Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I'm a town in Illinois, I'm a detour on a ride

For a pop can and pink Starburst, I'm a blur from the driver's side

I'm the last gas for an hour on 57 late at night

I am Circle K and Casey’s, I am dust you leave behind

I am pumpkins in October, and corn from a roadside stall

I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl

I'm the pines behind the graveyard,

And the cool beneath their shade,

Where the boys have left their beer cans

I am weeds between the graves.

My buses slog through snow to pick up schoolbound children

My sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them

I am a town.

I am a church beside the highway

Where the ditches never drain

I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name

I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age;

I am not your destination

I am clinging to my ways

I am a town.

I'm a town in Illinois, I am billboards in the fields

I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels

I am Amtrak, Walmart, Dollar General, and lights on Friday nights

I still ask for you to come here when I know that you’re never mine

I am a town

I am a town

I am a town

Northbound.

In the middle of America, in a state called Illinois, there lies a small town named Peotone. Even though it is very close to Chicago, one of the biggest cities in the world, one would never be able to tell. Peotone is a picture of Americana, surrounded by cornfields on all sides. The skies are blue, the roads are long and rambling, and every day is peaceful.

It’s here in Peotone where you live, just outside of town, at 10001 West Wilmington Road. It’s a picturesque old farmhouse surrounded by fields that your family hasn’t ever owned, but are still tended to. It’s just far enough away from town that you have to drive to see your friends. When you step outside your front door every morning, you only see a couple of houses in the distance. Everything else is wide open space. 

It’s where you grew up. It’s the only house you’ve ever known.

When you wake up, it’s never to an alarm. These days, it’s always to the sound of the shower starting up in the bathroom. You’ve lived alone for some time, but recently you had a friend of yours move into the spare room. His name is Beomgyu, and he sings in the shower. It’s usually something by his favorite band, BTS, so you’re always awake by the time he’s done, and you’re ready to kick him out to prepare for the school day yourself.

Beomgyu doesn’t pay any rent for staying with you. There’s usually nobody at his house, since he insists his “dad is a mess.” That and he prefers to live with someone, always referencing this one time he almost caught his house on fire. So it’s almost like the two of you are roommates. You know. If you were roommates who fight over the shower in the morning, then go to Dollar General and purchase straight sugar cereal for breakfast and takeout from Gyro Loco every weekend. It’s nice to have a constant friend around, though you’re certainly not tied at the hip. 

The other perk of having Beomgyu as your friend is that he has a car! If you get ready for school before he leaves, he is able to take you. Otherwise, you have to take the bus. This morning, you’re all sorts of prepared, and you grab your bookbag and lunch money, hopping into Beomgyu’s passenger seat. The car is older than dirt; Beomgyu has to plug his phone into a cassette adapter in order to get the music to work. Today’s music: BTS, of course! He turns on a song called DNA, and he sings along to every lyric as he drives down the road to school.

It’s toward the end of the school year, and as a senior, you’re going to be graduating soon. You won’t have many more of these days left. And you intend to cherish each and every one of them. 

Peotone High School is an easy drive from your house: drive into town, go past the McDonalds, turn left at the bank. The parking lot is already filled with cars when you get there; Beomgyu parks, and the two of you walk in. It’s Monday, the start of a new week. You know you’ve got class, but there’s one thing you have to do first. 

Every graduating senior has to meet with the school’s guidance counselor, Mr. Johnson, to plan their future after Peotone. Your next to last meeting is this morning with him, instead of your first class. So you go straight to his office, which has no air conditioning and therefore is sweltering hot. Mr. Johnson flips through your file, and you sit on the chair across from his desk. There’s a clock somewhere in this room that is ticking, and it reminds you of a bomb that could explode at any minute.

“So.” Mr. Johnson leans on his hands. “You really don’t have a plan, do you?”

You shake your head. “Nope.” You’ve fed him the runaround for weeks now. To be honest, you’re still waiting for that one thing, for lightning to strike, for the clouds to part and for your destiny to drop into your lap. And it hasn’t happened yet. So you figure you’ll graduate, then hang around Peotone, get a part time job, and wait for it. 

“You really need to be thinking about this,” Mr. Johnson says for the umpteenth time. “What are you going to do with your life? It’s up to you, but you have to take action. You can’t just coast through, or else other people will be in control of your life. If you lose that control, then you’ll never get it back. Stay in control, kiddo.”

