the eyelid surgeon the doctor asked if I wanted to get my nose done.” Jihoon snarls at Junhui in response, something about being a self absorbed son of a . Junhui will take his hands then, clenched into fists and ready to continue fighting in all their broken pieces, and whisper “thank you for sharing” into his ear before ing Jihoon’s pants and taking his lips further down. It won’t heal him; it won’t make it better, but Jihoon will smile despite his best efforts not to.)

Soonyoung and Seokmin become Facebook official sometime before Jihoon’s third bowl of beef noodle soup in July, and tell him during said bowl by bursting into the Chinese restaurant Jihoon’s starting to call home. Seokmin begins belting out some Celine Dion song, and Soonyoung shuts him up by dumping a glassful of water in his lap—this starts their first fight. Despite the near immediate hiccups in his relationship, and Jihoon’s general inclination to not be anything like Soonyoung ever, he burns with envy because his best friend made it all look so easy. So tangible. He found a Seokmin. He liked the Seokmin. He asked the Seokmin out. And now they’re together. It seems so simple, so natural, and yet when Jihoon looks over to where Junhui’s waiting tables he swears the ten steps between them look like ten kilometers, ten countries, ten worlds. By Jihoon’s tenth bowl of beef noodle soup though, he’s sick of the Zodiac-calendar printed red paper placemats, the chopsticks that Mingyu refuses to break apart like a normal person, and frankly he’s half certain his body’s growing another organ to hold the increasing levels of MSG he’s taking in. There’s no sign from the universe, there’s no sign from Junhui, and Jihoon’s pretty sure Mingyu doesn’t even remember why they eat lunch at this place anymore. But for a five second interval Jihoon feels normal in his own skin, confident, one might say. He met a Junhui. He liked the Junhui. And now the Junhui is right there, three tables over, on his lunch break, eating through a bowl of cold buckwheat noodles while he scrolls through his phone. Jihoon stands up.

He walks over to Junhui with tense shoulders, a furrowed brow, and hands that are sweating palm stains into his pockets. Looking back, none of the nerves were caused by Junhui himself, per-say, but rather by the realisation that Jihoon was actually going to ing do this. He’s not tense because of anything Junhui had said or done, and frankly walking up to the waitress sitting a table over would have prompted the same reaction, but the weight of his confession sits restless inside of him. It’s not butterflies, giddiness, or anticipation; it feels like waking up at six to eat breakfast before the SAT; it feels like the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white before his driver’s exam; it feels like one giant step for the half of mankind that doesn’t have the conventionally attractive jawline, double eyelids, or height and build that empowers them to approach strangers with romantic inclinations—everyone else has to make it too, somehow. His friends had made attempts towards encouraging while egging him on in the past, with comments ranging from “he’s a nice guy!” and “you’re going to the same uni in the fall!” to “stand on a chair if you get nervous” and “pick me up a dozen dumplings, will you?” but he doesn’t remember any of those sentiments, because when a man’s teetering at the edge of a cliff he wants a parachute, or a hand, but not a life jacket.

(Jihoon tells this story later, with a long arms wrapped around his waist and a warm, comforting body by his side, he describes the feeling as “finally being able to tell Yoon Jeonghan to eat .”)

The first thing Jihoon learns at uni is that Soonyoung encompasses all possible drunk stereotypes when he gets wasted, depending on his mood before he drank. Right now he’s lethargic and slow-moving, lying on the couch with his head in Hyerin’s lap, and the way he talks about light hitting Seokmin’s face reminds Jihoon of finally slipping his socks off under the covers after a long day and feeling the crisp sheets with his bare feet, of shoveling ddeokbokki that burns in sinuses into his mouth after he gets a bad test grade even though his eyes are tearing up, of cool air hitting his skin and the hairs on his arm standing up when he leaves the bathroom after a shower.

Jihoon is an introspective drunk.

“I just knew, y’know?” Soonyoung rambles, waving his hand around and getting slapped when he accidentally hits Hyerin in the . “From the first time I saw him.”

“When he was the size of an ant on the footie field when we went to go watch Mingyu’s game?” Jihoon responds, taking another sip of whatever’s in the blue can he’s holding.

