Does he know what has happened

Since that day, this heart has become his

Being a librarian, apparently, had never been in the list of what Wu Yifan wanted to be for living.

A basketball player, yes definitely; a band member, maybe; an influential spokesperson, he’s working on that; but never a librarian. Unfortunately, Lady of Fate is a who decided to make his life dirt poor that he had to take the offer from his roommate, Zhang Yixing, to be a part-time librarian in a library run by the government just 15 minutes walking distance from their university dormitory. Having just ₩149,000 under his own name in that month, Yifan just had to accept it if he didn’t want to eat kimchi kimbab for breakfast and ramyun for dinner for the whole month.

The payment is okay, he guesses, and he only thinks of the blood sausage he can afford to accompany the discounted microwaveable rice he bought from the nearest 7-11. He’s that poor, and he can hear his mom’s nagging from miles away about how he has to manage his allowance better moreover he’s just a mere scholarship student. It’s his luck that he got tall, lean body and quite athletic posture thanks to the vigorous basketball exercise he did during high school, plus arrogantly handsome face he inherited from his father; no one would think that Kris Wu is usually eating ramyun half portion for lunch and re-heat the rest for dinner in his poorer days. Yixing sometimes shares his shrimp mandoo with his roommate; sometimes he’s not so charitable. Either way, Yifan can eat a bit luxuriously in the first week of the month. He’s just as miserable as a living-alone college student would be.

He actually heard once from gossiping girls in the college canteen that Kris could look gorgeous adorned in only black t-shirt, bleached skinny jeans, crème colored sneakers, and a pair of old-school glasses. He grimaced inwardly because it’s not that he likes to dress simply; he just got nothing to dress up with.

Wu Yifan swears to buy a lot of clothes later when he gets a lot of money. He’s really determined for that.

For now he just has to be satisfied with his job because it’s not as hard as he initially thought. He checks-in the new books and jots them down in a list, letting the seniors sort them out further before he places the sorted ones to their destined shelves. He helps the guests to find the right aisles, warning them if they bring food into the collection area or make noises, and so on. The perks he gets are free wi-fi and the privilege to stay as long as he can after his shift hour is over to do course works. He can tag the best spot by placing his stuffs on the table and basically has the building like his own, and oh, pastries from the bakery at the lower ground are not bad, too.

His job isn’t really interesting but not borderline boring; he needs the payment to continue comfortable living as a foreign student on the foreign land, so there he is. He just needs to get through his slow days and do his jobs and he can get his payment in the end of the month.

But for every protagonist there will be an antagonist. For Wu Yifan, there will be Park Chanyeol.

Now you don’t imagine the latter as a horned little devil that came from hell to annoy the hell out of our main character here, but he looks rather like an overgrown puppy whose hair dark brown that looks soft just like a golden retriever’s fur, and eyes so big and kind and ears like an elf’s. From exterior he looks like an okay guy, but Yifan can practically smell him when he stays in the library.

By smelling it means practically scenting him; the younger guy (Yifan assumes) keeps breaking the library regulation by bringing a cup of steamy Americano to the collection area. Sometimes, it’s Macchiato and Yifan likes Macchiato so ing much that it irks him to the core. Nah, he’s totally not wanting the other guy’s concoction that he can’t afford too often but just. He breaks rules, that’s it. And Yifan hates rule breakers because they ruffle his peaceful day.

Maybe not hate. Because Park Chanyeol (the rule breaker’s name, he got it from the library visitors data, and no, he’s not snooping around) has a face that’s too handsome, too likeable to hate.

Not being cocky or anything, but even to Yifan’s standard the other guy is way above the average. It’s just unfortunate that such a good face has a personality of a trash. Uh no, that’s quite a harsh sentence. Yifan doesn’t know yet whether or not the other guy’s trashy but he breaks rules. It’s a decent reason for him to come to him and tap his shoulder.

But then he plugs off one of the earphones and turns around, and Yifan’s resolute determination to right the wrong tumbles a bit.

“Yes?” says the rule breaker and , does his voice sound so y. Not too low or greasy but definitely has the good timbre. Yifan wonders how many sticks of cigarette he consumes per day to get that kind of y voice.

