Haneul had his arms around two queens, shaking a tambourine, dancing like someone who had never learned the word shame. His shirt was mesh, sheer and clinging. His skin shimmered under the lights. Even now—laughing, stumbling, tipsy—he moved like choreography no one could replicate.
“He’s…” she began, but didn’t finish.
She didn’t need to.
“It wasn’t a betrayal, was it?” she said finally. “Just a reallocation of silence. You never said goodbye. You just… let the door close.”
He didn’t deny it. Didn’t apologize.
But something in the line of his shoulders shifted. Guilt, perhaps. Or memory. Or simply the exhaustion of knowing she was right.
“You started slipping away the day your father died,” she added quietly. “I thought I could wait. I really did. But I never learned how to be your pause.”
He turned to her then. Just briefly. Long enough to meet her eyes.
“You didn’t lose me tonight, Hye-jin,” he said. “You lost me ten years ago.”
Her nod was barely a motion. But her eyes stung.
And in the kitchen, Haneul cracked a glowstick with his teeth and held it above his head like a spell. “Whoever doesn’t eat cake in the next sixty seconds is homophobic!” he yelled.
Everyone laughed.
Seungho closed his eyes for just a breath.
He’d spent most of his life mastering control. Strategy. Containment.
But some things—like hurricanes and Haneul—weren’t meant to be managed.
Only survived.
??????
By 1 a.m., Seungho was drunk.
Not tipsy. Not loose. Gone.
Haneul had made sure of it.
Every time the glass emptied, he refilled it. Every time Seungho leaned back, Haneul handed him something—skewers, soju, his hand, a cherry he’d already bitten.
"Happy fucking birthday, skyscraper," he said at one point, crawling into Seungho’s lap. "You’re officially thirty-three and still incapable of joy."
Seungho looked at him, eyes glazed.
"That’s not true."
"Oh?"
"You."
Haneul blinked.
Seungho didn’t elaborate. Just leaned his forehead against Haneul’s collarbone.
"You smell like rain. And strawberries. And something I think I forgot."
Haneul exhaled. Carefully. Slowly.
