WHEN JIN ANSWERED the knock on his door Saturday morning, Ken tumbled into his arms.

“You’d think it would dawn on me someday that doors open in,” he apologized, straightening his glasses. “Must remember to stop leaning on peepholes. Nice digs, by the way,” he added, looking around. He crossed to the window over Jin’s bed. “Not a bad view, minus the bars and all.”

Jin stood behind him, looking out at the cemetery and, in plain view, the live oak tree where he’d had the picnic with Jungkook. And, invisible from here but clear in his head, the place he’d been pinned under that statue with Taehyung. The avenging angel that had mysteriously disappeared after the accident.

Remembering Taehyung's worried eyes when he whispered his name that day, the near touch of their noses, the way he’d felt his fingertips on his neck—all of it made him feel hot.

And pathetic. He sighed and turned away from the window, realising Ken had moved on, too.

He was picking things up off Jin's desk, giving each of Jin’s possessions careful scrutiny. The Statue of Liberty paperweight his dad had brought back from a conference at NYU, the picture of his mom with a hilariously bad perm when she was around Jin’s age, the eponymous Lucinda Williams CD Sandeul had given him as a going-away present before Jin had ever heard the name Sword & Cross.

“Where are your books?” he asked Ken, wanting to detour around a trip down memory lane. “You said you were coming over to study.”

By then, Ken had begun to riffle through his wardrobe. Jin watched as he quickly lost interest in the variations of dress code–style black T-shirts and sweaters. When Ken moved toward his dresser drawers, Jin stepped forward to intercept.

“Okay, that’s enough, Snoop,” he said. “Isn’t there research we should be doing on family trees?”

“Speaking of snooping.” Ken’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, there is research we should be doing. But not the kind you’re thinking.”

Jin stared at him blankly. “Huh?”

“Look.” Ken put his hand on Jin’s shoulder. “If you really want to know about Kim Taehyung—”

“Shhh!” Jin hissed, jumping to close his door. He stuck his head into the hall and scanned the scene. The coast looked clear—but that didn’t mean anything. People at this school had a suspicious way of appearing out of nowhere. Jungkook in particular. And Jin would die if he—or anyone—found out how enamored of Taehyung he was. Or, at this point, anyone but Ken.

Satisfied, Jin closed and locked the door and turned back to his friend. Ken was sitting cross-legged at the edge of Jin’s bed. He looked amused.

Jin locked his hands behind his back and dug his toe into the circular red rug near his door. “What makes you think I want to know anything about him?”

“Give me a break,” Ken said, laughing. “A, it’s totally obvious that you stare at Kim Taehyung all the time.”

“Shhh!” Jin said again.

“B,” Ken said, not dropping his voice, “I watched you stalk him online for an entire class the other day. Sue me—but you were being totally shameless. And C, don’t get all paranoid. You think I blab to anyone at this school besides you?”

Ken did have a point.

“I’m only saying,” he continued, “assuming hypothetically you did want to know more about a certain unnamed person, you could conceivably bark up a more fruitful tree.” Ken shrugged one shoulder. “You know, if you had help.”

“I’m listening,” Jin said, sinking down on the bed. His Internet search the other day had only amounted to typing, then deleting, then retyping Taehyung’s name into the search field.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Ken said. “I didn’t bring books with me today because I’m giving you”—he widened his eyes goofily—“a guided tour of the highly off-limits underground lair of Sword & Cross office records!”

Jin grimaced. “I don’t know. Prying into Taehyung’s files? I’m not sure I need another reason to feel like a crazy stalker.”

“Ha.” Ken snickered. “And yes, you did just say that out loud. Come on, Jin. It’ll be fun. Besides, what else are you going to do on a perfectly sunny Saturday morning?”

It was a nice day—precisely the kind of nice that made you feel lonely if you didn’t have anything fun and outdoorsy planned. In the middle of the night, Jin had felt a cool front brush through his open window, and when he’d awoken this morning, the heat and humidity had all but disappeared.

