Chapter Text
The fight wasn’t loud.
That was the first thing he noticed.
No shouting. No slamming of doors or sudden movements. Just two figures standing outside a modest restaurant at the corner of a quiet street, outlined by the low orange glow of the sign above them and the faint drizzle softening the concrete beneath their feet.
One stood still. The other paced.
Not angrily. More like they were trying to stay upright in a conversation that made the ground shift. Their gestures were sharp, then hesitant, then sharp again.
He was across the street, barely aware he’d stopped walking. The scene shouldn’t have meant anything. But something about it kept him rooted.
Maybe it was the way their silence filled the air louder than any argument could. Maybe it was the way one of them whispered, “You’re so damn stubborn.” And the other answered with a slur of words he can’t even properly distinguish anymore.
He didn’t know who said what. The voices weren’t loud enough, and the rain made everything a little harder to hear. But the words clung to the air like they’d been said before, in other timelines, other lives.
Then it happened.
One of them turned to go—abruptly, without a word, as if that single pivot was meant to be the final line in a story already too long. The other didn’t follow.
A beat passed.
A car turned the corner.
There was a flash of movement.
A sound, sharp and low.
A body folding against steel. And then the silence again, but heavier now.
He couldn’t see which of them had fallen. Only that the one left standing collapsed next—not from impact, but from shock. Their knees hit the pavement, hands hovering above the still figure as if touch would shatter what little remained. Their mouth moved, trying to say something. Or maybe just breathing through the wreckage.
Someone nearby screamed. A door opened. A phone rang. The rain fell harder.
But the world, for him, stayed inside that frame.
The glow of the restaurant. The weight of the moment. The quiet that followed the shattering.
He didn’t know why it felt familiar. Why the way that person on the ground clutched at silence stirred something buried deep inside him.
He hadn’t recognized their faces. Not really.
But he knew that kind of grief. The kind that doesn’t arrive with thunder but settles like dust, coating everything. Lingering long after the people leave.
He looked down at his hands, unsure of why they were shaking. He wasn’t cold. That’s what he kept telling himself. And yet—he couldn’t forget how the light flickered above the window. How the sign read Now Open, even as everything outside had just closed. How the moment felt less like an accident and more like an echo.
For a long time, he thought it was the first time he learned what death looked like.
Till was nine when he first learned that the world doesn’t stop for grief.
He had expected silence. Some grand pause. Like the sky itself would flicker, or the clouds would hold their breath. But instead, the world kept spinning. Cars still passed outside their window. His classmates still laughed about things that no longer felt funny. The sun rose. The birds sang. People smiled at him without knowing they shouldn’t.
His father had died that morning.
And the world, apparently, didn’t care.
He remembered his mother kneeling in front of him in the living room, hands gentle on his shoulders, voice soft and low as she said the words. He didn’t cry right away. Just blinked. Then blinked again. He didn’t even understand what he was blinking away. It wasn’t until she stopped talking that the weight dropped, heavy and final.
Later, at the crematorium, he watched the smoke rise into a pale afternoon sky and wondered if something had escaped. A part of his father that couldn’t be burned or buried. Maybe it drifted higher, turned into something lighter. A bird. A shadow. A thought.
He told Mizi that once. She asked him why he always looked up when he was quiet.
He shrugged. "Maybe I’m just waiting."
She didn’t push. Just handed him a drink and said, "Try not to get a stiff neck."
By nineteen, grief wasn’t something he carried. It just lingered. Like background noise in a familiar room. He had learned not to flinch at the quiet parts.
The people around him were loud, as if making enough noise could keep loss at bay. Hyunwoo especially. Hyunwoo was always in love, or just out of it, or declaring himself immune to romance forever, until the next boy with cheekbones and bad intentions came along.
He had a way of collapsing into heartbreak like it was performance art. Today, he was sprawled across the cafeteria bench, arms dramatically limp, eyes half-shut.
"It’s not just about the breakup," he said. "It’s about trust. Intimacy. Betrayal of spirit."
