Merry Christmas, firequakes!!!
Title: 5 Winters
Recipient: firequakes
Group(s)/Pairing(s): Seungho/Soyeon
Rating: pg13,
Word count: ~6500 words
Summary: Growing up in the endless circle.
a/n: ok sorry for this wreck of a work, I know it's rushed lol ;A; i would like to thank my betas, you know who you are. anyway happy holidays, and I really really hope that you will like this!
1)
Their parting ensued after a summer of late night drives and sharing gelato, like a couple but without the name. But August came, and went, and before they had known it was time to pack and go. Soyeon smiled at Seungho, waving as he pulled out of the driveway, down the road, and far away. She kept growing smaller and smaller in the rearview until she disappeared - but by then Seungho had set his eyes firmly ahead.
“This is the beginning!” she called out to him before she was gone.
It wasn't long before that Seungho had received the scholarship - Dear Yang Seungho, Congratualations! - and his parents were jumping and everyone was so excited and he was the ignoring the sinking feeling in his chest.
“Do you think they'll have a piano there?” he asked Soyeon that night.
And she laughed, and he laughed, and he acted as if it was supposed to be a joke.
Six months later, he was driving away, and she was waving goodbye, and this is the end, he thought but - but it wasn't for her. There would always be Minho, Minho - the boy with the dreams unable to be contained within this city. He was Soyeon's choice, the one she's riding the train to the city with, the one she's following, the one she sang for. Not Seungho, not her best friend since first grade, not the boy that had always been there for her, not the one - not the one that was leaving, he assumed.
Driving away was the hardest, as the past blurred along the way. The park where he and Soyeon used to play, their favorite restaurant, their old school - everything served as a reminder of what he was leaving behind, and soon they too blurred out into dots in the distance, disappearing on the highway. It's supposed to be his future, it's supposed to be new girls and new friends and new this but - the sun, high and bright on the horizon, was blinding him.
Seungho parked the car outside of his dorm and wondered if it was normal to desire nothing more than a second chance.
Fall went by slow as cold honey, and winter even slower. Seungho buried himself under piles of books and rarely came out until finals closed. To be honest, Seungho couldn't even recall if he did anything during his first semester of college beside study.
Instead of spending his break bundled up in ear muffs caroling with Soyeon, playing piano pieces while she sang for their family, or watching movies with her on his sofa, he spent his break in his dorm pulling apart his Iphone and putting it back together while Joon sat on his couch and fought with Byunghee over the remote. Propped up on his desk was a postcard Soyeon had sent him, a picture of her holding up a peace sign outside a famous club in LA - a picture that, no doubt, Minho had taken. Periodically, he would glance at it before sighing and pulling another screw out of his phone. He wondered where Soyeon was, if those big dreams she had were coming true, if Minho was really beside her like she had said he would be.
“Damn Seungho, you got another card!” Byunghee called out. “From the same girl!”
“The same one?” Chulyong asked, running up and snatching the card out of Byunghee's hand. “The same one!”
“Dude, she has to be in love with you. Why else would she keep sending you these? Here's what you got to do-”
“You're both idiots,” Seungho said, walking up to Chulyong and smacking him on the back of the head before grabbing the card. “She's just a friend.”
“Really?” they both questioned in unison.
“Yes, a best friend. Since childhood.”
“That's all?” Byunghee asked.
“That's all,” Seungho declared firmly before returning to his books.
(“Best friend?” Byunghee asked later.
“More,” Seungho replied.
“Boyfriend?”
“Of course.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Ten years, I guess. I don't really know. A long time.”
“How long have you loved her?” Byunghee wiggled his eyebrows.
“I don't know.”)
Most days, when Seungho went out for milk and slowly plodded his way through the snowy streets, he dreamed that maybe he would see her walking too, that maybe it would feel as if nothing changed.
Seungho's first winter in college was dull and ultimately depressing, characterized by one-night stands with girls he picked up at the bar, textbooks and a brief affair with Apple products before he returned to his usual Microsoft fare. It was cold, it was unbearable snowy, and it was dead quiet. There wasn't much else to say.
Their first winter apart was one with no real words, no real stars up above - it was one Seungho regards in images, in portraits, in silence - a circle of the same aspects over and over.
2)
Seungho went home the next winter - the dorm had been suffocating him.