He used to spend these golden early-fall days tearing up the neighborhood bike path with his friends. That was before he started avoiding the woodsy trail because of the shadows none of the other boys ever saw. Before his friends sat him down one day during recess and said their parents didn’t want them inviting him over anymore, in case he had an incident.

Truth was, Jin had been a little panicked about how he’d spend this first weekend at Sword & Cross. No classes, no terrorizing physical fitness tests, no social events on the docket. Just forty-eight endless hours of free time. An eternity. He’d had a queasy homesick feeling all morning—until Ken showed up.

“Okay.” Jin tried not to laugh when he said, “Take me to your secret lair.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ken practically skipped as he led Jin across the trampled grass of the commons to the main lobby near the school’s entrance. “You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for a partner in crime to bring down here with me.”

Jin smiled, glad Ken was more focused on having a friend to explore with than he was on, well, this … thing Jin had for Taehyung.

At the edge of the commons, they passed a few kids lazing around on the bleachers in the clear late-morning sun. It was strange to see color on campus, on these students with whom Jin so closely identified the color black. But there was Seo-joon in a pair of lime-green soccer shorts, dribbling a ball between his feet. And Hoseok in his purple gingham button-down shirt. Moyeon and Sijin—the tongue-ringed couple—were drawing on the knees of each other’s faded jeans. Jung-hwan sat apart from the rest of the kids on the bleachers, reading a comic book in a camouflage T-shirt. Even Jin’s own gray tshirt and tracks felt more vibrant than anything he’d worn all week.

Coach Woo-bin and Ms. Kang were on lawn duty and had set up two plastic lawn chairs and a sagging umbrella at the edge of the commons. Aside from when they ashed their cigarettes on the lawn, they could have been asleep behind their dark sunglasses. They looked utterly bored, as imprisoned by their jobs as the charges they were monitoring.

There were a lot of people out on the commons, but as he followed closely behind Ken, he was glad to see there wasn’t anyone near the main lobby at all. No one had said anything to Jin about trespassing in restricted areas, or even which areas were restricted, but he was sure Bo-young would find an appropriate punishment.

“What about the reds?” Jin asked, remembering the omnipresent cameras.

“I just stuck some dead batteries in a few of them on my way over to your room,” Ken said, in the same nonchalant tone of voice someone else might use to say “I just filled the car up with gas.”

Ken took a sweeping glance around before he led Jin to the main building’s back entrance and down three steep steps to an olive-colored door not visible from ground level.

“Is this basement from the Civil War era, too?” Jin asked. It looked like an entrance to the kind of place where you could stash some POWs.

Ken gave the damp air a long, dramatic sniff. “Does the malodorous rot answer your question? This here is some antebellum mildew.” He grinned at Jin. “Most students would keel over for the chance to inhale such storied air.”

Jin tried not to breathe through his nose as Ken produced a hardware store’s worth of keys held together on a giant lanyard. “My life would be so much easier if they got around to making a skeleton key for this place,” he said, sifting through the assortment and finally pulling forward a thin silver key.

When the key turned in the lock, Jin felt an unexpected shiver of excitement. Ken was right—this was way better than mapping out his family tree.

They walked a short distance through a warm, damp corridor whose ceiling was only a few inches higher than their heads. The stale air smelled like something had died there, and Jin was almost glad the room was too dark to clearly see the floor. Just when he was beginning to feel claustrophobic, Ken produced another key that opened a small but much more modern door. They ducked through, then were able to stand up on the other side.

Inside, the records office reeked of mildew, but the air felt much cooler and drier. It was pitch-black except for the pale red glow of the EXIT sign over their heads.

Jin could make out Ken’s sturdy silhouette, his hands groping in the air. “Where’s that string?” he muttered. “There.”

With a gentle tug, Ken a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling on a linked metal chain. The room was still dim, but now Jin could see that the cement walls were also painted olive green and lined with heavy metal shelves and filing cabinets. Dozens of cardboard filing boxes had been stuffed onto the shelves, and the aisles between the cabinets seemed to stretch out forever. Everything was coated with a thick felt of dust.

