The apartment is cold. The fresh, untouched snow of newly rekindled silence covers the corridor between Junhong and Himchan’s rooms.

Himchan hasn’t been around much; Junhong has only seen him a few times in the two weeks since Yongguk left. He still hears Himchan’s hacking cough in the dead of the night sometimes, but he doesn’t offer him tea again. He avoids Himchan’s room when he cleans the apartment in the fear of Himchan coming from work early and finding a reason to be furious at him. It’s lonely.

Despite everything, jealousy nips at Junhong as he pulls his hat lower over his ears on his way to school. Himchan at least got to say goodbye properly. He knows what Yongguk thinks of him: Himchan knows that they’re friends, and that Yongguk respects and cares for him. No matter how many times Junhong tries to recall their parting, he can’t decipher how disappointed Yongguk was in him. If the way Himchan told him about the cigarettes wasn’t enough, then Junhong’s muteness during his farewell must have been: after all the effort Yongguk put in to make something bright of Junhong’s future, all Junhong did was blow it out in his face and let the smoke shroud it.

The exam goes well enough, if a little anticlimatic: weeks of preparation for an hour and a half of sitting at a desk in silence. Junhong knows he should feel relieved that it’s over, but he can’t help flicking through his revision notes afterwards, glancing at the neat black additions to his blue scrawls. It’s like his last bond with Yongguk has been broken now. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever see him again, and even if he does, what then? He ruined it.

That evening, Junhong watches television for the first time since Yongguk went. He was scared of hearing Yongguk’s name in the announcement of the dead, but he’s realised that not knowing what’s going on at all is worse. He can’t pretend he doesn’t care.

The anchorwoman smiles faintly before continuing. More and more soldiers are being drafted. In an emotional clip appealing to citizens’ patriotism, the army says it needs new men to volunteer and sign up to protect the country, or else it’ll be infiltrated by the enemy. Junhong wants to roll his eyes at the drama of it all, and clearly he’s not the only unconvinced one in the country, if the army has resorted to drafting. The only protecting going on is of interests, and human lives is not one of them.

[continue reading here!! - link to the chapter on ao3]