Ilhoon lies down in bed after his classes; his uniform still on and shoes scattered on his best friend’s bunk. He thinks about what ramen to eat and that if he should skip tonight’s study to read the latest edition of his favorite manga when Sungjae nags at him to put his shoes on the rack.

“Hyung! How many times do I have to tell you that you should at least arrange your stuff before lying down?!” Sungjae scowls, not furious but adamant, not demanding but caring. Sungjae never learnt how it was to be caring.

There were evenings when Ilhoon would just pretend he dozed off, sometimes it worked with his old roommate, past 11 he would come down, and both of them would’ve already forgotten about it. This night he stands up and rolls his eyes before finally coming down to arrange his shoes. Sungjae had smiled widely by then.

“Sungjae yah! Do you think I should get the oriental one or the shrimp?” Ilhoon puts both packaged ramen up and shakes them, his head seeking Sungjae on the bathroom washing up.

“I don’t know hyung. You always end up doing what you want. What do you feel like now hyung?”

“I do?” There’s confusion in Ilhoon’s eyes and Sungjae tries to brush it off with a lame joke about Ilhoon picking up celery on the supermarket when he doesn’t eat any.  This is a true story. Maybe it isn’t important as Sungjae thinks.

The same way when Ilhoon cried over a broken piece of lego when they were six or even when he scraped his knee from biking or when Ilhoon kissed him.

That time when Ilhoon cried over a piece of lego was after a Monday playtime. Sungjae was fixing up his tower of justice and Ilhoon was helping him by reaching number of legos on the floor when he saw that single orange piece, all broken and lonely in the middle of the green ones.

“Ilhoon-ah it’s just a lego.” His mom left her poker game to make Ilhoon stop crying. Sungae had tried, but failed. “BUT IT’S BROKEN MOM!”

“Shh…” and his mom did what moms do, to make their children stop crying. Ilhoon cries until all that’s left are soft hiccups, Sungjae hears him “It’s broken and I can’t do anything to fix it mom. It’s broken.” Only it doesn’t sound nearly as clear as that, but something full of sadness and about something else, something more than a lego.

Months after that, Ilhoon’s dad leaves their home and Ilhoon wouldn’t talk to Sungjae about it.

“You know that time when my parents broke up? You remember that?” Ilhoon is now cooking his oriental ramen and Sungjae has finished washing up, their room smells both like shampoo and ramen and old clothes. He doesn’t think it’s half bad.

“Yes hyung. What about that? You told me not to talk about that thing though.” Ilhoon is now putting his well cooked instant ramen on his study desk and asks Sungjae to get two bowls.

“Did I?” Sungjae places the cups in front of them and smiles at his hyung. Ilhoon’s eyes are like a deep river and one look is all it takes for him to drown. There’s a soft music playing from the local radio, something that goes la la la and when Ilhoon recognizes the song, he hums a little. “Well, you know what my mom said to me when I asked her if they could ever get back together?” Sungjae tries to recall the name of the song but still manages to shake his head somehow; he has never heard this story but he had heard the song before, that’s for sure.

Ilhoon sips the soup from his ramen and lays his back on the bear Sungjae’s affectionate admirer gave him earlier that week. “She said ‘Love doesn’t work that way.’ And of course I was six so I was like ‘then how does it work?!’ I was crying then, you know how I used to cry back then.” He scowls and laughs. Sungjae joins him.  “Hyung, you looked really ugly when you cry.”

“Anyways, my mom said that when you fall in love with someone, you always wish it could be forever, but it doesn’t always end this way.” The way Ilhoon says this is like how prayers are said when they go to church on Sundays and sing songs on orchestra and how birds chirp on morning’s sunrise and every time Sungjae thinks he can draw Ilhoon like the back of his hand, he gives him a piece of himself he’s never sure he could draw. “You think it could be for forever but one day you just wake up and it hits you. One day you wake up and you don’t love him anymore, or maybe you do but it’s different so you try and try to feel the same way, you tell yourself things in front of the mirror, you do crazy things, ridiculous things, but it never ever goes back to the way it was before. It ends without ending. Love can be as vicious as it can be forgiving.”