He went home to warm family greetings and his mother's cooking and uncles insisting they hear about college, though he knew none of them were truly interested in the daily grind of an engineering student.
At the dinner table there was a new face, Seunghoon's latest girlfriend. She was a cute little thing, full of energy and rather talkative, and she was the only one that managed to engage Seungho in conversation for more than ten minutes. Her wide eyes and friendliness reminded him of the old girl that used to sit in her place at the table, so later on he remembers to pull Seunghoon aside and tell him “She's a good one.”
The rest was a routine he had remembered to perfect before coming home.
On a Friday night he and Jiyeon met up, deciding to go for a drive out to the beach.
“It's been a long time, Seungho. Four months? Five? Forever. How's college going?” she asked, turning her head to face him, her hair casting flyaways in her face. They drove the typical scenic route to the shore as Jiyeon propped her feet up on the windshield and grooved to the music on the radio
“Shitty,” he said. “How's Jieun?”
“Great. This company signed her, and they're talking CDs and performances and all her dreams, it's awesome.” Jiyeon's smile was so effortless and real, Seungho couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy.
“Hmm.” Seungho was driving with his hands rigidly placed atop the wheel, his eyes permanently oriented on the road. “So, when's Soyeon coming home?”
“Actually, you just missed her. She's off with Minho in Daegu, visitng his family. ”
“Oh.” The syllable dragged out of Seungho's mouth, prefaced by a second of unexpected silence.
“She stayed for the first half of the break but yeah, she's going on a vacation. They've been together for so many years that they thought it would be time for her to meet them.”
“That's cool.”
The radio looped another old carol in the background endlessly.
“Do you want to go out with me and Jieun? It could be like a double date. We can bring along Kyuri. Or - even better - Jieun knows this girl Suzy who knows this girl Amber who knows this girl Bekah who knows this one girl Jinah -”
“Thanks but,” Seungho sighed, “no thanks. I should probably not spend too long here. Byunghee is probably lonely too.”
“Too?” Jiyeon stared at him with a quirked eyebrow.
“I meant -” Seungho stopped. “I meant he's probably lonely. And Chulyong and Joon are too. They need me. That's all. They're idiots. They can't get by otherwise.”
“Seungho, you're not ok. I can see that. Why are you acting as if you are?”
Seungho simply shook his head and turned his focus back to the road. Jiyeon slumped down in the passenger seat quietly, turning the stereo up a bit louder. He missed when the sound of Soyeon's voice singing with the windows rolled down, carefree as a bird as the notes flew into the air and out, the summer sun beating down. It felt as if he had been an adult for so long, the circle spinning over and over around him.
They reached the beach, Jiyeon pulling off her shoes as Seungho parked and then darting out into the waves before he could turn off the engine, screaming at the water's iciness. Seungho sat in the car and watched until she pulled him out, stuffing her wet socks down his shirt. It was the first time he managed to smile that wide since he had rolled out of the driveway that one summer day.
“Remember high school?”
“Barely. It feels like so long ago.”
“I remember our gym class together - do you? The way you and Soyeon would bicker and Jieun would always get hit if you tried to pass something to her.”
Seungho snorted.
“I always thought you and Soyeon were dating, too. Funny how that worked out,” Jiyeon added. “But she and Minho are cute. They always have been, right? So musical and shit, I'm jealous. I wish I could be with Jieun the way they're together. College sucks, I'm always so busy, I never have time for anything. And I miss doing this every weekend - it used to be so real. You, me, Jieun and Soyeon, and the rest of us, too - all of us together, it used to be so easy.”
“I miss -” and there was a pause, an intake, a slight worry, “-that too.”
The piano beckoned him later in the week and he played an old duet - much to his family's glee - that Soyeon used to join him in. Her unsung parts hung in the air, empty and cold - but he still received a standing ovation, and he still wished that Soyeon could be there beside him, forcing him to bow a perfect ninety-degrees.
(“Don't push your loneliness on me man,” Byunghee said when Seungho returned to his room. “I'm getting all the ladies.”
“I saw Jooyeon with one of the upperclassmen at the coffee shop.”
“Fuck.”)
