It’s just another Saturday when you wake up. It’s late November, and it’s starting to get a little cold. Not cold enough that you need to be bundled up in a winter coat, but cold enough that you catch yourself wishing you could turn up the heat and go back to bed, because no one should be up when it’s that chilly outside. 

You wonder if it’s going to snow for the first time that year that day like they predicted. There are quite a few superstitions surrounding the first snowfall of the year. Like, if you witness the first snowfall with the person you like, true, long-lasting love will blossom between the two of you; or, if you make a wish during the first snowfall, it is sure to come true. 

You think you believe in them, kind of, before you realise there isn’t really a point to it, anyway. The love of your life is getting married to someone else today, and there aren’t many things you would wish for that are actually possible to attain. 

Well. The least you could do is be an adult about things. So you get out of bed, make yourself breakfast, and leave for the salon. 

—

“Wake up wake up wake up,” you hear Hyukjae chant, his voice getting insistently louder. 

You raise your arm to throw a pillow at him and it muffles his voice for a split second, before he continues chanting in your ear. 

“Please go away,” you mumble, still thinking about that Korean beef you were salivating over in your dream. Just one mouthful…

But Hyukjae doesn’t give up, and is instead tugging at your arm and dragging you out of bed. You end up standing upright—because you’re not sure the hotel carpet is clean enough for you to plant your face on, and you’re already sick of the weekly dermatologist visits—but keep your eyes firmly closed as a final form of resistance. You know you’ve already lost when you got out of bed, but still. 

You glance at the clock on the bedside table. It’s slightly after 7, which isn’t an unreasonable timing, unless you only went to bed a little over 4 hours ago. Which you did. Super Junior was invited to perform at a countdown party, and by the time all of you had supper and were shushed back to your hotel rooms, it was already well into the wee hours of the morning. You’re 22 and you wonder if you can still survive on the same amount of sleep 10 years down the road.

Hyukjae piles layers and layers of clothes onto your waiting body, and you open an eye to peek at him while he does up the buttons on your coat. You watch the way his eyebrows scrunch up when he’s concentrating on something, and find yourself wanting to smooth them over before you remember you’re supposed to still be angry with him. 

“Where are we going?” You ask, as petulantly as you can manage to be.

Hyukjae takes one look at your face and realises you’re not as pissed off as you’re pretending to be, but lets you off the hook and pulls a beanie atop your head. “Somewhere nice,” he says, tucking the tip of your ears into the beanie as well. It tickles, and you find your cheeks heating up over the tender gesture.

“Can’t it wait till morning?” You whine, even as you obediently hold out your hands for him to slip the gloves on. He puts on two on each hand, and you pretend not to notice. Your fingers do get cold easily. 

He shakes his head, but doesn’t provide any other information. You decide there and then, you can deal with surprises as long as it involves Hyukjae. You watch as he pulls on a sweater, and then another one, before putting on a hoodie and his winter coat. 

“You gotta be quiet when we leave, okay? I don’t want to wake up the rest of the members or manager hyung-nim,” Hyukjae reminds you as he wobbles on one foot trying to put his shoes on. 

You laugh, and in retaliation he throws your socks at you. You put them on and slip into your shoes, taking a few experimental steps in the room. No matter how many times you’ve done it, it still feels weird walking around when you have three pairs of socks on. 

Hyukjae gets done dressing up, and you help him with his gloves even though he’s fully capable of putting them on by himself. You’re not exactly the best at taking care of yourself—let alone another person—but you like the feeling of doing something for another, especially when it comes to Hyukjae. His little grin shows just how much he likes it as well. 

He slips two heat packs into your coat pockets, and puts his index finger to his lips as he unlocks the hotel room door. You roll your eyes—it’s not like you’re going to kick up a fuss walking down the hallway. 

He brings you up to the rooftop, and you’re about to roll your eyes again at the sign which clearly says ‘no entry’ when he flashes you a mischievous grin and produces a pair of keys from his pockets.

“Oh c’mon, have some faith in me,” he says, mock offended.

“How did you get the keys?” 

“Took a selfie with the hotel manager and gave her my signature,” he says, flashing a charming grin. You think you can empathise with the hotel manager, especially when you’re on the receiving end of that smile.

The two of you settle by a bench overlooking the skyline, and sit in companionable silence for a while. The clouds are starting to part. If you squint, you think you can see the sun creeping up.

