00.1

Awake. Taekwoon was definitely awake. There was always that sense of disappointment and the heavy sense of duty that welcomed him in the morning when the fog of alcohol and pain thinned and he was lucid. Another day. He had managed to survive yet another day.

"Do you ever think about the numbers zero?" She had asked him. It was a strange world the one they were living, in and Taekwoon felt often deeply inadequate to understand the challenges of their time. Taekwoon was a number two and he was happy. Despite knowing that there were people out there who hardly ever were happy, it was difficult to understand the feeling.

"Honestly, not all."

She had looked at him sideways. He and she came from very different family situations. Taekwoon had grown up in a peaceful home, his parents were a perfect pair of numbers two and their parents before them were too as well. His sisters were all married to their soulmates for years. Of course he was not blind, he knew that their world wasn't perfect but understand the pain numbers zero went through? Taekwoon didn't have the presumption to think that he could even vaguely grasp the concept.

"Call me selfish, but I'm always so happy that there is no room for anything else in my head," Taekwoon had confessed, making her smile.

"I'm happy too. But a lot is going on and I'm worried. Our daughter will grow into a world that doesn't know how to make peace with itself, Taekwoon," she said her belly. Taekwoon had intertwined their hands then. They had good genes, Taekwoon's family had been numbers two for generations and though his wife could not boast the same, the probability that their child resulted in being a number zero was incredibly minimal. But not nonexistent, a voice in his head reminded him.

"Whatever happens we'll face it together. You, me and our daughter. And this is enough to give me courage." Taekwoon had answered making her smile even wider.

If he closed his eyes and focused, he could still see the shadow of that smile. He could still remember it.

Taekwoon suddenly opened his eyes but had to close them again because the sunlight was wounding him violently. He grunted annoyed because after what he had been drinking, having the sun on his face was the last thing he wanted. He rubbed his cheek on the pillow trying to get back to sleep but while doing so he realized that it was rougher than he remembered, like the cloth that covers sofas. Then, he thought it was strange that the sunlight was hitting him in the face because he never opened the windows in the morning, he could not stand, in fact, to clearly see the outlines of a house that looked too empty.

He rose abruptly, throwing a wounded groan because he had just managed to worsen his headache and, at the same time, had triggered a terrible feeling of nausea. He violently broke free of the blanket that was enveloping his body and nearly fell off the couch while doing so.

"Hold on there. Don’t you dare make another move," said a young voice from somewhere in front of him. Taekwoon froze. Yes, that definitely wasn’t his home unless one of his hallucinations had suddenly learned to speak. Lazily, he opened one eye.

There was a guy sitting in the armchair across from him, probably not even in his twenties, who was staring at him with suspicion. He was holding a lamp in a hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. The scent momentarily distracted him but then he remembered that he did not know what was going on and so he opened his mouth.

"Where am I?" He asked in a whisper, feeling his throat horribly dry.

The boy sighed as if he didn’t like what he had to say.

"This is my home. Well, technically this is Hakyeon’s home but it is also my home, Sanghyuk’s and Hakyeon’s home. Hakyeon hyung is, in case you were wondering, the one who brought you here last night. You were so drunk though that I wouldn’t be surprised if you had forgotten everything. Hakyeon hyung is also the one who held your head over the toilet and has probably prevented you from coming to a bad end." The boy said with a sarcastic tone. Taekwoon found him a bit cheeky but decided not to comment. He couldn’t care less about this brat’s rude tone, he had other pressing facts to clear out if he wanted to go away from there as soon as possible.

"Who is Hakyeon?" He asked, sitting down on the couch and rubbing his temples in an attempt to ease the pain. When he looked up he saw that the boy was looking at him in disbelief, his already large eyes wide with surprise.

He heard him mutter something that sounded like "this syndrome to pick up strays had exceeded all limits" before yelling a "Sanghyuk!"

Taekwoon winced in pain. Was it really necessary to shout so loud?

"What!" Another shout came from somewhere above the house.

"Come down, now!" The boy said, leaving the cup on the side table and standing up, grabbing the lamp tightly like it was a weapon. Taekwoon looked puzzled almost unable to believe that his end would have been at the hands of a snotty brat. He raised an eyebrow, but the boy looked determined. He heard footsteps approaching and then another kid even taller than the first boy, came down the stairs. Despite his size, he looked younger.

Fantastic, he was being held hostage by two brats.

