Part 5

A second might as well have been a minute.

They stared at each other, the moment dragging out like it existed in a vacuum. Sunghoon’s eyes were wide, his eyelashes fluttering in disbelief like he couldn’t believe the sight in front of him.

The look on Sunghoon’s face made Jiwon’s breath catch in his throat. In the same way a magnet attracted its counterpart, it felt like something pulling him forward. Before Jiwon knew it, his feet were moving and he was about to rush towards the man that had once been his everything.

But at once, it all seemed to go awry. As Sunghoon noticed Jiwon moving, he stiffened and his face fell. The moment was broken and Jiwon came to a dead stop when he saw the woman that walked over and sat on the chair Jiwon used to occupy, the brown curtain of her hair obscuring her face. Sunghoon was looking between her and Jiwon with a panicked expression. An uncomfortable feeling filled Jiwon’s chest, choking him. So, in that situation, he could only do one thing.

He turned away and ran.

~*~

Jiwon was leaning against a wall, just around the corner of a store. The poisonous thoughts curled through his mind. He thought back to the time when they’d recorded that reunion show. That time he had left early because he couldn’t stand just a moment more of being so close to Sunghoon and everything being so wrong. It made his skin itch sitting next to him on the sofa while trying to keep the mood up for the recording. Jiwon hadn’t understood his own feelings yet at the time. He couldn’t explain why he had wanted to curse when one of the staff there had told him the next time he was recording that Sunghoon had come looking for him after the show.

In a perfect world, that should have been the moment when he would have realized he was still attached to Sunghoon. But Jiwon didn’t try to call him after that and had continued feeling angry over all that had made it go wrong in the first place.

Instead, he’d drowned those feelings in drinking and partying. That time was a blur in his mind and he honestly couldn’t remember a lot of other things from back then. The light at the end of the tunnel had been meeting her again during a short trip abroad. Things had changed. Later, his family had been happy over the news of his marriage, his mother and father overjoyed over the prospect of grandchildren. It was the first time they were proud of him in years.

Jiwon himself had started feeling like a human being again.

Now shame was joining all the other bad things he felt. Jiwon closed his eyes and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes as he leaned his head back against the wall.

It was also at that time he had started realizing things. Missing Sunghoon was a dark hole in his chest that had grown bigger and bigger over time, until he just couldn’t ignore it anymore. It lead to that phone call. All that he could hear in his mind was the curt way Sunghoon had said “congratulations” and ended the call, not allowing Jiwon to finish what he had planned on saying.

When he thought about it more, it might have been for the best. Jiwon had never been good with words and whatever he had planned on saying would have been just a hopeless plea for something impossible. Thinking he could have asked for forgiveness and win only friendship back. Was it such a bad thing, since Sunghoon had not only been his lover, but