Seungho is not a stranger to the lifestyle of the rich and swanky despite not being that of the rich and swanky. He’s not a stranger to this lifestyle, and thus, not a stranger to the miniature castles most of them occupy as homes. None of this is strange or new to him, and yet, he thinks that maybe Junhyung was right when he told him that Lee Joon’s house takes rich and swanky to face-rubbing-in-awe levels. Lee Joon’s house is not a miniature castle—his house surpasses miniature and shoots all the way up to massive.

          The first time he goes with Joon to his house, to his room, to tutor him, most of it just seems like a daze because Seungho’s mind is mostly preoccupied on making sure he knows how to get to the bathroom without getting lost and not accidentally walking in on, say, Joon’s sister or something because if that happened than lots of bad things might ensue. Plus, there’s the fact that Joon isn’t really helping any because he’s doing his usual thing of babbling and sputtering and showering Seungho’s face with saliva which he has to look forward to wiping off when he gets to his car and before he gets home or else Junhyung will choke on his own tongue laughing again.

          After the third time he goes with Joon to his house after track practice, Seungho is able to find his way to the bathroom without having to ask for directions twice on the way there and thrice on the way back, continues his lucky streak of not walking in on any of Joon’s family members , and learns how to dodge Joon’s projectile saliva in a new environment.

          But it’s not like Seungho was ever really worried about the whole being-at-a-student’s-house part. It’s easy to adjust. The main problem of this isn’t something new that’s added on to having to make a learning environment that’s not at a school. The main problem is:

          “I’m so tired,” Joon moans, face down in his mattress. The third year lies spread-eagle on his stomach, sprawled over his bed still in his track clothes and sweating profusely all over the sheets despite the drop in weather.

          And despite the fact that at today’s track practice, not much was accomplished other than Cheondoong managing to infuriate Joon and Byunghee both to the point of near-tears-and-property-damage.

          And of course, Seungho was the near part.

          Because it’s creepy for muscles like those to cry and the school’s hurdles are really expensive and imported.

          Seungho nudges Joon’s foot with his own. “I assigned you work. Get started.”

          “Don’t want to,” Joon mumbles.

          Seungho nudges the boy’s foot a little harder. “Don’t care.”

          “Student abuse,” Joon retorts.

          “Teacher abuse,” Seungho says back.

          Joon turns around and sits up abruptly, looking highly offended. “What—that doesn’t exist.”

          “Well, it should,” Seungho says. He grins. “But now you’re up, so you might as well get started.” He points. “Look, I even opened the book to the page for you.”

          Joon’s nose wrinkles, his expression clearly disgruntled.

          Seungho is just amused. This time he grabs the edge of Joon’s sleeve and pulls lightly. “Come on,” he coaxes sarcastically. “It’s not hard. You’ll finish in half an hour if you start now.”

          The student makes a face. “I don’t want to—I have a party to plan.”

          Seungho raises his eyebrows. “Again, already?”

          But then Joon is smiling—not a grin, not a smirk. It’s that bright smile that reaches his eyes and more, that takes up his entire face, that’s eager and a little bit naïve and ridiculously attractive and unreasonably charming because Lee Joon has always been ridiculous and unreasonable from the moment that he came stumbling into Seungho’s classroom—knocking over chairs and a desk on the way in—on the first day of school. “It’s not my party,” Joon says, obviously utterly excited. “Hyung,” he says playfully, “don’t you remember your own dongsaeng’s birthday?”

          Seungho stares.

          Blinks.

          Then—

          “Junhyungie’s going to kill you, Changsun-ah,” Seungho says. “You are going to die.”

          Joon pouts. “I’ve done it before,” he says dismissively. “He doesn’t hate it that much.”

          Seungho gives him a skeptical look.

          Joon bounces up and down on his bed a few times, looking so thrilled that Seungho almost expects him to start clapping like a monkey with cymbals just out of pure unable-to-be-restrained-anticipation for an event that is still at the very least two and a half weeks away. “I’m taking him party-planning this weekend,” Joon tells Seungho happily. “I’ve already got all the basics laid out so all the birthday boy needs to do is pick the details.”

          “He’s going to kill you,” Seungho feels the need to repeat in case Joon didn’t hear him the first time.

          Joon looks confused. “He’s not going to kill me,” he says firmly. “He’s going to love it because when I stuff him in front of a hundred people with a three-foot birthday cake, then he has to love it or else he’ll be a killjoy.”

