When he thinks back to that summer, all that comes to mind is turmoil. Emotional, chaotic turmoil, building up and cresting like the waves of an ocean during a storm. Dyed brown hair the same color as the chocolate powder he puts in his coffee, dark brown eyes that turn to liquid gold underneath the sun, a smile brighter than all the flickering incandescent light bulbs in the world, and pain, immeasurable pain.

It started as blunt-force trauma, like someone punched him in the chest, and then he couldn’t breathe. It was like that for a long time, just a dull ache in the middle of his chest, because for a long time, he didn’t believe it was real. He couldn’t, but when he finally could, the pain hit him like a bucket of water, ice-cold, leaving him gasping for breath, tears streaming down his face and blood dripping from his heart.

He doesn’t know how he survived it, the guilt and inner conflict. It tore him apart from the inside out, starting from his heart and spreading to every inch of his body. Some days, all he could do was cry, and other days, he didn’t know what emotions felt like. He would spend entire days in bed, staring at the blank white of the ceiling, mirroring it with his mind, and he remembers distinctly his mother’s tear-filled voice as she begged him to ‘just come out and eat something, please.’

For a long time, he thought that was it, that he would never be normal again. But once he went to college and left that small town behind, the storm clouds cleared and he pulled himself out of the dark place he’d spent so much time in. He left everything, stayed in Busan and never looked back. Everything was done and gone, and he had already moved on. Everything was fine where it was, and there was no need to reopen old wounds.

Until he bumped into them again.

The two people he never wanted to see again, in his town? Bull-ing-. This was no ‘coincidence’; it was a cursed intervention from the gods.

So now they sit, all three of them, in frosty silence in the middle of a café on a rainy November day, stubbornly silent until she finally clears .

“Come on, guys, let’s just talk. How have you been, Howon?” Carefully, she moves her dark hair behind her shoulder. “Ever since you left, no one could get in contact with you anymore.”

Of course not, he’d made sure of that. Howon sighs, rubbing his eyes. Come to think of it, Naeun had always been oddly optimistic about everything, even death and betrayal and all that. He wonders what she thought of the events that happened that summer.

“I’ve been fine,” he answers, not looking at her. Instead, he looks into the depths of his coffee, light brown and opaque, almost the exact color of the hair of the boy who left long ago. “Tired, but that’s what you get when you work nonstop.”

He laughs bitterly, downing the coffee. Its last dregs slide to the bottom of the cup, and the man sitting directly across from him scoffs, glancing out the window. Naeun looks to him at warning, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, like the rest of us don’t?”

Naeun frowns. “Myungsoo--” she says, but he cuts her off with a wave of his hand.

“Yeah, yeah, be nice to him and all that.” Myungsoo turns, looking Howon directly in the eyes. “So how’s your life been since you left us? Not even a note or a letter, not in twenty years.” He turns away. “He doesn’t deserve us.”

Twenty years. It’s been twenty years since the incident, and Myungsoo hasn’t changed much. Still the same black hair sweeping across his forehead, the same dark eyes that seem to pierce his soul, the same tone of hatred in his voice. Howon can’t stop the anger burning deep in the pit of his soul.

“And may I remind you that you were the one who started the entire thing?” His voice is ice-cold, and Naeun freezes, her pretty eyes darting back and forth between Howon and Myungsoo, who seems unperturbed except for the subtle wrinkle in his forehead. His habits haven’t changed, and even after twenty years, Howon finds - with a stab of pain - that he can still read him clearly.

It’s an eternity before Myungsoo speaks again, and Howon’s almost convinced that he won’t. But he does, slowly, gripping his coffee mug so tightly that his knuckles turn white. “So it may be,” he says, calm with deadly precision, “but you were the one who drove him to it.”

The guilt crests, burning with shame, forcibly dug up from underneath all the denial and evasion of twenty years. It crashes into Howon with a magnitude that takes his breath away. He clutches his chest – his blood pounds in his head – and rises, only to stumble. Naeun’s beside him in a flash, asking repeatedly ‘are you okay?’ in concern, but he can’t muster any more of a response than a nod and a grunt.

“I’m fine,” he finally manages to choke out, gripping the edge of the table. “I’m fine, really.”

The corner of the table cuts into the softness of his palm, but Howon focuses on the pain. He wants it, needs it, needs something to ground him in the reality of 2009, in this quaint little café on the side of a busy street in Busan, doesn’t need to return to the memories of that summer, that summer.

The summer of 1989, one of naivety, happiness, terror, and chaos, and in a flash, he’s seventeen again, lounging on the sun-warmed steps in front of the high school with his three best friends – Myungsoo, Naeun, and Ryosuke.

Ryosuke. Yamada Ryosuke, the boy with the hair the same color as chocolate powder, the eyes that turned to honey under the sun, the smile that outshone a thousand light bulbs, Ryosuke.

“Howon?”

It all disappears, and he’s sitting in a hipster café in the middle of town, an empty white mug in front of him, Myungsoo and Naeun across from him at a corner booth, and Naeun’s dress is white with pink flowers on it, and the air is heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke, and the fake leather beneath his jeans is sticky and damp but Howon’s just glad to have something to focus on. He takes a deep breath and forces the memories away.

“What?” he asks, trying to pretend like nothing’s happened. Judging by the looks on their faces, Myungsoo and Naeun don’t buy it. In fact, he thinks they know what just happened, maybe even understand, flashed back themselves.

Naeun shakes her head. Her hair falls in front of her face, and mechanically, Myungsoo reaches out to move it away. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately,” she says, looking into her untouched coffee. “About… the summer we were seventeen.”

Oh, God, here they go again. Thankfully, Howon has much more control over himself this time, and all he does is grunt in response. Myungsoo glances at him, gaze unreadable as always, and Naeun goes on.

“It all happened so fast, and I didn’t even have a chance to process what had happened, and then you left without explanation, and I was left along with all my thoughts and feelings, and, and…”

She’s crying now, tears forming in her eyes. Myungsoo pulls her into an embrace, lips against her ear, whispering something. Howon only watches them. How have they lasted all this time, through the pain and guilt and sin? But they’ve always been perfect for each other, he won’t deny that, making up for each other’s weaknesses.

“And we never got closure.” Naeun wipes her eyes and sniffs loudly. Unwittingly, Howon lets out an amused huff. She ignores him, of course. “I wanted to find you, but it seemed like fate was on our side and we met anyway. So I wanted to just talk.”

“About that summer?” Howon can’t help laughing, it’s just so funny. The two people who hurt him the most, the two people he never wanted to see again, back in his life after everything he did to escape it, and now they want to talk? About the incident?

Myungsoo’s eyes narrow. “I’ve also been thinking. It was…” He hesitates, and Howon gathers the rest of his scattered pieces in the silence. “It was my fault. I acknowledge that. But it was also all of our faults, and we should talk about it.”

Howon’s eyebrows shoot into his forehead. Myungsoo, admitting that he ed up? Perfect, prideful Myungsoo, admitting that he was – God forbid – wrong?

Maybe he’ll talk with them after all.

“Sure, it was your fault, but how was it all of ours?” he demands, trying to sound accusing, but his fingers play with the handle of his cup and betray the nervousness in his chest, the queasiness that upsets his stomach and threatens to spill everything he knows.

Myungsoo clicks his tongue. Howon recognizes it as a sign of annoyance. “I don’t know how to put it,” he says, running his hand through his hair. “We’d have to go back to the beginning.”

The beginning, where it all started. The rain outside strengthens, pattering against the window in a rhythmic pattern. The beginning was a long time ago, but Howon still remembers, clear as day, when he first met them.