Seunghyun squeezes his eyes shut as his hands tightened their grip around the many complicated knobs presented to him as he prayed fervently.

This must work... this must work...

The final whirring of the time machine slowed down, giving the room its usual chilly silence as Seunghyun slowly opened his eyes.

A small smile appeared on his face as he inspected his machine.

It was gone.

The rock was gone.

—

“Ouch!”

Jaejin winces as he instinctively brings his hand to rub the back of his head after a hard object claimed itself some skin, scattering dust as it landed on the pavement. The grubby rock stares back at Jaejin as the dark haired boy glares at it, sending it flying down the street.

“There’s no need to do that, it’s only just a rock,” Seunghyun chuckles, voice tinged with amusement as admires the perfection of a boy he has standing beside him, who was still furiously rubbing his head.

“Aren’t you jealous that a rock had a piece of your boyfriend?” Jaejin mutters back, pouting a little.

“Are you trying to put competition between me and a rock?!”

Jaejin sticks out his tongue. “So what if I am?”

“Yah, are you trying to say I’m a rock?” Seunghyun pretends to be angry, lightly pushing Jaejin off the pavement but not hard enough to kill him, as the smaller boy retaliated with a harder push of his own, sending Seunghyun spluttering into the bushes.

To anyone, they would have just looked like two schoolboys fooling around. But what was beyond the facade they put on was something else.

Love, like Jaejin always called it.

—

Beads of sweat mixed with dried tears rolled down Seunghyun’s pale cheeks, dirtied from all the work he had been doing as Seunghyun crouched down and fixed a loose part in the machine, standing up then slowly stretching, allowing himself to rest for awhile as he admired his masterpiece.

The apartment that he had been living in hadn’t changed, not a single bit, ever since Jaejin moved out. Everything was placed in the exact order that they were in when Jaejin left. Call him crazy, call him delusional, but this was the only way Seunghyun could retain those memories — those happy memories he had with Jaejin.

Out of the corner of his eye, Seunghyun spots an old, discoloured card. A smile lit up his face as he reaches out for it, feeling the age of the crumpled and yellowed card as he slowly the edge of the card lovingly.

“Happy 17th birthday to my one and only yeobo! Love, from Jinnie.”

—

Jaejin scurries around the small apartment, fixing some streamers that had come off loose and pressing the end of the huge banner to the wall, sticking it there as he backed away and looked at his work.

Seunghyun would love it.

Jaejin grins as he switches off the lights and waited for the birthday boy to come back. Not long now...

“!”

Suddenly remembering something, Jaejin squeals as he skids off the polished marble floor and into the kitchen, landing himself in a great heap on the ground, picking himself up and brushing off all the dust on him as he slowly lifts up the small birthday cake sitting innocently on the round kitchen table.

Picking up some candles, Jaejin takes some time to arrange them neatly, not caring about the age reflected by the candles as he lights up a match and lit the candle one by one, each candle adding on to the small flames of light dancing in the boy’s excited, light brown orbs.

Jaejin turns carefully, making his way out of the kitchen just as the door clicked open. The lights flickered on as the bewildered birthday boy strode into the living room.

“Happy birthday!”

The bewildered expression on Seunghyun’s face slid to a happy one as he looked up from the cake into the eyes of his boyfriend. “This...”

“Yah! No crying!” Jaejin stutters as he pushed the cake a little more towards the birthday boy’s tearing face. “Make a wish and blow the candles!”

Seunghyun sniffles and did exactly as told as he clasps his hands together in front of him and closes his eyes.

‘I wish we will never part.’

The birthday boy’s eyes flicked open in shock when he feels soft, warm lips on his cheek. Jaejin smiles sheepishly into his lover’s shocked face and placing the cake down, the candles blown out, leans into Seunghyun’s body and whispers, “we’ll never be seperated.”

Jaejin’s promise was sealed with a sweet little kiss.

—

Seunghyun gets up from the chair that he had been bonding with for the past few months, so much that there was a slight dent in the seat already. His leg catches on something and Seunghyun almost trips before grabbing the edge of the table, holding himself steady.

His gaze slowly lowered to the offending object.

A white and black electronic guitar gazed back at him, its neck and body gathered much dust along with its beginning to rust strings bringing back several memories, good memories. However, that one, long and horrible-looking scratch running down the last fret to the end of the guitar body, and the huge dent at the side...

It had once been his most prized possession.

Tears stung at Seunghyun’s eyes as he picked up the fragile instrument. His fingers gently pressed down on the respective strings as he started playing a soft melody, which progressed into something harsher and more drastic. The boy oddly looks at peace, both hands controlling the instrument to play the deadly melody. It would have looked peaceful if the song wasn’t playing at an alarmingly fast rate as his fingers flew up and down the guitar neck.

