Autumn 1994

“I already told you, get down from that tree!”

Sung-min yelled for the umpteenth time. It wasn't as if Hyuk-jae hadn't had dumber ideas, but they could be running the risk of being late to class, and Sung-min would like to prevent the awful scenario of his teachers calling his parents to tell them he had been late.

“Come and get me!” The younger of the two mocked.

“I'm not as dumb as you are, I won't climb that old tree only because it looks cool!”

Hyuk-jae sighed loudly, and looked rather discontent at Sung-min who was metres below him.

“All right, I'll go down now,” Hyuk-jae screamed, “but only if you promise you won't tell mum!”

“I promise!”

Hyuk-jae then started his journey down the old oak. He wasn't dumb – even if that was what Sung-min always called him, he took the same path down as he had used when he had climbed up. Only a few metres away from the ground, Hyuk-jae's left foot didn't find a steady branch to position itself on, so he quickly slipped and fell on his back.

Sung-min cried out Hyuk-jae's name as he hurried over to his hurt friend.

“Ah, I think I broke something.” Hyuk-jae whined, before turning his attention to the other kids in the playground, who were laughing hysterically at Hyuk-jae's fail.

“Monkey, monkey, monkey!” They all cried in unison.

“Shut up, or I'm telling Ms. Park what you're calling him!” Sung-min threatened as he helped his only friend up from the hard ground.

The two boys were sitting on Sung-min's clean bed. The room was white and cosy, the door was covered with Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee posters, and there were some post-its Hyuk-jae had written nice messages on covering the walls.

The room wasn't anything like Hyuk-jae's bedroom, which was filled with toys and pictures. The only thing both of their rooms had in common was in fact a picture of the pair of them which Sung-min's mother had taken last Christmas. It was a pretty memory to have, Hyuk-jae thought.

“You're lucky you actually didn't break any bones, you know that right?” Sung-min said as he drank the bubble tea his mother had brought upstairs to the boys.

“I know, imagine how mum would've reacted!”

“This has nothing to do with her, this has to do with your dumb ideas that you think will make you cool and popular!”

“They aren't stupid ideas, okay?” Hyuk-jae grimaced, “I just want to be cool, I've never even been kissed before!”

Sung-min looked at Hyuk-jae as if the latter had said the stupidest thing someone could say, “Stupid, you don't have to be cool to be kissed, you just have to ask nicely. It worked for me.”

“What?! You have been kissed?” Hyuk-jae covered his mouth with both hands in shock, “Who was it with? I bet it was Soon-kyu-”

“I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone that we kissed, or else she was going to tell on me.”

Hyuk-jae looked rather disappointed. He mumbled something along the lines of “I'll get my first kiss soon too”, and proceeded to write on green post-its.

Late Spring 1995

“Children, have any of you seen Hyuk-jae today?”

Once those words had left Ms. Park's mouth, most of Sung-min's classmates turned their attention to him, expecting him to know where Hyuk-jae had disappeared to this time.

“... Have you checked the toilet, Ms. Park?” Sung-min asked, remembering the one time Hyuk-jae had vanished during first period. The boy had been gone for two hours until Sung-min found him on the toilet. Turned out the boy had gotten diarrhoea.

“I have checked both in the girls' and the boys', but I just can't seem to find him.”

Sung-min could hear some of his classmates giggling, “Can I go look for him?”

Ms. Park hesitated for a second before telling him he could as long as he didn't leave the school's area.

Sung-min found him with his knees pulled up to his chest by the old oak tree. If it weren't for the way his shoulders trembled in sync with broken sobs, he would have thought Hyuk-jae was laughing.

“Y-you should be i-in c-class...” Hyuk-jae mumbled as Sung-min approached him.

“I got permission by Ms. Park to come look for you, she's worried sick,” Sung-min replied before sitting down on the humid leaves by Hyuk-jae's side.

“There's no-nothing wrong,” Hyuk-jae said as he raised his head, “I just d-did something d-dumb again.”

When Sung-min didn't reply, Hyuk-jae took the silence as a sign of having to proceed.

“I got Yesung-hyung to kiss me, and then I realised I couldn't brag about this be-because Yesung-hyung isn't a girl.” Hyuk-jae started crying violently once he had finished his sentence, “And I thought that if I showed u-up in class now, everyone would call me n-names again, so I d-d-decided not t-to go.”

 “You're really dumb,” Sung-min sighed, “don't you know that I will be your left foot?”

“What's that su-supposed to mean?” Hyuk-jae wiped away the tears which had dropped down his cheeks.

“That means that I will be keeping you steady, and always be there for you.”

“You promise?”

“I promise with my pinky finger.”

To everyone who reads this story, thank you. ♥ I hope you enjoy, comment and help me along the way.