“Thank you, Hyukjae,” you say, resting your head on his shoulder. The padded jacket makes it feel like you’re lying on a pillow. 

“It’s not much,” he says, suddenly bashful. His cheeks are a little pink, and you wonder if it’s the cold or if he’s shy. It’s a pretty colour on him, you think. 

“It’s enough,” you say, pressing your cheeks against his, the way you used to do all those years ago. The sensation is a little strange, given how cold it is, but your heart still flutters in your chest anyway. You pull away, and watch as the corners of his mouth pull up to form a shy smile, captivated. You’re suddenly overwhelmed by how important he is to you. You never knew another person could mean that much, but here he is.

He shifts to wrap an arm around you, and you press closer to him. 

You inhale the cold air, and as you feel the warm press of Hyukjae’s body against yours, you think: it’s going to be a good year. 

You feel like a kid watching the sun rise for the first time in his life. It feels like the most magical sight you’ve ever seen. You wish you could be the person he took to see the first sunrise every year.

—

Hyukjae’s popular with the girls. Of course he is. Every time he steps onto the stage everyone’s eyes are instantly drawn to him—there’s something about the way he moves, the way he carries himself. It’s mesmerising. 

You would know. You can’t look away either.

Sometimes he catches you looking, but he rarely points it out; and if he does, you would just pretend you were watching closely to emulate his moves. He doesn’t seem to mind, anyway. 

—

Some nights you dream of him. In the dream you put your hands on his body, and he lets you, and that’s how you know it’s a dream. When you wake up you find you can’t look him in the eye. Especially when he smiles at you. 

A part of you wonders what he’d do if he knew about the dreams. Would he still look at you this gently?

When he dates another idol singer you think she doesn’t deserve him, even if all your other friends thinks it’s the other way round. They say she’s way out of his league, and you wish they knew how wrong they were.

The dreams stop, but mostly because you can’t seem to fall asleep all that much anymore.

He asks if you think they’ll last for long. Though he doesn’t say it, the way his eyes dart around nervously is reason enough to know he’s seeking assurance. So you give it to him, because he’s the most important person to you and you didn’t want him to worry. And because you want him to be happy.

That night you look through her pictures on SNS. You suppose she’s pretty, and you had to be projecting, but there are certain features of hers that… kind of resemble yours. The straight brows, the big doe eyes, and the straight nose.

And a small, inane part of you wonders: why couldn’t it have been me?

—

They break up some months later, following a full-blown scandal. He says he’s fine and that he is sorry, but you know him better. You see the way his eyes are downcast every time there are cameras near him, and the way his hand slightly trembles while he holds onto a microphone.

(And you feel terrible about it, you really do, but you find that you sleep better knowing he’s right next door and not in anyone else’s bed.)

He’s still as jaw-dropping as he dances, of course, but it’s hard to miss the way his lips quiver when the music stops.

(The dreams come back. Except in these dreams you’re holding his face and telling him you’d never have done what she did to him. In these dreams you’re telling him you love him and he lets you.)

At one of the year end ceremonies he’s positioned next to you, and you watch the way he fidgets with his fingers—a tell-tale sign of his building anxiety. So you walk over, and you reach out for his hand. You hold onto his hand and squeeze it, meeting his eyes. You sense the cameras flashing in your direction but you do not care. It’s considered occupational hazard at this point. 

He looks up, surprised, and a few seconds pass before he shoots you a grateful smile, his eyes watery. You smile back, even if the both of you are momentarily blinded by the unrelenting reporters and fansites. 

You continue holding onto his hand. It’s both a sentiment between the two of you and a statement for the whole world—you’d hold up the sky for him, if only you could.

You want to put his head between your hands but you settle for his hand instead. The same way you want all of him but settle for what he would give you instead. It’s barely enough but it needn’t have to be.

—

You’d always dreamed of writing your own songs, and sometimes you turn on the radio to catch the songs charting to get a feel of what the market was looking for. You could listen forever, yet almost every single one of the songs would be about love. You’d wonder, whether the kind of love they spoke of was real. The kind of love that changes your life completely and dramatically. The kind of love that is bigger than life itself. The kind of love that’ll make all your trials and tribulations worth it.

Sometimes you think they must be exaggerating. 

Surely no one feels this strongly, and even if it were true, surely it can’t be that every single one of these singers experienced such a life-altering and exhilarating relationship.

