Chapter Text
Time seemed to have dissolved right there. The sun had already crossed halfway through the sky, and still, the shadows of the palm trees hadn’t reached the bench where we sat. The air was hot, still, heavy with dust. I could feel my shirt sticking to my back, the fabric damp and weighty, and a faint hum drifted from the street—like the world had refused to turn its sound off.
We must’ve been there for hours. No one said a word. The silence was so deep that I started noticing the sound of my own breathing—that dry, restrained rhythm of in and out. Across the square, a boy kicked a ball by himself, and the dull thud against the concrete kept time—the only clock that seemed to exist in that suspended moment where we were.
Chanyeol sat beside me but felt far away. His hands were clasped between his knees, eyes fixed somewhere on the ground, cap pushed back on his head. Every now and then, he’d shift, wipe his palms on his jeans, sigh. Small gestures of someone who wanted to say something but didn’t know how, or what.
I didn’t know either.
I suddenly found myself looking at him again—and that’s when it hit me how strange all of it was. We weren’t friends. Not even close. We knew each other just enough to trade a few random lines when our partners were around, laugh at something, pose for a group photo. And that was it. It had never been just the two of us. Never like this. Now it was only us—and the silence had turned into a wall between us.
I ran my tongue over my dry lips, trying to find the courage to say something. Anything. And on top of all that, the heat made it feel like I was trapped in a bad dream.
“Wanna drink something?” I asked finally. My voice came out low, rough. “Like… a beer or something.”
Chanyeol shifted beside me. I had the feeling he looked at me, but I didn’t turn to check.
“I don’t drink on an empty stomach.”
I nodded, kind of automatically.
“Oh.” That was all that came out.
My eyes stayed on the ground, tracing the cracked pattern of the concrete between my sneakers. I don’t drink on an empty stomach. It was such an ordinary, harmless sentence. But it hit me in a weird way—like a reminder of how little I actually knew him. How many times had we even met? Ten? Fifteen? And still, I didn’t know if he preferred beer or liquor. Didn’t know much about him at all, really.
And yet, there we were. Together.
The sound of the ball stopped. The kid had left. The square was empty now, filled only with the muffled noise of cars from the main avenue and the metallic chirp of a lost bird. The sun hit the trash can and bounced off the metal, making everything feel even hotter, more real, more absurd.
Chanyeol fiddled with his watch—a short, almost nervous movement.
“It’s probably been a while, huh?” he said.
“I think so.” I looked up at the sky, trying to guess the time from the color of the day. “Feels like we’ve been here since morning.”
“Yeah.”
And that “yeah” closed the subject, like words had stopped being useful.
I tried to shift my weight, but the bench was uncomfortable from every angle. The iron beneath the wood slats had heated up, lightly burning my skin. I rested my elbows on my thighs and stared at my hands. Time moved differently when no one knew what to say. Or do. Or feel. I didn’t know anything.
The silence between us wasn’t hostile—it was the kind that forces you to face the things you don’t want to think about. And the longer we sat there, the more his presence turned into something physical, tangible. I could feel the weight of his breathing, the warmth radiating from his body beside mine, the soft sound of a sigh that sometimes almost blended with my own.
Every now and then, our legs brushed by accident. That brief, unintended touch felt too loud. I’d move slightly away, and so would he. Then we’d end up back in the same spot, as if the bench had gotten smaller with each passing hour.
A dog crossed the square and stopped to sniff the base of a lamppost. An old man walked by, pushing a rusty bicycle, its chains creaking. The rest was just the wind, when it came—and it didn’t come often.
I thought about saying something, but I didn’t know where to start. It felt like anything I said would come out wrong. “You okay?” didn’t make sense for either of us. “It’ll pass” would be a lie in the short term. “Wanna talk?” sounded like a joke. So I stayed quiet.
Chanyeol ran a hand over the back of his neck, scratching at skin reddened by the sun.
“It’s fucking hot,” he said, his tone tired.
“Mm-hm.”