3)
The following summer, Seungho finally gave in and decided to move off-campus with Byunghee and Chulyong. Byunghee had ridiculous rules about women and how he deserved the most space because he's obviously getting more than the other two had gotten in the past four years combined while Chulyong was downright gross, but the two kept him entertained and he was never really lonely, so Seungho thought that he couldn't really complain.
That winter, the magic encounter he'd been dreaming of for three years finally happened. She was wearing a black coat and tights with short brown boots and he swore under his breath because somehow she managed to get even curvier and hotter in the past few years and Minho is still lucky as ever.
Her eyes met his across the street and she shouted, “Wait!” while she weaved in between cars to catch him. In a split second she has her arms wrapped around him and Seungho is grinning like an idiot and - even better - fate managed by some miracle to allow them to have have adequate time to sit down in a small, hole-in-the-wall cafe for some long overdue chatting.
It started out with the usual - engineering school must be killer and becoming a singer even moreso - and it's a good twenty minutes of laughter and shallow topics before it's actually a why.
“I heard you moved,” said Soyeon, aimlessly stirring her coffee in a circle, over and over.
“How?”
“Chulyong - he told Lizzy who told Amber who told Suzy who told Jieun who told Jiyeon who told me,” she replied. “So, essentially, from Chulyong.”
“Couldn't we have just bypassed that all if Chulyong grew a pair and talked to Jiyeon?” Seungho laughed a little.
“He was surprised by the whole fact that she rejected him. For cute little Jieun no less. But the real question is, couldn't we have bypassed it all if you just told me?”
“Oh.” Seungho took a large gulp of his coffee and repressed the frown on his face.
“I've been trying Seungho. I mailed you so many cards, I called all the time, but nope - no response.”
“I meant to, but it's hard. I was busy. There were just so many letters and I didn't have much time.”
She laughed at him and leaned to punch him in the shoulder. “God, you haven't changed.” Seungho chuckled a little in response.
“How's Minho?”
“He's good. You know those guys - Jiggy Fellaz? They took him in so now he's doing shows downtown. They like me so I usually go and sing for them. You should come sometime!”
“Ok,” Seungho replied, though he doubted if he ever could have the time to go. “Why don't you go back home?”
“Minho and I like to travel, so I usually don't have any time. Between college and practice and going to Daegu, it's hard.”
“Are you going back this year?”
“For a couple of days. The 20th to the 24th, I think.”
“Oh,” he grunted.
“How about you?”
“I arrive on the 25th and go back home a few days later.”
“Well, I'll just call you on Christmas. I bet you'll have created some fancy thing that will let me teleport to your house. Knowing you.”
They laughed.
Before they parted, she put her number in his phone with a devilish grin - “Don't you dare ignore me, because I will just keep calling you over and over until you pick up,” she had said - and her fingers lingered for several minutes on his arm, her smile so gentle and kind and sad, before she reached up and kissed him off the cheek. With that, she was gone again, walking down the road, farther and farther, until she was merely a small speck in the distance. Seungho held on to her until there was nothing left and she had disappeared. The circle continued.
4)
In January, Seungho met a girl in one of his engineering classes.
On the first day she took the initiative to take the seat beside him and begin a conversation with him about the professor and expectations and graduate school. Seungho had no real idea what had happened, especially because the girl was beautiful with legs that went on for miles and he hadn't showered in three days but for some reason a spark struck.
“Have we met before?”
“I've been in at least one of your classes for the past three years,” she said, laughing.
“Oh.”
“Don't worry though,” she said. “I'm Jinah.”
“I'm Seungho.”
“Nice to meet you.”
They went on a few dates, mostly to restaurants and movies and typical spots. Seungho couldn't, for the life of him, remember any details about any of them. Regardless, he still liked Jinah, the way she smiled at him and tried so hard, her fox face and unmeasurable beauty, even if she couldn't really hold a note and would rarely begin a conversation with anyone but him. But he also felt awful because he knew she was making a mistake, and he wasn't doing anything to stop her.
(Once, Seungho invited Jinah over for dinner at their apartment. He cooked, and Jinah praised him for it, while Byunghee decided to give her the primer on the most embarrassing moments in Seungho's life, and Chulyong just gawked at her. Seungho made sure that Chulyong and Byunghee were out of the house the next time she visited.)
“Hello?”
“Seungho?”
“Mom?”
And then there were the tears.
