Joshua had a weird habit of smiling nervously whenever he was lying. So when Jeonghan asked him where he’d been during the weekend, all Joshua did was pull the corners of his lips up and smile. “I was at school,” he said, and Jeonghan could practically hear the gears in his brain turning every millisecond to produce the answer Jeonghan would expect to hear. “I told you I had to work on my art piece, didn’t I?”

Jeonghan furrowed his eyebrows. Joshua barely sat in front of the easel for 30 minutes before running out of the room to, quoting Joshua, “get some fresh air.” As far as Jeonghan knew, Joshua hadn’t turned in a single art piece during the whole semester, and the year had almost come to an end. It was snowing outside already, the pine trees in front of the art building having been covered in white snow a long time ago.

At times, Jeonghan would ask Joshua why he came to major in art, when his passions seemingly were in music rather than visual arts. Joshua just shrugged. They offered me a scholarship, so I accepted. Jeonghan sighed, looking down at his brush, which had paint of the same tint of pink as Joshua’s hair on the tip of it. While Joshua hated art, Jeonghan couldn’t deny that he was better than half, no, at least three-fourths of their class. When he did focus, whatever art he would produce in two hours would be better than whatever art Jeonghan would work on day and night for three days. But Joshua hated art. So.

Jeonghan got up and got the water bucket that was on the table in front of their easels. He could feel Joshua’s nervous eyeballs following him as he did so. He stuck his paintbrush in the water bucket, and the clear water soon turned pink. It still reminded him of Joshua’s hair, so he closed his eyes and moved the paintbrush until he was sure the paint would have washed off.

When he came back to his seat with a clean paintbrush, Joshua was still eyeing him. “What?” Jeonghan asked, then immediately regretted it; his voice had come out a little sharper than he had expected it to. Joshua just shook his head and leaned in towards Jeonghan. Jeonghan closed his eyes as he saw Joshua’s red lips approaching his own.

“I don’t know why you’re annoyed, but don’t be,” he said, after pulling away from the short kiss. They were lucky there was no one else in the atelier to witness them. Joshua then wiped off the saliva on the side of Jeonghan’s mouth with his thumb and smiled, this time not a nervous smile, but a genuine one. Jeonghan could tell the difference from the ten years of friendship and five years of more than friendship he had spent with Joshua Hong. So he nodded.

Maybe he had been mistaken earlier. What did he have to lie for, anyway? Where were you during the weekend? It was a simple question as was Joshua’s answer. I was at school. I told you I had to work on my art piece, didn’t I?

**

But that night, when Joshua came back from a class, “introduction to architecture,” he had said earlier, Jeonghan knew that he had not been mistaken. His gray coat, which usually smelled like the cologne Jeonghan had bought him in his twentieth birthday, reeked strongly of women perfume. Chanel no.5, Jeonghan thought to himself as Joshua walked into their shared apartment, his breath also smelling like alcohol. He knew this from his part-time job at a perfume shop.

He tried to maintain his posture when Joshua spotted him from the doorway, undid his shoes, and came up to him to hug him. “Jeonghan,” he said, inhaling deeply, then exhaling. Jeonghan could feel his hot breath against the crook of his neck. He tried to pull away; the perfume was seriously hurting his head. But Joshua stopped him. “Jeonghan,” he repeated once again, “I have to talk to you.”

Jeonghan had, many times, read in books that the narrator had supposedly felt the world just collapse on top of himself. He’d wondered how that would feel like, but he knew, at that second, exactly what the author had tried to convey. He shivered a little bit. “Joshua, you’re drunk,” he managed to say.

The words that came out of Joshua’s mouth next were too much for Jeonghan to handle. “Jeonghan, I’m getting married.”

He slapped Joshua several times. The sounds of the slaps echoed against the walls of the apartment. He felt hot tears run down his cheeks, and memories of their happy days running through his brain like a video recorder playing. Both of them lying on the bed, holding hands, joking about how a professor actually, truly, . Joshua brushing Jeonghan’s hair in the morning, when he’d let it grow for his freshman year during college. Joshua promising to open an atelier with Jeonghan once they’d graduated. Joshua moving his hand down to Jeonghan’s waist when they’d kissed that one day on the beach as they’d watched the fireworks go off at a distance. Joshua stayed still, letting Jeonghan slap him until Jeonghan couldn’t take it anymore and just hugged him and started crying.

“Tell me a reason why,” Jeonghan cried, “let me understand.”

Joshua hesitated for a second before replying. “I got really drunk last month. You were gone to your parents’ house, and a middle school friend asked me out for a drink. Then I don’t know what happened, but I found myself in a motel room with a stranger next to me.” He then inhaled, and exhaled, letting Jeonghan absorb his words. “She contacted me over the weekend. Apparently she’s pregnant. With my baby.”

Jeonghan slapped him once more. “I’m not sleeping in the same apartment as you,” he said, “come back in the morning and get your stuff and leave. But you’re not sleeping in here today.”

Then he turned around and walked straight into the bedroom, Joshua just looking at his back.

**

“I really like the part where Joshua and the narrator meet again after five years, both of them more mature,” the chief editor said as he looked through the draft he had written. Jeonghan nodded as his words, a gesture for him to continue talking. “It’s a sad story, but at least they’re happy at the end.”

“I heard it was based on your own story? So you would be the narrator, right? And Joshua your boyfriend?” another editor chirped in from the right, “it’s a really great story, by the way, I think we could get started on the publishing process right away.”

Jeonghan blushed slightly before opening his mouth. “Not, really,” he said, “it’s my story only until the narrator slaps Joshua and walks into his bedroom. It’s more of a what-if this had happened, a book written out of my regrets.”

The editor looked confused. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Jeonghan’s face was rather solemn as he said the next words. “My own boyfriend ran out of the apartment in the middle of the night, and never came back. He got into a car accident. Went into a comma, passed away two months later; I felt horrible.”

Silence resonated throughout the room; the only sounds that could be heard were Jeonghan’s quiet sobs.

“So, it’s a what if. What if I hadn’t turned Joshua down that day? Would he still be alive? Would we have met five years later, both of us more mature and ready to be happy? Would our story have been a happy ending instead of what it is right now?”

Okay, so if you didn't understand, Jeonghan and Joshua were in a relationship. Then Joshua comes in drunk one day and announces that he's going to get married. Obviously, Jeonghan is really mad, and he tells Joshua to leave the house. Joshua does, but he gets into a car accident and dies. Regretting his words that night, Jeonghan publishes a book, although he changes the ending to a happy ending; the first two scenes are supposed excerpts from Jeonghan's book (although written in third person for my convenience). The last scene is Jeonghan discussing his book with the publishing company. It's a what if, a happy ending in a parallel universe.