THE ENDING

Jinhwan understood why he should stay away from Hanbin.

It had been a week since rumor that he was gay flew around the campus. Supported by pictures of him holding hands with and hugging another guy, the rumors weren’t baseless. The rumor was true. Jinhwan was gay.

Students began to make fun of him, words like ‘’ flying around the hallways in a blunt manner every time he walked through. Jinhwan wished he could put brakes to their mouths. It wasn’t just that.  They also felt the need to print the word permanently on his desk, which they later on removed from the classroom to prove their point. He wished they stopped there.

They didn’t, not when ‘they’ was a collective term to address almost the whole school, all with the exception of the teachers who knew the situation very well but didn’t say a word, Hongseok his best friend, and Hanbin’s circle of friends.

‘They’ also liked to shove past Jinhwan’s little figure as though it made them happy, as though they were having fun and he was the of the joke. Maybe he was.

Jinhwan was the island within the ocean, and he had no fight. He couldn’t say a word because he had nothing to say but ‘Yes, I’m gay so off’, not when he was treated like his uality was a virus that they needed to get away from. He wished he didn’t suffer alone. Hongseok was there though. He stayed even though it resulted to him being isolated as well. They couldn’t even hang out with Hanbin anymore, as he was afraid that his virus would spread to them like fire.

He could understand why he should stay away from Hanbin as the latter had aspirations on becoming student council president and the last thing he could be associated with was a bad reputation. What Jinhwan couldn’t understand was why Hanbin had never contacted him once, ever since the rumor broke out, why he didn’t even dare look at him when they passed by each other in the hallways, why he didn’t wonder how Jinhwan was doing. Hanbin had told h