“Um,” Yifan responds dumbly. Now Park Chanyeol’s whole body is facing him and the librarian can fully inspect the other guy; he wears a tshirt under a checkered shirt, slim fit jeans, and comfy Converse sneakers. He looks nice. Totally his style.

Wait, no, that’s not—

“Sir?” calls him once again, making Yifan snap out from his reverie. He’s titling his head to the side, cutely Yifan admits, and the librarian has to clear his throat before he can blurt any embarrassing comment regarding the cuteness of the rule breaker.

“I’m sorry,” the part-time worker says. He pats himself inwardly for not producing wobbly voice or he would sound like a loser. “But food and beverage is not allowed in this area.”

“Oh!” he exclaims, looking at the steamy coffee in his hand. “I didn’t know it! I’ve been bringing my coffee for a few times here and I never got reminded, I thought it was okay.”

Yeah, I figure, Yifan all but rolls his eyes but keeps his professional smile intact. “I let you slide in every of that day,” he nods slowly as if a point in his sentence. “But rules are rules, young man. I’m sorry but you have to finish your drink outside the library and you can come back to study.”

“But…” Chanyeol juts his lips slightly —does he just ing pout?— and opens his hot drink cup’s lid. The whiff of his freshly served coffee hits Yifan’s nose and it just smells so, so good.  What is it he bringing today? “The coffee only tastes the best in the right temperature, right? If I drink this now, or later, it won’t be so good anymore.”

“Well,” Yifan’s at lost in the other guy’s problem. “I have no idea how to solve that problem.”

“How about this,” Chanyeol takes Yifan’s idle hand, making the latter confused a little. “You take this to the staff room and wait for me for a few minutes while I’m looking for the book I want to read, and then I come to you to drink my coffee. It’s a good idea, right?”

“Wait, I don’t—”

“Thank you,” he pauses a bit to look for a name tag that attaches to the chest of every library staff but Yifan forgot to bring this morning. “Um, nameless hyung. I’ll surely come back.”

“It’s Kris,” Yifan tells the retreating library guest. Chanyeol looks back with raised eyebrows. “Kris, my name.”

“Okay, please wait for me, Kris hyung,” grins Chanyeol. “And I’m Chanyeol.”

“I know,” Kris mutters under his breath to a cup of warm coffee still steaming in his hand.

*

The next day he arrives to the staff room, Chanyeol is sitting at the long desk and waves at him cheerfully, a cup of coffee in his hand. He’s still wearing his uniform, a light grey sweater under a white shirt. He still looks incredibly cute even after school, especially with his heartwarming smile.

After their first encounter, he cannot bring himself to dislike the cute rule breaker in front of him.

“I thought I already told you that you cannot bring food or beverage to this place,” Yifan shakes his head and sighs. He pads his way to his locker and puts on the uniform vest over his shirt. “Last time was just an exception, you know?”

“But I also got you coffee!” the younger guy shows him another cup of the hot drink. “I hope you don’t mind Americano.”

“Now you bribe me,” deadpans Yifan.

“N-no!” sputters Chanyeol, a tinge of blush appears on his slightly chubby cheeks. “It’s just— I think it’ll feel better if I have a company, and you’ve been so kind to me…”

“Relax, Chanyeol-ah, I just teased you,” he ruffles Chanyeol’s dark brown locks a bit. “It’s still an hour until my shift and I intended to study a bit, so thank you for the coffee. Today’s classes were a bit hard.”

Chanyeol scoots further to give space to Yifan, and the older guy takes the seat beside him as he drops a text book and a laptop on the desk. Yifan can feel the other’s eyes are on him but he lets him be. After a few minutes, Chanyeol finally speaks again, “Is college hard?”

“Sometimes it’s hard, but you have more free time than you had in high school,” answers Yifan without looking at the younger guy, still typing to his laptop.

“I want to enroll to your university.”

“Ah, national exam is in a few months, right?” Yifan nods thoughtfully. It’s September already and the exam is on November. “And you surely don’t aim higher.”

“10 highest score students will get full scholarship, I think it’s not particularly bad,” Chanyeol grins. “Now I just have to study more, and more! Study until I go crazy, hehehe.”

“If you go crazy then the scholarship will go into waste,” Yifan ruffles the younger’s hair again. “’Work hard, play hard,’ have you heard that?”

“What does it mean?”
 