Till didn’t look up from his tray. "You met him three weeks ago."
"Exactly. And I let him in so fast. That’s what makes it worse."
Across the table, Mizi snorted into her juice. Sua twirled a spoon between her fingers with the kind of concentration that suggested she was imagining throwing it.
"Your taste in men is an act of violence," Mizi muttered.
"I can’t help that I love deeply."
"You love recklessly."
Till tuned them out after a while. He liked the noise but not the commentary. There was something soothing in the rhythm of their voices, even if the content was always mildly absurd.
Mizi and Sua had been dating since the world began, or so it felt. Loud, occasionally unkind, fiercely loyal in a way that made other people nervous. They broke up often, usually in whispers and insults, and got back together like nothing had happened. No apologies. Just a new inside joke and a return to form.
Many nights Mizi would ring Till’s phone and rant about how mean and cold Sua was to her earlier that day. She would go on for hours and say something along the lines of how this was her last straw and that she would finally let her go.
They both knew those words would be forgotten the moment she saw Sua, which was usually the next day.
He never asked for details. He figured if they needed to explain themselves, they would’ve by now.
They all worked like that. Orbiting each other with a kind of magnetic chaos. Hyunwoo’s dramatics. Mizi’s dry sarcasm. Sua’s bite. And Till, somewhere in the middle, taking it all in without needing to be the center of anything.
He liked things that were familiar. Predictable, even when they were messy.
After they finished their meals, they migrated to their usual spot behind the library, a sliver of grass hemmed in by brick and hedges. It wasn’t officially a hangout, which made it perfect. No teachers. No questions. Just peeling benches and some loose gravel to kick around.
Hyunwoo continued his monologue on doomed romance, now pacing like a caged poet.
"I’m not saying I expected him to be The One," he said, "but maybe, like... One of the Ones."
Sua looked up from her phone. "You said that about the last one. And the one before that."
Hyunwoo waved her off. "Those were flukes. This was different."
Till leaned back on his elbows, watching the wind comb through the grass. Warm air clung to their skin, making everything feel slow and wide.
Mizi sat cross-legged, half-listening, half-scrolling, humming under her breath. Sua leaned against her knee, not really touching but close enough to count.
They made sense in ways Till didn’t understand. All sharp edges and inside references. Sometimes they seemed like they hated each other. Other times, like no one else existed.
He didn’t envy them. But he did think about it sometimes.
"So," Hyunwoo said, collapsing theatrically beside him. "Here’s a thought. What if I just gave up on boys entirely and entered the seminary?"
Mizi didn’t look up. "You’d last two hours. You’d flirt with the priest next door."
"Incorrect," Hyunwoo said. "I’d flirt with the devil and then ask for forgiveness."
There was a comfort to their rhythm. They snapped at each other like old radio static—gritty, half-familiar, never truly malicious. Even when they argued, it looped back into something softer. Familiar.
Till picked a blade of grass and twisted it between his fingers.
"You’ll find someone," he said, eventually.
Hyunwoo shrugged. "Yeah. Probably. Doesn’t mean I should."
"No," Mizi agreed. "But we can’t all be emotionally competent."
The sun slipped a little lower, casting their corner in longer shadows. The wind stirred the hedges. Somewhere beyond the quad, someone was playing a guitar badly. And for a while, that was all there was until Hyunwoo let out a cinematic gasp.
Sua startled. "Jesus. What now?"
Hyunwoo pointed. Not with subtlety, but with the dramatic flourish of someone unveiling a great tragedy. "Do you see that?"
Till and Mizi looked. It took a second to understand.
Across the cafeteria, Hyunwoo’s most recent ex, the one with the bleached hair and strategically sad eyes, had just walked in with someone new. They were laughing. Close. Touching. It was, objectively, not that deep.
But Hyunwoo clutched his chest like he'd been physically struck.
"I was just starting to heal," he said, voice tight with disbelief. "How dare he weaponize joy against me."
Till rolled his eyes. "He’s eating pudding."
"He’s taunting me."