"Sanghyuk, he said he does not know who Hakyeon is!" The older boy said as if it was something unforgivable. The newcomer frowned.

"How come he doesn’t know who Hakyeon is? I thought he was a friend of his- I mean, hyung had been holding his head over the toilet," the boy, Sanghyuk, said gesturing.

"Apparently not!" The older boy exclaimed exasperated indicating Taekwoon with the lamp. "This thing has to stop! I mean, I am aware that if it weren’t for his maternal instinct we wouldn’t be here, but a stranger? And a drunk one on top of that?" Taekwoon told himself that he should feel offended but honestly none of the things that came out from this boy’s mouth was a lie. He even agreed with the hard feelings he seemed to harbor for this Hakyeon’s habits. Who on the earth nowadays kidnapped drunken strangers and brought them home to look after them?

"Hakyeon will be here soon, it should not take long for him to come back from the supermarket and then we ask him some questions," Sanghyuk tried to reason. "In the meantime, let's not jump to conclusions. Even if it were like that, I doubt that he represents a threat in the state he is now. Look at him, he is not even able to stand up properly," the younger boy said, pointing to the pathetic state of Taekwoon with a gesture. Taekwoon tried to glare at him with a defining look but he was certain that his hangover wasn’t helping his cause. Besides the kid was right.

"Plus, Hakyeon would have never let him in the house if he represented a danger and Jaehwan would not have helped him get in the car," the boy concluded with a shrug.

"Not that Jaehwan hyung is the most reasonable person in this world," said the first guy skeptical.

"Now don’t be dramatic Binnie," the boy retorted glaring at him. The first boy, Binnie, sighed raising his arms in surrender.

Now, of all the weird things that the two brats had said, this was the first that had made sense.

"Jaehwan? Lee Jaehwan?" Taekwoon asked, voice coming out in a rasping whisper. God, he would have given anything for a glass of water.

"You know Jaehwan hyung?" asked the boy named Sanghyuk with an unreadable look. Taekwoon nodded. The two boys looked at each other in surprise.

At that moment, however, the sound of the front door opening took them by surprise. A man with black hair and with vivid eyes stepped through the door holding a shopping bag in his hands. When he saw all of them gathered in the living room, he smiled. Taekwoon had to look away from such a genuine positivity

"You are all awake! Great!" He said cheerfully.

"Hakyeon hyung!" Said in chorus the two boys.

"What's up? Since when you are so happy to see me?" Then noticing the tension in the air he looked around and noticed that Hongbin was holding the lamp in his right hand.

"Hongbin what are you doing with that lamp in your hand?"

It followed some idle talk in which the two boys asked the man who had just entered what was happening and why he had brought Taekwoon, a stranger, in their house.

"He is not a stranger, I know him. Well, more or less," the man corrected himself, earning a glare from the boy named Hongbin.

"This not the time to chat, though. We have a guest and we haven’t had breakfast yet.” Taekwoon watched as this Hakyeon unceremoniously passed the bag to Sanghyuk and came up to him with a radiant smile plastered on his face. He looked at him, his eyes narrowed as he tried to put this man, the person who had dragged him to that place claiming to be a savior, somewhere in the hazy memories of his head.

"I bet that under that headache you're hungry. I hope you like pancakes and coffee?" He asked then politely stopping two meters away from him. A distance that, he must have realized, it was the maximum his guest could tolerate.

Taekwoon, confused and puzzled, didn’t know what to answer and just stared at him. Something akin to understanding seemed to pass over Hakyeon’s face. "Oh, I'm so sorry, this must look so strange to you, you probably don’t remember well what happened last night," Hakyeon said sitting down slowly at the opposite end of where he was sitting. "Last night I found you passed out in the alley next to my community center. I tried to wake you up but I couldn’t but I also couldn’t abandon you there and I didn’t think it was a good idea to call the authorities either. So with the help of a friend, I brought you here," he concluded simply.

However, since none of his words had provoked a reaction in Taekwoon, Hakyeon looked worried. Another shadow passed over the man's face. "Wait, do you remember me, do you? I’m Cha Hakyeon, I woke you up the first time and then we met at the supermarket. No?"