“You have to play as equally hard as you study,” Yifan smiles to still blinking Chanyeol. “It’s about balance, Chanyeol-ah. Unbalance life is bad. You work as hard as you spend it. You see those billionaires out there but they dress so casually… they feel hard to spend the money because they know how hard it was to earn it. Isn’t that so?”

“Uhm,” Chanyeol nods, his bowl cut hair moves cutely around the frame of his hair. Yifan really wants to touch it, to feel the younger guy’s soft hair tickling in between his fingers, but he thinks it’ll be a little too weird and too intimate considering that they’ve just met two times. “Hyung, how did you enroll the university? Did you also take the national exam?”

“No, I applied to the Korean Council in Canada, and they accepted me,” answers Yifan as he backspaces the typo he just made. It’s hard for him to multitask, actually. “And then I was enrolled into a language school in Daejeon last year before finally entering the college. I needed to past Korean Proficiency Test level 4 to graduate that school.”

“Was it hard? Have you ever thought about giving up?” Chanyeol asks again. Yifan finally looks at him again; his eyes are shining.

“I have,” Yifan sighs, thinking about failed mock exams and sleepless nights just to make a perfect paper about the culture of his origin country.  He thinks about Luhan, his roommate from China who helped him a lot in during that time and now going to Yonsei University. “But thinking about people who support me, my parents, my friends, and then there was my roommate who always helped me in the language school, I felt stupid to ever think about giving up. I just didn’t want to let them down, didn’t want to think that they support went into waste, so I just kept going.”

Yifan looks at the wall clock that indicates that it’s 5 minutes before his shift starts, so he begins packing his stuffs and throws two empty cups to the trash bin. “Don’t worry,” he messes Chanyeol’s hair once again, it’s harder this time just to spite the younger guy. “I’m supporting you, so don’t give up, okay?”

Chanyeol nods eagerly and gets up from his seat while rearranging his messy hair, following Yifan going out of the staff room.

*

Chanyeol, after he gets to know the younger guy closer and deeper, is a smart boy. He stays in the library until late that he needs the coffee beforehand to stay awake longer. When Yifan asked him about why he didn’t go to a cram school, he only smiled simply and shrugged, “Not everyone can afford after-school classes, Kris hyung.”

Yifan suddenly remembered a saying that the one who smiles the brightest feels hurt the most, too.

Often times, when it’s already late at night and there are a few guests in the library, Yifan sits beside Chanyeol and assists the younger in whatever field he can do. He usually teaches English, and he patiently explains that the plural form of ‘that’ is ‘those’, not ‘thats’.

Yifan gets accustomed to Chanyeol that he sometimes forgets that the younger guy doesn’t come every day, but just every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He likes Fridays the most, though, as he can take a breath for a while after exhausting series of day, and that way he can teach Chanyeol better, too. There’s something fascinating and just purely amusing when he witnesses Chanyeol scrunching his nose over his explanation, as if he can digest the knowledge better if he does so.

Yifan grows fond of Park Chanyeol, but he isn’t so sure of where this kind of affection will bring him to.

*

A day before the national exam, Yifan asks Chanyeol to wait in front of the entrance door of the public library.

A boy at Chanyeol’s height runs to his direction, and after he comes closer Yifan realizes that he’s indeed Park Chanyeol; he has his hair cut but that doesn’t hinder his cuteness at the slightest. His pointed ears look prominent now and even more endearing. He pants a bit, forming a thin smoke to the air. “Am I late? Did you wait long?”

“It’s okay, Chanyeol-ah,” Yifan grins but says nothing else because he indeed waited for quite a long time but that wasn’t the younger guy’s fault. He was just too excited that he came to the promised place twenty minutes early. “Come on, I have these two coupons from the buffet restaurant a few blocks from here.”

“Eh? You’re bringing me to have a dinner?” Chanyeol sounds genuinely confused but there’s a hint of excitement in his tone that brings Yifan to nod.

“Think of it as energy food for the battle tomorrow,” Yifan ruffles the now short hair as the walk down the street together. The night is quite chilly, but it’s nothing compared to the winter in Canada for him. “I think they have meat there, so we can put a bit of weight into your scrawny body here.”

