나 숨 쉬듯 감출 수 없는 사랑이니까

Because my love is like breathing, I can't seem to hide it

Buried beneath their now shared blanket, Myungsoo and Sungjong had been spending the past few hours catching up by talking about what they had done during their three-year separation, of the memories they made without each other. Myungsoo had finally brought up the topic of how he managed to graduate a year early from the police academy ("It's not a big deal, really," he said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "My professor just thought I was qualified enough to graduate a year earlier than my classmates. He introduced me to the Chief Police of the station one day, and that's how I started working as a detective.") which had only left Sungjong flustered because he couldn't find anything particularly interesting that had happened to him in the past three years. The best he could come up with were small anecdotes of him occasionally running into a few of their old friends from high school or of him being reluctantly dragged along by some of his schoolmates for double dates. Myungsoo sat up in bed, staring down at the younger boy in evident shock. "Y-you . . . dated?" he stuttered a bit too loudly. But Sungjong only responded by hitting his older friend in the chest with a pillow.

It wasn't until later that the younger boy brought himself to glance timidly up at Myungsoo and ask him the question he had once kept tucked away in his heart. "Did you . . . did you miss me while I was gone?" 

The detective shifted his gaze down to his own lap, unable to meet Sungjong's eyes without having tears building up in his own. "I did," was his answer. And it was the truth. There had been some days when Myungsoo would lie awake in the middle of the night with a vacant look in his eyes, recollecting the memories of his past and imagining the "what if's" of his future if he had chosen to remain by Sungjong's side. Moments like these had become less and less frequent over the years, and he had gradually begun to forget. But not entirely. It was that sliver of memories hidden away in the crevices of his mind that occasionally brought him a sharp pang of longing. 

Sungjong reached out to gently prod the older boy's cheek. Just as he had done countless times in the past. "Then do you think it means something that we found each other again?" 

Myungsoo thought about it for a moment. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "But I'd like to think it does."

~

With a small sigh escaping his lips, Lee Howon leaned impatiently against the counter, waiting for the nurse behind the receptionist's booth to return from the filing room. On Sunggyu's request, the detective had gone to the hospital on his own to retrieve Lim Jaeheun's visitor records (with a warrant, of course), but so far, all he's been doing was standing around doing absolutely nothing. Another sigh. Howon didn't have time for this, and he had half a mind to barge into the back room to look for the file himself. But before he could act irrationally (which he had a terrible habit of doing whenever he grew impatient), the nurse bustled back into view, balancing a stack of papers in one hand and cradling a box in the other while murmuring hasty apologies under her breath. She plopped down the load of paperwork along with the box onto the countertop. "I'm sorry for the wait, Detective Lee," she insisted after catching her breath. "These papers here are Lim Jaeheun's visitor records we've accumulated over the past three years. The ones in the box are the patient's medical records."

Eyeing the pile in shock, Howon found himself asking, "So I'm guessing that the patient gets a lot of visitors?"

"Not really," the nurse replied, pushing the stack towards the detective. "If you look through these, you'll see that besides a few family members and friends, no one else really came by."

Howon glanced up. "Friends?"

"Yes. Lim Jaeheun had a handful of acquaintences visit him during the beginning of his stay, but most of them eventually stopped coming when they saw that he hasn't recovered. Well, except for one young gentleman who comes quite often." She thumbed through the papers, pulled out the records from this month, and gestured to the column with the same printed name written down the length of it. "Min Kisuk-ssi. I remember him because he drops by every few weeks to water the plants on the patient's windowsill. I assumed that they were very close friends before the accident."

But Howon was barely listening to that last bit. Instead, he seemed rather fixated on the name. "Min Kisuk, you say . . ."

~

"Nothing on the police records for Min Kisuk," Lee Sungyeol said as he entered the meeting room empty-handed. "No criminal records, nothing. You've got to hand it to him, though. Even though he put his name out for us to see, he still manages to make himself invisible."

"Yah, stop praising him," Woohyun snapped. "No matter how smart he may be, the bastard's still a killer. And it's possible that this Min Kisuk person might not even be him."

"We should still bring him in for questioning," Sunggyu interjected. "Killer or not, Min Kisuk is still a possible suspect for this case. We don't have any background information on him, nothing about his profession or family. Like Sungyeol said, it's almost as though he's invisible which makes him all the more suspicious."

"So what are you proposing, team leader?" Jang Dongwoo piped up.

But the eldest only leaned back in his seat and let out a sigh. "Desperate times call for desperate measures . . ."

~

To put it simply, Sungjong was annoyed.