For the first time, the man's smile seemed to falter. Taekwoon didn’t know what had happened then, perhaps it was the fact that he realized he was the one in the wrong and that he was taking advantage of the kindness of strangers even if he had never asked for it. Or maybe it was the fact that this Hakyeon seemed able to talk with him even when he did not speak as if it were easy to read his mind when anyone except his soul mate had never managed to do so. Or, finally, it was the fact that this man, who probably was his age, seemed genuinely affected by his indifference which was weird in ten million different ways, because what could he, a dead man walking, mean to this person who seemed to be made instead of bottled up happy solution? It was obvious that the two of them had nothing to spare.

The thing was that for once he tried, he tried to figure out where he could have seen his face, where he had already felt this irritating sensation of inadequacy, like shadows that feel threatened by the sun, and it was then that he remembered having already experienced this feeling.

"You are the man who offered me coffee," he said in a serious tone.

"Exactly!" He exclaimed triumphantly, clapping. "See?" The man said then, turning towards the first boy who had stayed there in the living room, unlike the other guy who went to the kitchen to put away the groceries, to watch over him, the crazy stranger, as if he could do something threatening against the other man. Taekwoon snorted internally. He did not represent a danger to anyone except for himself even if he had to mentally agree with the guy that he perfectly matched to the definition of lunatic stranger.

Taekwoon realized then how much out of place he was in there. He jumped up and it was a bad idea because he was attacked by another wave of nausea.

Hakyeon stood up, worried, but didn’t dare to get closer than he already was. "You can leave whenever you want. But please eat something first. I'd feel better to know you are well fed." Taekwoon wanted to say no, because who was this man to tell him what to do, he told himself, however, he knew that in reality, all his irritation stemmed from his incapacity to bear all that kindness, something that hadn’t received for such a long, long time that it was a physical pain. He also realized though that in those conditions he would not have managed to walk for too long, considering he didn’t even know his location. He needed to wash his face and clear his mind and only then, he could try to figure out how to go away as quickly as possible.

"The bathroom is over there," said Hakyeon reading him once again and Taekwoon forced himself not to be dominated by yet another motion of irritation.

Taekwoon however, decided not to comment, and without saying a word went to the bathroom. There, he found clean towels stacked on the washing machine and he wondered if they had been prepared for him, but he tried not to think about it. He owed them nothing, he owed Hakyeon nothing, it wasn’t his fault that this guy had a compulsion to mind others’ business. Inwardly, however, he was grateful.

He rinsed his face with cold water and soap, being careful not to accidentally look at his reflection in the mirror. He must have looked like garbage but he could not care less because that was how he felt inside, dead.

He looked at his clothes. There, nothing could be done, they were all crumpled and there was an unmistakable patch of alcohol on his pants but he didn’t have a change and did not want to ask for anything lent because he was afraid that he would get it. So after rinsing his mouth several times, he decided to go to the kitchen.

He paused in the doorway, looking uncertain. The first guy, Hongbin, was setting the table, the youngest was taking the coffee from the machine while Hakyeon was warming up pancakes in a pan. Taekwoon was tempted to get out of there. There were too many people in a single room, too much light, too much everything. But Hakyeon as though feeling his presence looked up from the pan and smiled.

"Ah Taekwoon you can sit, we are almost done." Taekwoon froze but then like that time he had followed Hakyeon at the supermarket, he saw himself follow his suggestion and sat. He told himself that it was the smell of coffee that had tempted him.

Once they were all seated at the table, no one spoke anymore and everyone seemed more interested in their food. Hongbin every now and then threw him wary glances, but he looked pretty busy with the phone to glare at him too often, whereas Sanghyuk threw curious glances between a huge bite of food and another. He tried not to look at Hakyeon as he poured a liter of coffee in his cup and nibbled at a plain pancake.

Slowly some conversation aroused here and there but fortunately, Taekwoon was left alone. Not having a real interest but not being able to filter the noise he heard Hakyeon ask Sanghyuk about school and Hongbin babble of his work in the university library. He tried with all his being to ignore the chatter but it was difficult to ignore them, to filter out the melodic voice of Hakyeon, commenting, laughing, asking. The two boys and Hakyeon seemed to have nothing in common except for the roof over their heads, they led different lives, had different ages and didn’t resemble each other at all so surely there couldn’t be brothers. Yet they acted as a family.

The fork clattered loudly on the plate. Taekwoon had to get out. Now.

"Are you okay?" asked Hakyeon but Taekwoon didn’t want to stay there to hear him, he jumped up and without another word, without even apology or to say thank you in front of such selfless kindness, dashed toward the front door.