“Your mom has always been my type.” Sungjae tries to go back to that part of Ilhoon he knows best, that part where it’s comfortable without even trying, that one he had always been a part of.

“Shut up. “ Ilhoon glares and Sungjae thinks he’s back. “What I’m saying is that I just don’t want to fall in love then wake up and feel differently.”

Sungjae finally figures out the name of the song, and Ilhoon’s half way done with his ramen. The radio tells a story about a boy and a girl and when he looks at him, he’s always off somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. Sungjae takes it back; he doesn’t think Ilhoon’s back.

Morning rises and Sungjae can hear the sound of the electric fans and Ilhoon’s breathing. He wishes he doesn’t wake up too soon. His breathing is slow and peaceful and it helps Sungjae memorize his face easier. Ilhoon’s alarm will soon go off and Sungjae knows this, 7am it’s time to get up, get ready, if you wake up later you’re dead, 7 am and Bomi’s voice would’ve rung out loud through the whole room. It’s 5 minutes to 7, other days he would have left with a post it saying ‘Hyung, I left already. See you later.’ Or ‘Hyung don’t forget to turn off the gas before you leave.’ Today he leaves after saying “Good morning. Happy birthday, hyung.”

 When he left, Bomi was already at the front door.

Sungjae doesn’t yield but he doesn’t lose either. Or so he thinks.

That time when Ilhoon scraped his knee from biking was during his 9^th birthday, his mom bought him a bike as a gift and when he first tried to ride it, he fell on his and right before Sungjae could laugh, he saw the blood dripping from Ilhoon’s knee and ran.

“Yook Sungjae-yah! Do you respect hyung less now? Do you admire hyung less now? Do you? Do you~~?” Ilhoon jokingly told him as he helped him back to the house. Sungjae laughed and had thought his hyung was cute.

Same day of the birthday greeting, that night Sungjae comes home to the smell of seaweed soup and beef and Ilhoon wearing that apron his mom left on her last visit. The table is set and there’s a pile of unopened gifts on the other side of their bed - ‘university people’s gift’, they decided to call, both of them have garnered a few over the years, Sungjae still has some on his hands. ‘Oppa could you give Ilhoon oppa this?’ ‘Oppa please tell him happy birthday for me!’, his whole day is filled with requests when he can’t even grant his own.  

“Oh Sungjae you’re home!” Ilhoon tells him as soon as he notices, almost 5 minutes since he entered the room.

“Ah yes. Hyung these are for you.” Ilhoon nods a little without looking back. Sungjae takes it as ‘put it on the floor, thanks’. 

“Bomi brought this earlier. She said you two saw each other but you were running late for class.” He places the soup on the table beside the meat and smiles at him. “You shouldn’t have waited for me to get up just to be the first one to greet me. You could’ve left a post it just like you do every day but thank you Sungjae-yah!”

This Ilhoon is  the same one Sungjae helped after he bruised his knee, his hair colour a bit different and his voice bigger. His smile is the same, and that’s all it takes Sungjae to fall back to level1- the falling.

“You’re welcome, hyung.” He says a little shy, he hopes Ilhoon notices, but at the same time he hopes he doesn’t.

“This doesn’t taste as good as your Mom’s, but it’s delicious, Bomi cooked it.”  Ilhoon puts some beef in his plate and lets him eat first.

Bomi came into Ilhoon’s life mid-freshman year. She was someone from the Art class, someone bright and someone who loves eating. Someone whose laugh sounds much like a joke itself - that’s what Ilhoon told him when he went back home during his spring break. He showed him a picture on his laptop – someone whose hair was dark brown, someone who didn’t look like she could kiss asses up until Sungjae met her. And when he did, he saw someone pretty, someone his hyung had set an eye for even if he hadn’t told Sungjae about it.

“Do you like her?” he asks after a full 20 minutes talk about how a certain Yoon Bomi helped him with his art project.

“Nah. She’s a friend, I won’t date her.”

The next thing he knows Bomi’s across him holding his best friend’s hand and Ilhoon introduces her as his girlfriend to his mom and to him, Ilhoonie’s closest childhood friend.