And then, the sound of the ball came back. Another group of kids had shown up, shouting at each other, laughing loud. For a moment, the contrast was so sharp I almost laughed too—two adults falling apart in silence while the world kept moving on, happy, noisy, completely unaware.
The sky was starting to change color—that heavy orange light that makes everything look more melancholic. I didn’t even know what I was still doing there. Maybe that was it: doing nothing. Because anything else would require an explanation, and I wasn’t ready to put the day into words. And going home would mean facing things I wasn’t ready to face yet.
I sighed.
“Strange, isn’t it?” I murmured. “Us here… like this.”
He took a while to answer.
“Yeah.” Then, after a pause, he added, “Kind of surreal, when you think about it.”
I nodded. There wasn’t much to say.
For a while, we just stared at the ground, the wind, the nothing—as if we were waiting for the world to tell us it was okay to leave. But that signal never came. And somehow, I knew that nothing from here on out would ever be the same.
I took a deep breath, the taste of the dry air scratching my throat.
But before I go on, you need to understand how we got here.
I met Chanyeol because of Taeyeon—or, to be more precise, because of Taeyeon’s friendship with Kyungsoo, his boyfriend. The two of them were the kind of pair that seemed to come in the same package, since childhood. She used to say, without thinking, that he was the one constant in her life. They grew up in the same building, shared their snacks and teenage secrets, studied for college entrance exams side by side, traveled together, were witnesses to each other in everything. When they started dating different people, the logical consequence was the creation of a little ecosystem that would become our… quartet.
I remember perfectly the day she told me about it—excited, convinced that this would be the start of a perfect dynamic. “You’re gonna love Kyungsoo, he’s great! And his boyfriend too, Chanyeol. You two are gonna get along so well.” She said it like she was offering me a destiny. I laughed, trying to hide the discomfort of not wanting to disappoint someone else’s enthusiasm, and told her she made it sound like an order. “It is,” she shot back, lighthearted, not realizing the weight of her own words. “It’ll be important to me.”
And that’s how, on some random Friday, I ended up sitting in a corner restaurant that smelled like charcoal and burnt meat, waiting for a couple I’d never met. The waiter passed by three times asking if we wanted to order something. Taeyeon, impatient, checked her watch every two minutes, her foot tapping against the floor in a rhythm I knew well. The air was warm, thick with smoke and other people’s laughter, and I kept thinking the whole thing tasted like a social experiment.
When they arrived, the first thing I noticed was Kyungsoo’s ease. He had that kind of calm presence that fills a room without even trying. He spoke with his eyes, with his hands, and the way he and Taeyeon hugged made it seem like the whole world revolved around their familiarity. And then came Chanyeol—too tall for the doorway, his smile too wide for his face. He looked like someone who hadn’t yet learned how to shrink himself to fit into small spaces. He greeted us with a loud “hey,” his body a little awkward, and I realized he was the kind of guy who laughed more than he needed to—not out of nerves, but out of habit.
Dinner went just as expected: shallow conversation, long pauses, polite laughter. We talked about work, TV shows, the price of beer, and left the childhood stories to them—they laughed together, finishing each other’s memories. Chanyeol and I traded a couple of knowing glances, the kind that say we’re not part of this joke, but that’s okay. When we left the restaurant, Taeyeon looked pleased—that satisfied look of someone watching their plan unfold perfectly. “See? I told you you’d get along!” she said, and I didn’t have the heart to disagree.
From then on, the four of us started meeting regularly. It wasn’t exactly friendship, but a comfortable arrangement. We knew what to expect: lukewarm conversations, predictable company, the comfort of being around people who knew you just enough that you didn’t have to impress anyone. That’s how it was—at bars, at the movies, on short trips. There was never any conflict, which is sometimes just another way of saying there was never any closeness. I knew he drank iced coffee no matter the season and had a laugh that drew attention in any room. He knew I always ordered the same drink and that, when the day was bad, I went quiet until someone else broke the ice. And that was it.