It did not matter if he didn’t know where he was. He would walk until he had recognized a familiar part of the city.

"Wait!" came the voice of Hakyeon that managed to stop him before he opened the door, hand on the doorknob.

"We are a couple kilometers away from the community center, in the east part of the city. If you go to the left you will find a bus stop. I would have taken you back ... but I..." the voice of Hakyeon died. Taekwoon tried not to look, but although he did not care anything about himself or of someone who wasn’t his daughter Sunmi, he said that for once he wanted to try again to be someone decent. There was a time when he would have never behaved like that, but that Taekwoon no longer existed, it had died with her that day. So the only thing he, in the end, succeeded to say was feeble whispered, "thank you." Even though he knew it was not enough.

He opened the front door then and ran away.

If he had turned around again, he would have seen Hakyeon smile.

Jaehwan felt that the roles were reversed. Just a couple of days before he had teased Hakyeon for being distracted but now that he knew who was a distraction, Jaehwan found himself prey to the same distraction. Jaehwan never thought of his past, he liked him to stay with his mind in the present, leaving his past where it was, behind him. However, he had never thought to see Taekwoon ever again and certainly not under those circumstances.

Taekwoon had been his classmate and best friend in high school. They were an odd couple of friends, Jaehwan lively and talkative whereas Taekwoon was taciturn and reserved. They liked the same music though and they shared the same degree of malice, for they were the kind of people who enjoyed pulling pranks on the others. Taekwoon had often been the mastermind of the plans Jaehwan then took care to implement.

Jaehwan had been sorry to lose sight of each other after high school, he had been so sorry. But he would have been even more sorry if he had told him the truth, that his life was had turned quite different from the happy one Taekwoon was preparing to live with his soul mate.

What would he say if he knew that Jaehwan had accepted an arranged marriage between zeros when both for years had commented with horror that fate?

Jaehwan could not tell him. So he didn’t, and when their paths took separate ways because of the different choices of life careers, he took the opportunity to put as much distance as possible between himself and Taekwoon, between himself and everything that reminded him of a happy life that would not be returned.

It would have been a new Jaehwan, a new beginning and he would have to live with it.

He had met Hakyeon in college but his friendship with his current colleague and best friend hadn’t cemented until after the facts of the blast, that had changed the lives of so many people, including his. And so instead of an artistic career, Jaehwan had agreed to teach at the community center, to convey to others what he had learned and tried for the second time to bury the past that weighed like a boulder on his chest. He had buried himself  twice and was surprised that he was still standing there.

"Hyung?" Jaehwan roused himself from his thoughts and, in doing so, he saw that Sanghyuk had stopped paying attention to his homework in favor to keep watching Jaehwan intently. He cleared his throat.

"Is everything alright Hyuk? Is there something you don’t understand?" He asked in his most cheerful tone. Sanghyuk looked him up and Jaehwan felt strangely nervous.

Sanghyuk had grown so much, had he not seen him get taller and become a young man before his eyes? So many things had changed but Sanghyuk still looked at him, even after all that time, with the same adoration of when he was thirteen. However, he was no longer a child and under his gaze Jaehwan didn’t know what reaction would have been better to have.

"You look very pensive today, are you sure you’re okay? You are not getting sick, aren’t you?" They were sitting next to each other in the study hall of the community center. Sanghyuk often came to Jaehwan to ask for help with his homework and that Saturday afternoon was no exception. At first, the help had been certainly necessary but Jaehwan suspected that, lately, it hadn't been like that at all. But he had been Sanghyuk’s tutor for years now, ever since Hakyeon had crossed the threshold of the center holding hands with a lost child all alone in the world, and he was used to his role. He had been so innocent and hadn’t deserved not even one of the things that had happened to him. The heart of Jaehwan had tightened at the thought of someone so young experiencing a more severe pain and the same grief he felt. Jaehwan had decided to do something, he had to see the child smile again. And that was how he had agreed to be his tutor even before Hakyeon had asked him and with time he also became babysitter when Hakyeon worked too much, a friend when he had needed some advice and even their personal chauffeur when later both Sanghyuk and Hongbin had needed a ride because they had missed the bus. Jaehwan had taken him under his wing until he had not seen Sanghyuk become the lively child who he had wished him to be. But now he wondered if there had been something wrong, something unforgivable in his way of educating Sanghyuk. He had wanted to see him smile and had pledged to make it happen but in doing so he had put too much of himself and had ended up misleading his protégé.