Staying cooped up in an apartment for the past few days wasn't exactly his idea of fun. And whenever he would even bring up the subject of going outside, Myungsoo would throw a fit to the point that Sungjong had no choice but to comply. So he decided that he was better off asking the older boy if he could help out with the case. "Why not?" Sungjong reasoned. "In my psychology class, we were assigned a project on investigating the criminal mind. I got an A, Myungsoo, and my teacher even said my analytical abilities surpass those of my classmates. I can at least be of some help!"

"Lee Sungjong," the detective countered, "if this happened to be a different case, then by all means, I would let you. But it's not, and if anything, you're the only target left. The more you're involved in this, the closer you'll grow to him. And I'm not going to let that happen, not when your life is on the line."

"But that's exactly why I should become a part of this case!" the younger boy cried out. "It's my life, Myungsoo. I'm trying to protect myself. Back in high school, you were the one that was always protecting me, the one that always watched over me. Am I supposed to just sit here and do nothing while you're risking your life for me?" He shook his head, clasping Myungsoo's hand. "I can't let you do that."

The older boy shifted his gaze, wavering slightly. "But your memory . . ." he murmured.

"Well, you know better than anyone else, don't you? That I have a killer memory." Sungjong smiled a bit, and that was enough to completely break down Myungsoo's defenses to the point that he could no longer distinguish from what seemed to be true or not. "What do you have to lose?"

Myungsoo met the boy's eyes again, and he felt a single word escape his lips before he even had a chance to think it over, "You." Unable to stop himself from blabbering on incessantly, he continued. "I asked if you were afraid that night, didn't I? Afraid of all this? Truthfully, I'm the one who's scared. I'm terrified because I don't know what's going to happen. I'm terrified because I don't know what to expect. I'm terrified because you're here, right in front of me, at this moment. But in the next, you could disappear." Myungsoo was starting to blink excessively again, an old habit of his that seemed to surface whenever his emotions were on the brink of spilling over. "I don't want to lose you. I can't lose you again because . . . I just can't."

It was at that moment when Sungjong gently gathered his older friend into his arms and whispered the words that Myungsoo had been longing to hear for what seemed like eternity: "I'm here, hyung. I won't disappear again."

~

Woohyun seated himself on one of the benches by the extended care unit and crossed his arms over his chest, thus beginning his shift as an undercover spy in search for the faceless Min Kisuk. His job was quite simple, really; the crime unit had already notified the nurse at the receptionist desk to contact the officer on duty (which was Woohyun, in this case) if the suspect signed himself in. They've been doing this for about a week already, and no one by the name of Min Kisuk ever showed up. But as Sunggyu said, desperate times call for desperate measures, and they didn't have any other options.

He sighed. Today was probably going to end up being another pointless stake-out.

After a few hours of leisurely sitting around, his phone lit up, vibrating on his lap. Woohyun picked it up, expecting Myungsoo to be the one calling him (the persistent bastard's been on his nuts to give him a call if the suspect happened to show up during his shift). But the caller ID was one that was unfamiliar to him, and he fumbled with the device for a bit before finally answering the call. "Yes, hello?" the detective said hurriedly, standing on his feet.

"Detective Nam, Min Kisuk-ssi just signed in," the nurse at the receptionist desk reported from the other line. "He left the front desk a few seconds ago, and he should be on his way up to the extended care unit right now."

Woohyun turned abruptly, murmuring a quick "thanks" before hanging up and peering down the hall where the elevators should be. Cursing under his breath, he punched in a number from his speed dial and pressed the phone to his ear. "Hyung," he interjected before his team leader could even begin to ask. "It's time."

~

Myungsoo had to remind himself for the upteenth time today that he should stop staring and do something productive. But whenever Lee Sungjong seems to fall in his line of vision, the older boy couldn't help but steal quick yet . . . well, longing glances at him. Because the younger boy really had nothing better to do, he would busy himself by rearranging the entire apartment or watering the parched plants situated on the balcony. And it took every ounce of willpower in the detective to not take prolonged stares at Sungjong as the boy made his way around every corner of every room with a light smile playing on his lips and eyes glimmering with utter curiosity. It wasn't until his younger friend began sifting through the bookshelves did Myungsoo snap out of his brief stupor to rush over there and try to stop him. "Wait, Sungjong. Don't-"

But Myungsoo figured he was doomed when Sungjong held up their old high school yearbook for him to see. "Look what I found," the younger of the two tittered. "I didn't know you still kept something like this. Now let's see how Detective Kim looked when he was a teenager."

"Give it here." But Sungjong was relentless on handing it over. He held it tightly to his chest, meeting Myungsoo's eyes with his rebellious ones, and soon enough, the two were wrestling for the book still clasped tightly in Sungjong's hands. "Yah, Lee Sungjong!"