"You're the one staring."
"I was blindsided. Ambushed. Victimized."
Mizi leaned forward. "Do we need to leave before you do something theatrical?"
"No. I’ll suffer in silence. Like a saint."
"Saint Hyunwoo of Emotional Self-Sabotage."
Hyunwoo raised his chin. "Thank you for recognizing my sacrifice."
They let it spiral for a bit. It was easier to let Hyunwoo dramatize than to try and talk him down. Eventually, he’d tire himself out. Or switch targets. Probably both.
Till didn’t say much. He was watching the way the light shifted on the cafeteria floor, catching on scraped tiles and cheap linoleum. Something about the moment felt suspended—like a held breath that hadn't been released yet.
He shook it off. Just another lunch period. Just another Hyunwoo heartbreak.
By the time the final bell rang, the building had already started to empty. The rush of footsteps, half-shouted goodbyes, the clatter of locker doors. All of it blurred into something background. Till moved through it without hurry.
He liked the stillness that came after the crowd thinned. When the day felt like it was exhaling. Like the noise had stepped outside and left the building hollow and warm.
His last class had ended early, but he’d lingered. Pretended to organize his bag. Waited for the hallway to clear.
There was nothing waiting for him at home. His mom worked late, and even when she didn’t, she came home tired in ways he didn’t know how to help with. They were gentle with each other. Careful. Not cold, just... cautious.
He slipped out the side exit by the music room and cut across the edge of the quad, past the rusted bike rack and the untamed line of trees that everyone called “the woods” even though it was only seven trees and a squirrel.
It was quieter there. The noise of school life didn’t stretch this far. Just birds and wind and the occasional distant hum of a lawnmower from the field.
He pulled out his sketchbook.
It wasn’t much; I was just a battered spiral pad he kept tucked inside the lining of his backpack. The cover was scratched. The pages curled at the edges. No one had ever seen it, and no one ever would, if he could help it.
He flipped past a dozen unfinished things. A cluster of hands in different gestures. A pair of sneakers tied together by the laces. An old classmate’s back turned in profile, hair tied up, spine slightly hunched.
He didn’t draw people he loved. That felt too close. Instead, he drew impressions—postures, shapes, shadows. The way light moves through a body. The suggestion of feeling, not the face itself.
Today, he started something new. A bench. Someone’s arm thrown over the back of it. Long legs slouched out. No face. No eyes. Just a pose.
He didn’t know who it was supposed to be.
By the time he made it home, the sun had dipped low enough to paint everything gold. The windows in their apartment caught the light and threw it unevenly across the floor. He dropped his bag by the door and poured himself a glass of water.
The silence was familiar. Not heavy, just present.
He left his shoes by the mat and wandered into the living room, where the couch sagged slightly in the middle and the bookshelf had more dust than books.
Sometimes he missed the noise of his friends. Other times, he missed the quiet of before he had them.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted most days. Just that the world felt easier to manage when it moved in soft, expected patterns.
Like school. Like lunch. Like Hyunwoo’s heartbreaks and Mizi and Sua’s bickering and the way the sun slanted through the cafeteria windows every afternoon just before the bell.
That, he understood.
People were harder.
He sat on the couch with his sketchbook open in his lap, flipping through until he landed back on the unfinished figure from earlier. The posture had changed in his memory. He adjusted the arm. Tilted the shoulders differently.
The body looked more tense now. Like whoever it was had just heard something they didn’t want to believe.
He stared at it for a while.
Then set the pencil down.
His mom came home just after seven. She didn’t say anything when she walked in—just let out a long breath, like she’d been holding it since the train ride. She placed her keys in the bowl near the door, shrugged off her coat, and padded into the kitchen with the tired weight of someone used to swallowing entire days.
Till watched her from the couch.
“Dinner?” he asked softly.
She paused at the fridge, hand on the handle, then glanced over at him. “There’s some japchae in the back. Still good, I think.”
He nodded. “Want me to reheat it?”
Her smile flickered, then held. “If you don’t mind.”
