N was the one to extend the first invitation to meet up with you after the groundbreaking heart to heart. A part of you felt obligated to meet him but the larger part of you wanted nothing more to do than to spend time with him, so you did.

“Hey Mikyung.”

You gave him a small smile in greeting as you got off the bus. At this point in the beginning of something new, you knew better than to expect Ken to be there too but you still felt a little let down when you didn’t see him waiting anywhere within the vicinity of the bus stop. Maybe it was still too soon.

N nodded to the right side as you walked up to him, “I found a good restaurant for us to try. I’m pretty sure you still like pasta right?” You gave him a firm nod and he returned your smile. The look in his eyes contained a familiar spark of amusement that remained a welcoming sight to behold. You both started walking in the direction he set out for and for a second you pondered in how close you should walk next to him but your feet already set an amount of space between the two of you. You were unsure in how to go about regaining a bit more familiarity but you figured that would take time and another trial and error system going for a second time.

He started chattering about the food he was craving in recent days and you felt a surge of familiarity that was becoming of your time past time together as he resumed his duties in filling the silence between you two with a nice flow of chatter. The way he voiced his wishes for certain foods was reminiscent of Hwangin and your dad’s own longing whenever they came back from the base. It was another thing that was familiar for you but now involving someone new so you were able to sympathize with him because of that prior experience and you felt that urge within you to provide for him what he wants the way you would with the men in your family.

You continued to take in the somewhat warm and lucid atmosphere in his midst because no matter how many times you realized it for yourself, you were happy he was here with you even if he was sticking to neutral topics at the moment. It was a tentative step into an unknown that was promising and not lacking in anything related to nostalgia but something new enough that you craved.

When you arrived at the restaurant, you were a bit surprised at the ambience of it that was on the fancier end but N escorted you right in. And he had reservations made for the two of you in advance. That already implied how far he took measures in securing this for you both and you were taken a bit off guard by it.

He clearly read your feelings as he gave you a reassuring smile. “It’s fine, Mikyungie. It’s just that it’s been a long time since we ate together and I wanted it to be a bit special for the two of us.”

You regarded him with suspicion but you didn’t want to entertain such thoughts in relation to your first time out with him so you let it go. That and the fact there was still apprehension between the two of you that was hard to discourage or disregard completely. And you could work around such boundaries and trepidations because it was what had to be done in order to regain a higher level of friendship between the two of you. But to apply a transparency to the situation, you couldn’t ignore the walls cemented between you two with the more prominent one being a certain soccer player who had yet to infiltrate the conversation and atmosphere.

And the thing was, with N at least, you didn’t know if he could instigate any talk about Him. N was not as straight forward or should you say, as brash as his friends. He was probably last in that particular standing in comparison to the others when in concern of you, Ken being the most followed by Ravi. If he still retained that side of him, N wouldn’t be bringing up Him for no reason unless he had a strong incentive to do so especially considering this was the start of a new phase for you and them.

Up until now, that soccer player has been set aside for future addressing and that was okay with you. After the sneak attack on you, it was decided that you would only focus on N and Ken as best as you could separate them from the ticking time bomb involving their lifelong friend.

And on a more private note, you would be sending three letters out to three boys who didn’t deserve to be left out in this re-establishment but deciding on that and following through was a tad bit difficult which was odd. Only because there was so much to write and grovel for. But you knew it was essential you do something for the younger ones while they were away because they were the main ones you tended to conform to, if not baby them, on a slightly larger scale compared to your same aged friends back then so you knew it should be no different and do this for them.

There was still a part of you that was scared of the response but it was with realization that you knew they must have felt something similar when they wrote their own letters. It was a jump you would have to risk since they obviously did the same when the situation between you and them was a lot tenser. That meant you had to reciprocate it.

By the time you met with N this day, you had read his letters all the while shedding tears throughout. You had to calm yourself down multiple times and wipe your useless tears away because you could barely read past the blurriness. It had been a draining experience as you braved through it and it made you feel pathetic and condemn yourself even more for the delay you inflicted on yourself. You knew that you could never face him today without reading his words to you while he had been away serving the country.

As a test to time, N was very accommodating to you in ways that were unfamiliar to you. Either that or you may have just forgotten how he used to act around you or it could be that he had developed new habits and gestures as a result of his service. He held your gaze with such an intensity that belied his time away from you and made you more aware of the subtle flashes in a discerning masculinity that once again bespoke of his time spent on a military base. He was more aware of his surrounding compared to you and he moved with more assurance in his actions if not in a manner that reminded you of marching or timed steps. Whatever the case, you let yourself bask in his presence, happy to continue to develop a new friendship with him with a foundation that was at least stable.

