Chapter Text
“This place still feels empty without you.”
Sunghoon was sitting on the flat surface of a large boulder, the hems of his jeans cuffed to his mid-calf. His bare feet trailed through the water, his toes numbing from the cold.
Sunoo had always said that the babble of the river sounded like the giggling voice of a person. Sunghoon didn’t know if it made it any better that he wasn’t talking to himself, but to a body of water. He liked to imagine that the giggling of the river belonged to the person who once sat here next to him.
How many years had it been now? Four? Five? They all blended together, those empty days since he had left. You would think that time heals all wounds. Makes you miss someone less. It doesn’t. It just makes the hole wider and wider, until you’re not sure if you can ever fill it again.
“A goodbye would have helped. Some sign that you didn’t want to leave. Or is that selfish of me?”
The silence, which used to be filled by Sunoo’s sparkling voice, echoed. The river laughed at him. In the distance, he heard the faint sound of twigs snapping underfoot.
Nobody else ever came here. This was supposed to be his sacred spot, shared only between him and a person who would never return again. Sunghoon slowly raised his head.
Standing several meters away with his back to Sunghoon, was a boy with a head of the whitest hair he had ever seen. He had his hands stuck into the pockets of ripped black jeans; Sunghoon couldn’t make out much of his side profile, but he could see the glint of a metal spiral wrapping around the curve of his ear. Sunghoon had never seen this boy before in his life.
He suddenly felt impossibly, irrationally irked. He didn’t have any claim to this river, but it still somehow felt that something sacred to him had been infiltrated, broken into by this rough looking stranger with the shock of icy hair.
Sunghoon stood up. He gingerly rolled his pants back down and pulled his boots back on, trying not to make any noise that would alert the stranger to his presence. Despite everything, he still hated confrontation.
With one last glance at the strange intruder, Sunghoon slipped away without a word.
~~~
The first time Sunghoon saw Kim Sunoo was from a distance. They were seven years old, and Sunoo was the new kid in class, drawing everyone’s attention with his khaki slacks, knit vest, and neatly parted hair.
He looked out of place among the other children with their ragged jeans and ratty sneakers. As he stepped up to introduce himself, a chorus of poorly concealed whispers ran through the room. Children could be cruel, and always leapt at the chance to tear down the thing they saw as different from themself.
Sunoo was indeed different. Sunghoon thought he was the brightest thing in the room.
When they grew old enough to understand the concept of money, and how being close to someone with a lot of it could be advantageous, people started flocking to Sunoo. Sunghoon observed from afar, always one to avoid anywhere that people congregated. Dealing with someone one on one was hard enough; a whole group of people was unimaginable.
And thus, the shining star that was Kim Sunoo became even more unapproachable.
Throughout the years, Sunoo remained constant as a permanent fixation in his life. By some coincidence, they always were in the same classes, always passed each other in the hallways, and even lived on the same street. Sunoo was always there, just out of reach. Their lives ran parallel to each other, and though Sunghoon always kept Sunoo in his sights, he had resigned himself to the fact that they would never intersect.
Until one day, they did.
~~~
Sunghoon was bored out of his mind. He listlessly traced the patterns of the wooden grain of his desk, already willing his class to be over before it had even started.
He didn’t look up when the teacher announced that two new students would be joining their class. He already hated interacting with the people he already knew, let alone new ones.
“Why don’t you introduce yourselves?” The teacher prompted. Sunghoon rolled his eyes. Introductions were pointless. They were agony both for the speaker and the listener, and nobody cared anyway.
“I’m Jay,” a voice drawled, sounding bored. “Your turn, Sun,” he passed the spotlight over to his companion, already having had enough it seemed.
So they knew each other then, Sunghoon vaguely noted.
“I would say I’m glad to be here,” came the new voice, “but I don’t like to lie.”
Sunghoon’s world came to a screeching halt.
He was afraid to look up. He did so anyway, his fists clenched so tightly in his lap that his fingernails cut deep marks into his palms. He didn’t feel a thing.
The first thing he registered was the head of icy white hair, looking oddly familiar. The next thing he registered was the boy’s face. At the sight of it, a physical flash of pain shot through his chest. The pieces fell into place. The white hair. The stranger at the river yesterday.
He had aged since Sunghoon had last seen him. His soft edges had been sharpened into angles and hard lines. His ebony black hair was now the color of snow. His ears were threaded with an assortment of studs and bars, and he looked like the antithesis of the boy he once knew.
But underneath it all, there was no mistaking it. Sunoo was back.