Within an hour Seungho was packed and on a train back home. He dropped his things off at the house, he nodded to his relatives but - it was silence, all of it.
It wasn't until he was in the car driving to the hospital with his mother that the silence was broken.
“She's sick,” his mother said, dressed in black. “And she's - she's gone.”
“How's Soyeon taking it?”
“The poor girl is falling apart.”
Seungho didn't need much else, so he spent the rest of the ride watching his mother hold on to the wheel for dear life and wondered what Soyeon could have been thinking.
“Her uncle and her grandmother, all so close together - it's a tragedy. A true tragedy.”
When they arrived, his mother went to go comfort hers while Seungho simply took a plush seat in the waiting room. The air was sanitized and cold and the whole place was so sad and all he could think about was how much Soyeon must have hated it there, how it was the ultimate antithesis of her.
Soyeon arrived in silence, took a seat in silence, and started crying in silence. Seungho didn't really know what to do, despite the fact that he was twenty-two now, a man that should know such things. They sat in the hospital waiting room and she cried, her tears soaking into his shirt. He merely stroked her hair, not offering any promises, not saying any words, because he knew that she wouldn't hear him. The silence wrapped them up, tying circles about them, binding them, leaving them in an ever so fleeting state of togetherness.
(Minho arrived the next day, walking through the door in a silence that showed that he felt for Soyeon, that he understood. He hugged her tight and Seungho watched as Soyeon cried into his shirt next, as if he had never been there at all.)
The following few months were a lot of the same, a lot of the time. After the first six weeks following the tragedies, Soyeon left off with Minho again. There were letters, for a good deal of time, but eventually they faded, as always. Seungho remembered a vague promise to watch them perform, but he never followed through, never really wanted to, so he simply glanced at the postcard on his desk and wondered what it would be like if he was there with her.
He slept with Jinah a few times, aced a few finals, finished his senior thesis with two weeks to spare and got accepted into his top choice for graduate school - all in all, Seungho considered himself to have had a very successful few months, though rather uneventful. He received his diploma and threw his cap up into the air, spotting Soyeon clapping for him in the audience - all good things, he reminded himself. There was a pain in his chest that intensified with every passing glance - or perhaps it was more an absence of pain, an emptiness that had began to engulf him. The diploma on his desk was a stark reminder of a fact - you're growing up and you're unhappy - but Seungho quickly buried it and called up Jinah instead.
As such, the circle continued.
Summer passed quickly, quietly, as if nothing had really come of it. Seungho worked at a sound engineering company for a while and enjoyed it, Chulyong got a girlfriend that inspired him to not be such a pig, and Byunghee got back together with Jooyeon which meant fewer unknown women were passing through the apartment everyday. The little things were what Seungho noted the most, the reasons to look up towards the sky and expect the sun. The oppressive emptiness that resonated in him began to be filled, if only by water and good-intentions.
The blur that had encompassed the peaceful months was broken when Seungho opened his door on a November evening to find Soyeon waiting.
It was that sudden - as if Soyeon decided to reappear out of thin air. Seungho let her in and took note of the three bags she was carrying, making sure to shuffle through the mail pile on the table to assure there weren't any letters he had missed while he prepared her a cup of tea. And there weren't. The last thing he had received from her was the latest post card on his desk, a black and white photo of Soyeon singing on a stage, taken from behind the curtain, surely taken by Minho (as if there was any other) - but regardless of appearances the postmark still read August.
“Why are you here?”
“I was looking for a place to stay,” she said. “And I was thinking that I could stay here.”
He stared at her with a perplexed expression because what the fuck, Soyeon but he didn't say it, only stared a little longer. “Are you sure this is the best place? Both Chulyong and Byunghee are pigs in their own ways and we don't have an extra bed.”
“I'm sure.” She smiled. “I'm positive, actually.”
Seungho didn't push it, picked up her bags and gave her a tour.
(That night, Seungho woke up with Soyeon in his bed, clutching the blanket he had handed her earlier tight to her chest, her cheeks streaked with dried tears. He didn't really know why but he didn't have the balls to say no, so instead he just tucked the blanket around her before crawling out of bed and making a cup of coffee. He stood hypnotized by the coffee as it turned in a seemingly endless circle in the microwave, on and on for what could have been forever.)