The sunshine outside suddenly felt very far away. Even though Jin knew they were only a flight of stairs under the ground, it might as well have been a mile. He rubbed his bare arms. If he were a shadow, this basement was exactly where he’d be. There were no signs of them yet, but Jin knew that was never a good enough reason to feel safe. Ken, unfazed by the gloom of the basement, dragged a step stool from the corner. “Wow,” he said, pulling it behind him as he walked. “Something’s different. The records used to be right here.… I guess they’ve been doing a little spring cleaning since the last time I meddled in here.”

“How long ago was that?” Jin asked.

“About a week.…” Ken’s voice trailed off as he disappeared into the darkness behind a tall file cabinet.

Jin couldn’t imagine what Sword & Cross would possibly need with all of these boxes. He lifted one lid and pulled out a thick file labelled REMEDIAL MEASURES. He swallowed dryly. Maybe he was better off not knowing.

“It’s alphabetical by student,” Ken called. His voice sounded muffled and far away. “I,J,K … here we are, Kim.”

Jin followed the sound of rustling paperwork down a narrow aisle and soon found Ken with a box propped in his arms, struggling under its weight. Taehyung’s file was tucked under his chin.

“It’s so thin,” he said, lifting his chin slightly so Jin could take it. “Normally, they’re so much more, um …” He looked up at Jin and bit his lip. “Okay, now I sound like the crazy stalker. Let’s just see what’s inside.” 

There was only a single page in Taehyung’s file. A black-and-white scan of what must have been his student ID picture was pasted onto the upper right-hand corner. He was looking straight at the camera, at Jin, a faint smile on his lips. He couldn’t help smiling back. He looked just the same as he had that night when—well, he couldn’t quite think of when. The image of his expression was so sharp in his mind, but he couldn’t pin down where he would have seen it.

“God, doesn’t he look exactly the same?” Ken interrupted Jin’s thoughts. “And look at the date. This picture was taken three years ago when he first came to Sword & Cross.”

That must have been what Jin had been thinking … that Taehyung looked the same then as he did now. But he felt like he’d been thinking—or been about to think —something different, only now he couldn’t remember what it was.

“‘Parents: unknown,’” Ken read, with Jin leaning over his shoulder. “‘Guardian: Los Angeles County Orphanage.’”

“Orphanage?” Jin asked, pressing his hand to his heart.

“That’s all there is. Everything else listed here is his—”

“Criminal history,” Jin finished, reading along. “‘Loitering on public beach after hours … vandalism of a shopping cart … jaywalking.’”

Ken widened his eyes at Jin and swallowed a laugh. “Loverboy Taehyung got arrested for jaywalking? Admit it, that’s funny.”

Jin didn’t like picturing Taehyung getting arrested for anything. He liked it even less that, according to Sword & Cross, his whole life added up to little more than a list of petty crimes. All these boxes of paperwork down here, and this was all there was on Taehyung.

“There has to be more,” he said.

Footsteps overhead. Jin’s and Ken’s eyes shot to the ceiling.

“The main office,” Ken whispered, pulling a tissue from inside his sleeve to blow his nose. “It could be anyone. But no one’s going to come down here, trust me.”

A second later, a door deep within the room creaked open, and light from a hall illuminated a stairway. A clopping of shoes started down. Jin felt Ken’s grip on the back of his tshirt, pulling him against the wall behind a bookshelf. They waited, holding their breath and clutching Taehyung’s poached file in their hands. They were so, so busted.

Jin had his eyes closed, expecting the worst, when a haunting, melodious hum filled the room. Someone was singing.

“Doooo da da da dooo,” a male voice crooned softly. Jin craned his neck between two boxes of files and could see a thin older man with a small flashlight strapped to his forehead like a coal miner. Mr. Bogum. He was carrying two large boxes, one stacked on top of the other so the only part of his that was visible was his glowing forehead. His airy steps made it look as if the boxes were full of feathers instead of heavy files.

Ken gripped Jin’s hand as they watched Mr. Bogum place the file boxes on an empty shelf. He took out a pen to write down something in his notebook.