“His jersey number is ten.” Soonyoung continues, probably tricking some passer byers into thinking he can hold a conversation. “Ten is my lucky number. And then I told him that, after his first game y’know.”

“It sounds like destiny.” Hyerin nods, probably trying to deliver a comforting rustle to Soonyoung’s bangs but ends up scratching his eyebrow instead.

“Love is so exciting.” Soonyoung grins, sitting up too quickly, getting dizzy, and then collapsing back onto Hyerin’s lap. “I’m exciting. Jihoonie, do you think Seokmin loves me?”

“I love napkins.” Jihoon responds, trying to glare down at a dribble of amber liquid flowing down his chin, but isn’t able too and ends up just blinking one eye at a time as he tries to get an in-focus view of the bridge of his nose.

Jihoon doesn’t fall in love with Junhui at first sight—Jihoon isn’t even in love with Junhui still, probably. It’s actually a ing miracle they made it through the last seven weeks of summer break, into welcome week at uni, because their relationship is full of pregnant pauses, averted eyes, dry texts, and chaste pecks on the cheek that make Jihoon want to wring Mingyu’s neck for letting him get himself into this. If either of them had a single better thing to do during that summer, they probably would have broken up.

(Later, in three months, Jihoon will come home to a clean apartment after failing his orgo exam; the piled takeout boxes will be in a dumpster out back, the tissues and dirty napkins will be in the trash, his laundry will be in clean piles on his roommate’s bed, and his angry notes will be back in their binders on a shelf above his bed. Junhui will be asleep on the bed, shirt and pants in rumpled piles on the floor, and Jihoon will feel chills and smell ddeokbokki when he watches the evening sun stream across Junhui’s face. And he’ll let himself think, for the second time in his life, for the duration of about five minutes, that maybe the universe had it right; maybe there was destiny at work here, or maybe he’d saved a small dog in his past life, because if they hadn’t made it through those seven weeks then he wouldn’t have what he has now—confidant, comfort, and partner all rolled into one. And for those couple of moments, until the light runs out, Jihoon wouldn’t change anything; because even the .3 he wants added to his GPA could tip the delicate balance that brought them together.)

The very first time Jihoon is grateful that he has someone is four days after moving into his dorm, which is the eighth week of their relationship. Jihoon’s resting face and silent demeanour are only passable if he already has friends to spent time with, and he’s accustomed to carrying himself like a stone cold because he’s accustomed to already having friends, but three days into orientation, when he and Soonyoung are sitting alone in the cafeteria, he comes to the shocking realisation that he really doesn’t, not anymore. “Think of it as an adventure!” Soonyoung had cheered, seemingly sharing none of Jihoon’s anxiety, and so he brings up Seokmin in the conversation as soon as possible just to see Soonyoung deflate.

That’s when Jihoon remembers that his regular-date-if-not-boyfriend is on campus too.

Jihoon and Junhui tended to only see each other alone, outside, and kept the focus of these dates on other activities because history had shown conversation was not their strong suit. They went out to eat, to see movies, to play tennis, and generally during the afternoon; their latest date had gone until nine thirty. Jeonghan called them the regency duo, out of fascination more than spite. And Jihoon could call Junhui, and meet up sometime tonight or this weekend, but he misses a crowd of loud voices gathered around a table, playing cards, pointing fingers, occasionally breaking out into song. Soonyoung’s met a few people when they get separated in groups during orientation, but there aren’t quite enough to satisfy, so Jihoon stands up to go make a phone call.

“Hello?” Junhui answers, after eight rings on his end and nine urges to hang up on Jihoon’s.

“Hey, it’s Jihoon.”

“Oh, hi! I haven’t heard from you in a while! We’ve both been busy. Have you moved in yet? Wait, I saw you yesterday.” Junhui continues, and Jihoon tries not to bash his head into the wall. Friends. Loneliness. Desperation. Right.

“Do you have time to get together later?” Jihoon replies, and then clarifies when Junhui’s silent for a few beats. “Like, not just us, but a few people? That we’ve met and stuff. To meet more people on campus.”

