The campus at six o’clock in the morning was as isolated and lonely as it was in the bustling afternoon in the eyes of Seunghyun as he stumbled through the steel gates, nodding to the security guard who was half asleep in his miniscule office. There were a couple of students that were wandering in the grass, watching for the rising sun.

 

Leaning against the stone pillar connecting the gates, Seunghyun zipped up the gray sweatshirt and pulled down the hood so that it covered just above his nose, shoving his hands into the pockets of flannel pants. He was grumbling under his breath, looking down the pebbled road, glaring down at the rays of early sunset.

 

“Why the hell do they want me to pick it up so damn early?”

 

The Captain’s voice still rang in his head through the drowsy buzz from his state as well as the crackle of the phone reception. Youngbae had thrown a pillow at him while still managing to stay asleep, arms crossed and hat down, his face turned towards the dark corner of the room.

 

The sound of wheels rumbled down the road, making a silent curve around the flower landscape in the middle, coming to a halting stop just in front of him. A driver got out and went around the car to open the passenger door, but someone inside already beat him to it, almost slamming the door in the driver’s face. One slim leg stepped onto the ground, black knee-high boots with deadly heels crunching the sand in its wake. A familiar mass of subtly waved brown curls blew in the early morning wind, a white smile piercing the gloomy air.

 

Seunghyun smirked and straightened up just as the door closed shut, and he pulled back his hood to reveal his face just as she took off her sunglasses to show hers. He opened his arms for an embrace, watching her walk towards him with dainty steps.

 

“Noona,” he said fondly, enveloping her small frame into his broad figure, patting her hair down as she hugged around his neck. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

 

“Long trip back home to Busan,” she replied, pulling away from the embrace, a secret glimpse in her eyes. “It took longer than expected. The fish...they were hard to catch.”

 

“But you caught them?”

 

“Oh yeah,” she said with a sharp smile, a contrast to her kind eyes. “All in a synch.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis after taking off her leather gloves, laughing a tinkling laugh that fit her demeanor much more than the killer’s smile.

 

Just as she stepped back, she jumped from the ground and smacked him behind his head, slapping his cheek when his face was closer to her reach.

 

“Did you seriously forget your luggage...for a mission?” She whispered the last part just as the driver rolled over a black bag to her side.

 

“Seriously, I didn’t need all of this. This is a simple “tying up the loose end” task, I don’t need any guns for this.” When he finished, she slapped his head again.

 

“Say it louder, will you?” she hissed. “Nevermind if you think you don’t need it, the higher-ups think you do.”

 

Seunghyun shook his head, slouching and hunching his back. “It’s nice to know they have such trust in me.”

 

“Don’t be such a baby,” she said briskly, pulling up her gloves so that they tightened around the fingers and the wrists. When she brushed back her hair to reveal the lean curve of her neck and the graceful lines of her collarbone, a silver chain flashed in the light with a simple silver circle as its charm.

 

“What’s that?” he asked, cupping one hand gently behind her neck to get a closer look.

 

She slapped his wrist away and it before hiding it away again under her hair. “Some boy in my old neighborhood left it for me under my door.” Suddenly, for a brief moment, her face lost the focused look of cold, calculating instincts and the guarded wall around her was taken apart stone by stone.

 

“Some boy?” he asked, looking curiously at her.

 

She sighed, unconscously running her fingers up and around the chain. “He had a small accent, he hadn’t been there for long. Carried around a sketchpad with a pencil on his ear...” she trailed off before finishing in a wistful whisper. “He was cute.”

 

Had...was... Past tense, again.

 

“Did he see you...?” Seunghyun started, treading carefully on the matter. He was taken aback by the new revealing facade of her emotions, he felt that he was walking across a terrain of mines. Unfamiliar, dangerous territory that, when ventured, only gives way to misery and scars.

 

She blinked and crinkled her nose, as if in disgust. “Stupid boy came by when I was finishing up, and I hadn’t put away the gun yet...I had to do it.” She cleared before turning around and giving him a small, half-hearted smirk. “I couldn’t keep his drawings of me, but maybe I was a little too theatrical. I burned them all. I would have burned the necklace but...silver doesn’t burn easily.” She closed her eyes at the excuse, knowing full-well that it sounded weak even to her ears.

 

“Maybe I was lucky that he saw the gun. Maybe he does these things with any girl that he can find, and I just saved myself the effort of having to find him later.” She let out a chortle, waving away the tension that had masked the air around them.

 

Seunghyun twitched on a smile and shook his head, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Dara noona, you know you’re not just any girl.”

 

When he leaned down to kiss her forehead, she raised two fingers and fended off his lips, pushing him away with just a light touch. “Save it, I don’t need it. Jiyong would get so jealous, and I don’t need that on my hands.”

 

She pushed away and walked to the car, putting on her sunglasses and flipping back her hair so that the risen sun reflected off of her brown silk and soothed over his gaze.

 

“Don’t screw up,” she called out over her shoulder, “and don’t get killed.” She turned around and said with a wink, “College can be brutal.”