He didn’t. He liked cooking, in the way people liked folding laundry or sweeping floors—something methodical, something that made the world feel temporarily manageable.
They ate on the couch. She scrolled through her phone between bites. He didn’t press for conversation. They didn’t really fill silences with words anymore. Just the clink of utensils against ceramic and the occasional passing comment about the show playing quietly on the TV.
Halfway through her bowl, she looked at him. “How was school?”
“Fine,” he said.
“Hyunwoo still being dramatic?”
“Extremely.”
She huffed a soft laugh, then shook her head. “You kids exhaust me.”
“We exhaust ourselves,” Till said. “Hyunwoo especially.”
They let the conversation drift again after that.
The show they weren’t really watching ended. She rinsed her plate. He offered to wash up. She waved him off.
“Homework?” she asked, halfway through the hallway.
“Done at lunch.”
“You should rest then.”
“I’m fine.”
She looked at him for a second longer. Maybe she was thinking of something or maybe nothing at all. She then disappeared into her room and closed the door behind her.
Till loved his mom, but loving her felt like visiting a house where he knew the rooms but not what they were called. She wasn’t distant, not exactly. Just practical. The kind of person who believed that pain was private and that surviving quietly was its own form of strength.
After his dad died, they both got good at avoidance. At making things look smooth on the surface. At being okay enough.
She asked how school was. He gave short answers. She nodded like that was enough.
It wasn’t that they didn’t talk. It was just that so much had been left unsaid for so long that starting now felt impossible.
Sometimes he thought they were like two people standing on opposite sides of a glass wall—close enough to see the shape of each other, but too far to press their palms to the same spot.
Still, she tried in her way. And he did, too. That counted for something.
Later, after the dishes had been rinsed and the lights dimmed, Till sat on the floor of his room, knees drawn up, sketchbook balanced across his thighs.
The city outside his window never really slept. Even at night, it buzzed—quietly, insistently. Neon signs blinking against glass, the occasional hum of a motorcycle slipping between traffic lights, voices rising and fading in the alley below. He liked the sound of it. The world, breathing.
He flipped to a blank page.
But he didn’t draw. Not at first.
His pencil hovered.
There was a line he wanted to trace—something vague and persistent, just behind his eyes. A movement. A shape. But every time he tried to pin it down, it shifted.
Sometimes he wondered if he was drawing the same person over and over. The same body, different versions. Sometimes standing. Sometimes falling. Always about to say something.
Always unfinished.
He glanced over at his wall. Taped-up pages. A few Polaroids. A printout of a poem someone had posted online two years ago that he still thought about more than he should. Not because it was beautiful, but because it felt like it had been written while someone was waiting for an answer that never came.
Till reached for his phone. No new messages. No notifications worth checking. His group chat with Mizi, Sua, and Hyunwoo was quiet for once (probably because Hyunwoo had finally fallen asleep face-down in his pillow after a full day of tragic sighs).
He didn’t text anyone. He never really initiated. He figured if people wanted to talk, they would. If they didn’t, it meant they had better things to do.
And honestly, most people did.
He set the phone down and lay back against the floor.
Above him, the ceiling was just drywall and faint scuff marks from a long-forgotten water stain. But in the dimness, it almost looked like a sky. Not the kind he remembered from childhood, with stars and wind and endless blue. But a quieter sky. A heavier one.
He stared at it until his eyes blurred.
There was something strange about this particular evening—like it had folded over itself. Like a page that had been turned too early. Nothing obvious. Just a quiet shift in the air.
The kind of shift you don’t notice until later. When it’s too late to name it for what it was.
He fell asleep thinking about hands he hadn’t drawn yet.
The morning came in slow.
Light filtered in pale and gray, diluted through cloud cover and a sleep-heavy window. Till stirred before his alarm, the kind of half-wake where the world feels too quiet, like it hasn’t decided whether or not to begin yet. He didn’t rush to get up.
He liked mornings like this. Slightly overcast, the kind that dulled the colors of the world without dimming it completely. He got dressed in silence, towel-dried his hair, packed his bag by habit. The routines moved through him, not the other way around.