          Seungho watches, unimpressed, as Joon grins from ear to ear like a small child. “If you die,” he finally says, “I’m not going to be sad because it’s your own fault.”

          “Hyung,” Joon whines. “Hyung—you’re coming, right?”

          Seungho stops at where he stands near the door, ready to leave because he knows that even though Joon moans and groans about it and staples himself to his bed, the third year will stay up all night if it means finishing his homework. He raises his eyebrows curiously. “Mm?”

          “You’re coming, right?” Joon smiles, leaning back on his palms. He tilts his head, hair falling across his face, perspiration matting the ends to the face of his skin. The thin, worn cloth of his old practice t-shirt clings to every contour of his body, clearly an athlete’s—all lean muscle and sinew.

          “To the party?” Seungho frowns just so slightly. “I’m a teacher, Changsun-ah.”

          Joon’s smile widens into another grin. “Nope,” he says matter-of-factly, “you’re the birthday boy’s hyung, and you’re the party planner’s hyung so you have to come. I’ll never speak to you again if you don’t.”

          Seungho stares.

          “I’m your tutor,” he says after a moment because it’s possible that the mind of Lee Joon doesn’t have enough gigabytes to store this kind of information. “You have to speak to me.”

          Joon sits up and folds his arms over his chest, turning his nose into the air and away from Seungho. “No I don’t,” he says, looking away adamantly. “I don’t have to speak one word to you if I don’t want to.”

          Seungho thinks that maybe it’s his duty as an educator to inform Lee Joon’s parents that their son has finally gone around the bend.

          “I can just use sign language,” Joon continues, sneaking a glance at Seungho, and then proceeds to demonstrate excitedly with that ever-familiar impish grin. He proceeds to demonstrate only Seungho isn’t sure when the demonstration begins because Joon motions wildly with his hands like a lunatic on a daily basis so Seungho doesn’t know when the lunacy ends and the sign language begins—although considering that Joon’s vocal activity consists of a random order of words irrelevant to any conversation, his sign language would probably resemble lunacy anyway.

          Plus, Seungho starts laughing midway through the first sign/lunatic-hand-motion anyway, and then his stomach starts to hurt so he doesn’t have to worry about misunderstanding or understanding Joon anymore.

          He starts laughing and when he finds that he can’t stop, he sees Joon out of the corner of his eye laughing with him and standing up and then he feels Joon’s arms around him and they are both laughing and falling to the ground, leaning on the door for support.

          When both of them can breathe again, Seungho shoves Joon away with his feet. “You’re an idiot,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to say even though he knows that’s probably not something a teacher should say to a student.

          “Shut up, hyung,” Joon says, smiling back, and he retaliates by pushing Seungho out of the door with his own foot against the back of Seungho’s legs. “And if I don’t see you on the nineteenth, we’re talking in sign language forever!” he calls out as Seungho descends the staircase still laughing.

          “I don’t understand why I had to come,” Junhyung says to Joon, forty-five minutes in to picking the lights of the club’s backroom. The clerks are literally on bended knee in front of both third years and Joon looks like a little kid at a toy store while Junhyung feels like he’s having a root canal done. “It really doesn’t matter—you could’ve just picked all this yourself and I’d be okay.”

          Joon frowns. “But then it’d be my birthday party,” he says, “and not yours.”

          Junhyung wants to remind him that he doesn’t want a party in the first place so it might as well just be Joon’s second birthday party except that if he says that Joon will probably rev up the waterworks again, and Lee Joon’s waterworks come from his mouth, and the last thing Junhyung wants is to be awaken at seven on a Saturday morning and then drenched in Lee Joon’s saliva.

          So he just sighs again and picks the most non-offensive shade of neon blue there is for the back lighting.

          By the time Junhyung’s cell phone flashes nine o’clock, his stomach is grumbling and Joon’s stomach is grumbling, but the different lists for different aspects of the party—at this point they are aspects Junhyung either has never heard of or has never thought about—continue to drag on and the employees continue to revolve in and out of the backrooms of the store. There are other clients now, milling in and out, picking up cakes, picking up wallpapers, lights, table arrangements, but Junhyung and Joon seem to have the VIP guest spot for the entire party planning package.

