iii. 

(but wenhan also thinks sungjoo suits his power, maybe too well. wears the freedom his teleportation gives almost effortlessly. materializing anywhere with only a puff of smoke to signal his entrance and departure, all with a quirking cheshire grin that lingers longer than he ever does.)

*

gyeonggi is strange, though sungjoo’s not sure it’s because of reverse culture shock or if it is just really like this. yet it’s nice to be able to speak korean again after so long and he’s missed the cheap street foods that he could actually name.

but it’s not quite as strange as the boy who he ends up tutoring for extra money. seungyoun has a crooked smile and mischievous eyes and never fails to distract sungjoo and drag a laugh from him when he’s supposed to be grading papers. which usually earns him a little shove and a ‘you should make better use of the TA who’s busting his to get you a better grade.’

seungyoun never seems bothered or deterred by sungjoo’s distance. he’s always flinging questions about the older’s past with crumpled paper balls and they’re always ignored. but he’s persistent if anything,  as if he hopes enough times he can grate sungjoo down one day into giving in.

but sungjoo’s worked too hard to make a life in the months after yibo and the determination not to get attached outweighs any temptation to let seungyoun in, past nights poured over music theory and fleeting moments where they smile at each other across the lecture hall.

yet somehow, slowly, over the course of a few months, seungyoun wriggles his way in, maybe through a door that sungjoo didn’t – or couldn’t – completely close.

it’s when sungjoo finds an old paper of seungyoun’s from last semester’s intro to music theory class, that he realizes that seungyoun doesn’t eve