In the kitchen, his mom had already left. A folded note rested near the rice cooker.
Got called in early. There’s kimchi stew in the fridge. Eat something. Don’t just have coffee again. Love you.
He smiled faintly at the underlined part. She always pretended not to notice when he skipped meals, then slipped in reminders like she was being subtle.
He poured himself some instant coffee anyway.
Outside, the air was cooler than expected. A quiet, damp kind of cold. He adjusted his jacket and took the longer route again, through the path that wove between old gym equipment and the cracked tennis courts, past the spot where the janitor always smoked behind the auditorium.
It wasn’t about avoiding people. Not really.
He just liked the feeling of moving through the edges of things. Of walking where no one was watching.
Class passed in waves Some sharp and sudden, others just background blur. The school itself was old, and it showed. The walls had been repainted too many times, each layer a different version of beige that made the air feel slightly heavier. The windows stuck in the summer, the heaters failed in winter, and the bell system occasionally glitched, either ringing twice or not at all.
It was the kind of place that ran more on muscle memory than maintenance. Everyone knew which toilets never flushed, which vending machines ate coins, which teachers could be reasoned with and which ones couldn’t. The third-floor east stairwell smelled faintly of mildew year-round. Room 2B had one desk that wobbled violently if you leaned too hard. The courtyard flooded if it rained too long.
And yet, there was a rhythm to it that Till found reassuring. Like the school itself was alive, scratched up and fraying at the edges, but still functioning. Still breathing.
They had uniforms, technically. Navy slacks and crisp white shirts, ties on formal days, jackets in winter. But enforcement was lax. Most kids pushed the line where they could. From baggy sweaters, mismatched socks, hair just barely within regulation. Hyunwoo had taken to safety-pinning glittery charms onto his backpack despite weekly warnings to stop.
Till never got called out for anything. He blended too well. Looked like he belonged everywhere and nowhere.
In third period, the teacher forgot to collect the assignment. In fourth, someone’s phone went off mid-lecture and they played it cool like it wasn’t theirs. In fifth, the fire alarm chirped once for no reason, then went silent. No one reacted. It wasn’t worth reacting to.
By the time lunch rolled around, the halls were already spilling over with motion—students pouring out of classrooms like water over stone. Laughter echoed from behind the science wing. Someone ran past barefoot, inexplicably. A club was doing a fundraiser near the front gate, handing out stickers shaped like frogs. One of the security guards was trying (and failing) to stop someone from skateboarding down the back stairs.
Till made his way to the cafeteria through a side entrance that passed the art wing. He liked the art wing. It always smelled faintly of charcoal and linseed oil. Sometimes he took the long way just to walk past the display case filled with student work. Today it held a series of miniature sculptures; faces warped into half-smiles, like they were trying to remember how to feel something.
The cafeteria was already half full by the time he stepped in. His group had staked out their usual corner table by the windows, a spot that caught just enough sun to feel warm but not enough to sweat.
Mizi was already seated, picking apart her sandwich. Sua sat next to her with the elegance of someone prepared to insult anyone at a moment’s notice. Hyunwoo, of course, had taken the seat with the best lighting for his pout.
“I’m fasting emotionally,” he said before Till even sat down.
“Meaning what,” Till asked, placing his tray down.
“No boys. No crushes. No drama. I’m cleansing myself spiritually.”
“He said that last week,” Sua muttered.
“And the week before,” Mizi added.
Hyunwoo waved them off. “This time I mean it. I had a dream that I was married to a tax evader and that was a warning from the universe.”
Till just sipped his soup and let them talk.
The cafeteria was loud in the familiar way. Metal chairs scraping, plastic trays clacking, conversations overlapping like songs played out of sync. Someone dropped their drink and cursed loudly. The vending machine beeped twice and then jammed, causing a small riot. The lunch lady yelled at someone for cutting the line and then gave them an extra scoop anyway.