          When it comes time to pick the color of the straws that are to be placed for drinks on the east hall table of the club, Junhyung thinks it’s probably time to tell Joon—saliva or no—that enough is enough. “Hyung,” he says, “maybe we should take a break and get some breakfast.”

          Joon blinks.

          The employee in front of them, holding the straw samples, blinks.

          They blink at each other.

          And then they blink at Junhyung.

          “I need to go to the bathroom,” Joon says, standing up suddenly, and the expression on his face makes it so painfully obvious that he’s planning something that Junhyung almost expects the floor to open up and swallow him through a hidden trap door. There’s also the fact that Joon’s stomach grumbled so loudly in the past half an hour that the employees had to hide behind the desk to stop from laughing right in their clients’ faces.

          “Oh my God,” Junhyung says as Joon scrambles over him and more or less sprints to the backrooms. He turns his gaze on the employee for maybe an explanation since Joon is a regular here, so perhaps they’re used to the retarded too. But the employee simply blinks back at him for another few seconds before also scrambling to her feet and sprinting after her client.

          Junhyung stares after them.

          Clearly, either this store and the people who work here all think on the same stupid wavelength as Joon, or Joon has been coming here so often that he’s started to infect them.

          Jonghyun is of the opinion that problems are better and more easily solved if they are spoken out loud and discussed with the other parties involved because humans can’t mind read and if they can, then they’re probably freaks anyway like Joon. Except Joon can’t read minds and no one can read Joon’s mind and no one wants to because reading Joon’s mind is useless since all that would be in there is empty space and maybe the occasional AP Calculus formula.

          In any case, Jonghyun is of the opinion that problems are better and more easily solved if they are spoken out loud, so considering that this is one of the few Saturday mornings that he’s managed to get Kibum to stay over on and not escape like a fugitive back to his house the night before, the second year decides to execute his great opinionated theory and asks, “How come we never hang out?”

          Kibum turns around from where he sits at Jonghyun’s desk, still only dressed in boxer briefs and Jonghyun’s t-shirt despite the snow that’s scheduled to come later in the afternoon. Jonghyun sits Indian-style on top of his sheets and was watching the younger boy start on his Literature homework because apparently, as the first year put it, Jonghyun is so boring that homework on a Saturday morning is more exciting and more productive. “We are hanging out, hyung,” Kibum says, giving Jonghyun the look that the rest of the world gives Joon all the time, “Right now.”

          “No,” Jonghyun says, “I mean, like how me and Jessica-noona did a few weeks ago.”

          “It’s ‘Jessica-noona and I’, hyung.”

          “ off,” Jonghyun laughs and Kibum smiles. “Seriously, Kibum-ah, we have to hang out.”

          Kibum throws his pen lightly at Jonghyun who narrowly dodges it. “You off,” he shoots back playfully, “And seriously, hyung, we’re hanging out right now.”

          “No we’re not,” Jonghyun pouts. “You’re doing homework and I’m sitting here depressed because my dongsaeng doesn’t want to be seen with me in public.”

          Kibum stares at him.

          “You’re absolutely right,” the first year says after a moment, straight-faced. “I don’t want to be seen with you in public because you’re an embarrassment to mankind.”

          Jonghyun’s mouth drops open.

          Kibum grins. “Hyung,” he says with a laugh. “I need to get this one.” He pokes his Literature notebook. “Throw me back my pen, will you?”

          “No,” Jonghyun says. “I refuse.” He folds his arms. “I refuse to give you back your pen until you go to the mall with me.”

          This time, Kibum laughs outright.

          “It’s not funny,” Jonghyun says loudly, picking up the pen from the ground and wrapping his fist around it. “You’re not getting it back and you’ll never finish your homework until you hang out with me in public where everyone can see.”

          Kibum merely looks highly amused, folding his own arms, eyebrows disappearing in to his bangs. “Really?”

          “Really,” Jonghyun sticks out his tongue. He wrinkles his nose. “You only want to hang out when you want , and we never actually do real stuff anymore.”

          Kibum—

          Wait—

          There’s—

          The expression on Kibum’s face falters.

          It falters?

          “Well maybe that’s all you’re good for,” Kibum says, his tone teasing, except Jonghyun almost doesn’t even hear the other boy because he’s too busy watching at how the light in Kibum’s eyes are shaking and the teasing tone isn’t as certain as it was before and something is off.