At the end of your time spent with him, he invited you to another lunch with him again and you accepted without any incentives though a day hadn’t been settled on for another meeting.

It was as he was waving at you as you were about to board your bus again did you feel the tension lessen somewhat. So you took that brand new sense of peace with you back to your apartment.

Then you got a text. From Suho. ‘Hey Mikyungie. Did you want to meet up at the first café at the end of your class tomorrow?’

You agreed without any thought.

~~~~~

He was quick to apologize and it was getting annoying. Whenever there was a slight lull in your time with him, he apologized. In fact, he didn’t seem at ease at all and you had no idea in how to coax a less tense demeanor from him. You didn’t know him well enough to do that.

You had long since grown used to a certain level of complacent peace with him that this apologizing bundle of rigidity was new. He was acting differently and you were not one to pry. You didn’t think you two were close enough for you to instigate anything that you didn’t know whether he may or may not mind. So your time with him wasn’t as comfortable as you were used to. It was ladled with guilt, shame and fear. Those were the three you could identify and slightly sympathize with understanding attached. It was enough that you could identify his conflict but that was limited with what you knew of him.

And that wasn’t an issue in your eyes.

What he planned, devised and carried out was something you could not fault him for as it was something you were a hundred percent sure you would never pull off on your own or have the gall to plan such a thing. He brought back N and Ken to you on his own terms and for that you were willing for it to be water under a bridge. But it seems that he was unable to see things the same as you or should you say that he was trying to let it go but there was something that was bothering him. You didn’t know if you were in the right place to inquire about it but you figured it was better that you let him open up on his own time.

Suho didn’t open up during that day. Or your next meet up with him.

He was reserved in a new way. He was his gentleman self but lacked a warmth that had been there before. There was now a gap that had not existed in your time spent with him and that put you on edge.

There was conflict there and you didn’t know how to approach it with your limited social abilities. You could recognize it for what it was but you couldn’t do much more for that. And because it was Suho you were feeling this with, you knew he had become a friend. The fact that you wanted to do something in order to fix things made it clear you treasured him in a closer connection than the one you had started out with. You didn’t want this wall between the two of you. It was preventing things. It was barricading him from your view. And you didn’t like it.

Suho was a person you identified resolution with. In clarity and actions. A likeliness he shared with N but on a different scale all together. Suho was something of a foreign enigma that carried him to familiarity in your mind. He contained a riddle that you wanted to solve but also preserve and at the same time lacked the mystery a riddle should contain. The contents of his riddle was what set him apart from the new connections you had been plagued with since graduating high school. It beheld an importance and depth that you were sure it had.

Suho is a friend of yours and you were happy to have him included in your life. Now that you could value such inductions, you were that much more grateful for him to be here with you.

“So, Mikyungie, how are things with N and Ken?” Now that you are all back together…It was implied in his words. It was almost like he was unsure of himself.

“Fine,” you murmured.

With a smile shot at you, he replied, “That’s good to hear.”

Hesitation was what plagued your time with him. He was hesitating for something, in doing something. It instantly took you back to just the time before he had set up the reintroduction of both of your friends back into your life. It was only after all that has occurred to get to this point did you figure out that he had been planning for the meeting weeks in advance.

He must have had a troubled time in deciding to follow through with it, you thought. And it was because he was a resolute person that he went through with his desires to fix something he saw the need to fix. He had the power to do so, he had the connections between the two parties, in fact he was the connection in between. All he need was a push and what that push was, you didn’t know. A part of you wanted to know and another part didn’t want to just because you weren’t a pushy person in cases such as this.

You could only be happy that things turned out the way they had with two boys now back in your life.

~~~~~

When you met with Ken, it was intense. You should have expected it but your time with N made you more comfortable than you had deserved.

Out of the six, Ken probably had the most layers to his personality, the outermost being his happy-go-lucky self that everyone was exposed to. Deep down he had an almost unforgiving side to him that did its best not to hold grudges but sometimes failed. The Yoohyuk failed fiasco was proof of this.

Ken couldn’t stand to be anywhere near your childhood classmate if either guy could help it after what Yoohyuk tried to commit. Ken was actually the one who gave Yoohyuk his black eye as opposed to Him who had to be held back by his friends and you when all had been revealed and brought to light. It was a shock to you all after the action was committed, even to Ken whose expression you had trouble forgetting. It was Him and the rest of his friends who had to keep his friend from jumping Yoohyuk whenever a coincidental meeting took place from then on.

And because of that side of Ken, you knew it would take you a lot longer to take up things the way they were between the two of you. Because you were not positive that he had forgiven you. You didn’t know if your grudge had dissipated enough to allow a trace of forgiveness to pass through.