“I’m not scrawny, I’m just too tall for someone my weight!” says Chanyeol indignantly. Yifan chuckles and says sorry. “This is the first time someone older than me takes me out for dinner. You’re my first time, hyung!”

Yifan nearly chokes on his saliva because that was really ambiguous; it’s either Chanyeol is that innocent or he just chose the wrong words. He hides his slightly hot cheeks under his turtle neck collar and keeps on walking, glancing a few times just to make sure that Chanyeol is still by his side. The younger guy keeps on smiling, humming a foreign song under his breath with eyes glistening brightly. He’s happy, Yifan can say. There are times when Chanyeol smiles just because he doesn’t know what else to do, and that makes him feel pity of that boy. And that’s why Yifan asked Luhan to give him free coupons from any diner in Seoul (he was hopeful for it, his friend has links broader than any foreign student in Korea could); he just wanted to make Chanyeol happy even for the briefest. He doesn’t know how much a growing boy can eat so a buffet restaurant can be a solution. He knows meat can make Chanyeol excited. Meat can never go wrong.

There are times when Yifan thinks he’s fallen in like with the high school boy. Or maybe it’s just affection. Either way, he doesn’t ponder it too long. What matters the most is the present and the younger guy is currently under pressure. He feels like it’s his job to ease the tense.

*

“Hyung,” says Chanyeol after swallowing a piece of meat. “What is it like in Canada?”

Chanyeol, as Yifan finds out later, talks a lot when eating. He seems in a good mood, but then again, who doesn’t like free food? He keeps commenting about the dishes and talking the best way to eat them. He teaches Yifan how to eat galbi with whatever leaf it is, and it apparently tastes good. It is a good dinner.

“At my hometown?” Yifan thinks for a while. “Vancouver is a warm place. Quite peaceful, but still a big city. I live in a suburb and there’s a beautiful park near my house.”

Chanyeol hums. “It sounds like a nice country.”

“You should try travelling there someday,” Yifan nods. “You can crash at my place, if you want. My mom would surely adore you.” The other guy only smiles, that one doesn’t reach his eyes. He keeps munching on his rice and meat and Yifan takes it as it’s his turn to ask, “Chanyeol-ah, do you have siblings?”

“Siblings?”

“Yeah, as in a brother or a sister.”

“I have an older sister, her name is Yura,” he fishes out his phone from his jacket pocket. He clicks the screen a few times before showing it to Yifan. “Look, we look quite alike, don’t we?”

In Chanyeol’s phone screen, there’s a picture of a girl who looks almost exactly like Chanyeol, except her body  smaller and her hair long. She has the same smile like Chanyeol’s, though her ears aren’t as pointy as his. She’s pretty, and that makes Yifan imagine the other guy as a girl and how pretty he would be.

Yifan quickly bats the imagination away. “Do you live with her?”

“No,” Chanyeol mumbles quietly. “She’s not with me right now. She goes to college, anyway.”

Chanyeol goes quiet on their way home. Yifan thinks it must be about him offering to accompany him home but he doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing wrong with it and the night has gone quite late. He can’t risk the younger guy walking alone on an empty street.

“Here I am,” Chanyeol says after a while. They stop in front of a building that doesn’t look like a normal apartment. It’s an orphanage.

Yifan averts his gaze from the building to the young guy beside him. Chanyeol only shrugs. “My parents died seven years ago. They let me stay here until I graduate school.”

The older of the two opens his lips, but he cannot say anything. It never occurred to him that this lively boy, the one who’s been lighting up his day, is an orphan. Maybe he’s the real proof of balance life; his bright personality equals his sadness toward his life.

“It’s embarrassing, right?” Chanyeol’s words bring him back from his reverie. Yifan looks at him, whose eyes shining under the light of the street lamps. “Hyung, are you embarrassed?”

Taken aback is an understatement for the state Yifan is in. “What—”

“It’s okay,” Chanyeol shrugs. In front of Yifan he tries to look and sound nonchalant but his eyes say all of his emotions. Are you embarrassed with me? “Only few want to befriend with orphans, I understand.”

It takes Yifan a few steps to take the younger’s trembling shoulders and bring that skinny body into his embrace, tucking his hair under his chin. He can feel Chanyeol melt into his arms, as if he’s relieved, so grateful that someone still wants to take him. Slowly, Chanyeol’s arms snake around his waist and bring their bodies closer and his nose digs onto Yifan’s nape.

