Seungho didn’t answer.
He couldn’t have, even if he tried. His mouth had gone dry. His spine was locked in place like a man bracing for war.
Haneul shifted again. Not away. Closer. A little more of his weight sinking into Seungho’s side, warm and bright and twitchy like lightning caught in a hoodie.
He kept talking.
About his professors.
About how the cafeteria had stopped serving the good rice.
About how spring meant deadlines and critiques and sleep deprivation.
About how he kept getting caught sketching Seungho’s hands in the margins of his notebooks and lying that they were mannequins.
All of it said in a rush.
Like it wasn’t important.
Like it meant everything.
Seungho sat beneath it all, hands clenched on either side of the cushion. Barely breathing.
And when Haneul finally fell quiet—midway through listing blackbird migration paths and grumbling about supply costs—the only sound left was the film’s final monologue:
“I didn’t know how to love him.
I only knew how to want him.
Quietly. Like a coward.
And by the time I found the courage, he was already halfway gone.”
Neither of them looked at the screen.
Haneul stared up at the ceiling like it had insulted him.
Seungho’s jaw clicked softly as he swallowed.
Outside, the spring air rustled faintly through the barely-cracked window. A scent of trees blooming in places they hadn’t noticed. A breath of the future, waiting. Unnamed. Undecided.
Seungho turned his head, just slightly.
Haneul’s eyes were closed now. His leg still hooked over Seungho’s thigh. Notebook falling to the floor. Breathing even.
But his hand was fisted in the edge of Seungho’s sweater.
Clinging like a boy who didn’t know how to ask for what he needed. Only how to hold still, and hope the world didn’t flinch.
Seungho stayed there a long time, listening to the end credits roll, to the wind moving past the glass, to his own blood rushing toward every part of him he refused to move.
Then he exhaled.
Soft. Careful.
As if even that might startle the thing beside him into flight.
He didn’t touch Haneul.