The powerful and deafening song abruptly ended as one of the strings snapped, slapping Seunghyun’s finger mercilessly and leaving a deep cut there.

The boy puts down his guitar gently like a mother would to her baby son as he rubbed off the tears with that one injured hand, leaving blood streaks on his cheeks.

—

“Seunghyun-ah, wanna try learning how to play an instrument?”

Seunghyun looks up from his math homework, blinking as he stared at the older male who was grinning at him, earphones plugged in as he air guitared, ending his performance with a dramatic bow.

“I was thinking, maybe learning how to play an instrument, like guitar, would be good,” Jaejin continues, not waiting for Seunghyun’s reply as he propped himself onto the table which Seunghyun was working out his sums on, legs swaying.

“How are we going to get guitars? Where would you get a teacher?”

“I have my ways,” Jaejin winks and leaving Seunghyun baffled and confused, skips out of the room.

The next two weeks, Seunghyun found himself and Jaejin learning how to play guitar from another guy, Oh Wonbin, which Jaejin had carelessly dismissed as ‘his good friend’.

Seunghyun tilts his head away from the chords he has been repeatedly playing, ignoring the sharp pain in his fingers as his gaze rested on the boy sitting next to him, immersed in his guitar playing. Seunghyun stops playing and let the sound of Jaejin’s gentle guitar playing fill the entire room.

—

The outdated television that was forever rambled on and on about new K-pop groups making their debut and whatnot as Seunghyun’s tired and lanky body leaned onto one side of the couch, his head drooping from his supporting arms as the boy fell into a deep slumber, something he had not allowed himself to do when he first started building that machine.

 “... but of course, that one band which brought on the Hallyu wave, FT Triple!”

A face that would be painfully familiar to the vulnerable, sleeping boy, filled up the small television screen as he flashed a dashing smile, drawing strangled fangirl screams. His smile was done was much practice, so much that it appeared on his doll-like face so naturally that it didn’t seem like an act, a well-moulded mask anymore.

His almost-perfect smile never wavered amidst the lowered volume of the fan screams in the background as his other members introduced themselves, each drawing a different set of screams and finally, the microphone was passed to him.

The boy took it, and without faltering, smiled again.

“Hello, I’m Lee Jaejin, vocals for FT Triple.”

—

“I want to try out for auditions.”

Seunghyun looks up from his homework — Pythagoras’ Theorem, which was bugging him non-stop as Jaejin almost knocks him off his chair with his excitement and also partly due to the electric guitar slinging off his body, crashing into the wooden chair but Jaejin doesn’t even blink at the sound.

“Do you think I can get in?”

Seunghyun looks at his boyfriend from top to toe, from his mess of brown hair which was actually very carefully styled after spending hours in front of the bathroom mirror, to his angular face, to his eyes — two big, brown orbs which sparkled with excitement to his not-very-sharp nose... and finally his gaze sets on Jaejin’s lips.

As much as Seunghyun didn’t want to admit it, Jaejin was the perfect built to any fangirl’s dream. Jaejin studied his boyfriend’s expression closely as he casually strummed a soft chord on his dark blue guitar before he slowly mutes it, tapping the strings lightly.

“You know what Seunghyun? Let’s go try out together.”

-

“Are you sure we can do this?”

It had been two months after Jaejin first proclaimed his dream to be a singer and somehow pulled Seunghyun down with him. Seunghyun adjusts his guitar strap as he observed the surroundings — the cool, white corridor which somehow freaked him out and scared him out of his wits as he looked painfully small standing next to the confident and cheerful Jaejin who was randomly greeting black suited people, smiling so wide that it looked like his lips were going to crack apart.

Jaejin lightly punches Seunghyun’s arm. “Everything’s gonna be fine. Believe in me.”

Seunghyun nods, his lips trembling as he reruns the chords and guitar solo he had prepared for a month now. He was more than prepared, the tips of his reddening fingers stinging with the endless loop of practice he had forced himself to be as good as Jaejin. Seunghyun looks up, just as Jaejin breaks into comfortable conversation with a boy that had a guitar slung to his back, who looked older than them but had the perfect facial features, big eyes, sharp nose... He watches as Jaejin continues to talk to the statue-like boy. He watches as the statue boy brings up his hand and caresses Jaejin’s face lightly. He watches Jaejin flinches but does nothing to stop the boy.

It hurt.

It hurt just as much as the painful fact that they were drifting apart, and Jaejin didn’t make an effort to save it.

...