One.

Compromises.

Our dynamic has always been a source of anything from head-scratching puzzlements right to the downright invasive nosiness, be it from family, friends, or mere acquaintances. It doesn't take a licensed psychologist to see, and to figure out, that we are starkly, astoundingly different. So much that to some people, it simply doesn't make sense.

Choi Minho, as I met him many years ago, was a handsomely-dressed 31-year-old MBA graduate, with a thin-rimmed glasses perching on his nose and a laptop open underneath his hands, on top of a table where books and papers were strewn about carelessly. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the mug filled with cold tea, sitting dangerously close to the edge of the table, forgotten. By then, I had heard great things about him, from my old coworkers and friends, the people who suggested I meet with him.

I don't remember precisely what he said during that meeting, but I remember leaving with a head full of contradictions. I remember thinking how useful he could be for our new, precariously-built cause, but also how much of a liability he could possibly be. As I think on it a little longer, it essentially came down to this:

Minho was—and still is—a corporate drone. He hovered over things to supervise and control, to watch over and fix, whatever problems they may have. At 31, he was already collecting ideas and poring over the data and patterns only he could see, to prepare for the doctorate he's got planned. One he was taking to advance his career in business. He was organized in a way I couldn't be. His plans were laid out neat and long-term, each step precise, with timetables and deadlines. He was serious and straight, with a heavy British accent he tried to hide behind his awkward Korean seemingly became the only sign of imperfection from him. He was unfazed. He was focused. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it. He probably knew too, then, that what we were looking for, was not the same.

I didn't need a corporate sellout, I thought with as much prissiness as only a 24-year old idealist could conjure up. I needed someone genuine. Someone who wanted to do good.

As perfect as Choi Minho was, to me, he was a starry-eyed worshipper of capitalism, and that, in my book, was worse than being the devil himself.

Despite the rocky start, however, we somehow found our way back to one another. I was attending my favorite service, listening to Reverend Jo list out stories and advices that always felt close to my heart, to my community, to my purpose. My family had always been big on religion, and despite the lack of strong belief in me—I didn't know it then; couldn't tell the difference between finding comfort in the routine and truly believing in its core idea—I still attended Church every Sunday. If only to enjoy the mindful serenity it brought me.

That day, however, Choi Minho was there. Sitting two rows behind me, eyes glued to Reverend Jo, body leaning forward with his folded arms resting on the back of the empty bench in front of him. He was sitting one row behind everybody else, and long after the service was over—after everybody had finished saying thank you and good bye personally to the Reverend—he stood up, meeting Reverend Jo halfway and leaning down to hug the older man as if they were old friends.

I hung back, then, curious about the exchange, but didn't feel like interrupting. I waited outside until he came out, no less than half an hour later.

"I didn't know you were a member," I told him. I remember Minho grinning like he's just been told a funny joke. Then he simply shook his head and told me, "I'm an atheist."

It was the first truly personal thing I learned about him, and again, it contrasted starkly with my belief. It was almost as if this man was made to contradict me and everything I stood for. Yet, it didn't slip my attention, the fact that we were there, talking in front of a Church. So I asked him why he was there.

Minho then explained about his family history. About how Reverend Jo was his late father's best friend, his godfather, even. He explained about how sometimes he would sit on one of the services and just listen; soaking up in the warm, fatherly comfort the Reverend provided his community with.

I simply nodded, any and all appropriate response leaving me. It was odd, not being able to agree or disagree with Minho. It left me standing in an in-between that just felt wrong.

Until, minutes later—to break the quiet, I presumed—Minho asked if I'd like to get a cuppa. I stared at him like he was a mad man, baffled by both his vernacular and his offer. Minho raised an eyebrow at me, rather tamely, yet it still felt like a challenge. So I took it.

Unlike our stilted, heated first meeting, the afternoon tea I had with him felt far, far more fulfilling. It was as if suddenly, we managed to find a common ground and were both willing to work from there. It took me a long time to figure out that that common ground was simply us realizing that the other was as human as ourselves. It was us realizing we were not two-dimensional; that we had thoughts running deeper and further than the contrasting idealism we've categorized ourselves in.

I told him about the work we were doing, about what the organization's purposes and reasons for being were. I told him about the children whose talents and aspirations are drowned out by the relentless routine and ruthless demands to excel in academics, and only academics. I told him about the kids who were simply bigger than their lives, than their community, whose dreams are small only because they didn't realize there was something bigger out there. I told him about the mental health and emotional clarity we could increase in those children, if only we had the means to create a safe environment where they could flourish without worrying about failure and grades and the humiliation of being placed in a class meant for "slow learners".