But then there are some days where Hyukjae would turn to smile at you—his eyes crinkling at the ends—the way he never smiles at anyone else—and try as you may your pulse almost always misbehaved.

On those days you wanted to put your pen to paper, and you just know that every single love song you will ever write would be dedicated to him.

—

You’re a terrible drinker, but you know you can only turn down that many company dinners before they stop inviting you altogether. 

“Don’t drink more than you can handle,” Hyukjae tells you before you step in the room.

You shrug his concern off. “I’m not a kid,” you say. 

But you do get drunk, and he supports your weight the whole journey home and you try to push him away, complaining about how the fans are going to see this.

“If you were worried about that then you would have stopped after two drinks,” he chastises you, and even though the whole world is spinning for you you think you can see the anger in his eyes.

“Hyukjae,” you say as you stop in your steps, holding onto his arm. “Are you mad at me?”

He doesn’t answer, but tries to tug you towards the street anyway. 

“I’m sorry,” you continue, because you’ve known him long enough to know how he’s like when he’s angry, and when he’s trying to hide it.

He stares at you for a moment and you try to look as pitiful as you can—which isn’t all that difficult in your drunken stupor. He has a soft spot that you’re not all that against exploiting. He doesn’t say anything.

There’s a fierceness in his eyes that you haven’t always seen, and for some strange reason you feel your face heating up. You wonder if that has anything to do with the alcohol.

Then he sighs, and raises an arm to grab at your neck. His hand is warm against your skin, or maybe your skin is simply on fire. You think you can hear your heartbeat in your ears. He leans in and for a splitting moment you think he’s going to kiss you, but he only says, and with no real heat behind his words, “You’re going to be the death of me some day.”

And he’s about to pull away, but liquor courage or alcohol-induced stupidity has taken over your brain and you do what you would never have dared to do sober—not in a million years—not if it’s what you’ve always wanted since you’ve known desire—and you kiss him. 

You feel his body go tense and you think: what the did I just do. The gods take pity on you there and then, and you pass out.

—

The next morning is a bit awkward. And the morning after the next. And the one after that too. The silence between the two of you stretches until it can’t anymore, when Leeteuk locks the two of you in a room and tells you to sort out whatever it is that’s got the both of you sulking like that. 

You snicker as he closes the door on the two of you, because if only he knew the real reason behind it. 

Hyukjae lingers by the door, twiddling his thumbs and looking everywhere and at everything except you. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, breaking the silence. 

That gets his attention, and he meets your eyes. “What for?”

For kissing you. For ruining things between us. For jeopardising our friendship. “For drinking too much,” you end up saying. 

It startles a laugh out of him. 

“Then I’m sorry too,” he says, bridging the distance between the two of you. It’s not much—it’s a small room—but in that moment it felt as though he’d been crossing oceans just to get to you.

“What for?” You ask now, unable to stop your traitorous heart from speeding up.

“For not kissing you back,” he says, and your whole world narrows down to his lips and the way they’re pressed against yours.

When he pulls away you think you must be living in some fever dream because there’s no way that just happened, but you see the fear and uncertainty in his eyes and for some strange, inexplicable reason, that is what convinces you the kiss did happen. 

“Hey now,” you say, grabbing onto his wrist before he can run out of the room and never speak to you again. “It’s okay,” you tell him, even though you don’t really know what you’re talking about. 

The fog in his eyes clear, however, and he’s smiling at you with the kind of grin that keeps you up all night and then appears in your dreams when you finally fall asleep. 

When Leeteuk finally lets the two of you out, you’re holding his hand. 

—

A few days later he knocks on your room door at night. 

It’s late and everyone is asleep, but you let him in anyway. You can smell the liquor on him, and it scares you, because he’s never the type to drink.

The door opens and he falls right into your arms, clinging onto you, his breaths hot and heavy against your neck.

He says he doesn’t know what he’s doing but he wants you. He says it’s unfair because he doesn’t know if he can do it but he wants you. He says you’re his best friend in the entire world and he really shouldn’t be feeling this way but he wants you. 

You hear nothing, except that he wants you.

—

The days that follow are some of the best days in your life. He holds your hand and cups your face and tells everyone you’re his boyfriend, and he looks at you with the kind of fondness that you’d never thought a person would be capable of. He says he’s in love with you and he kisses you like he means it. 

He’s by your side through the four seasons and you’re conflicted between wanting time to fast forward because you’re perfectly contented and wanting time to come to a standstill because you’re perfectly contented.