They toppled to the ground, and the detective finally managed to pin down the boy while he snatched the yearbook from him. "What's the big deal, hyung?" Sungjong breathed. "I just wanted to see!"

"You have your own!" the older boy snapped. "Why do you even need to see mine?"

"The only yearbook I brought with me to Seoul was the one we received on the year we graduated. The others are at my parents' house, so I haven't had a chance to look at those for a while." Sungjong sat up, offering him an amused grin. "There's another thing that hasn't changed about you since high school. You're still extremely touchy."

Myungsoo cleared his throat ineptly. "W-well, you didn't have to go through my stuff if you wanted to see it," he stuttered, holding out the yearbook for Sungjong to take. "Here. Try to keep your laughter to a minimum for the sake of my sanity."

Lips splitting into a wide grin, Sungjong didn't hesitate to flip through the pages of their adolescence. "No promises."

And rather than returning back to his workspace, Myungsoo joined his younger friend on the couch and peered over his shoulder to meet the eyes of their old classmates staring back at them. Occasionally, Sungjong would point to a familiar face and recall a memorable anecdote about the same person with a wistful expression settling on his face. Or he would grimace down at the faces of his old high school bullies in distaste and murmur to himself as he flipped to the next page. Then came the moment Myungsoo was dreading -- his very own picture from their first year. He threw a sidelong glance at Sungjong, watching for his reaction. "You . . . don't look so bad," the younger boy said finally. There was a pause. Then a small snort which quickly escalated into a fit of laughter. "Why is your hair so big?! This is hilarious!"

"I think you've seen enough." Myungsoo yanked the yearbook from him and flipped a few more pages. "Should we see how the number one student in the nation looked back then?"

"Hyung!" Sungjong cried out in protest.

But the detective already placed his finger over the small portrait of Lee Sungjong, mirroring the laughter that had lit up the younger boy's face just moments ago. "Yah, you asked me why my hair was so big? You had a mushroom cut!"

"We all go through that phase!" His younger friend grappled for the yearbook and slammed it shut haughtily. Myungsoo rolled onto his back, exploding into laughter. "What's so funny?"

"There's something that hasn't changed about you in high school. You're still as temperamental as ever."

The older boy deserved the smack on the chest that soon followed.

When the laughter finally began to die down, the two of them reclined back onto the couch and basked in silence for a few moments. That is, of course, until Myungsoo decided to break it. "Sungjong," he said quietly.

"Hm?" the boy responded, glancing sideways at him.

"Well, I . . . I-"

From his workspace, Myungsoo's phone went off, making the two jolt upright. They exchanged looks before the detective brought himself to stand on his feet, pad over to his desk, and dig through the clutter of papers to find his phone hidden underneath. He answered it, seeing that the caller ID read that it was Lee Sungyeol was calling him. "What is it, Sungyeol?" he asked, skipping the formalities. "Did you find anything else on Min Kisuk-"

"We found him, Myungsoo," Sungyeol interjected hurriedly on the other line. "We're heading over to the hospital where Lim Jaeheun is being treated, and the receptionist . . . look, I don't have time to explain. Just come-"

Myungsoo hung up before he could hear the rest; it didn't matter anyways. Nothing else seemed to matter to him at the moment.

Sungjong rose from the couch and caught the older boy by the wrist just as he brushed by. "Hyung, I don't know what's going on," the younger boy uttered, "but don't do this."

"Sungjong, let go of my-"

"So you can go and get yourself hurt? I know it's your job, Myungsoo. I'm fully aware of that. But . . . but to me, your life comes first. I can't let you do this to yourself . . ."

Myungsoo snatched his wrist away, grabbing the younger boy by the shoulders and meeting his gaze with a biting glare. "Why do you think I'm doing this?!" he exploded. "Why do you think I'm risking my life for this case? Do you really think I'm doing this because it's my job?" Biting his lower lip in momentary hesitation, Myungsoo pulled Sungjong in towards him, and the younger boy, not knowing what seemed to be coming, found himself met by a pair of lips colliding against his. Sungjong tried to take a step back in an attempt to pry himself free from Myungsoo's hold, but he was held in place by the strong grip on his shoulders. Myungsoo broke away first, the boy in arms staring emptily up at him. "I wanted to protect you. The reason why this case is so important to me is because you're here now. It's because I want you to be here . . . by my side."

Sungjong said nothing (because what is there that he can say?). Myungsoo lowered his hands to his sides and turned, running out the door because doing so was the only thing that seemed to make sense to him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: Uh yeah, so this kinda lol. Sorry about that :/