“My roommate and I were going to have some people over later tonight?” Junhui suggests; he’s justifyingly apprehensive but Jihoon is still annoyed by the hesitation. “You and Soonyoung are welcome to come too!”

“Is it fine if there are a few more?” Jihoon asks, marginally competitive now that Junhui’s brought up multiple friends.

“Sure! We can always move to one of the community rooms if need be.” Junhui says. “Hey, I’ve got a meeting with my adviser in ten minutes and need to leave now. But I’ll text you my room number?”

“Sounds good.” Jihoon responds, and after exchanging goodbye’s Jihoon returns to the cafeteria to tell Soonyoung about the plans.

Soonyoung is excited and makes them stop at a campus bookstore to buy a couple bags of chips before they make their way over to Junhui’s room, with a Jeonghan and Wonwoo replacement following them along, in a co-ed dorm on the southern half of campus and right next to the student activities building. There’s seven or so people there when Jihoon arrive, and all seven give the four newcomers a king’s welcome at the door.

“This is Soonyoung, and this is Jihoon. I-I know them from high school. We went to the same high school.” Junhui introduces them, and pulls a lanky guy looking through pizza menus on his laptop on the bottom bunk forward to meet them all.

“Hey, I’m Dovin.” The roommate greets, bringing a hand forward to shake Jihoon’s, Soonyoung’s, and the two others’. “I thought Junhui was joking about having a boyfriend but I could never really tell.” He confesses, ignoring the painful looking punch Junhui throws at his shoulder.

Because he’s got a… a boyfriend, based off what Junhui’s roommate thinks of them as, the room is three times as full as it would have been if Soonyoung had just invited the guys from his financial aid seminar. It’s bright, with different colours and washes of sound, and this campus still feels more like a hotel for now but he settled, even if just for now, even if just for a moment. And Junhui’s helping settle him.

He and Junhui get in the habit of seeing each other three or four times a week after that, vising classes, figuring out how to get to a grocery store, meeting up with guys off craiglist that want to sell them textbooks, and by the time their classes start they’re studying together every night in the graduate library; it’s next to a bubble tea cafe and Junhui’s addicted. Soonyoung had scheduled classes from eight to two, in order to leave room to join an inter mural sports team in the evening, but Jihoon had no such ambitions and his earliest class ever is at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Junhui’s is on a similar schedule, and Jihoon assumes the guy just likes to sleep in, but it turns out Junhui works one of the most attractive side jobs Jihoon’s ever heard of.

“I think you’re skipping some words.” Jihoon frowns, squinting at Junhui’s laptop. They’re on the latter’s bed, leaned against the headboard and each other, and Junhui has scans of One Piece volume 83 pulled up on his tablet while he types translations in sloppy text boxes on his laptop before sending them back to the scanner. The volume literally came out three hours ago, but Junhui is nearly done with the first chapter already though the fact he has to read them all out loud for Jihoon might be slowing him down. Jihoon has a forty page journal article on shifting markets in Chinese ports to read and summarise before class at one, and it’s three in the morning, but volume 82 had ended on a cliffhanger and what’s the point in dating an online translator if you can’t know what happens before everyone else?

“Gross.” Dovin comments, opening the door and nodding in greeting when he spots them both.

“Hey.” Jihoon responds, and two weeks ago he probably would have lifted his head off Junhui’s shoulder as soon as the door opened, but at this point he can’t be bothered. It’s comfortable.

“Flip.” Junhui requests, and squirms when Jihoon flicks him on the ear. “Please flip?” Jihoon swipes his finger across the tablet to display the next scan, and this time he’s the one squirming when Junhui kisses him on the head in response. “Thanks babe.”

Jihoon remembers their one year anniversary mostly because a month beforehand, Soonyoung drags him and Junhui back home to watch Seokmin’s last footie game in high school. He calls it their first double date because “watching Junhui work over a bowl of noodles and having you tell us to shut up every three minutes doesn’t count,” but Jihoon thinks this barely does because Seokmin won’t even be within speaking distance for the vast majority of it.

(Jihoon was really only as hesitant as he was so Junhui would feel the need to placate him with physical favours. It’s a skill Jihoon had taught himself after the first time he’d gotten mad when Junhui accidentally ate the last of his prawn crisps, and Junhui’s initial reaction had been to try and kiss him into submission.)