There was a kind of unspoken truce between us—an agreement of coexistence that required no depth. It wasn’t friendship, but it wasn’t distance either. It was the kind of thing that happens when two people orbit around the same two others.
The point of convergence showed up by chance, at some random barbecue, when Kyungsoo started telling college stories. Between jokes, he mentioned that Chanyeol had played for the university team. “Right back. The nightmare of every opponent,” he said, with exaggerated pride. Chanyeol just smiled, a little embarrassed, and said that had been a long time ago. I, maybe out of reflex, mentioned that I still played sometimes—with some guys from the neighborhood. And that was all it took for Kyungsoo, excited, to declare: “Perfect! You two are playing together on Saturday. It’ll be great!”
Taeyeon backed the idea immediately, like she was sealing an alliance. “That way you can get to know each other better, without us interfering.” And I could only laugh, because it sounded like trying to make two cats become friends after forcing them into the same box.
No one brought it up again during the week, but on Friday—during our usual after-work drinks—the topic came back full force. The bar was small, the kind of place with music too good for the size of the room. Kyungsoo and Taeyeon dominated the conversation, laughing loud, trading stories. Chanyeol and I were at the end of the table, just watching, each with a glass in hand and the same patient smile. And that’s when, somewhere around the third drink, Kyungsoo slapped the table and announced that the plan was set: “Tomorrow, Chanyeol’s picking you up, Baekhyun-hyung! You guys are playing together, and then we can all meet for lunch.” Taeyeon nodded firmly, and before I could come up with any excuse, Chanyeol just gave a half-defeated smile and said, “Deal.”
And that’s how I ended up waking up way too early on Saturday, my body still begging for more sleep, stepping out into the street while trying not to regret the promise I’d made.
The sound of a car horn came right at seven on the dot. Chanyeol was leaning against his car—hair still damp, T-shirt way too clean for someone about to play soccer. He was holding a thermos like it was an extension of his daily routine. “Ready to run?” he asked, flashing that kind of morning smile that gave away he was definitely a morning person. “Not even close,” I said, climbing into the car.
The drive to the field was an exercise in patience. The radio hummed softly; he changed the station, then gave up. We didn’t talk much—and when we did, it was about safe things: the weather, the traffic, the bar from the night before. But there was something different about that silence—less awkwardness, more observation. I noticed he had this habit of drumming his fingers on the steering wheel when he was thinking. He probably noticed that I looked out the window when I didn’t know what to say.
The field was in a neighborhood a bit farther out, and when we got there, the sun was still an invitation, not an enemy. The smell of wet grass mixed with the scent of old cleats, and laughter echoed across the space. Chanyeol blended in quickly—he was good at that, good with people, the kind who walks in and already seems like he belongs. It took me a bit longer, but after the first play, I found the rhythm. He ran well, precise, knowing exactly when to pull back.
At some point during the game, he shouted my name. Just my name—short, direct: “That was a good one, Baekhyun-hyung!” There was no formality, no nickname. It caught me off guard, small as it was. Because it was the first time my name had come from him without the filter of social context—without “Taeyeon’s boyfriend” attached. It was just Baekhyun, tossed into the air with the ease of someone who had already allowed himself to use it.
We played three matches, and by the end I was exhausted—drenched in sweat, but with a lightness I hadn’t felt in a long time. So was he. We sat on the edge of the field, breathing deeply, trading offhand comments about the game. And when the others started setting up for a fourth round, I said I was sitting that one out. “Taeyeon’s probably waiting for me.” He nodded, standing, a towel hanging over his shoulder. “Yeah, I’m dead too. Want me to drive you back?” I said yes without thinking.
The ride back was different from the one there. The silence was comfortable now, filled with small, natural pauses. We talked about the game, the local team, the tournament someone had mentioned for the following week. I said we should sign up together. “You’re a good right back.” He laughed, saying he was too old for that, and I shot back that he was too young to quit. We laughed together, and the sound felt genuine.