Thankfully the meeting ends after that, and you’re dismissed back to the hall. It’s an in-between period, before your second class for the day, so you head to your locker. As you unlock it and open it, you hear someone call down the hall. “Hey hey!”

“Oh, hey, Rue!” Only Rue calls out to you like that. Rue is your best friend; you’ve seriously known each other since third grade, when she shared her apple with you at lunch. Rue’s hardly changed over the years; she’s grown taller, but she still has that same blonde hair pulled back, still wears the same ankle-length dresses. Other students at Peotone might call Rue a prude, but to you, she is perfectly Rue. She also uses her attention to rules and regulations to help the student council as its president; when she graduates in a few weeks, she’ll be heading to Bible school in Missouri. So these are also the last few weeks with Rue before your friendship gets harder to maintain.

“I have a question for you,” she asks, looking a bit nervous. “You know how we’re having the end of year banquet on Sunday night?”

You think back. Ahh, yes, you know about this. It’s a big banquet where all of the students are invited to dinner, and the end of the year awards will be given out. Beomgyu won’t stop talking about it because his band is performing during the presentation. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I was gonna have Dayton give a speech at the beginning, you know, a student speech type of thing. Something done by a graduating senior to inspire everybody, look back on their four years, that sort of thing. Well, he just got back to me today and said he can’t do it! So the only other person I know who can do it is you.” She clasps her hands together, as if she’s praying. “Please? I know it’s only a week, but you’re not that scared of talking in front of crowds!”

You could go either way on the crowd thing, you suppose. But you are a pretty good writer. Your book report on To Kill a Mockingbird that you wrote during your junior year won several end of year awards and was even published in a quarterly education magazine in Chicago. If anybody can write something in a week, it’s you. “Okay. I’ll do it. But don’t expect me to talk perfectly in front of the crowd! I might be reading it from the paper!”

“Oh, that’s fine, that’s fine, thank you!” And then Rue is off to her next class, quickly. She doesn’t have a cell phone, probably never will, so you can’t text her about it. But you can start to think of something to write. A speech for the end of the year banquet, huh? Perhaps you should look up some inspirational graduation speeches online in the library --

You run smack dab into somebody. “Oh, sorry!”

“No, it’s my fault.” And when you look up, you notice you’ve collided with someone you haven’t met before. A freshman? No, you know everybody at Peotone High. There’s only, like, a few hundred students here, right? But as he walks away, composed again, you can’t help but wonder... haven’t you seen him before?

“Oh, you mean Choi Soobin,” Rue says over lunch. 

Lunch time at Peotone is a simple affair; the lunch room hardly ever has what you want, so you bring your own. So does Rue; for a while there, her mother packed both of you lunches, until you started to experiment with your own concoctions. You’ve obviously graduated from a paper bag to a vinyl lunch box in your favorite color, but the sentiment still stays the same.

“Choi as in last name first? Is he related to Beomgyu?”

“No, don’t think so. It’s like Josh Smith and Ashley Smith.”

“Oh, okay.” Josh and Ashley have no relation but the same last name. They joke about it a lot. “So who is he again?”

“Oh, he’s a junior. Really quiet. Always does 4-H stuff every year, so he doesn’t do clubs or sports. That’s his life. Think he raises some animal or something.” Farm kids are standard among the Peotone demographic; every year at least one graduating senior drives their tractor to prom. “You said he looked spaced out?”

“Yeah. It was odd. I don’t know why I don’t know him. I know everybody at this school.” 

When you get home that night, you look him up, just to be curious. He doesn’t have a Facebook page, but there are some articles on ABC7’s website about him. The entire family has done local agriculture projects for decades; it looks like Soobin’s dad was once a corn farmer, while his mother makes quilts. All of the kids raise rabbits; Soobin’s sister won first place in 2018, the last year she was eligible. Oh, wait, I know her! Everybody in school knew Minnie — she was one of the most popular girls the year ahead of you and was even on homecoming court. Soobin must be her younger brother. 

The next morning, as you’re getting ready for school, a thought crosses your mind. You stick your head into the kitchen. “Hey, ‘Gyu?”

Beomgyu is raiding the fridge for some leftover cold pizza for breakfast. “Yeah?”

“You got band practice tomorrow, right? Don’t forget.” 

“I won’t. You’re always reminding me, flower, I got this.” He throws your now-full lunchbox at you. “Now, if you excuse me, we can’t be late.”