It’s spring pushing summer outside, and the weather reflects the shifting seasons with hoards of baby fruit flies that dampen Jihoon’s mood when he sits on the bleachers. He feels outdated and out of place from his seat on the bleachers, but can hold his head high despite the fact and the corridors he remembers feeling trapped have a puerile sheen to them. It’s easy to forget about the rest of the school on the bleachers though, when the game carries on and the score’s cutting it close, but Mingyu makes a goal during overtime and even Jihoon finds himself jumping up to holler.

“Hyung!” Mingyu picks him up, and Jihoon wrinkles his nose but doesn’t complain about feeling like he just got sprayed down with the younger’s sweat. “Junhui! I can’t believe you guys are still together, oh my god.” Mingyu exclaims, moving onto Soonyoung immediately after, and Jihoon peers up at Junhui’s reaction to the comment.

“We’re still together. It’s been almost a year.” Jihoon throws out there, still watching Junhui, who stops gazing off to meet Jihoon’s eye now.

“When we went to Starbucks the first time.” Junhui begins, and Jihoon starts fidgeting, not wanting to relive the memory. “The entire forty-five minutes we were there, I was praying someone would pull the fire alarm so I could go home.”

“Well I think it worked, because I almost pulled the fire alarm myself on my way back from the bathroom.” Jihoon replies, slapping Junhui with the sleeves of his shirt when he laughs.

“On our second date, the one where we went to see the movie Soonyoung recommended.” Junhui continues.

“Yeah, it was great.” Jihoon nods, and sets a brisk pace and he starts walking back to the parking lot, where in theory Soonyoung and Seokmin will be waiting by Junhui’s car. Junhui follows.

“You fell asleep. And I almost left, but I would have felt bad if someone stole your phone or something, so I just moved a row up until the movie ended. You didn’t even notice.” The rest of Junhui’s story is interrupted with laughs when Jihoon begins an assault on the sides of his waist, pinching and tickling until Junhui concedes.

The sun is burning from above and there’s a cool breeze trailing in from the west and there are bugs everywhere and probably ants in Jihoon’s socks and Junhui is doubled over, laughing as he holds his sides, as Jihoon tries to walk on without him five times before just giving up and joining him.

This is the first time Jihoon starts to see destiny, in the lines around Junhui’s eyes and the the heat of their clasped hands and in the fact that Junhui is within reaching distance right now, in all of time, in all of space. Three minutes later Seokmin pops a chip bag too hard, covering the entire backseat in Cheeto bits, and Jihoon’s faith is lost once more.

They break up on a Tuesday morning, over instant coffee in Jihoon’s trashed apartment, seeing each other for the first time in five days, which also happened to be the longest span of time they’d spent apart from freshmen year until then. Jihoon can tell it a lot of ways.

He can blame the entire thing on Soonyoung, who had decided to move into off-campus housing with Jihoon and their friend Mark from Econ class; they had two weeks to find a fourth name for the lease before they lost it to another group of guys on the waiting list. Soonyoung had immediately told Jihoon to ask Junhui; Jihoon had immediately balked and told Soonyoung that Junhui had found a place. It would have worked just fine, even though Junhui was still on the market, if out of everyone on the entire ing campus Soonyoung had gotten that fourth signature from someone that wasn’t Junhui’s current roommate.

He can blame it on Dovin, first for agreeing to sign on without giving Jihoon a warning, then for telling Junhui about his apartment plans next, and lastly for not being there to stop their ensuing fight. They dig up past grievances—Jihoon’s inattentiveness, Junhui’s nosiness, Jihoon’s inability to let things go, and the ease at which Junhui will just forget.

“I’m not an investment.” Junhui declares, voice always disgustingly level-headed as he lays it out like everything is all in Jihoon’s head. “I’m not going to be worth one day for you to get rich off of and then worth less one day for you to ditch. You can’t just anticipate what I’m going to do and act on your own and then keep not telling me things.”

“Well do you want to live together?!”