Till leaned back in his seat, letting the warmth from the window touch his shoulder. He picked at the rice, half-listening, half-drifting.
The walk home took longer than usual.
Till didn’t have plans, but he didn’t feel like heading straight back either. The air was cool, the streets humming with a kind of tired life, and the sky above was layered with a thin veil of pink and gray.
He ended up at the café.
It wasn’t the type that showed up in hashtags or date-night vlogs. More like someone’s old living room with too many power outlets and just enough chipped mugs to feel honest. Till had been coming here for over a year. The barista never asked questions, and the playlist was always four beats behind the times. That suited him just fine.
He ordered his usual Iced Americano and settled into his usual corner seat by the window. A breeze stirred the lace curtain. His sketchbook lay open, untouched, a pen resting idle between his fingers. He wasn’t really drawing. Just existing.
When the bell above the door chimed, he didn’t look up right away.
It wasn’t until someone stepped into his peripheral vision and paused—just briefly, like they were deciding something—that he glanced up.
The boy was tall. Not tall-tall, but tall in the way that felt intentional. Pale sweater, loose jeans, a bag slung casually over one shoulder. He didn’t scan the room. His gaze landed directly on Till, then flicked away as if that had been an accident.
Till didn’t recognize him. Not exactly. Maybe he’d seen him before. Maybe in the hallways, or from across a classroom?
The boy smiled, polite but almost… sheepish. “Sorry. Is this seat taken?”
Till blinked. “No. Go ahead.”
The boy sat at the table beside him. Close enough to share the corner light, far enough that it didn’t feel invasive.
There was a pause.
“I thought this place would be empty,” the boy said, voice low and easy. “Guess I’m not the only one hiding out.”
Till glanced over. “You come here a lot?”
“First time,” the boy said, looking around. “It’s nice.”
Till nodded. “Yeah.”
They didn’t talk much more at first. But the silence didn’t stretch in a bad way. It was companionable, balanced. The boy ordered a green tea latte, scrawled something in a small notebook, and occasionally looked out the window like he was waiting for someone, or something, to appear.
There was something about him.
Till tried not to stare, but he couldn’t help the quiet study—the way the boy’s limbs folded comfortably into the space, how he carried a kind of athletic ease like he belonged on a court somewhere, shoulder-to-shoulder with teammates. The kind of guy you’d expect to see joking around outside the gym or in photos with too many filters and captions like game day vibes.
But he didn’t have that loudness. If anything, he was still. Too still. Like something listening through skin.
When he glanced over and caught Till watching, he smiled again, and that’s when Till saw it.
A slight snaggle tooth. Upper left. Just barely out of line.
It should’ve ruined the symmetry of his face. It didn’t. It made him look... real.
“You’re drawing,” the boy said, voice warm but amused, not mocking.
Till's brows furrowed, caught off-guard. “Trying to. And I may not be able to finish if you keep talking to me."
“Anything good?”
“Not really.”
The boy tilted his head slightly. “That supposed to be modesty, or honesty?”
“Bit of both.”
There was a pause. Then: “Can I see?”
Till hesitated. He almost said no—he usually did. But something in the boy’s tone made it feel less like a demand and more like a passing breeze. You could let it touch you or not. It wasn’t going to push.
He flipped the sketchbook around and slid it over.
The boy took it without ceremony, thumbing through the pages with quiet interest.
“These look great,” he said after a moment.
He turned the book back and didn’t say anything else about it.
Till stared at him, slightly thrown.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he said eventually.
The boy smiled again, snaggle tooth and all. “Ivan.”
“Till.”
They sat like that for a moment longer, Ivan watching the window, Till watching him.
There was something strange about the way Ivan existed—like he was listening for a sound only he could hear. Like he was counting down to something no one else was aware of.
But that was ridiculous.
He was probably just another guy killing time in a coffee shop, avoiding homework or waiting for someone who’d forgotten him. Nothing cosmic. Nothing strange.
Just a boy with kind eyes and a slightly crooked smile.
Till told himself not to think about it too much.
And for now, he didn’t.