You notice Soobin when you get to school again. This time, he’s sitting outside, looking at his phone. He blends into the general surroundings so well that it makes sense that you’ve never properly seen him. And sure, it feels like it might be too late to make friends now, with you graduating and all. But you’ve never been one to turn down the chance to meet someone new.

So you might as well meet him!

“Whatever’s on your phone must be pretty interesting,” you say.

Soobin looks up. “Oh, hello!” he says, as if you’ve actually known him all this time and you’re really good friends. 

“You know me, right?” you say, introducing yourself. “I’m just sorry I ran into you yesterday. I wasn’t looking where I was going. You’re Minnie’s brother, aren’t you?”

“Oh, you know Minnie?”

You laugh. “Who doesn’t know Minnie? How is she?” And Soobin talks about how Minnie is doing in Chicago, living the dream and going to college. The conversation drifts to the bunnies they raised for 4-H, and Soobin pulls out his phone, and before long the bell is ringing and you’re still looking at bunny pictures. Which...there’s absolutely nothing wrong with. They’re bunnies. They’re adorable by definition.

You trade numbers, and he sends you a couple more pictures during class. Soobin’s siblings have raised a couple of generations of rabbits, and while they have given away some as pets, there are a few that have stayed in the family. 

He sends one picture in particular. These are all three of our first rabbits, he texts. Old picture. Hyunbin’s is on the left, Spot. Minnie’s is Lokki, on the right. And Tobin is mine, he’s in the middle. Tobin is my favorite. 

There’s a pause before another text message. I think Tobin’s dying. He’s the only one of the original rabbits left, and he’s showing all of the signs. He hasn’t been eating his food. 

You text him an I’m sorry to hear that, but it stays on your mind. You’ve had your own share of loss in your own life, and even though Soobin knows what’s coming, it doesn’t soften the blow any less. Plus, from the looks of things, Soobin is probably more attached to his bunnies than he is other people. 

You shove aside your concerns during study hall, trying to think of a start for this speech you’re supposed to give at the end of the year banquet. Couldn’t Rue at least have given you a prompt? Well, everybody will be there, so it might as well be something inspiring, a look back at lessons learned, that type of thing. The teachers will love it. Maybe you’ll even put it on a resume. 

Mr. Johnson’s words float back to you. What are you going to do with your life? Write inspirational speeches, apparently. 

“Who are you texting?” Beomgyu asks while he drives you home. 

“Nobody of importance,” you say, and you go back to your conversation with Soobin. Your texts have drifted away from his bunnies, which he might prefer if his favorite one isn’t doing so good. In fact, he’s talking a lot. Perhaps he just hasn’t had the right person to talk to. And that may be true; not everybody is going to be perceived as popular, like his sister Minnie was. Sometimes all it takes is one conversation to find a new friend. 

You message Soobin on and off for the rest of the night, while looking up inspiration for your speech. He doesn’t have any thoughts, but does offer some support as he’s staying up late playing some game on his computer. He does have friends; they’re just all virtual. 

You wake up on Wednesday to Beomgyu singing in the shower again; it gives you enough time to gather your things and get a ride to school. You look for Soobin, but you don’t see him. Your phone is in your pocket through the first half of the day, but it does not buzz.

“Hey hey,” Rue says, catching you after class and before lunch. “Any progress on your speech?”

“I think I’ve got a few ideas.” This is true, but so far, everything you’ve come up with sounds fake. Perhaps you can focus on the speech while Beomgyu’s at band practice tonight. 

You crane your neck in the cafeteria, but you can’t spot Soobin. So you eat beside Rue and text him: Hey, everything okay? You’ve known him a grand total of twenty four hours tops, but considering you texted all night, right now it just feels like he’s ghosting you. Which is fine, but…

You get a return text two minutes later. Hi, I’m sorry, I’m here. Tobin’s being put down tomorrow. I haven’t left the nurse’s office.

You skip class after lunch — as a senior, you already know you’re graduating, and at this point the senior classes are fun and games, extended movie sessions, and bonus lessons in preparation for college. You’re not missing anything by going to the nurse’s office instead.

Soobin is a mess. He’s physically fine, but he’s so wrecked with grief that he’s laying down on a cot, red face stained with tears. When you push aside the curtain, he sits up in shock. Then, “Why are you here?”

“I’m your friend, aren’t I? I wasn’t sure if anybody else would come see you…”

“Can I give you a hug?”