“My sister was adopted a few years ago by a couple from the US which the wife is sterile,” Chanyeol whispers to Yifan’s jacket; the older of the two can hear him as clear as the day. “At first she was furious when they said they could only adopt one of us and they chose her, but then I pushed her to leave for the better. Why would she sacrifice something so great for me? With them she could go to school and enter college, get nice clothes and meet new friends. Her life there has been good, that’s what I see from our Skype sessions. She looks so great, hyung, that I oftentimes feel lonely.”

They stay like that for a while, keeping in each other’s embrace and listening to their soft breaths. The night is peaceful though a bit chilly, their body heat keeps them warm. It’s comfortable that way; Yifan can feel Chanyeol getting relaxed in his embrace. Maybe he’s been longing for someone’s warm touch. Yifan rubs the younger guy’s back affectionately, easing the tense on the muscles.  “I won’t feel embarrassed of you, Chanyeol-ah. You’re an okay boy, and I guess I’m alright with it.”

“Just okay?” Chanyeol breaks the hug and looks at him with raised eyebrows.

Yifan just nods which gets him a weak punch on the chest. He laughs and ruffles Chanyeol’s locks while smiling. “Go get in, you need to rest for tomorrow. I’ll pick you up to your school.”

Chanyeol’s eyes get so bright under the lights and he nods enthusiastically. He says his good bye and thank you before retreating, but then he runs back and pecks Yifan’s cheek.

“Good night, hyung.” His whisper echoes in Yifan’s mind for the whole night.

*

Is he falling for me? Like what I did for him

Is he falling in love? Like what I’ve been hoping for

Yifan has never experienced it before, to look at what the national exam day would be and what people would do on that day. He learns that for Koreans, national exams are a live-or-die situation where the freshmen and juniors come to the school to give supports to their seniors, while the parents come to pray for their children. He sees a student comes with a police with motorcycle, who apparently got stuck with flat tire and the police is more than willing to bring him to his exam place.

Yifan comes as Chanyeol’s guardian, the one who prays for his success.

Chanyeol brings him to an empty alley. They haven’t talked about last night’s incident, but they’re content with that. They aren’t ones who express with words, Yifan realizes. The younger guy holds his hand tight, not letting it go until they’re completely free from anyone. It’s an hour before the exam starts.

“You’ll do well, Chanyeol-ah,” Yifan tucks a few strands for Chanyeol’s hair behind his ears. “No, you’ll do great. Believe in yourself, okay? And you can go to the same university with me.”

Chanyeol nods wordlessly, his cheeks redden. He takes Yifan’s hand again, both of them this time, and tightens his grip. “Thank you for everything, hyung.”

“It’s nothing,” Yifan smiles.

“I actually knew that I wasn’t allowed to bring any drink into the library.”

“Wh—”

“I first saw you in the café I’m working on, you know,” Chanyeol grins sheepishly. “I was studying for a mock exam at the corner of the café and you bought a cup of Macchiato. You looked so… so handsome,” Chanyeol pauses, as if collecting his bravery to say what he wants to say next. “I followed you and found you entering the library. I saw you coming out of the staff room and there I realized you’re a part-time staff. You’re really a head-turner, you know, the girls looked at you dreamily as you walked pass them. I didn’t know how to get your attention but I really wanted to get to know with you, until I opened a customer’s cup’s lid that I got the idea of how to make you come to me.”

Silence engulfs them, making Chanyeol chew on his lower lip. “Kris hyung,” he calls timidly, hanging his head. “You’re not mad with me, right?”

“Yifan.”

“Huh?”

“It’s my real name,” says Yifan with his trademark gummy smile. “Call me Yifan.”

“Yifan hyung,” Chanyeol tries to say that strange name, and it sounds good to Yifan’s ears. “Yifan hyung.”

“Go, Chanyeol-ah,” the older guy tells the latter. “You might want to check on your exam room.”

But Yifan doesn’t let him go, instead he embraces him tightly and inhales the whiff of shampoo from his hair. He suddenly feels the need to tell Chanyeol that he’s here, he’ll always be there to support him. He breaks the hug and to Chanyeol who looks up with confused eyes, he closes their gap and kisses that high school student’s lips.