“Just a couple more,” he said, then something under his breath that Jin couldn’t hear. A second later, Mr. Bogum was gliding back up the stairs, gone as quickly as he’d appeared. His hum lingered for just a moment in his wake.

When the door clicked shut, Ken let out a huge gulp of air. “He said there were more. He’ll probably come back.”

“What do we do?” Jin asked.

“You sneak back up the stairs,” Ken said, pointing. “Hang a left at the top and you’ll be right back at the main office. If anyone sees you, you can say you were looking for a bathroom.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll put Taehyung’s file away and meet you by the bleachers. Mr. Bogum won’t get suspicious if he sees just me. I’m down here so much it’s like a second dorm room.”

Jin glanced at Taehyung’s file with a small pang of regret. He wasn’t ready to leave yet. Right around the time he’d resigned himself to checking out Taehyung’s file, he’d also started thinking about Jungkook’s. Taehyung was so cryptic—and unfortunately, so was his file. Jungkook, on the other hand, seemed so open and easy to read that it made him curious. Jin wondered what else he might be able to find out about him that he might not otherwise share. But one look at Ken’s face told Jin that they were short enough on time as it was.

“If there’s more to find on Taehyung, we’ll find it,” Ken assured him. “We’ll keep looking.” He gave Jin a little shove toward the door. “Now, go.”

Jin moved quickly down the rank corridor, then pushed open the door to the stairs. The air at the base of the stairs was still humid, but he could feel it clear a little with each step he took. When he finally rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, he had to blink and rub his eyes to readjust to the bright sunlight flooding the hallway. He stumbled around the corner and through the whitewashed doors to the main lobby. There he froze.

Two black leathe boots, crossed at the ankles, were propped up and sticking out of the phone booth, looking very Wicked Witch of the South. Jin was hurrying toward the front door, hoping not to be spotted, when he realized that the leathe boots were attached to an unsmiling Yoongi. The tiny silver camera was resting in his hand. He raised his eyes to Jin, hung up the phone at his ear, and kicked his feet to the floor.

“Why do you look so guilty, Meat Loaf?” he asked, standing up with his hands on his hips. “Let me guess. You’re still planning on ignoring my suggestion to stay away from Taehyung.”

This whole evil monster thing had to be an act. Yoongi had no way of knowing where Jin had just been. He didn’t know anything about Jin. He had no cause to be so nasty. Since the first day of school, Jin had never done a thing to Yoongi—except try to stay away from him.

“Are you forgetting what a hellish disaster it was the last time you tried to force yourself on a guy who wasn’t interested?” Yoongi’s voice was as sharp as a knife. “What was his name again? Yi-joon? Yi-byul?”

Yi-jung. How could Yoongi know about Yi-jung? This was it, his deepest, darkest secret. The one thing Jin wanted—needed—to keep under wraps at Sword & Cross. Now, not only did Evil Incarnate know all about it, he felt no shame bringing it up, cruelly, cavalierly—in the middle of the school’s main office.

Was it possible that Ken had been lying, that Jin wasn’t the only person he shared his office secrets with? Was there any other logical explanation? Jin gripped his arms over his chest, feeling as sick and exposed … and inexplicably guilty as he’d felt the night of the fire.

Yoongi cocked his head. “Finally,” he said, sounding relieved. “Something got through to you.” He turned his back on Jin and shoved open the front door. Then, just before he sauntered outside, he twisted his neck around and looked down his nose at Jin. “So don’t do to dear old Taehyung what you did to what’s-his-name. Capiche?”

Jin started after him, but only got a few steps out the door before he realized he would probably crack if he tried to take on Yoongi now. The guy was just too vicious. Then, rubbing salt in Jin’s wound, Hoseok trotted down from the bleachers to meet Yoongi in the middle of the field. They were far enough away that Jin couldn’t make out their expressions when they both turned back to look at him. The blond head craned toward the black haired one—the vilest tête-à-tête Jin had ever seen.