Throughout my fiery explanation, Minho stayed silent, nodding and humming in all the appropriate places, yet not adding a word in. I thought that was perhaps due to my passionate words, and the somewhat defensive nature of my delivery, but even once I finished my monologue, he stayed quiet.

If that was our first meeting, I know I would have immediately dismissed his silence as disinterest. I would've judged him as someone who didn't care, someone who simply could not sympathize with issues that happened beyond the gleaming glass windows of his fifty-something floor office. But at that second meeting, I sat, and waited.

It took Minho a long while. Time he spent sipping on his Earl Grey and giving the monochromatic painting on the wall a thousand-yard stare. Time I spent looking at him while pretending not to be, expectant but concealing it desperately, in an attempt to not come off as eager. It didn't occur to me why I was so excited to finally hear his opinion, given that I was all for giving him an internal middle finger just two weeks prior. It occurred to me now, though, that in whatever shape or form, Choi Minho and his opinions would always matter to me, even that early on. I just didn't know it yet.

So when he finally opened his mouth, I leaned forward to listen, and was utterly floored by his response. It wasn't that I expected him to be a bad person, not exactly. It was just that by then, even at my young age, I had met so many people that were just so cynical, so negative, or worse, so neutral about issues that don't directly correlate them. Even when the issue was divisive in its clear black and white-ness.

Choi Minho, as it turned out, was not one of them.

By the time he finished giving me his personal opinion and approval of the programs, of the organization's vision, he started grilling me about technical stuff—asking about who we were planning on reeling in as stakeholders, as allies, as brains and brawns; about our sources of funding, our agility to zigzag our way around bureaucracy, our readiness to face the dismissive nature of some politicians when it comes to making changes that wouldn't give them instant gratification.

I answered them the best I could, and for the most part, I knew we got it covered. Jonghyun was one hell of a planner, and he knew the inner workings of the education system, thanks to the long line of teachers and educators in his family. Jinki was the son of an ex-congressman, and even though his father's political career was stopped short by the clash that followed his persistent idealism—which eventually brought him towards the direction of independent activism and academics, instead of the politics he’d been scouring in for more than a decade—he still knew his way around the intricacy of, especially, City Hall bureaucracy. Outside of the three of us, we had a small team, consisting of people who were in charge of the more practical things like public engagement, designs, and field research. It was an us-against-the-world situation, but Minho, surprisingly, did not seem to be deterred by it.

If anything, he was intrigued.

And I was intrigued by his intrigue.

So he joined the team, albeit unofficially. He connected us to the higher-ups of his company, pitching us as a shiny badge of altruism they can wear (I squirmed uncomfortably at this, but even I understood that funding was necessary, and to get it, you had to fulfill the means). He called his old professors back in Manchester, and his parents' political connections. He introduced the team to another team he used to volunteer for back in England, whose mission and ideas were parallel with ours.

With that out of the way, by the third month since my first reluctant meeting, our team of three had become four.

Kim Kibum came into the picture eight weeks later, nearly nine months into Shining's journey. He, like Minho and Jinki, was a highly-educated trust fund kid, though unlike the other two, he was a tech-savvy, and he blended in very easily with the younger crowd, despite being almost thirty-two. Kibum was Minho's middle school friend whom he reconnected with in college. They were close in a way only people with so much yet so little in common could be. In retrospect, I realized that that was probably why I didn't like Kibum.

He was close to Minho the way I was trying to be close with him. Different, yet complimentary. It was humiliating to think, and so I pushed it down, and layered discontent on top of it.

Except discontent was hard when, the moment Kibum stepped into the picture—apparently after weeks of relentless battering from Minho—our funding spiked up so sharply that we started borderline panicking about what other programs we could do to keep the funds rolling. I was reeling from the newly-established pace, and, even though they hid it better than me, I knew that deep down, the rest of them, sans Kibum, were, too.

It took some doing for us to finally be able to get a grip and start laying down groundworks for the new plans. Bigger plans. The following months were then filled with intense badgering of our staff, demanding that everyone worked harder, faster, and more creative. It was exhausting and exhilarating; I never felt enough and yet, at the same time, I was satisfied.

Most importantly, perhaps, was the fact that for the first time in months, we felt secure. Jonghyun and I were over the moon about it, because good funding meant a stable future (only if they are managed well, I can still hear Minho reminding us every five minutes or so), and for the sons of working-class families like us, stability was a source of comfort.

Still, despite the professional success and the new era Kibum brought to the table, I felt the childish dislike and discomfort settling in. It was gradual, and it was lurking under layers of admiration and respect, so I didn't pay much attention to it. Not until it was too late.