When the car turned onto my street, I realized I didn’t really want to get there yet. There was something about the ease of that morning that made me think maybe Taeyeon had been right. Maybe Chanyeol and I really could be friends.
When the car stopped in front of my building, I was still sweating, but light—the kind of lightness that comes after running, laughing, and forgetting everything for a while. The morning had been good—a rare thing—and maybe that’s why I wanted to stretch it out a little longer. I looked at Chanyeol; he was wiping his neck with the towel, distracted. And before I could overthink it, the words were already out of my mouth: “Wanna come up? Taeyeon’s home. We can call her and have lunch together.” He hesitated for a second, like he was trying to measure whether he had the time or the will, then nodded. “Sure,” he said. And I remember thinking how natural it felt. At that moment, it seemed like the most harmless thing in the world.
The building was old—the elevator creaked, and the mirror was scratched around the edges, reflecting us in this strange way: two guys who had only really started getting to know each other a few hours ago, trying to act like old friends. The silence in the elevator wasn’t awkward, but it was full of polite unfamiliarity—still the kind of silence where any comment feels too formal to be spontaneous. “You play often?” he asked, eyes on the panel. “Every now and then,” I said. “The guys in the neighborhood call me when they’re short on players.” He nodded, and that was it. You could hear the motor hum as it pulled us upward, our breathing, and the faint sound of footsteps on another floor.
When the door opened, the hallway was stuffy, carrying that sweet mix of food and old-building dust. I laughed a little and said Taeyeon was probably still asleep—she’d told me she’d be home later, and she was never good with schedules. “She’s probably out cold. Sleeping’s her true talent,” I joked. He laughed softly, and for a moment I thought how strange it was—being there with him, sharing that kind of domestic joke, like we were somehow part of the same routine. But the feeling passed quickly.
I unlocked the apartment door, the key creaking the way it always did, and the air inside hit us—warm, still, with her perfume tangled up with the smell of the coffee I’d had before leaving. “Come in,” I said, kicking my sneakers off on the rug. “I’ll be right back, gonna check if she’s awake. Make yourself at home.” Chanyeol nodded, dropped his backpack beside the couch, and stood there for a second, looking around—that kind of curious look that’s trying to be polite, while not quite knowing what to do with your hands.
As I started walking down the hallway, the sound of my own footsteps felt too loud. There was something different in the air, though I couldn’t say what. Maybe it was just the silence. Normally, when Taeyeon was home, there’d be music, the shower running, the TV murmuring on some random channel. But now—nothing. Just the distant ticking of the wall clock and the muffled hum of the street seeping through the window.
The bedroom door was slightly open, a thin line of light spilling through the crack. I pushed it gently, half-distracted, ready to tease her—to pretend I was mad she was still asleep. But what I found didn’t fit into any of the possibilities my mind had prepared for.
At first, it was like time stopped making sense. All I could register were fragments: the crumpled sheet, a sudden movement, the sound of breath catching in the air. Then clarity hit—violently. It was one of those moments where the body reacts before the mind does. First, your stomach tightens. Then your chest. Only after that does your mind catch up with the image. It felt like falling—like the floor had vanished under my feet.
I froze, not sure whether to scream, laugh, or turn away. And when sound finally came out, it was the most human and automatic thing possible. “What the fuck is this?”
The shock was instant. Taeyeon shot up, clutching the sheet with trembling hands, eyes wide, unable to say anything. Kyungsoo took a second longer to react—his face in disbelief, body stiff. And all I could think was how absurdly out of place the whole scene looked.
“Baek…” she started, her voice weak. I laughed—a dry, humorless sound. “No. Don’t even try.”
I could feel the blood pounding in my ears—hot, relentless. From the living room, I heard Chanyeol call my name, but his voice sounded distant, like it was coming from another floor. “You okay in there?” I didn’t answer.
Taeyeon took a step toward me, wrapped in the sheet, her face already wet. “I can explain.”
“Explain what?” I asked—not shouting, but each word came out sharp. “What exactly are you going to explain in here that I haven’t already seen?”