You sit on the cot and give Soobin a side hug. It feels comfortable, like you’ve known him forever even though you just met. “Every time I try to go to class, I start crying again. And I don’t —“ His voice cracks again.

“Hey, it’s okay.” You weigh the options. “You drove here?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you drive home? There’s no reason for you to be here today.”

“I still have class.” Soobin wipes away more of his tears. “I have a chemistry test in two weeks…”

“The test can wait. Do you know anybody in class who can get you notes?”

He thinks. “Dayton can, I think. Or Jay. They’re both in my class.”

“Okay. Get in your car then, go home, spend some time with Tobin. Did you make an appointment for tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna —“ He whimpers, putting his fist to his mouth, and you pull him into your arms again. You feel him try to fight it, try to say more, and it doesn’t work. So you let him cry for a while, and as you do, an idea starts to form in your head. 

“Do you need for someone else to drive you home?”

“...maybe?”

“I mean, I can technically drive you.” You don’t have a car, but you do have your license. 

“Then how would you get back to school?”

“Ehh? Logistics. It’s boring, we’re not doing anything in class. I’ll figure it out.” You pat Soobin on the hand. “More importantly, we gotta get you home. Do we need to contact your parents?”

“They’re out of town. Mom’s in New York, and Dad’s still in Seoul.” He’s calmed down again. “I don’t have to contact anybody, I can just go.”

“Then let’s go.” And you do. When the nurse returns, you clear your departure from school with her. Soobin’s car is an old blue Dodge, a small thing with manual windows and — thankfully — automatic transmission. You put your backpacks in the backseat, then jump in the driver’s seat. It’s been a hot second since you’ve needed to drive anywhere; Beomgyu usually enjoys doing that part these days. 

Speaking of Beomgyu, you whip out your phone before you start the car and text him. He’s always forgetting about his band practices. If you don’t make sure he gets there okay, then who will?

Soobin lives off of W. North Peotone Road, so you have to drive out of town the opposite way to get there. It’s a nice house, one story but sprawling, a newer build with tan paint and green shutters, and a garage that would make Beomgyu super jealous. “Nobody’s here,” Soobin says as you park just in front of the garage. “I live alone at this point.”

“Are your parents always out of town?”

“Yeah. Mom travels all the time, and Dad’s just...pretty permanently in Seoul right now.” He jumps out of his car and grabs the keys. “Do you wanna see the bunnies?”

Soobin’s living room is well put together; his parents must have a good amount of money, because everything looks untouched. There’s a room off to the side that has an entire wall of rabbit cages, all comfortable and with plenty of space for the rabbits to run around in. “Right now we just have a few, because I’m the only one here,” Soobin explains as he sits by one cage in particular, decorated with a blue ribbon. “This is Fluffy, she’s Minnie’s last bunny. She won first place at the fair last year.” And he goes down the line, introducing you to Mittens and Ttalgi and Spot Jr, and it’s almost adorable how excited he is. 

Then he gets to the very end. “And this is Tobin.” 

You walk to the end of the cage line and sit. Tobin does look old; he has white fur along his whiskers, and his eyes look tired. But you can clearly see how much he is loved. “If he suddenly flops over, don’t be alarmed,” Soobin says. “That’s normal when they’re...like this.” He sighs. “It’s why I’d rather take him in than let him suffer. Minnie did the same thing with Lokki. I just…I’ve had rabbits pass away before, but not Tobin.”

“Is there anything we can do for him to help him feel comfortable?” If Soobin is going to the vet in the morning, then this is his last night with Tobin. 

Soobin looks up at you and smiles. “We’re already doing what we can. But would you like to help?”

First things first: Soobin goes to the kitchen and preheats the oven for a frozen pizza. There’s an easy domestication that he shows off, and you’re familiar with it. Neither one of you have parents at home, so you’ve learned to fend appropriately, while contacting your parents for the bigger or more legal aspects. Come to think of it, you don’t even know where your own parents are now. Then Beomgyu interrupts you with a text message, so you stop thinking about it.

“What’s that?” Soobin asks, and you show him the video Beomgyu has sent you. Beomgyu’s been wanting to get this one song down pat for months now, and he’d finally had a breakthrough a week or two ago. This is the first rehearsal with the song, and Beomgyu loves it so much that he wants to perform it at the end of the year banquet on Sunday. You agree, sending back a text. It’s kind of sad, but I think it will fit okay. Just don’t play it last!