So when Sanghyuk leaned forward, his face close on purpose, Jaehwan stiffened. Instinctively he planted his hand on his face preventing him from going further.

"I’m fine. I'm just tired Hyuk,” said Jaehwan trying to remain composed.

"If you say so. It’s not like you to be so silent hyung and I worry. "

"It’s not the duty of the children to worry about the adults. I'm fine, "Jaehwan said waving his hand, trying to minimize.

"I have long since ceased to be a child hyung, you just don’t want to admit it," The blood froze in the older’s veins but he tried to act as if nothing had happened as if what his pupil had just told him, hadn’t affected him in the least.

"Even if it were, being seventeen or eighteen does not make you an adult Sanghyuk. And now stop looking for excuses to forget your homework or no dance classes for you next week. "

 Sanghyuk shook his head and seemed to want to answer, but he realized that his answer would have sounded like the tantrum of a child. So he just shook his head and say, "we'll see," before returning his attention to his duties. Jaehwan sighed. Until when would he be able to maintain the control of the situation before having to get Hakyeon involved? He didn’t want to hurt Sanghyuk, let alone embarrass him but he had to understand that what he believed he wanted, could not be real. But as long as Sanghyuk still listened to him, he would try not to involve his guardian. Yet he also knew that Sanghyuk's eighteenth birthday was approaching and soon Jaehwan would have run out of excuses. Sanghyuk would be by all means an adult and the elder feared that then, the younger would come to claim what he had promised. Jaehwan prayed for that to never happen.

Yet time hadn’t proved him wrong?

Jaehwan had loved this child like it was his own younger brother and had hoped to be for him a brotherly figure, someone he could rely on. But now he lived with the echo of the words of love that Sanghyuk had never missed to renew every year on his birthday, since that first confession when he was fourteen.

"I love you." Jaehwan was checking that the classrooms were in order before he had to close them and leave.

"Oh Sanghyukkie, I'm almost done here, wait for me in the hall and I’ll give you a ride home." Sanghyuk had looked at him with his big frightened eyes.

"Didn’t you hear me hyung, saying I love you?" Jaehwan still thinking the kid was only being his  endearing self, answered, "I love you too, Sanghyuk, a lot." He had approached Sanghyuk then, to ruffle his hair but Sanghyukhad stepped back.

"No, you don’t get it. I mean I love you, really love you. The love you see in romantic movies, the love of the numbers two, the love my mother and my father had shared once. That kind of love." Sanghyuk had said, stomping his feet on the ground. Jaehwan was so shocked that he didn’t know what to say, so he stepped back in turn. What was going on, was he in an alternate world in which everything had turned upside down?

"Sanghyuk, you know that I care for you, you are my student and Hakyeon’s child. You think you love me and that's fine, I feel flattered either way. But I'm the same age as Hakyeon and you're very, very young." He tried to reason.

"I know I'm young. I know I’m still a child," he saw big fat tears forming at the corners of Sanghyuk’s eyes and he wanted to kick himself. He had just succeeded in the one thing he had always wanted to avoid since he had known him. Make him suffer.

"But one day I will not be one anymore. One day I’ll be an adult too, so get ready Lee Jaehwan!"

Jaehwan still smiled at the memory of that statement, violent, and at the same time so pure and innocent. That time he had hugged Sanghyuk like a big brother would have done with his younger brother and had said,

"Then I will prepare. However many things may change over time and it can happen you won’t feel the same in a few years. But I promise if that won’t be the case we'll talk about it. Until then you will remain my student, even though my favorite, and I’ll be your tutor." Jaehwan had tried to be nice, he thought that a white lie would have spared Sanghyuk a pain and that with time the child would have naturally forgotten those words. Everyone, after all, had had a crush on their teacher at least once, but no one was there to tell it years later. So he made that promise with lightness, not really believing he would have to maintain it years later.

But Sanghyuk was seventeen now and in the past three years on his birthday, he had renewed his words of love, again and again.

Jaehwan loved that child as if he were one of his own family, but Sanghyuk still had much to learn, so much of the life to enjoy and he was too young to understand that he, Jaehwan, was the worst number zero he could ever choose. It was his job to make him understand, even if it meant breaking not only his heart but his own too.