Hi, uh I didn't even edit this and I wrote this in like half an hour omg or less (I wasn't looking at the time!) so if there are mistakes I am sorry!

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“Hi my name is Lee Jaehwan and from this day onward we’re going to be best friends.” That was how he introduced himself to me in elementary school and even if I tried my hardest to avoid the hell out of him he still managed to worm his way into my life.

In middle school when I still continued to avoid him he would follow me around, request to be in my classroom and eat lunch with me at any random place I would choose in order to be alone.

By high school I gave up and finally started to get to know this stranger by the name of Lee Jaehwan, whose birthday was April 6^th, and who loved to sing and act out randomly in class.

He had no other friends, only me, and he liked it that way. He would smile when we would sit down for lunch and soon enough I started getting used to having this boy in my life.

“So Taekwoon, are you doing anything this weekend?” He would ask every Friday at lunch and like every Friday I would answer,

“No, you can come over if you’d like.”

Then he would smile, do a fist pump in the air, and cheer in place for a good five minutes that now when he does it no one even questions it.

I learned he never liked being at his house on the weekend, never said way, but always wanted to spend the night even if to do homework or watch TV in my living room. He made the excuse of liking my mother’s cooking, but I knew he was lying but never pushed it.

I never was a sociable person, always too shy to make friends and always didn’t want to deal with having a friendship. Lee Jaehwan has been the only person to ever break through the walls of how anti-social I am and became friends with me. A kid named Cha Hakyeon tried to do it once when we were in middle school but I shut him out completely and didn’t bother acknowledging his presence. So why Lee Jaehwan you ask? There was always something different about this boy. Something I couldn’t exactly place and something I wanted to know. He always wore a smile on his face, but beyond that there was something that was hidden in his eyes. A secret he kept all to himself.

It made me want to get to know him, made me want to learn everything about him. First as a scientific experiment, but that soon grew into an actual friendship by our second year of high school.

“Okay so I already have my stuff in my bag so I can just take the bus with you after school.” He smiled and sat back down and went straight back to eating his food. I should have guessed that he already had his belongings with him since he did it often after realizing that I always said he could. My parents were fine with him since he was always respectful and never was much of a burden to the family. My sisters liked him and smiled at me a lot when I first brought him over. Said something about me finally making a friend and that he was always welcome.

Then he finally broke down our first year of college. He seemed happier once we moved in together in the dorm and he didn’t have that hidden sadness in his eyes, or at least not as often. He talked more often, made more friends which included our suitemates Lee Hongbin and Kim Wonshik, and also a smaller high school boy named Han Sanghyuk.

So I thought he was finally better, even if he never told me it would be fine as long as he was happy now, until the end of the first semester when we returned to our houses for the vacation break. He came back completely sad and did not talk to me for a full week until he finally broke down crying on my desk and told me everything.

His whole life he has lived with an abusive family that would abuse him emotionally from elementary school and onward. He hid this fact from everyone because they’ve threatened that if he were to tell anyone then it would not only be emotional but also physical as well. That was around the time he introduced himself to me. I don’t know why he clung to me, but he always wanted to be by my side because everyone else shut him out of his life completely.

They especially got worse in middle school when he realized something that set him as different as the rest of society. He was homoual—and the reason why he never told me this was that I was the one he was in love with. He took refuge at my house every weekend to avoid the constant harassment that they gave him for being different, for wanting to be a singer, for liking his own gender and even his grades and his lifestyle. It only got worse as the years went by and yet he has never told a single soul until now.

He put all of his trust in me and hoped that even after knowing this we could still be friends—that we could still be the best of friends we’ve always been.

I know I’ve always had a problem with expressing emotion and talking about my feelings, but I was always there for him and that was all that he needed.

Funny how the happy sociable one had the horrible parents while the anti-social one who wanted nothing to do with anyone had the nice and sweet parents.

“So now what?” He asked after he finally broke down and told me everything.

Now what?

“Nothing. You’ll always be Lee Jaehwan to me, no matter how different people say you are.” I answered. I always was bad with words. And actions. And pretty much everything to do with people.

But he knew that and has always known that. So to that he just nodded and smiled slightly and hugged me. “Thank you for always being there for me. Thank you for being my friend.”

I awkwardly hugged him back and smiled when I knew he couldn’t see me. “No, thank you for sticking with a weird person like me.”

And from then on people would classify us as a ‘couple’ but we never gave it a title. We’ve always been best friends, always will be. We’ve just grown closer since then and will possibly grow closer as the years go by.