“Do you even want to be together?” Junhui asks, and in just three seconds that exact voice is unsettling rather than rage inducing. “It’s like I don’t mean anything.” Junhui continues, as if every word is being ripped out of his heart. “When you forget to tell me things. Don’t tell me things.”

“I-” Jihoon starts, and then takes in the room. It doesn’t feel like Junhui’s room—it feels an extension of his own. He’s got a leftover cardigan draped over a chair in the corner, one of the various bottles strewn across the sink in their bathroom is probably his, and well Junhui. He’s part of it too.

“Well?”

“I really like you.” Jihoon begins, ignoring the part of him that says this is unwarranted and uncalled for and too much.

This is the part of the story where Jihoon starts blaming himself.

“I don’t know why I like you or why I want to be together or if I want to be together or- I don’t know anything. And I don’t know why we’re not just friends, like me and Soonyoung or you and Dovin or anyone else really, I don’t know why we’re dating instead of just and I don’t know what makes our relationship different besides and whatnot but- basically this is all in my head.” Jihoon pauses for a bit, but Junhui doesn’t interrupt, so he fills the distance with more words. “I really like you and I just made it all up. I made up a crush and I made up whatever we had and none of it is explainable or facts but I just imagined a reason that we should be together to justify why we should be together and then I asked you out. Because I like you.”

“Are you trying to be romantic right now?” Junhui had responded.

(Those words will haunt Jihoon for years.)

It’s somewhat okay after that, okay for weeks to come, but the potential for separation brings a crack into the relationship, and time continues to batter them until the divide grows wider, and it’s not like Jihoon falls out of love, it’s just that he’s too angry to remember he’s in it. This is the fun way to tell the story, or at least it is at first—blaming Wen ing son of a Junhui.

Junhui who never ing learns to shut up about himself, who never gets the hint that sometimes when people rant about their problems it’s not an invitation to share your significantly less important ones. Who responds to “my grandmother died last night” with “my father left when I was three” and “I don’t like the way your mother talks about my body” with “just ignore her; she hates my nose” and “will you shut up?! I have an exam in four hours!” with “but I have to sub this episode by tonight or the other team will beat us to uploading!”

Junhui who always has his head buried in some psychosocial book about Introverts or Silence, but can’t read other people for the life of him, who can’t tell when calling Soonyoung “Sweaty” transitions from funny into uncomfortable, who will prod in response to a poke war far past it’s appropriate duration.

Junhui who complains about Jihoon being reserved and guarded when getting Junhui to share is like willing the dead back to life. There’s bits that Dovin has overheard, bobs that Soonyoung’s stumbled onto, and scraps of Junhui that Lianghui has tripped over and Jihoon is tired of running around trying to see these sides of his own boyfriend for himself.

This is the most exciting way for Jihoon to tell the story, blaming the ex boyfriend, and probably the most traditional, but the more Jihoon dwells on Junhui the more other memories will crop up too. So he deletes Junhui’s number, starts avoiding their mutual friends, stops checking social media, and starves this plant dry until it dies. Soonyoung’s concerns are ignored; Seokmin’s texts receive one word responses; even Jeonghan calls him from the other side of the country at one point to try and get under his skin but Jihoon stands strong. But three months after the breakup, walking into Starbucks is what starts this cycle all over again.

“How are you today, sir?” The cashier asks, sharpie at the ready. Jihoon knows this cashier couldn’t give half a ; Jihoon still doesn’t know what to say.

He can blame Soonyoung, or Dovin, or himself, or Junhui. He can also cut straight past the past and skip to the now—I ended a 718 day relationship twelve days before our second year anniversary and found his coffee mug in my sink so I ran out of the house and ended up here.

I found out yesterday that my exboyfriend and his exroommate are ing and I can’t help but wonder if this really started after we broke up.

When I was 18 I thought relationships and feelings and other people were within my grasp; I thought that the universe was finally giving back to me, but there is no universe or fate or destiny there’s just pain and birth and a slow descent into the grave.

I’m going to be the best man at my best friend’s wedding in three months but I was supposed to get married first.

“Can I take your order?” The cashier asks again, laughing sheepishly and growing increasingly alarmed as he processes Jihoon's silence, unbrushed hair, and house slippers.

“Coffee, cream, no sugar. Venti please.”