“Soyeon,” he asked the next day. “Why are you here?”
Soyeon was sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug of tea in her hand, reading the newspaper, this odd domestic portrait painted against the backdrop of the chaos that had become Seungho's life.
“I,” she began, and then she stopped. Seungho stood patiently, looking to her not with the usual harshness he could muster, but rather just a silence, a waiting.
“I asked my mom what I should do,” Soyeon began again. “I was feeling so lonely around everyone, and I was feeling so lost. I'd been singing and practicing and befriending the company and doing the motions but all of it was the same, and I couldn't feel the same. And she told me that maybe I should talk to you, because, you know, we've been best friends for what, ten years? And I thought that was a good idea. So now I'm here.”
Seungho stood for a second, noting how she only held his eyes for a second before leaning back to her newspaper.
“What about Minho?”
“We broke up.”
Seungho didn't believe that it was that simple.
As November turned forward and spread to December, the snows falling on their windows and classes drawing to a close, what was thought to be temporary turned out to be different. Every night Soyeon would sleep in Seungho's bed, curled up in a tiny ball with her blanket clutched to her chest, pressed against the wall. Seungho couldn't dare to touch her, to reach her, to tell her it's ok - so he just watched the heave of her chest, and made sure she never shivered from the cold. He couldn't give her everything, but he tried to give her enough.
She took some lessons from Seungho and eventually became the head chef of the household, cooking each one of them warm meals at the end of the day. She put aside money for rent, bought the groceries, and made sure to keep her part of the apartment cleaned. None of them could really complain, especially when they woke up to her heavenly voice every morning and were given free access to warm meals - in fact, they couldn't remember what it had been like without her there.
Jinah was another story, but he just learned to take her out most nights or ask to stay at her place, basing it on the argument that Byunghee and Chulyong were gross and she shouldn't be around them. Usually, Jinah would slightly purse her lips and raise her eyebrows before she agreed, but Seungho saw an agreement as an agreement, regardless of the other messages.
“Soyeon,” Seungho asked again one day, six weeks weeks after her sudden arrival at his door, “why are you here?”
There was a sharp inhale that echoed in the room, followed by an extended silence. But Seungho could wait, Seungho could wait forever if he had to - because he needed to.
“I really don't know. Minho called and offered me a place and said he'd be there for me but,” Soyeon said. “But I couldn't do that.”
“What couldn't you do?”
“I couldn't be with him anymore. I couldn't stay with him through all that because I realized that it - it just wasn't the same. The feelings weren't the same. I can't explain why. I didn't fall out of love with him. I think I still love him. It's just I realized that our stages are years apart and what we want is so different and I'm not even sure if I want this anymore -”
“So, you broke up with him,” Seungho said clinically.
“I guess I just didn't know what I wanted. Three years was so long but - but when we got together we were what, fifteen? Sixteen? We were young, that's it. And, well, in growing up, I guess I've realized things. Before I was young and I knew exactly what I wanted. Now that I'm older, I'm not so sure.”
“So you're growing up?”
“I guess that's what I'll call it, yes.” Soyeon laughed. “Not that I think you would know.”
It was when he saw Soyeon crying in his bed that it all the pieces began to come together for Seungho. He reached out for her, the girl lying in his bed when her world had fallen to pieces, but the hand couldn't touch, so he could only do as always - look, and stare, and hope to give her something, even if it's not everything.
“I don't know - how can I follow my dream - when - when everything is gone,” she sobs, exasperated and gasping for breath. “I followed them - I followed - because - Minho - because Minho - told me - but-”
“Soyeon,” he “You were the girl that sang every solo in choir, who got a scholarship to the premier art school. You can't give up. Not because you shouldn't, not because it's wrong, but because I don't think you want any other life.”
“Says - says the engineer - the engineer that plays - plays the piano.”
“I was.”
“You were afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of not being as good as you know you are.”
“Then learn from me.”
“I will.”
“Don't let the dreams you chased become nothing more than what you once wanted.”
It's always the same, always in the same bed, except this time she sleeps a little closer to him, and this time he doesn't push her away.
But he doesn't pull her in, either.
(Seungho brought Jinah over for lunch once during that fleeting December, but only after making sure that everyone was out of the house and none of them would be coming back for a while. He saw her eyes flicker over a girl's T-shirt on the couch and the fact that the door to his room was closed shut.
