Not heaven. Not god. Just—sky. The whole damn thing.
Wide, untouchable.
He wore his eyeliner like warpaint, his mesh shirt like armor, and his skirt over pants just because he fucking felt like it.
He never really got gender.
Or maybe he got it too well. Got the trap of it, the way peopleused it like a blade. He didn’t think he was a girl. He didn’t think he was a boy. He thought he was a problem, and that seemed to bother people more.
He sat in the back row of his art history lecture, half-listening, half-doodling. He had showered in the gym before anyone arrived and his hair was dripping all over the paper and desk. The teacher gave him a quick glance before resuming the lecture with a tense expression and a furrowed brow. It was always this way… teachers looking the other way because he still aced exams or because paperwork was easier than caring.
The professor’s voice melted into static, a soft hum that let him keep his head propped against the cool concrete wall. His sketchpad was full of faces he didn’t remember drawing—sharp jaws, narrowed crimson eyes, long hair tied back in battle knots he couldn’t name.
He flipped the page and started again. Same eyes. Same hair knot. Same goddamn ache in his ribs he couldn’t explain.
??????
By afternoon, Haneul was half-asleep in a booth near the back of campus. The ramen shop was loud with student chatter and bad music, but he liked it. He liked background chaos—it gave his own a place to breathe, and the door was always open. He hated closed doors; orphanage staff used to lock them when they “needed a break.”
He ate with his legs tucked under him, chopsticks moving fast. He still ate too quickly. Orphanage instinct. Eat fast, or starve polite.
He remembered the homes.
Three, maybe four of them. Each worse than the last. The first one smelled like bleach and wet wool, the second like sour rice and mildew. By the third, he’d stopped unpacking his bag. He was “difficult.” “Weird.” “Problematic”. He bit a teacher once. Moved rooms three times because he could hear the electricity running through the walls and it would make him insomniacand manic. Stole lipstick. Got caught grinning and holding hands with a boy in the laundry room. The staff slapped him so hard his ears rang for days.
At fifteen, he’d slipped out through the laundry chute during a thunderstorm and never went back.
The streets didn’t care who you were. They only cared how quiet you could be, how fast you could run, and whether you knew which subway stations stayed warm through the night. Haneul learned all of it. Jongno underpasses, the 24-hour saunas, coin karaoke booths.. Those were his refuges. He learned which subway stations stayed warm all night, and how to wash up in convenience-store bathrooms. How to steal triangle kimbap, wrapping his growing braid under a beanie and trading sketches for instant noodles.
He also learned that people always wanted something. A sketch. A smile. A piece of him.
He gave them what he had to. Never enough to matter.
But no one ever taught him how much was too much. How to hold back. How to say no.
He knew how to bite and run and vanish, but not how to navigate closeness. Touch confused him. Kindness disarmed him. He could talk back to a cop, but flinched when someone brushed his hair out of his eyes.
He hadn’t kissed anyone before Minseok. Not really. His first kiss—if you could call it that—had been stolen just before his sixteenth birthday by some older boy at the back of the convenience store where Haneul used to steal expired milk. A hand on his jaw, a wet mouth, breath that smelled like cinnamon gum and sweat. Haneul had frozen for half a second too long—stunned, confused, not even scared yet—before rage lit his body like a match. He’d punched the boy so hard twoteeth cracked. Ran three subway stops with blood on his knuckles. He never told anyone.
He’d chalked it up to instinct. Another ambush, another escape.
But even now, he didn’t know if it was shame or shock that curled under his skin when he thought of it.
Minseok was the first person to stay longer than five minutes. The first to call him “baby” like it meant something, even if it didn’t. The first to press him down and say, “You like this, don’t you?”
And the worst part was—
Sometimes he didn’t not like it.
And that blurred line scared him more than any fist ever had.
These days were better. Technically.
He had a scholarship, a legal ID, a moldy apartment and a shared stray cat that liked him more than it liked anyone else. But still… he never stayed home unless he had to. The silence crawled on his skin.
??????
That night at Velvet Eclipse, Haneul had finished his shift early. Minseok hadn’t come tonight. Said he was “too busy.” That usually meant other people. Other beds. Haneul didn’t ask anymore.