 

He gave her a small salute. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

 

As the car drove away, leaving him behind with a bag filled with burden and fires, he was left to ponder on the story revealed to him with the vision of her necklace flashed his eyes, the circle going around and around in its silvery glance. It was more enticing, more thought provoking than could be seen in the chosen symbol for infinity. Perhaps because of its simplicity.

 

~

 

“What’s your first class?”

 

Dong Youngbae nudged Choi Seunghyun with an elbow, glancing sideways at the scheduled crumpled in Seunghyun’s hand, laughing as he stared at his frozen face. “What, are you scared about your first day as a college freshman?”

 

“I don’t know, it’s kind of...” Seunghyun paused, looking up from the paper and following a senior crossing their path, eyes quickly looking down at his feet before he could notice. “Intimidating,” he finished.

 

Youngbae laughed again, patting him hard on his back. “You’re a bit of a baby, aren’t you?”

 

“Am not.” He flinched just as they crossed a lamp light that flickered off, avoiding Youngbae’s amused gaze before stopping in front of a large building. “Uhh, I think this is it. You can...go now. Thanks for walking with me.”

 

He shrugged. “Hey, no problem. From what I can grasp at this point, you were bound to get lost on your way here.”

 

Seunghyun frowned and shoved Youngbae’s shoulder. “Go away.”

 

With more taunting laughter, Youngbae turned his back and walked down the path that they had just come from again, waving goodbye with one hand and pushing down his beanie with the other, the tone of his muscles emphasized by the arch of his back.

 

Seunghyun’s smile vanished, crumpling the paper back into his pocket and walking into the building, stone-faced and deep in thought. Getting Youngbae close to him was proving to be difficult in the last few days before the school semester began, their room still lingering with Youngbae and Daesung’s picture that he refused to throw away from his bag. Every night, as Youngbae fell soundly asleep hugging a pillow to his chest, Seunghyun sat on the edge of his bed staring across the room at Daesung’s smiling face that stared back with his squinted eyes.

 

Ghosts had never dared to come back and haunt him. Why did this one? Was he protecting Youngbae in his helpless state, or waiting to meet him after the mission was complete?

 

Daesung’s loving words caressed his thoughts, nudging at his heart. It had seemed so sincere, so wholesome. But was it torn between him and Youngbae? Such an innocent boy, he had seemed. Incapable of sin, relentlessly good-hearted. There was a sense of unreasonable betrayal in the revelation of Daesung’s past.

 

There were no other words for the feeling that tugged at the corner of his heart and nipped away at the edge of his mind. Although it was unreasonable, illogical, Choi Seunghyun felt betrayed. Furiously betrayed, enough to grind his teeth in the middle of the night and curse Daesung’s buried soul, angrily...stubbornly hoping that his ghost could hear him.

 

There had never been love towards Daesung, there had never been any love towards the tasks that he was given. But the fact that anyone was able to deceive him, to double cross him, Choi Seunghyun, was unfathomable. Impossible. Yet he was bound to it, having to deal with it every night until his mission was complete.

 

Then he would be free to burn all those pictures and laugh, just to be able to say that no one could beat him in the art of deception.

 

Love is my ally, he thought as he walked down the hallway in the dusty building, gazing the passing classrooms. Love is my weapon.

 

He was cute, Dara’s voice suddenly floated to his ears.

 

He stopped just in front of his classroom, hand on the knob. Her solemn face came up again, the necklace that seemed to mock him for whatever reason. He gave a small scoff, shaking it out of his head. Won’t happen to me, he thought.

 

Jiyong’s face came up this time just when he opened the door, flickering between a smile and a scowl until the scene stopped in between: a mutilated mask of brokenness, the image of a hundred pieces shattered and hastily put back together with the glue still drying and oozing out from the cracks. Someday, he promised himself, I’m going to find those missing pieces and fill the cracks.Clean away the glue because by then, they would all be ready to stay without adhesive.

 

Choi Seunghyun smiled and stepped into the room, the image of Jiyong overpowering Noona’s sullen voice. Then, outside of his mind, a strangely familiar voice said close by, “Hey, it’s you!”

 

A young face came up in front of him, smiling. “It’s the other Seunghyun.”

 

Everything shattered, his focus completely disoriented. Her last whispering voice lingered before it dissipated, like water vapors in the July desert.

 

Silver doesn’t burn easily.

 

~

 

“Who knew fate would have us meet again?” Lee Seunghyun said with a laugh as they walked out of class. The constant drone of the business professor’s dreaded voice echoed in Choi Seunghyun’s ears, but it did nothing to interfere with Lee Seunghyun’s constant babble of excitement and naivety. All he could do was smile on and pray for a subtle escape.

 

“Has your luggage come yet?” he asked, keeping a dead conversation afloat.

 

“Oh yeah, it came a few days ago,” Choi Seunghyun replied, “my noona came instead of my mom.”

 

“That was nice of her. What school does she go to?”

 

Gritting the back of his teeth, he smiled with closed eyes. “She graduated a few years ago at a community college in Busan.”

 

“She didn’t go here?”

 

“No, she wanted to get out of the city.”