The first outwardly sign of my discontent was the morning of our nth session, held in a cozy meeting room of a high-end co-working space, all the way in Itaewon. It was a meeting we set up for young seasoned entrepreneurs and artists we were chatting up to endorse the first anniversary showcase. They were Kibum's connections, and so he did most of the talking. It was normal, everything was going well, right to the moment Minho arrived, dapper and smelling expensive, like always. At the sight of him, Kibum perked up, and for some reason, it flared a fire inside me I didn't even realize existed.

For hours I watched them, bantering and bickering back and forth. They spoke English, fluently and naturally, and it was another thing I was most jealous of. Minho was a different person when he spoke English. Gone was the awkward, heavy tilt of his stilted Korean, and in its place were jokes and references and the unmistakable ease of a native speaker, speaking his native tongue. It was the first time I saw Choi Minho as the foreigner—not a stranger; this was somehow worse than a stranger—that he was, despite his physical appearance and his name and his domicile. He was a foreigner, an outsider. With that, he had another thing in common with Kibum.

And one less with me.

Yet again, I didn't realize why that realization was so disheartening. That didn't stop me from giving both Kibum and Minho the cold shoulder for the rest of the week, however, and the fact that they didn't seem to be bothered much by it, only served to push the knives in deeper.

The thing with jealousy was that it was latent. It rooted deep in you for a long time, brewing underneath many layers of common sense, before slowly growing a trunk, then branches, and finally, it'd bloom. As the case of mine, by the time I noticed it, it had reached its full height, and thus was chipping on my rationality.

After that day in the cafe, Minho began to speak more and more English. I wouldn't admit it, but I loved listening to him speak. His accent was flawless; his voice heavier than it was when he spoke Korean. His gestures were calmer, and the way he carried himself was simply different. The changes were minute, but they were present, and I relished on it. At least when we were alone.

The moment Kibum stepped into the same room, however, my patience became short. So short that once or twice, I'd be attacking even Minho, shooting down his ideas and using his ideals against him. Minho, to his credit, took it in stride, because that was just how we were, right from the beginning. The fiery, passionate, bright-eyed (naive, I'd say, though Jinki would always disagree) idealist running against the steady, stubborn, equally passionate realist. We argued and fought on a daily basis, over big ideas, small ideas, over lunch menus, over who used Jonghyun's markers without telling, over who was the best actor of the early 2000s. Our fights were not always the same, not always relevant, but they were consistent. It was part of us, of our dynamics.

That day, the fight was different. At least for me.

I had no idea how it began, because one moment we were drawing up blueprints for our newest batch of volunteers, and the next I was snapping at him to stop speaking English in front of me. It occurred to me, faintly and absently, that Kibum had slipped out of the room quietly the moment I started calling Minho names, going full-on passive-aggressive about him rubbing in his privilege in my face. It spiraled so quickly, turning so personal so fast that even Minho's good humor was quickly wiped away, replaced with a sharp disapproval and offense. I was hurling one accusation after another, and it came to one point where he just blurted, red in the face and impatient with my childish self, "It's not my fault you could afford nothing else but e public schools that taught you nothing about the real world!"

I don't remember much of what happened, then. I do remember, however, the regret that flashed Minho's eyes even before the words were fully out of his mouth. It was a hard blow, attacking my upbringing, but it was fair one, considering the fact that I wasn't exactly fighting clean, either. Still, it hurt. I still remember how it hurt me, shook me right down to my core that this prissy rich kid was telling me I knew nothing about the real world.

So we fought some more, louder and harder than we ever did, until finally, we stopped fighting. We just did. I was running out of things to say, and so was he. I was tired. Filled with the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that didn't allow you to think, or process anything.

Jonghyun's head popped into the room moments later, telling us to stay quiet because a stakeholder was coming to visit in mere minutes. It was unnecessary, however, because I knew, when I looked up to meet Minho's eyes at that moment, that we were finished.

Things returned to a state of relative normalcy after that. At first, Minho and I didn't speak for a full week, not even during our bi-monthly Happy Hour, where he turned up with Jinki, wearing a leather jacket that hugged his form in such a way I found hard to look ar (or, if I was more honest with myself, it was harder to not look). By the time the next Monday rolled in, however, he brought my coffee right alongside his tea, because, as always, I loved the things he hated, and vice versa.

Despite the lack of words exchanged, I understood, and accepted, the olive branch.