Your time with N had really put you in a complacent spot and Ken’s somewhat frigid stature was an almost welcoming call that brought you back to reality. Welcoming only because you knew things couldn’t be easy the way N was so forgiving. You had to make things up to each of them and meeting with Ken was just the one to remind you of that fact.

Even though he was the one to text you first, you set up the time and location. Starting with a movie which then progressed into another movie and another until you were caught up in all of the recent releases. He was quiet after each movie and most of the time you both left it at that and he escorted you to the bus stop right after.

You both took turns buying the tickets and snacks for the movie until on one meet up, he held his fist stretched out to you. It took only a second to process the gesture before you raised your hand out as well and after three deliberate shakes, you won the rock, paper, scissors game. He paid for the tickets and the popcorn. The next meeting was for a musical. And you both repeated the game and you won.

You continued to win each meeting and Ken was comically frustrated. It was glimpses like this that was proof things could go a desired way should you both let your guards down a bit.

The wall between the two of you was spiky and harmful on both sides. It was dissimilar to the one between you and N only in size. Ken’s wall was fortified to such a degree that you were cautious around him and he paid that back in spades. N’s, on the other hand, was almost like a screen that could wrap around you both and conform to the situation but it did not allow direct contact. Just a ghost of one or a slight brush of contact to feel warmth but a barrier nonetheless separating you two.

And yet, neither of those walls could compare to the chasm that separated you from a certain someone. While a wall could be built, you had dug a gap between you and him to form this void.

So things resumed in such a manner for a month until a meeting between the three of you was set up and you got a reply to your letter. From Hyuk, the precious youngest in the group.

Your eyes were already swollen before you could make it up to your apartment from your mailroom on the ground floor.

When you calmed down a bit, your heart was broken all over again after going through the contents of the single page, front and back. It was a decent amount of a response considering the ten or so pages you sent each of the three boys you couldn’t meet face to face with.

You were quick to get another letter sent out quickly after you composed yourself once again. Now that this link has now been officially reciprocated, you saw no reason in letting any more time waste away.

It was two days later when another letter was found in your mail box because since you sent out your own letters, you had compulsively checked your mailbox every day since, sometimes even twice a day. This one was from Ravi. Like the previous case, your eyes were bloodshot before you entered your apartment. Following precedent, you penned a reply and sent it off right after absorbing the words scrawled on paper.

Hongbin’s reply came a week later. And that one was the shortest one of the three, totaling to two paragraphs. If you had to pick the one who was the most guarded, it was Hongbin. And so the length of the letters was understandable yet it didn’t hurt any less but that pain was of course deserving.

In each letter, you provided your apartment’s address as their letters had been forwarded to you from your mom as your home address was the one they had been addressing though you wondered about it as you were sure you had used this address in your first letter.

And so your connection with them begun anew in the written form at the same time you were getting to know N and Ken in closer proximity. In retaliation, you ended up sharing a bit more in writing compared to a somewhat stunted form of communication to the ones who had completed their military service. In a way this difference was explainable in that you were not a verbal person so it would make sense that you would open more through writing. But there was only so much you could write that sometimes a facial expression in person could easily express in comparison.

You took what you were offered and did your best to release the full potential of the offerings and submissions while doing so in return.

The letters they sent were so uniform in regards to their daily tasks with wariness plaguing their every word shared with you. Hyuk was the one who seemed to give you a bit more thorough account of his doings and thoughts compared to the other two. Another thing that was understandable as the youngest was a bit more dependent on you compared to the other two. It was something that was hard to describe but as the youngest in your own family with the exception of Mieun, you understood how that dependency was a natural occurrence from being treated as such.

In their letters, they described their surroundings and with a general as a father, you could picture their surroundings with a clear mind thanks to your childhood visits to your father’s base. In fact, it was Hongbin who was stationed at that base as if to prove coincidences did exist.

Their discharge dates varied and it was clear from the way each of them phrased this information that they expected something from you though they did not outright say so. It was a commitment you were willing to make for them and yourself. The fact that they shared the date in and of itself was a glaring sign.

The only thing preventing complete and full acceptance was that a bridge needed crossing in order for you and the boys to completely receive each other.

You would have to make sense of what you and Him were going to do with each other. And that was the scariest thing of all.

You two would have to find some kind of agreement that will ease your regeneration of friendship with his friends.

Something had to be done with whatever longing and reluctance you felt for him.

And the only way you were going to find that out was a meeting. Between the two of you. Face to face.

And then it happened.

Suho repeated his offense/gift.

They were both waiting.