 

They stepped out into the open air, faced with the mid-morning breeze as upperclassmen made their way to their first class of the semester. Just in luck, Choi Seunghyun spotted Youngbae across the field, recognizable by the blonde hair and black hoodie ped over a sleeveless white tee. He was the only one not holding a bag, carrying his books under one arm with their spine hitting against the looped chain around his belt holes.

 

“Sunbae!” Choi Seunghyun called, interrupting Lee Seunghyun mid-sentence. Youngbae looked up and waved with a blank face, making his leisure way around to them.

 

“Sorry,” he apologized when Youngbae came up. “This is my roommate, Dong Youngbae. He’s a junior.”

 

Lee Seunghyun gave his familiarly friendly smile and held out his hand without hesitance. Such blind trust was going to ruin him someday, Choi Seunghyun thought to himself as he watched their hands meet.

 

“Hi, my name’s Lee Seunghyun.”

 

Youngbae smirked. “Another Seunghyun? Does that get confusing?”

 

“No, we’ve only just met,” Choi Seunghyun replied, shaking his head. “This is our second time meeting.”

 

Even when their hands let go, Lee Seunghyun kept on smiling as if it was the only thing he knew what to do.

 

“I don’t know, guys. Two Seunghyuns hanging in the same class. Just...call each other by your surnames.” Youngbae pointed to Choi Seunghyun and declared, “Choi Seunghyun just goes by Choi. Lee Seunghyun goes by Lee.” Looking proud of himself for a moment, Youngbae nodded to himself and patted Choi on his shoulder before heading off down the road.

 

“I grabbed some breakfast from the cafeteria and put it on your bed. Eat it before your next class,” he called over his shoulder, striding along with long legs.

 

“He seems nice,” Lee commented, another smile perking up the corners of his lips. “Kind of sad though...is he all right?”

 

Choi froze, a sudden slip of his facade, a small crack in his mask. An unintentional mistake which was, fortunately, able to be played off as a part of his act.

 

“His boyfriend killed himself over the summer without even a note. He keeps their pictures around the room, quietly cries himself to sleep every night, and wakes up pretending to be fine in the morning.”

 

There was a small pause in the air before he replied. “What a sad cycle, needing to live but having nothing to live for.”

 

Following the path of Youngbae’s back, facing the hunch of his shoulders before he disappeared down the road, Choi frowned and turned his head to the side. “...I hadn’t thought about it that way. I thought he was mourning.”

 

“Mourning...maybe. Hiding, crumbling, drowning seems more like it. He has no spark in his eyes.”

 

“How would you know? You’ve never met him before, right?”

 

Lee shrugged, staring back at him like he was confused by the question. “Does it matter? Everyone has a spark, it shows who you are. His spark is dead, the embers are just laying in a pool.”

 

Suddenly, his voice changed to a more amused tone. “Your spark is hidden, so I can’t really make out who you are. As of right now, you’re another pretty face in my way. But I’m sure there’s more. There’s always more,” he finished with a subtle wink and a smile.

 

As if somehow caught in a trance, Choi Seunghyun lingered in his spot, tension traveling to the back of his concerns and leaving him with a sense of curiosity and relevance.

 

Hidden, he recalled. Crumbling, drowning.

 

A curious choice of adjectives, he thought to himself while watching Lee fumbling with the straps of his backpack. They fit well with the situation; like key puzzles pieces that were missing, making the picture indecipherable until they filled the distorted hole of the scene.

 

~

 

“Cereal is breakfast. Toast is breakfast,” Choi rattled off of a list, spinning around and around on his chair as Youngbae collapsed on his bed and kicked his bag under his desk with a swift kick of his foot. “Sunbae, pizza is not breakfast.”

 

“They were leftovers from last night, the cafeteria ladies didn’t want to waste. I thought I would help them out.”

 

“Hmm, you’re nice, sunbae. I think you’re a little too nice.”

 

Youngbae shrugged and brought his pillow against the wall, leaning against it with his hands folded behind his head. “Think whatever you want, Choi. I won’t tell you what to think.” He stared at him with a blank look and a vague lift of his lips, his face scrunching in reveal of his distinct eye-smile.

 

Choi smiled back, rubbing the back of his head. “What?”

 

“Nothing. You look good today, is all.”

 

Behind the shy turn of his head, Choi’s sly and sharp killer’s smile gleamed in the shadows. He’s almost fallen for it.

 

“That’s something I haven’t heard in a while. Thanks for the confidence boost, sunbae.”

 

Youngbae shot him a wink. “Confidence is a very endearing trait. Keep that in mind when you’re looking for the right person.” As he finished, he looked back to his table and blinked at the picture of the ghost. He had his arms wrapped around Youngbae’s neck while Youngbae held the camera over their heads, both of their eyes crinkled into a huge smile. A snapback was covering one half of Youngbae’s face while Daesung pressed his face against his cheek.

 

Another tug at his conscious made him stumble, faltering in his facade and weakening the smile. I’ll burn those pictures someday, I promise.

 

“Confidence. I’ll keep that in mind...sunbae.” He gazed at the picture as well, imagining the fold of the burning page, embers spluttering in their attempts to rekindle their fire as they carried the happy memories captured in those pictures to heaven or hell.

 

Because memories burn so easily.

---