That’s how it is. Bomi coming into Ilhoon’s life meant Bomi coming into Sungjae’s life as well, and Sungjae didn’t mind. She is something made of sunshine and her jokes aren’t half bad, also to say her cooking’s good even though most of the time she makes Ilhoon do it. She punches him when he says something stupid but other times she would gladly join in. He means it’s cute and thinks it should be what relationships are about.

“What? Isn’t it delicious? I added a bit salt awhile ago, I guess I shouldn’t have. Do you admire hyung less now? Do you~?” Ilhoon jokes in the middle of eating. Sungjae still thinks his hyung is cute.

This time though he wishes he could adore him less and be happy.

That time when Ilhoon kissed him was after his freshman’s night when he ended up a little too drunk to find his way to Ilhoon’s room (which will eventually become his own, after they kick Ilhoon’s old roommate out).

Ilhoon’s lips were soft but the way he kissed him felt like he wasn’t the person Sungjae knew.

What Sungjae knows is that no matter how many years he spends with Ilhoon, it always feels like there’s so much he doesn’t know about Ilhoon, so much that he needs to know, so much he hasn’t seen yet and so much of everything he wouldn’t figure out no matter how many meals they share, how many stories they tell each other or how many post-its they leave behind.

“Hyung, why do you love Bomi noona when you’re so afraid one day you’re gonna wake up and feel different?” The radio doesn’t play anything familiar because it isn’t even , but Ilhoon hums something and it’s a happy tune or at least that’s what he thinks. The food is already half done and Ilhoon begins to look at the gifts he received. Sungjae thinks his hyung doesn’t hear him so he repeats the question.

“I don’t know how to put it.” Ilhoon takes a bite of the meat and looks at him. “It’s just that I love her and I don’t know, I guess she makes me forget about that part I’m afraid of.” Sungjae doesn’t understand but there’s something in the way Ilhoon says it that makes him think of things otherwise.

He has seen them kiss, so many times that he’s lost count. The first one was probably a week after he moved into Ilhoon’s room and it was rushed or at least that’s what Sungjae thought of it. It wasn’t like the time Ilhoon kissed him; it was more desperate and hard, it almost looked like they depended on each other’s mouths, to survive. He was kissing her roughly, pressing her on the wall after slowly fumbling to open the door, her hand was placed on the nape of his neck, clutching his hair and his on her back then inside her shirt and there were tongues and when Bomi told Ilhoon Sungjae was there, Ilhoon had a look on his eyes that he’s never seen before. The other time wasn’t fairly the same than the way Ilhoon kissed him, it was slow and passionate and he could hear Bomi giggling and when Ilhoon smiled, he couldn’t remember if he had seen him smile that way ever before.

Sungjae thinks it’s unfair sometimes. Not that part where Bomi kisses Ilhoon every time he wanted to do it, but that part where it took Bomi less time to know him that way, the way that Ilhoon is ready to lose himself when she’s with her more than he does when he’s with him.

The night Ilhoon kissed him was the same night he first confessed to him.

He told him he loved him straight up as they were lying down in bed, there was no sound other than the rustling sound of the unexpected rain outside. His breathing returned to normal and he knew Ilhoon knew he wasn’t drunk anymore.

“You’re not in love with me. You’re drunk.” Ilhoon tells him and he hates it, hates the way Ilhoon pretends that he doesn’t know he’s sober, but hates it more when he tells him that sentence like he knows better than Sungjae. Maybe he does. Usually Ilhoon does.

But I am in love with you. He wanted to say before but didn’t. Couldn’t.

He thinks of saying it tonight, and so he does.

“I love you hyung, you know that.” The tables all clean and there’s a soft whistle coming from Ilhoon’s lips, his hands are on his phone and Sungjae doesn’t want to think Ilhoon is saying the exact same thing to Bomi but he still thinks about it and his stomach feels awful.

“I mean it.” I meant it back on that night you kissed me and on the mornings I tell you ‘Good morning’ when I meant ‘I love you’ instead. Sungjae whispers, he hopes he hears them, he hopes he doesn’t.

“I know. But I love Bomi and you know that.”

He does.

Ilhoon’s face was something he couldn’t paint with his own hands because he was not a painter and Ilhoon is more than sure being in love with Bomi more than anything in his life.