“It wasn’t…” she started, then stopped.
And then, behind her, Kyungsoo spoke. “Calm down, Baekhyun. It’s not what it looks like.”
That was it—the moment his name, his voice, became the spark that set everything off. I looked at him, completely disbelieving, feeling my whole body go rigid. “Not what it looks like?” I repeated, laughing under my breath, because there was no room left for any other reaction. “You swear it doesn’t look like you were fucking my girlfriend in my bed?”
That’s when I heard Chanyeol’s voice again—closer now, confused. “Hyung?” And before I could say anything, he appeared in the doorway.
“I don’t want to intrude, but…”
For a moment, no one breathed. His eyes went straight to Kyungsoo, and what followed was the kind of silence that weighs, that stretches until it screams on its own. His face went pale. The air left him. And his shoulders—the same ones that always seemed too big for any space—suddenly looked small. “Kyungsoo?” he said, his voice cracking halfway through.
Taeyeon was sobbing something I didn’t want to hear, Kyungsoo was trying to explain, and all I could see was a scene that shouldn’t exist. “You’re fucking ridiculous,” I said, and the laugh that slipped out was ugly, bitter. “Do you even hear yourselves? It’s pathetic.”
That line he’d tried earlier—it’s not what you think—kept looping in my head, like a cruel joke. Chanyeol was still standing in the doorway, frozen, trying to make sense of whatever there was left to make sense of. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low it almost vanished in the air. “Since when?”
Kyungsoo answered too quickly, and that alone was enough. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, no?” Chanyeol shot back—not raising his voice, but with a sharpness that cut through the air. “Then explain what the fuck I’m looking at, because honestly, I’d love to know.”
No one answered.
Time felt suspended in that room, and every breath sounded too loud. I wanted to break something—anything—just to make the silence stop.
In the end, I don’t remember who left first. I just remember walking down the hallway with my vision blurred, my hands shaking, my heart beating out of sync. Behind me, I heard the door slam—a dull sound that sealed the world shut. We went down the stairs without saying a word—me in front, him behind. Two bodies moving on reflex, like we’d both forgotten how to speak.
Outside, the sun was still the same—the same heat, the same sky. Nothing had changed, and yet everything was unrecognizable.I braced my hands on my knees, trying to breathe, but the air felt too thick to pass. Chanyeol stopped a few steps ahead, hands in his hair, eyes fixed on the ground. No one said anything.
We started walking without meaning to. Our legs moved on their own, as if our bodies were trying to escape the place our minds were still trapped in. We walked through a few streets until we reached the square. I sat on the bench, he sat beside me, and the world stopped there.
Looking back now, I think that was the moment the rest of the story began. Not in the bedroom, not in the shouting, not in the shock.It started out here—when there was nothing left but two strangers breathing the same air, trying to make sense of what they’d just lost.
And that’s how we ended up at the square.
The sun was starting to give in, dragging itself lazily behind the buildings, and the light that lingered had that yellowish late-afternoon hue that makes everything look sadder than it really is. The grass was dry in patches, the bench too hot, the air heavy with dust and exhaust. Neither of us said a word. And time, which had once felt too fast, now crawled.
My head was still throbbing, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the heat, the hunger, the anger—or that hollow kind of emptiness that settles in after everything’s over. I couldn’t think of anything solid; my mind just replayed scattered images, flashes that came and went. Sometimes I caught myself staring at the ground, fixing my eyes on a piece of dry leaf or a tiny pebble, as if that could distract me from myself.
Chanyeol was beside me, sitting at the other end of the bench, body hunched forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He looked still, but his shoulders rose and fell slowly, with a heavy, almost painful rhythm. His silence was thick enough to feel. It wasn’t the silence of awkwardness—it was the silence of someone who didn’t have words big enough for what had just happened.