He balled his sweating fists together, imagining Yoongi spilling everything he knew about Yi-jung to Hoseok, who would immediately run off to relay the news to Taehyung. At the thought of this, a sick ache spread from Jin’s fingertips, up his arms, and into his chest. Taehyung might have been caught jaywalking, but so what? It was nothing compared to what Jin was in here for.

“Heads up!” a voice called out. That had always been Jin’s least favorite thing to hear. Sporting equipment of all sorts had a funny way of careening right at him. He winced, looking up directly into the sun. He couldn’t see anything and didn’t even have time to cover his face before he felt a smack against the side of his head and heard a loud thwunk ringing in his ears. Ouch.

Seo-joon’s soccer ball.

“Nice one!” Seo-joon called out as the ball sailed directly back to him. Like he’d intended to do that. He rubbed his forehead and took a few wobbly steps.

A hand around his wrist. A spark of heat that made him gasp. He looked down to see tan fingers around his arm, then up into Taehyung’s deep blue eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

When he nodded, he raised an eyebrow. “If you wanted to play soccer, you could have said so,” he said. “I’d have been happy to explain some of the finer points of the game, like how most people use less delicate body parts of their body to return a kick.”

He let go of his wrist, and Jin thought he was reaching toward him, to the stinging side of his face. For a second, he hung there, holding his breath. Then his chest collapsed when Taehyung’s hand swept back to brush his own hair from his eyes.

That was when Jin realized Taehyung was making fun of him.

And why shouldn’t he? There was probably an imprint of a soccer ball on the side of his face.

Yoongi and Hoseok were still staring—and now Taehyung—with their arms crossed over their chests.

“I think your boyfriend’s getting jealous,” Jin said, gesturing at the pair. 

“Which one?” he asked.

“I didn’t realize they were both your boyfriends.”

“Neither one is my boyfriend,” he said simply. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I meant, which one did you think was my boyfriend?”

Jin was stunned. What about that whole whispered conversation with Hoseok? What about the way the boys were looking at them right now? Was Taehyung lying?

He was looking at him funny. “Maybe you hit your head harder than I thought,” he said. “Come on, let’s take a walk, get you some air.”

Jin tried to locate the snide joke in Taehyung’s latest suggestion. Was he saying he was an airhead who needed more air? No, that didn’t even make sense. Jin glanced at him. How could he look so simply sincere? And just when he was getting so used to the Taehyung brush-off.

“Where?” Jin asked cautiously. Because it would be too easy to feel gleeful right now about the fact that Taehyung didn’t have a boyfriend, about him wanting to go somewhere with him. There had to be a catch.

Taehyung merely squinted at the boys across the field. “Someplace where we won’t be watched.”

Jin had told Ken he’d meet him at the bleachers, but there’d be time to explain later, and of course Ken would understand. Jin let Taehyung lead him past the scrutinizing gaze of the guys and the little grove of half-rotted peach trees, around the back of the old church-gym. They were coming up on a forest of gorgeously twisted live oak trees, which Jin never would have guessed were tucked away there. Taehyung looked back to make sure he was keeping up. He smiled as though following him were no big deal, but as he picked his way among the gnarled old roots, he couldn’t help thinking about the shadows.

Now he was going into the bosky woods, the dark under the thick foliage pierced every so often by a small shaft of sunlight from above. The stench of rich, dank mud filled the air, and Jin suddenly knew there was water nearby.

If he were the kind of person who prayed, this would be when he would pray for the shadows to stay away, just for this sliver of time he had with Taehyung, so he wouldn’t have to see how crazy he sometimes got. But Jin had never prayed. Didn’t know how. Instead, he just crossed his fingers.

“The forest opens right up here,” Taehyung said. They’d reached a clearing, and Jin gasped in wonder.