“Chulyong got a new girlfriend, and my room just happens to be a mess, and I don't want you to believe the stories Byunghee has told you are actually true so I don't think you want to see it,” said Seungho casually as he placed the bowl in front of her.
Smiling, Jinah dug into the soup and praised him as usual. He, as always, tried to ignore the nagging voice in his mind, the voice that said you're breaking her heart and you know it, you asshole.)
Christmas was next, and Seungho held Soyeon's hand firmly on the train ride back home. He didn't let go ever, visiting the graves of ones passed, visiting the ones that he knew Soyeon was struggling to live without. The town he had once known was so quiet, so empty, so cold - the portraits of the past hung starkly on the walls. False hopes - of somedays, of solos, of concerts - followed them both everywhere, and though he had found the lies within their seems before, he wouldn't let Soyeon do the same - because in her case, they weren't false. Perhaps bordering on past, on fallen, on old, but never false. The way she could hit those notes - there wasn't any other path.
They managed a piano duet, the same duet from their childhood, the same solo from Seungho's first year of college. The air was warm, filled with the notes that once had flowed out of the window and into their car. The standing ovation was far more enthused this year, as if it was the one promise still left. Soyeon pushed him down into a perfect ninety-degree bow, and he smiled because she was finally standing there with him, again.
They celebrated New Years at a party that Jinah took them too. It was at a club with live music that Soyeon seemed greatly happy to be at, jumping up onto stage and supporting the lead singer to a powerful beat. Seungho spent the night glued to the bar, through shot after shot, trying to make himself drunk enough to blur the lines between one and another.
Seungho brought Jinah home that night and Byunghee promised to keep Soyeon and Chulyong out of the apartment. They slept together, and Seungho tried to acquit himself of the guilt that began to surface, the guilt that he was sleeping with a girl that he didn't love in a bed that he shared with a girl that he hadn't gotten out of his mind for four years, a girl whose boyfriend he had been irrevocably jealous of for noticing her before he did, a girl that had lost everything and still managed to smile while when he had lost her he couldn't even get by.
“I love you,” Jinah said, her face buried in his chest.
“I,” he began, and then he hesitated again. “I love you, too.”
It was more a question than an answer, and Jinah knew that, but she bit back the tears and tried to fall asleep instead. Seungho felt her breathing so heavy in his chest, the lightness of her body, as if she was apologizing for something he had done.
5)
“Thanks for letting me stay,” said Soyeon during a snow storm that January. “I needed direction and someone to be there and you really were. I'm sorry if I ever doubted you. This was....uncharacteristic of you but I think you've grown up - just like I'm trying to do.”
“I should be thanking you. I've been wanting Byunghee and Chulyong to go out for months,” he said, turning away from his computer to face her. “But until you came, they had no reason to leave. They were actually always here. So thank you, for that.”
“That's it?” Soyeon laughed, landing a fake punch straight into his arm. “After all these years, all the girls I helped you get, all the time I watched over you in high school,” she looked up at him with a mischievous smile, “and all I get is a thank you for getting Chulyong to go to the market?”
“Well,” Seungho began, but he was cut off by Soyeon's chuckling.
“But nothing,” she said. “Next time, I'll bring Jooyeon and Jiyeon along with me. Then they really won't ever leave.”
Seungho rolled his eyes and Soyeon merely grinned.
As January came to a close, Seungho told Jinah that they couldn't stay together.
They met up at a coffee shop in the city, and Seungho tried to make it as impersonal as he could. It was a decision he had reached after months of deliberation - because he really did like Jinah, liked the way she smiled, liked the way she talked, liked the way she cared for him, always. But that didn't make the guilty conscious he had - it's wrong, it's a mistake, and you're sick for knowing it - go away. He cited that it just wasn't right for him to stay with her when he had graduate school and other commitments (and another woman sleeping in his bed, however platonic it might have been, but he left that out) that consumed all the time he should have been dedicating to her.
“For Soyeon, isn't it?” she asked.
“What?” Seungho stared at her, shocked.
Jinah smiled warmly and shrugged, as if that was all she could offer.
About ten minutes later, she finished her latte and left without a word.