          Jonghyun swings his feet over the edge of the bed and stands up, keeping his eyes on Kibum’s face—on Kibum’s expression—and crosses over towards the first year, pen in one hand, and the other hand reaching out to intertwine itself with Kibum’s. He holds up their hands level to Kibum’s face, right beside the younger boy’s ear. His eyebrows furrow together at Kibum’s sudden blankness. “What’s wrong?” Jonghyun asks quietly.

          “Nothing,” Kibum whispers. He makes to pull his hand away but Jonghyun keeps their fingers soldered together. “Hyung, let go—I need to finish this.”

          “Yeah, and we need to finish this,” Jonghyun says, unable to keep his voice from rising slightly. “I just want to talk, Kibum-ah.”

          Kibum’s eyes narrow. “Let me go,” he says again, flatly. “I want to finish my homework.”

          “And I want to finish this ing conversation so you can tell me what the ’s wrong,” Jonghyun says loudly.

          “ing nothing is wrong, hyung,” Kibum snaps, matching Jonghyun’s volume. He starts trying to yank his hand out of Jonghyun’s at full force, but Jonghyun is still stronger and grips it tighter. “Hyung—what the —let go!” He stands up now and Jonghyun just continues to hold on.

          “I’ll let go,” Jonghyun says in a low voice, “when you tell me what’s wrong because I know something is wrong so don’t ing tell me it’s nothing, Kim Kibum.”

          Kibum glowers back at him stubbornly, his mouth clamped firmly shut.

          Jonghyun glares back.

          “I want to go home,” Kibum says after a long moment of furious silence. “Let go of me, hyung, I’m going home because you’re being retarded.”

          Jonghyun’s eyes widen.

          His eyes widen because pain grips his chest and he’s never had pain like this grip his chest, grip any part of his body so tightly, so furiously, so fiercely, so heatedly, so intensely because it hurts and it hurts and someone is kicking him in the stomach, someone is punching him in the head, someone is shaking him by the shoulders, someone is moving the ground beneath him, and he doesn’t know why but suddenly everything hurts and if Kibum leaves just like this—if he leaves while he’s angry at Jonghyun—it’s going to be unbearable.

          Jonghyun knows he can’t bear this kind of unbearable so he does what he hopes to God will stop Kibum—he lets go of Kibum. He lets go of the other boy’s hand, but stands in front of the door, stands in front of where Kibum’s things are on the ground near the doorway because Kibum can’t leave like this. He can’t leave while he’s angry at Jonghyun because what if Kibum ends up not talking to Jonghyun, ends up telling the ’91-line to keep Jonghyun away, ends up ignoring Jonghyun and Jonghyun can’t have any of that happening.

          It hurts and he doesn’t know why.

          “Don’t go home,” Jonghyun says in a whisper, leaning against the door of his room, one hand on the doorknob because Kibum can’t leave.

          Kibum’s eyes are wide too—they are as wide as Jonghyun feels his own eyes are only Kibum’s expression is surprised rather than pleading.

          “I’m sorry,” Jonghyun says because he doesn’t know what else to say—he’s not about to take back what he’s said about something being wrong because he knows that Kibum’s not telling him something and he’s not about to buy into Kibum’s lie—not about to play along. “Just—I—if you don’t want to talk about it with me, then you don’t have to.” He bumps the back of his hand against Kibum’s arm gently. “I just don’t like seeing you sad.”

          Kibum continues to stare and Jonghyun wonders if maybe he is about to witness the longest period of time a human can ever go without blinking.

          The staring goes on until Jonghyun starts to think that maybe he should say something because the silence is getting to the point where anything could happen including Kibum just stomping off angry beyond words and Jonghyun may never see him again. Jonghyun just begins to gather words into his mind when he notices that Kibum’s eyes are suddenly a little pink and a little wet and then all the intelligent words disappear and they are replaced with, “—are you crying?”

          “No,” Kibum snorts unconvincingly and turns away to sit on the bed, which at the very least, means he isn’t leaving anymore. “You’re just so stupid that your face is starting to hurt my eyes.”

          “Don’t cry,” Jonghyun says incredulously, one knee at the edge of the mattress, his hands hovering unsurely above Kibum.

          “I’m not crying,” Kibum repeats, folding his arms and staring intently at his knees. “I’m just really hungry and we haven’t had breakfast yet.”