Kissing Chanyeol, apparently, feels different from any kiss he’d done before. His lips are slightly chapped due to cold weather, but they feel warmer and more addicting. The younger guy parts them to give in to Yifan’s ministration and he can taste cheap, instant coffee from Chanyeol’s mouth and other things so Chanyeol, tastes he could never find anywhere else in this world. The sensation is enthralling, moreover when Chanyeol tilts his head to the side for better access and starts kissing him back. Chanyeol snakes his arms around his neck to bring them even closer, as if he doesn’t want to let go, as though he doesn’t have better things to do than kissing Yifan, being with Yifan.

They almost forget that there’s a national exam happening in the next hour.

Both of them eventually break the kiss and Yifan decides that he likes to see that he’s the one making Chanyeol blush furiously. He pecks the other’s cheek and caresses the spot he just kisses on, “Good luck, Chanyeol-ah.”

*

They never talk about the kiss, but they know from that moment that their feelings are mutual. They keep on going their own lives as usual, but with each other’s presence as the spice of the day. Yifan likes to visit Chanyeol’s café during lunch and although it’s during busy hour that they cannot have their own moment, Yifan likes it to watch the hard working side from his boyfriend. He can see that the customers are fond of him because of his bright smile and easygoing personality, and if the society wasn’t so binding he would’ve boasted around that that guy is my boyfriend; that handsome guy is mine.

Yifan spends his Christmas in Chanyeol’s orphanage with the boys and girls there and he helps the staffs especially Mommy Han, the head of the institution, to tend some babies. The elder is ecstatic to see that Chanyeol is no longer feeling lonely now that he has Yifan, and he feels grateful that she’s open to their relationship.

“She likes you, hyung,” Chanyeol smiles to the figure of Yifan and baby Yesul in the recreation room. “She’s never been easy to strangers, yet she’s calm in your arms.”

“Really? Do you like me, Yesullie?” coos Yifan to the girl, making the infant gurgle excitedly. “She’s cute. And the other kids aren’t bad either.”

“Because we only have each other,” Chanyeol looks around the room and smiles to the younger brothers and sister he has in the institution. “We’re taught here that the person in front of us might be disappear one day without our conscience, so we always make the best effort to make each other happy. Because we don’t want to leave negative image to other’s memories, we don’t want to be hated and most likely we have enough experience with sadness. So why making people sad if we can make the world better?”

Chanyeol looks at Yifan and offers him a bright smile, making his boyfriend follow his example. Yifan realizes that there are so many things in this world that he hasn’t known, and he can learn things the university never shares to their students from people he finds and meets on daily basis. From Chanyeol, the high school boy who used to break the rule of the library just to get his attention, he learns about humbleness, about looking at the bright side of every misfortune.

He vows that he’ll be the umbrella for Chanyeol, to shield him from heated sunshine and raging raindrops.

“It’s okay, baby,” Yifan coos to sobbing Chanyeol in his embrace. “There’s always another chance. You can do better next year, I believe you.”

Chanyeol gets accepted into Yifan’s university but only on the 13^th highest score in the list. He’s devastated because he thinks he’s disappointing Yifan, who’s been more than bigger supporter in his life. Though Yifan says that he’s never disappointed in him, he feels terribly guilty for not doing better in the exam. He was so close! Yet he couldn’t reach it.

Yifan understands.

That is why he whips out his phone and dials number 7 on his speed dial, asking for help. He doesn’t want to see a bright guy crumble to the ground.

“You must be in love with him, Yifan,” says Luhan from the other line. “Otherwise you wouldn’t bother calling me to provide him with education fees.”

“Before he became my boyfriend, he once was my favorite guest in the library,” Yifan smiles. He can hear Luhan chuckle, as if he can see Yifan’s smitten smile from the phone line. “He inspires me to become a better man. He’s so bright, Luhan. He deserves this chance. I saw him in this state and I just…”

“Meet me in the café in my department building tomorrow around lunch,” Luhan says after a few seconds of silence. “I want to meet the one who tamed you.”

“Luhan!”

*

God, make him only falls in love with me

If only he knows what I feel

Dorm life isn’t the most ideal kind of life Yifan’s pictured before, but if he can meet Chanyeol and spend the time together with him, he doesn’t mind at all.