Something had changed while he and Taehyung had been walking through the forest, something more than just the mere distance from phlegm-colored Sword & Cross. Because when they came out of the trees and stood on this high red rock, it was like they were standing in the middle of a postcard, the kind that spun around a metal rack in a small-town drugstore, a dreamy image of an idyllic South that didn’t exist anymore. Every color Jin’s eyes fell on was brilliant, brighter than it had seemed just a moment before. From the crystal blue lake just below them to the dense emerald forest surrounding it. Two seagulls banked in the clear sky overhead. When he stood on his toes, he could see the beginnings of a tawny-colored salt marsh, one he knew gave way to the white foam of the ocean somewhere on the invisible horizon.

He glanced up at Taehyung. He looked brilliant, too. His skin was golden in this light, his eyes almost like rain. The feel of them on his face was a heavy, remarkable thing.

“What do you think?” he asked. He seemed so much more relaxed now that they were away from everyone else.

“I’ve never seen anything so wonderful,” Jin said, scanning the pristine surface of the lake, feeling the urge to dive in. About fifty feet out on the water was a large, flat, moss-covered rock. “What’s that?”

“I’ll show you,” Taehyung said, kicking off his shoes. Jin tried unsuccessfully not to stare when he tugged his T-shirt over his head, exposing his muscled torso. “Come on,” he said, making him realize how rooted to the spot he must have looked. “You can swim in that,” he added, pointing at his gray tshirt and tracks. “I’ll even let you win this time.”

Jin laughed. “Versus what? All those times I let you win?”

Taehyung started to nod, then stopped himself abruptly. “No. Since you lost at the pool the other day.”

For a second, Jin had the urge to tell him why he’d lost. Maybe they could laugh about the whole Hoseok-being-his-boyfriend misunderstanding. But by then, Taehyung’s arms were over his head and he was in the air, arcing and then falling, diving into the lake with a perfect little splash.

It was one of the most beautiful things Jin had ever seen. He had a grace like none he’d ever witnessed before. Even the splash he’d made left a lovely ring in his ears.

He wanted to be down there with him.

He tugged off his shoes and left them under the magnolia tree next to Taehyung’s, then stood at the edge of the rock. The drop was about twenty feet, the kind of high dive that had always made Jin’s heart skip a beat. In a good way. 

A second later, his head popped up above the surface. He was grinning, treading water. “Don’t make me change my mind about letting you win,” he called.

Taking a deep breath, he aimed his fingers over Taehyung’s head and pushed off and up into a high swan dive. The fall lasted only a split second, but it was the most delicious feeling, sailing through the sunny air, down, down, down.

Splash. The water was shockingly cold at first, then ideal a second later. Jin surfaced to catch his breath, took one look at Taehyung, and started in on his butterfly .

Jin pushed himself so hard that he lost track of him. He knew he was showing off and hoped Taehyung was watching. He drew closer and closer until he slammed his hand down on the rock—an instant before Taehyung.

Both of them were panting as they hauled themselves up on the flat, sun-warmed surface. Its edges were slippery because of the moss, and Jin had a hard time finding his grip. Taehyung had no problem scaling the rock, though. He reached back and gave him a hand, then pulled him up to where he could kick a leg over the side.

By the time Jin had hoisted himself fully out of the water, Taehyung was lying on his back, almost dry. Only his shorts gave away any hint that he’d just been in the lake. On the other hand, Jin’s wet clothes clung to his body, and his hair was dripping everywhere. Most girls or guys would have seized the opportunity to ogle a dripping-wet guy as beautiful as Jin, but Taehyung lay back on the rock and closed his eyes, like he was giving him a moment to wring himself out—either out of kindness or a lack of interest.

Kindness, he decided, knowing he was being hopelessly romantic. But Taehyung bseemed so perceptive, he must have felt at least a little bit of what Jin felt. Not just the attraction, the need to be near him when everyone around him was telling him to stay away, but that very real sense that they knew—really knew—each other from somewhere.

Taehyung snapped open his eyes and smiled—the same smile as in the picture in his file. A rush of déjà vu engulfed him so completely that Jin had to lie down himself.

“What?” he asked, sounding nervous.

“Nothing.”

“Jin.”