The noise of the city kept happening around us, but far away—like we were sitting inside a bubble. A dog barked somewhere. A bus rumbled down the avenue. A group of teenagers laughed loudly near the courts. Everything carried on as usual, and it pissed me off. The world shouldn’t keep going. It should stop—just for a minute—to catch up with what we’d just seen.
It wasn’t until I heard the faint sound of a sniffle that I realized the silence had been broken. I turned my head slowly, not sure if I should, and saw Chanyeol wiping his face with the back of his hand—quick, like he was trying to erase the gesture before anyone could notice. He was staring at the ground, eyes red, nose red too.
My first reaction was discomfort. I didn’t know what to do with that. Two men sitting on a bench, nothing to say, no real closeness to hold the moment together. For a second, I thought about pretending I hadn’t seen it. But my chest tightened, and the words came out before I could stop them.
“Hey… don’t be like that, man.”
It came out weird—not loud, not soft. Just… off. He let out a short, muffled laugh that sounded more like a choked-up sob.
“You serious?” he said, voice rough. “You’re crying too, hyung.”
The words hung in the air, and it took me a second to process them. Another to realize he was right. My face was hot, my eyes stung. I wiped them quickly, as if I could undo the damage in time, but felt the skin damp under my hand.
“Shit,” I muttered—more to myself than to him.
He laughed again—a weak sound, caught somewhere between a laugh and despair.
“Pathetic, huh?”
“Totally.” I tried to laugh too, but my voice cracked halfway through.
And there we were—two guys, half strangers, half familiar, sitting on a park bench, sweaty, exhausted, and betrayed, trying to laugh at our own disaster. The scene should’ve been ridiculous. It should have. But somehow, it wasn’t. There was something sad and human in it—something I couldn’t quite name.
Chanyeol ran his hands over his face again, took a deep breath, and looked up at the sky, like maybe an answer could fall from there.
“I don’t know what to do now,” he said, voice weak but honest. “Like… tomorrow. What the hell am I supposed to do tomorrow?”
It wasn’t a question for me, but I found myself thinking about the answer anyway. Because I didn’t know either. There’s no manual for that kind of loss. It wasn’t a simple breakup—it wasn’t just the end of a relationship. Since I met Taeyeon, I’d sworn she was the love of my life—the woman I’d marry, have kids with, grow old beside. Hell, I’d been planning to propose on her birthday.
“I don’t know,” I said finally. “Wake up. Make coffee. Breathe.”
He let out another laugh that wasn’t quite joy—more like a spasm from someone who found humor in the absurd.
“Breathe?”
“Yeah. Sometimes that’s all you can do.”
The sun finally slipped behind the buildings, and the streetlights began to flicker on, one by one, each with a sharp click that sounded too loud in the quiet. The yellow light fell across his face, carving deep shadows under his eyes. And for a moment, I thought about how strange it was—the way pain makes everyone look the same. No masks, no defenses. Just flesh and exhaustion.
“Sorry,” he said suddenly, not looking at me.
“For what?”
“For this. For dragging you into this mess.”
I shook my head, staring straight ahead.
“We got dragged together, really. None of this is on either of us.”
He didn’t answer, and I didn’t say anything else. We just sat there—each of us trying to deal with our own silence, which wasn’t as uncomfortable anymore. It was just… what was left.
Every now and then, I’d hear him take a deep breath—the kind of sigh that feels like it comes from the soul—and I’d feel the urge to do something, anything, to make it easier. But there was nothing to do. There was no fixing it.
Night finally settled, and the square was almost empty. The lights in the buildings came on one after another, like windows into another world. I stared at my hands and thought about how strange it was—that we were here, sharing the same space, the same silence, the same kind of pain. Two almost-strangers who, by some cruel coincidence, had been struck by the same lightning.
When I stood up, my body felt heavier than before.
“Shall we?” I asked.
He nodded slowly, stood, wiped his hands on his jeans, and glanced around—like he needed to make sure there was still a path to follow.
We started walking, slowly, with no real direction.
“Hyung,” he said after a moment, “I’ll take that beer now—if you’re still offering.”