          Jonghyun thinks that whoever says girls are the most frustrating, incomprehensible creatures on this earth probably has never met a Kim Kibum. Because, personally, he thinks that a thousand PMS-ing girls are nothing when compared to a Kim Kibum on one of his good days.

          And yet—

          “What do you want to eat?” Jonghyun sighs.

          He’d still probably take the Kim Kibum.

          Small children have never been fond of Junhyung.

          Children in general are usually not very fond of Junhyung.

          Anyone below the age of eleven usually isn’t very fond of Junhyung, with a few exceptions. Junhyung has met rare few exceptions of this facial affliction that he suffers from with children, and he hasn’t seen one of these exceptions in at least a year if not more. He hasn’t seen one of them in a while so when one of them comes running out, squealing and waving her little arms that aren’t as little as he remembers them to be the last he saw her, he’s nothing short of shocked.

          He’s nothing short of shocked when Jang Geurim collides into the sofa, right next to him, and then grabs onto his knee with a wide smile of surprise, clearly pleased at seeing the face that most little girls would start bawling at. Junhyung doesn’t quite know how to react because Geurim is the last person he would ever expect to see at a party planner’s and she’s gotten so big even though it’s only been a year and now she looks like her brother more than ever and she has his eyes and she’s pretty and just looks so much like him.

          “Geurim-ah?” he says finally when she starts jumping up and down, waiting for him to speak.

          “Oppa,” she giggles. “Oppa, you never come over anymore,” she says, still breathless and giggly and bouncing up and down on the soles of her little, white tennis shoes.

          Junhyung finds himself smiling and leaning forward, resting his arms against his knees. “I didn’t know you missed me.”

          Geurim frowns. “I did miss you. I did so,” she says.

          “Really?” he teases, as she takes his hand and tries to get him onto his feet. He smiles again and concedes, standing up and letting her lead him around and around the store. A nearby woman who is picking out different shades of lighting smiles down at Geurim as they pass. “Really, really?”

          “Really,” Geurim says with complete six-year-old solemnity.

          “I don’t know,” Junhyung says, pretending to be disbelieving. “Are you sure?”

          Her eyes widen. “I’m sure,” she says, voice rising. She stomps her foot. “Oppa,” she whines. “I missed you and you don’t believe me. I even lost two teeth and you didn’t know about it because you didn’t come over. Two whole teeth, Oppa.” She holds up two fingers for emphasis.

          Junhyung gets down on one knee and widens his eyes, mimicking her playfully. “Two whole teeth?” he says, grinning. “Put ‘em up,” he says and holds up his palm. She laughs and high-fives him.

          “Why don’t you come over anymore, Oppa?” she asks, holding his hand as she leads him to the area with stuffed animal sets for baby showers a-la-rich-and-fancy. Geurim takes hold of a bunny and turns it around in her small hands.

          Junhyung in his cheeks for a moment, trying to compose a response in his mind. “I don’t know,” he says after a pause. “Your brother and I haven’t been talking for a while—we’ve been really busy.”

          Geurim stops petting the stuffed bunny and looks up at him, her eyes curious. “You haven’t been talking to Oppa?”

          He shakes his head. “Things are busy,” he says again, and feels for some reason that lying to Geurim is worse than lying to anyone else.

          “I think,” Geurim says thoughtfully, putting the bunny back on the shelf and taking up a stuffed monkey, “that Oppa really misses you. I think he wants you to not be busy anymore so you can talk to him again.” She stares at the monkey’s face with a look of utter concentration and then tugs at one of her pigtails, seemingly comparing the color of her hair with the black of the monkey’s fur.

          Then she turns her eyes—so much like Hyunseung’s—to him again. “Is the busy stuff almost done?” she asks. “I really want you to talk to Oppa again so you can come over and I can show you my teeth treasure box.”

          He stands back up and watches her as she waits for a response, her small face tipped up towards him expectantly. “I don’t know,” he says again quietly, offering an apologetic smile. “I really want to talk to your oppa again, too.”

          Her face brightens. “You do?”

          “Yeah,” Junhyung nods.

          “I’m gonna go get him, ‘kay?” she says happily and starts pulling Junhyung’s hand towards the backrooms.

          Geurim starts to pull Junhyung’s hand but there’s not much a six-year-old girl’s strength can do against a frozen seventeen-year-old. Junhyung stares down at Geurim. He stares down at her because while he knows that the Jang family owns a chain of party planning stores and it’s not a rare sight to see Geurim and her nanny at other restaurants or banquet halls or decoration departments because Geurim’s nanny also happens to be head maid in the Jang household, it is a rare sight to see Hyunseung at these places because Hyunseung usually gives the customers headaches.