“I can’t get it out of my head,” he said, rolling over on his side to face him. He didn’t feel steady enough to sit up yet. “This feeling that I know you. That I’ve known you for a while.”

The water lapped against the rock, splashing on Jin’s toes where they dangled over the edge. It was cold and spread goose bumps up his calves. Finally, Taehyung spoke.

“Haven’t we been through this already?” His tone had changed, like he was trying to laugh him off. He sounded like a Dover guy: self-satisfied, eternally bored, smug. “I’m flattered you feel like we have this connection, really. But you don’t have to invent some forgotten history to get a guy to pay attention to you.”

No. He thought he was lying about this weird feeling he couldn’t shake as a way of coming on to him? He gritted his teeth, mortified.

“Why would I make this up?” he asked, squinting in the sunlight.

“You tell me,” Taehyung said. “No, actually, don’t. It won’t do any good.” He sighed. “Look, I should have said this earlier when I started to see the signs.”

Jin sat up. His heart was racing. Taehyung saw the signs, too.

“I know I brushed you off in the gym before,” he said slowly, causing Jin to lean forward, as if he could draw out the words more quickly. “I should have just told you the truth.”

Jin waited.

“I got burnt by a guy.” He swung a hand into the water, plucked out a lily pad, and crumbled it in his hands. “Someone I really loved, not too long ago. It’s nothing personal, and I don’t want to ignore you.” He looked up at him and the sun filtered through a drop of water in his hair, making it gleam. “But I also don’t want you to get your hopes up. I’m just not looking to get involved with anyone, not anytime soon.”

Oh.

Jin looked away, out at the still, midnight-blue water where only minutes ago they’d been laughing and splashing around. The lake showed no signs of that fun anymore. Neither did Taehyung’s face.

Well, Jin had been burnt, too. Maybe if he told him about Yi-jung and how horrible everything had been, Taehyung would open up about his past. But then again, he already knew he couldn’t stand hearing about his past with someone else. The thought of him with another guy—he pictured Hoseok, Yoongi, a montage of smiling faces, big eyes—was enough to make him feel nauseated.

His bad-breakup story should have justified everything. But it didn’t. Taehyung had been so strange to him from the start. Flipping him off one day, before they’d even been introduced, then protecting him from the statue in the cemetery the next. Now he’d brought him out here to the lake—alone. He was all over the place.

Taehyung’s head was lowered but his eyes were staring up at him. “Not a good enough answer?” he asked, almost like he knew what he was thinking.

“I still feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,” he said.

All of this couldn’t be explained away by one bad heartbreak, Jin knew. He had experience in that department.

His back was to him and he was looking toward the path they’d taken to the lake. After a while, he laughed bitterly. “Of course there are things I’m not telling you. I barely know you. I’m not sure why you think I owe you anything.” He got to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got to get back,” he said.

“Don’t go,” he whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear.

He watched, chest heaving, as Taehyung dove into the water.

He came up far away and began swimming toward shore. He glanced back at him once, about midway, and gave him a definitive wave goodbye.

Then his heart swelled as he circled his arms over his head in a perfect butterfly . As empty as he felt inside, he couldn’t help admiring it. So clean, so effortless, it hardly looked like swimming at all.

In no time he had reached the shore, making the distance between them seem much shorter than it looked to Jin. He’d appeared so leisurely as he swam, but there was no way he could have reached the other side that quickly unless he’d really been tearing though the water.

How urgent was it for him to get away from him?

He watched—feeling a confusing mix of deep embarrassment and even deeper temptation—as Taehyung hoisted himself back up onto the shore. A shaft of sunlight bit through the trees and framed his silhouette with a glowing radiance, and Jin had to squint at the sight before his eyes.

He wondered whether the soccer ball to his head had shaken up his vision. Or whether what he thought he was seeing was a mirage. A trick of the late-afternoon sunlight.

He stood up on the rock to get a better look.

All he was doing was shaking the water from his wet head, but a glaze of droplets seemed to hover over him, outside him, defying gravity in a wide span across his arms.

The way the water shimmered in the sunlight, it almost looked like he had wings.