A record label signed Soyeon towards the end of November, and Seungho got picked up by a new company to assist them in their designs. They were, quite frankly, a power couple - he took her to dinners and meetings and all the old men in suits loved her - she started conversations and told fantastical stories and sung, oh yes she sung, for free and for their amusement. Seungho smiled and pulled her in and they posed for photos.
“Seungho, you're one lucky man, to have nailed a girl like that,” one of them told Seungho once, red face and bloodshot eyes and one beer too many.
“Actually,” Seungho responded, “she's just a friend.”
“Well then, goddamn you're an idiot.”
Seungho felt the urge to fight back, to say well goddamn I designed half you're fucking company, but then realized that. well - he was right. So he eased the man back into his chair, gave the guy's car keys to his wife, and took a seat beside Soyeon instead.
Occasionally, the two would have these magical nights out where Seungho took Soyeon to bars to let her dance, or they sat in candlelit restaurants, or visited amusement parks. Seungho would try to win her a UFO prize, but he couldn't get the crane to catch it. Soyeon smiled because it's ok, at least I know you haven't changed. So they laughed, and they smiled, and the full moon would cast a perfect circle in the world, flickering under the passage of the waves.
The following months dragged on for the two, silently so, but Seungho smiled because coming home to a quiet house was better than coming home to the silent sobs of the girl he had spent his life with.
They journeyed back to their hometown in early December, and he visited the graves with her and he held her hand and her heart when she leaned into his chest and cried. He stared at the past, the memories, the quiet shells that have faded - and saw no longer portraits of unfulfilled promises, rather new dreams and opportunities, the second chances. They rode the train back silently and she rested her head on his shoulder and he was oddly content, in the countryside with Soyeon, even after all those years. Even when they were only visiting ghosts. They drove to the beach with Jiyeon and Jieun in the back and laughed, laughed as Soyeon's voice flew out the window and Jieun harmonized, laughed because they were 23 but 18 yet again, as if nothing had changed in the years, the dot waving in the background that never disappeared.
It was quiet, but they were memories in snapshots and choruses and verses that radiated with warmth, rather than the same painted in silence and cold. Seungho didn't think he could have dreamed it any other way.
They celebrated Christmas in the apartment with Byunghee and Jooyeon and Chulyong and Jiyeon and Jieun, and their hearts were too full to recall anything else. Soyeon chose the tree, a small noble fir, decking it with Jieun's help. Seungho cooked, Byunghee provided the entertainment, and Chulyong was, because that was his job, pretty much. Seungho thought that even if before - even if where he once had dreamed himself to be never could be, that maybe this was better, that maybe this was what he could have always wanted, and simply had to wait to get.
“Seungho, dance with us!”
And so he learned to dance, and changed his scowl to a smile for what felt like the first time.
It was what he imagined the beginning to be like.
The fifth time was the real time - the time that Seungho (finally) got it right.
“How many years has it been since we met?” Soyeon asked, curled up with him on the sofa as they watched the stars glitter from the window.
“A lot,” said Seungho, laughing quietly.
“How many though?”
“Fifteen - or so?”
“It's a long time.” Soyeon smiled. “I remember when I first moved in and I met you. You were just a little boy and you were so weird, the weirdest kid I met, because you would play the piano every day and then you would sit around and pull apart the toys and learn how they worked while the other kids merely played.”
“You were weird too, always so full of energy but so painstakingly neat. And always singing, always singing.”
“It's hard to think that we're growing up - twenty-three years, is it?”
“Yes, twenty-three years,” he affirmed.
“I think I've learned one thing, it's that when you want something - you should chase it. To think I almost quit my dream before.”
“I've learned the same.” There was a sigh, and Seungho glanced at Soyeon, her profile that stood out against the night air, her glassy eyes and smile. “I wish I could have changed things, sometimes, but - but I don't think that I need to. I'm happy where I am. I was really nervous before, because I thought I made a mistake - a lot of mistakes. I didn't want to be an engineer. I wanted the stage. I wanted - I wanted you, not just as a friend but as more. But I guess, as I got older, that I think I'll be fine. I'm happy, no matter how we are, as long as I get to be with you.”
“Me too. Actually, I don't think I would have it any other way, because I ended up with you.”
Seungho glanced at her, and Soyeon kissed him on the cheek, and, with that, the circle fell apart.