Something changed between us. That was a subtle, undeniable, and perhaps even inevitable fact. It wasn't that we were treating each other differently, but I could feel it, anyway. It was in the way he would lean closer and turned his entire body to face me when I spoke, as opposed to before, when he'd simply spare me a quick glance. In the way he'd never fail to greet me when he came into the office after work, often in English, because he's often too tired to think. In the way he'd choose to stand and sit next to me on whatever occasion, be it professional or personal. In the way I was now acutely aware of his presence, and it was everywhere.

Jonghyun, unsurprisingly, was the first one to notice. He handled it like the middle-schooler he sometimes still was, of course, by nudging me and grinning like a loon whenever Minho entered a room. I was quietly grateful of his wordless approval, because that meant I wasn't imagining things. Beyond that, it meant that whatever it was brewing between us, it wasn't a lost cause.

There was nothing dramatic, nothing abrupt about the way we started dating. The most notable incident, aside from the date itself, was perhaps the show Kibum put on—kissing Jinki on the lips as the man walked into the room and sat behind his desk. It was ridiculous and sudden, and so, so Kibum. He spared a wink at me, and right then I knew, it was his way of telling me that he and Minho were not, and had never been, a thing. Even further, I knew it was his way of saying that I had his blessing.

With the jealousy gone, the fondness and affection that rushed through me at the sight of Kibum was so overwhelming that it left me breathless. He didn't seem to notice.

Minho blurted it out nearly six weeks after our fight. By then, I was already tired of our dancing around one another, and was ready to gather up my courage to ask him out for coffee—I cannot, for the life of me, find the enjoyment out of drinking tea—when he came by the office, late at night, carrying a briefcase and looking like he wanted nothing more than to sleep for three straight days. He took a seat on my desk in a rare show of impropriety, dropped his suitcase on the carpet, and looked me in the eye as he asked, not a note of nervousness in his voice: "Will you go out with me?"

And so came our first date.

Despite the many outings we've done over the past several months, I was nervous. I fretted over what to wear, how to style my hair, how to accessorize, should I accessorize, what kind of food would he pick, will we go somewhere fancy, what if I embarrass myself, et cetera. At 18:51, I was ready to go, and it was an excruciating wait, despite it being only about three minutes, because at 18:54, he knocked on my door, carrying a bottle of vodka that I raised an eyebrow to.

"Taeyeon said this is your favoured spirits," was his way of explaining. Taeyeon, Jonghyun's wife, was, for some reason, my drinking buddy. I wouldn't find out until months later, but by then, she was already Minho's as well. She was a good secret keeper, I knew, and that was likely why Minho sought her advice, rather than anyone else's.

By then, I had already gone to many, many first dates. Some of them worked out, some of them didn't, but mostly, my experiences were pretty uniformed. Perhaps in some, there was more shyness and jumbled words, and in others, there was more adult fun than talking, but there was never a break of routine. Each date, be it successful or embarrassing, was hardly different from the other, yet I had no doubt that the night—that night—would be interesting. Perhaps even became one I would remember for years to come.

As it turned out, I was correct. Aside from the obvious fact that I am reminiscing and retelling it right now, that first date truly was something different. Choi Minho was something different. He was intense and serious, even at his friendliest. He was vulnerable, in a way that he's open to gestures of affection, and had no qualms about showing or saying it. He was intelligent to the point of intimidating, but I was nothing if not persistent. In short, the date with Minho was pushing all the right buttons in me, and it was satisfying in a way I had never felt before. I was challenged, and I challenged him right back. We built arguments and broke them down, all in good fun, and the fight that happened some weeks ago felt like something from another lifetime.

Minho didn't come home that night. He came in. I opened the bottle of vodka he brought, and we took shots like a couple of college kids, getting giggly and giddy, silly and loose and, dare I said it, on the cusp of being in love. I remember looking sideways to where Minho sat, only to catch him looking at me, a strange smile on his face.

As he was leaning close, I shut my eyes, expecting a kiss that turned out to be lasting for longer than I thought it would. There was nothing grand about the kiss, no sudden revelation or butterflies. It wasn't life-changing, but it was warm, and Minho tasted a little bitter, like the alcohol he just consumed. Then, as he pulled away, he whispered, a daring note in his voice:

"I've never met anyone like you."

Even in my drunken state, I realized that he was genuine. The rush of the flattery wafted through my bloodstream, warming up my cheeks and ears, turning them a faint, unattractive red that Minho seemed to find endearing, because his hand cupped my cheek and he was smiling a tipsy smile. My own lips were tense as a bowstring, but despite that, I managed to stretch out a smile, anyway.

"Yeah," I told him, honest and happy. "Me neither."

A/N: I am attempting to portray a moment of reflection, of reminiscing. With contentment and maturity as the main nuances. I hope it delivers, even a little.