A flurry of red, yellow, and orange leaves swirled in the air. Taekwoon puffed his way down the sidewalk in the frigid air of the changing seasons. His arms were crossed with textbooks pressed to his chest as he crossed the university campus for fifth time that day. He had walked past the same things so many times today that he decided to take a detour; take in something new that he hadn’t already viewed on the campus.

    So he took the sidewalk that led him between the art and music buildings, an area of campus the mathematics and computer science major had never laid foot on prior to now. His eyes took in new twisted paths, new murals put up by past and current students, new buildings, new trees. And that was when he spotted him. Another student, seemingly lithe and frail, leaned against the largest weeping willow on campus. A book was settled within his fingers, the fringe of his hair blowing in the gentle breeze. He looked much too comfortable for it to be approaching freezing temperatures, Taekwoon thought.

    Nonetheless, Taekwoon trudged along. He eventually made it to his destination of his suite on campus. His roommate, Hongbin, an uptight and quite privileged first year student, wasn’t home at the moment, so Taekwoon had the one room box to himself.

    Settling on his bed, Taekwoon thumbed through the dense textbooks he had just carried across campus. The boy from beneath the tree flickered within his mind when he did this, his supple and gentle figure appearing in his mind like a perfect image.

    Taekwoon’s eyebrows knitted in confusion, trying to push the image from his head. His eyes glanced over the words printed on his textbooks, asking for a distraction. ‘Advanced Linear Algebra,’ ‘Discrete Mathematics and its Applications,’ and ‘Introduction to AutoCAD’ all stared back at him; dulled, lifeless colors embroidering the front and back covers of all three books. Much less lively than the student beneath the tree.

    “Why am I thinking about him so much?” Taekwoon thought aloud. “He’s just another student who goes here. Maybe he’s not even a student. Maybe he’s someone’s kid. He looked pretty young,” he talked to himself. “Ugh, why does justifying it even matter? I’m never going to see him again!” But that sentence brought an familiar, but surprising, surge of discomfort. Taekwoon paused; he knew himself, he knew this feeling. But why was it popping up now?

    Just then, the door to the suite swung open, and a thin, dimpled student walked in, throwing his backpack on the floor with a disinterested huff. “Oh, you’re here,” the student said with even less excitement. Taekwoon cocked an eyebrow. Hongbin was home.

    “Hongbin, you’re back,” Taekwoon more so stated than he asked. Hongbin hummed, stripping himself of the clothes he had been wearing.

    “You should’ve seen it, I had three of them after me this time,” Hongbin chuckled, replacing his shirt with a clean one. He kicked the first one beneath his bed. Taekwoon peered up from staring at his textbooks.

    “Three girls?” he asked. Hongbin nodded, his dimples appearing as he smirked to himself.

    “Ahh, I know I’m handsome, but once one started running, her friends joined her. It was like a mob was forming, coming for South Korea’s most precious person. I mean… Am I that damn gorgeous?” Hongbin stepped towards Taekwoon on the bed, flashing a smile and highlighting his jawline. Taekwoon rolled his eyes, faking a gag when Hongbin turned away. “Anyways, I thought you had to go to the bookstore because they overcharged your check?” the younger boy glanced before continuing to strip.

    “Already took care of it, that’s why I have three textbooks with me,” Taekwoon answered, an air of tension in his voice as he replied. He could hear Hongbin scoff in the background.

    “It was just a couple hundred dollars, I don’t see why it was a big deal,” the first year student droned.

    “Well, Hongbin, unlike you, whose father owns several companies and whose mother is a famous host on TV for home shopping, I have to depend on myself for my own income. Which is very little. So a couple hundred dollars is actually a lot for someone like me,” Taekwoon bit back. Hongbin just rolled his eyes, muttering something about poor people.

    What was bothering Taekwoon more than Hongbin’s snuffy attitude was that the boy from under the tree was still on his mind. Would he still be there if he went back?

    Taekwoon made a face as he thought quietly, why was he popping back up in his mind? But he was curious to see how long the boy sat under the tree. Did he not have classes to attend and complete homework for? And what was his name? What was he reading? Why did he want to read outside when it was so cold?

    “Taekwoon? Taekwoon!” Hongbin shouted to bring the boy back to reality. Taekwoon shook his head slightly, focusing his eyes on Hongbin who had fully changed by now. “What were you doing, dreaming about money?” he teased.

    Without a word, Taekwoon got up and left the suite, leaving Hongbin shouting his name until the door shut in his face. He had tried retracing his steps to find the same tree he had found the boy underneath. All he remembered was the general direction, but there were many weeping willow trees on the campus, and after crossing every building that he knew was in the direction of the art and music area, he still hadn’t found the boy. Maybe he left?

    Defeated, Taekwoon sighed, turning back to go back to his suite. He hoped Hongbin wouldn’t still be there when he arrived.

_____

    Taekwoon groaned as the sun rose, peeping through the sheer curtains in the suite. Hongbin wasn’t there when he arrived back, and it seemed that Hongbin never came back at all through the night to sleep.

    Hopping out of bed, Taekwoon looked at the time; it was 8:42 in the morning. Most of last night Taekwoon had spent completing homework, but with every problem he went to, a tiny little cloud remained in his mind. It was of the boy. It was almost starting to irritate him at this point. So much so that he decided to get dressed and go back out to look for the boy. He still had time before his first class, after all.

    Once again, Taekwoon set out across the dying grasses of the campus, in search of every weeping willow near the art and music buildings, but he didn’t see the boy again. It bothered him. He had hoped he would see him again before class, just to solve a few of the questions that bumped around in his head.

    Sighing, Taekwoon headed off to class, trying to push the thought from his mind as best as he could to focus in class. Which worked for the most part. He made it through the two classes he had that day, but took the walk back through the humanities area once more just to be sure that the boy wasn’t outside, reading, like he had found him yesterday.

    And Taekwoon’s heart almost skipped a beat when he saw a figure leaning against a tall weeping willow, large book in hand, as his hair swayed in the frigid breeze. Just like the day prior. Taekwoon squinted to see what the book was, but couldn’t make out the lettering. He could only tell that it was a textbook.

    The subtle feeling of nervousness and anxiety bubbled in his stomach, and Taekwoon decided not to stop and talk to the boy, but rather keep walking, but h