          Geurim blinks up at Junhyung in confusion when she realizes that her feet are moving but she’s not really going forward because he has a vice grip on her hand. “Oppa?” she says, frowning. “Let’s go.”

          “Geurim-ah,” Junhyung says slowly. “Why is your brother here?”

          She looks towards the backrooms and then back up at him. “Because Soori-unnie is busy with Mommy,” she says. “And Unnie is supposed to take me to pick out paint for my new playhouse, so Seungie-oppa is taking me instead.” Then she smiles. “And guess what?”

          “What?” Junhyung asks, faintly.

          “I saw Joonie-oppa in the back, too!” she says excitedly.

          “Oh, really?” Junhyung hopes that he can hold back the nausea so he doesn’t cover Geurim in vomit.

          “Oppa,” Geurim says brightly, “I’m going to marry Joonie-oppa, okay?”

          But that whips the puke back down out of Junhyung’s throat.

          Junhyung stares because he thinks that maybe this is life reaching its of hatred towards him. “What?”

          “Uh huh,” she says, nodding, and then tugs at his hand again. “Come on, you have to talk to Oppa now.” She yanks at his hand, making a comic show of throwing his wrist over her shoulder and hauling it like a mule towards the backrooms. “Come on,” she laughs because she thinks that Junhyung refusing to move his feet is just him playing around with her rather than him actually not being able to move his feet because his heart weighs about seven tons right now.

          Junhyung has made up his mind that if Joon doesn’t reappear from his forty-five-minute-bathroom-excursion in the next three seconds, come Monday, Junhyung is going to ask Yoseob to cement Joon’s track shoes to the field.

          “I think I have to go soon, Geurim-ah,” Junhyung says in the most apologetic-oppa-voice he can manage. “I’ll just talk to him at school.”

          To describe the expression on Geurim’s face as disappointment would be such an understatement that it would understate an understatement. And whether it’s because Junhyung is spineless against little girls or just weak in general in front of Hyunseung’s face even when it isn’t Hyunseung’s face, he quickly says, “But I guess I have a few minutes left,” before Geurim starts to throw a temper tantrum a-la-Lee-Joon and lets the little girl pull him along.

          The backrooms don’t look much different from the main part of the store only with a lot more shelves and employees milling about, preparing samples to bring out to the clients at the front, and not as many sofas. Junhyung recognizes some of the employees’ faces from those he’s seen at the Jang house during the many times he’s been over, the base of the party planning operations. He just hopes that none of them recognize him.

          Junhyung is able to immediately pinpoint him amongst all of the uniformly dressed employees. His eyes immediately catch him even without Geurim leading towards the far left table filled with rolls of different kinds of tablecloths and candelabras.

          Hyunseung isn’t dressed like he was at Joon’s party. He isn’t wearing skin tight black jeans that show a strip of waistband. He isn’t wearing eyeliner that makes his eyes dark and shadowed. He isn’t wearing jackets and shirts that ride up when he leans over to talk to someone. He isn’t under the dim lighting, swaying and shaking to the booming bass.

          Junhyung sees him talking to a few female employees, a smile on his face, light in his eyes, color in his cheeks. Junhyung sees him in warm clothes, comfortable clothes. He sees him in sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He sees his hair messy like he’s just woken up. He sees the slightly worn loafers, the limp socks. He sees that he probably just rolled out of bed and hopped into the car with Geurim.

          Junhyung sees him and thinks he’s beautiful.

          Junhyung sees him and feels like he himself should be wearing a suit, a tuxedo, tie and all, but even then he feels like that wouldn’t be enough to talk to Hyunseung in. Junhyung sees him and thinks that maybe he should’ve come prepared with his entire bank account and maybe a car or two perhaps with enough food to feed a country for a month and several hundred apology letters accompanied with probably a quarter of his parents’ bank account but all of that probably still wouldn’t be enough to ask Hyunseung forgiveness for what he did the last time they encountered each other at school.

          “Oppa,” Geurim calls out when they are a foot away. “Oppa—look!”

          Hyunseung is still smiling when he hears Geurim’s voice. He’s still smiling, and then he turns—

          And the smile drops off.