Taekwoon didn’t return for almost a year.

This is why right now he’s standing on the Kim family’s porch, reminiscing, locking and unlocking his phone, carefully considering whether 6 pm on a July afternoon is an appropriate time for visiting anybody.

He soon decides it is, mostly because he has been putting off this particular visit for days, and because standing on someone’s porch for more than 10 minutes might look weird to others.

He rings the doorbell, and a few seconds later a familiar, kind expression greets him on Mrs Kim’s face as she opens the door for him.

“Taekwoon-ah!” she exclaims and ushers Taekwoon inside, making him sit down at the dining table as soon as he kicks his shoes off. “We haven’t seen you for ages! How have you been? Would you like to drink something? Coffee? Tea?”

“I–uh, no, thank you,” Taekwoon stutters, feeling heat building up in his cheeks. “Is Wonshik home?”

Mrs Kim glances at the clock on the wall.

“He said he would be home by now, so I think he’ll–“

Mrs Kim gets cut off by the opening and closing of the front door, and deep-voiced laughs coming from the hallway. Taekwoon feels a lump growing in his throat as he stands up, just to do something.

The sound of feet shuffling can be heard, and a moment later, three boys appear in the kitchen, greeting Mrs Kim and Taekwoon–all but one: a tall boy with platinum blond hair, wearing a white tank top and basketball shorts, hiding his face behind big black sunglasses.

Taekwoon stands speechless before Wonshik, staring at him and figuring that Wonshik must be doing the same, only Taekwoon can’t see his droopy eyes from the sunglasses. Mrs Kim’s voice as she’s inviting the two strangers for cookies and juice gets muffled by the thoughts in Taekwoon’s mind.

“Hey,” Wonshik breathes so quietly Taekwoon wouldn’t even catch it if his attention weren’t fully directed at him.

“Hi,” he replies equally softly.

Taekwoon’s gaze shifts to Wonshik’s bedroom’s door and Wonshik gives a slight nod, stepping in, Taekwoon following him.

Wonshik sits down on the edge of his bed, offering Taekwoon a place too, but Taekwoon doesn’t feel like sitting down next to him, not yet.

The bedroom has changed a lot over the last year: the single bed got replaced by a double one, the pictures of women posing in revealing clothes disappeared to give room to posters of artists Taekwoon doesn’t know, and all the furniture is black now.

“So?” Wonshik asks, putting his sunglasses on the nightstand.

“So what?”

Wonshik snorts and an eyebrow at Taekwoon.

“You come back after an entire ing year of me not hearing a goddamn word from you and the first coherent sentence you utter is the question ‘so what’?”

Taekwoon almost replies with a ‘you asked me first and ‘hi’ is a sentence too’, but he refrains. He’s here to settle things, to talk and maybe hang out with his friend, and a fight certainly won’t lead to any of these.

“Why didn’t you reply to my messages?” Wonshik asks, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why did you change your phone number and not tell me? Why did your mother tell me you’d be back soon but never more?”

Taekwoon averts his eyes. He examines a dirty sock on the floor, almost instinctively picking it up to put it in the laundry like he did so many times in the past, but he stops himself. He knows he can’t behave like the last year has never happened.

“Okay, look at this,” Wonshik says with a small quiver in his voice, and Taekwoon turns back to see him take his phone out of his pocket and tap on it a few times before lifting it up for Taekwoon to see. Taekwoon leans in, seeing a playlist, and on the top of it, the title of his all-time favourite song. He looks up at Wonshik uncomprehendingly. “Look at the title of the playlist.”

Taekwoon does so, and his heart sinks into his stomach when he reads ‘Most played’. He swallows thickly, straightening his back and looking down at the floor.

“I thought you didn’t like it,” he mumbles.

“I don’t,” Wonshik replies with a small chuckle that’s far from happy. “You know it’s not my style, but after you were gone, after I tried to contact you so many times and failed, thinking you’d never be back, I kept listening to it, because at least you left this here. Now, did you ever think of me?”

Taekwoon looks up at Wonshik’s face again, seeing hatred, sorrow and anger on it, and he feels like crying. He has never wanted to see that in Wonshik’s ever so shiny, smiley eyes, especially not when he’s looking at Taekwoon.

Taekwoon sits down on the edge of the bed, hands shaking and his stomach doing somersaults, his insides twisting. His heart beats faster than ever, with deep, bitter, erratic thumps, and he’s so sad he thinks this might be how grief feels like, but he presses closer to Wonshik and captures his lips with his own in an unspoken I love you. The kiss is firm and forced, it’s nowhere near the soft and bubbly feeling Taekwoon has always imagined; nothing happy, nothing uplifting, nothing requited.

He pulls back, but doesn’t dare look at Wonshik’s face, only rests his forehead in the curve of Wonshik’s neck, and tries to bring a rhythm into his breathing, to even it out in order to be able to hold the tears back, just a little bit more.

Wonshik’s hand comes up to his back, rubbing it soothingly, pulling Taekwoon closer with his other arm, exactly like Taekwoon did to him so many times: when Wonshik broke up with his first girlfriend, when his parents almost divorced, when his grandmother died. Taekwoon feels bad about needing the comfort and care he has always given Wonshik, because Wonshik needs it more, he must need it more–that’s all Taekwoon has been able to give him for all these years.

“Is this why you left?” Wonshik asks in a hoarse voice, the way his voice gets when he’s close to tears. “You wanted to get rid of it, right?”

Taekwoon nods, his hair probably tickling Wonshik’s neck, because Wonshik flinches, but when Taekwoon wants to draw back, Wonshik holds him tighter.

“I’m sorry,” Wonshik whispers, and by now Taekwoon’s entire body is trembling as he clutches Wonshik’s top, creasing it as much as he can to let out the pent up sadness. “I love you more than anybody. You’re not just my best friend, not just someone I’ve always thought of as a brother… you’re–you’re a part of me, a much bigger part than I myself. I love you, okay?”

Taekwoon is grateful Wonshik doesn’t say he loves him ‘but not like that’. It’s already ed up enough as it is, because even if Wonshik means all of this, there will be a time in the future when Taekwoon’s favourite song won’t be the most played audio file in Wonshik’s phone–one day, when Wonshik will have married the luckiest woman on earth and given her the most adorable children; Taekwoon will be lying in his own, cold bed then, singing the lullaby he first sang to Wonshik, feeling sorry for himself. He hates these thoughts, hates that he can only think of his own mind’s peace when he was the one who deceived his best friend and forced his feelings onto him.

So Taekwoon tucks his love for Wonshik away, sprinkling memories on it, hiding it under brotherly feelings. He thinks his heart will be safe like that–no one can disturb and tear it into pieces, and it can beat in his chest peacefully; broken, but protected by all the memories.