Since you know what you’re doing, you take the pizza out when it’s done, then find the pizza cutter and slice it appropriately. When you stick your head back into the side room, Soobin is sitting on the floor with a towel in his arms. You see two old bunny ears sticking out the top, so he must be holding Tobin.

“You don’t want to hold a rabbit for too long,” Soobin explains as you bring him a plate of pizza. “They’re not really made for it. But I’ve been doing this for a few days. If he’s in my arms, then he won’t flop around and hurt himself.”

You both eventually move back to the living room, sitting on the couch. Since Soobin’s arms are relatively full, you grab the remote and scroll through the channels, stopping at some action movie where a car blows up every two seconds. It’s pretty mindless, but it’s fun, and nobody appears to die, so it’s perfect. What’s even better is that the sequel plays after the first movie is done, so you and Soobin are just able to sit and talk and eat pizza and relax. 

“Does Tobin have any favorite movies?” you ask with a smile, knowing rabbits can’t watch movies.

“Hmm. If Tobin could watch a movie…” Soobin takes the remote and finds a Disney princess movie. “I guess this?” Then you both laugh.

There’s no tension between the two of you; it’s like you’ve both suddenly found an easy friendship that just might have no limit. Soobin has literally been so quiet at school that other students don’t even know he exists. But now that you’re talking to him, you notice just how funny and sweet and caring he is. 

And he notably doesn’t let go of Tobin, and when he does, he places him into your arms with such care that you can’t help but be touched. When Tobin looks up at you, you get this feeling that his entire little rabbit life has been filled with the same kind of love and care that Soobin just...exudes. 

How did anybody miss it before?

“Do you need to head back to your house?” Soobin asks as Sleeping Beauty ends. 

“Ehh.” You hadn’t thought this far ahead. You had figured either Soobin would take you back, or Beomgyu would pick you up after his practice was finished. “Whatever works. Wait, you’re going to the vet in the morning, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Skipping school?”

Soobin is silent. Then, “yeah, I think I only have to miss first period.”

“Well, take it from someone who just watched you stay in the nurse’s office all day.” You smile. “Stay home from school. Whatever you need, just do it.”

“That’s just it. I don’t know what I’m going to need yet. If Minnie was at home, she’d be running all around taking care of me and Tobin and stuff. She’s just...not.”

“Didn’t you call her?”

“I did. Like, five times. But she hasn’t picked up.” Soobin leans over and gives Tobin a kiss on the top of his head. “Minnie’s disappeared to Chicago and doesn’t really talk with me anymore. She’s living the life, and apparently she’s too good for me now. Saw something about her throwing a party online on Facebook, but that’s about it.”

“So you’ve been alone here with your rabbits since the start of the school year.”

“Yeah.”

“Then yeah, I should spend the night. We’ll go together to the vet in the morning.”

Soobin gapes at you. “You would do that? For me?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“But you don’t even know me.”

You grin. “I do now.”

Minnie’s bedroom is still in one piece; she took a lot of her belongings with her, but her bed is sitting in one corner, unused. Soobin fishes out a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt for you to sleep in. “Is this okay, or should I drive you home?”

“Maybe? It’s a little cold.” So Soobin goes back to his room and finds a blue Peotone High hoodie, and you put it on and it fits perfectly. And he leaves you be, and you plug your phone in, settling in and texting Beomgyu. As you sit in bed, it occurs to you that you haven’t worked on your speech at all today. But with everything else that has happened today, a speech seems kind of...trivial. So you make a note to work on it tomorrow, and you fall asleep.

Because Beomgyu’s singing is not there to wake you up, you sleep in just a little bit. Soobin opens the door to let you know it’s time; the appointment is at 10 AM. You roll out of bed and keep Soobin’s hoodie on, making the rest of yourself presentable enough.

Peotone Animal Hospital is on the southeast edge of town, across the street from Gyro Loco. You drive the car as Soobin sits in the back, with Tobin in a small crate. The parking lot is empty; you walk in with Soobin, but when the vet tech meets him in the lobby, he turns to you.

“I’m gonna go back there,” he says. “I’ll be okay. I just...want you out here, when I’m done. Is that okay?” And you nod, and you blow Tobin a kiss in his crate, and Soobin follows the vet tech to the back.

You pull out your phone and check for a text from Beomgyu; nothing, which is probably good. It means he’s not worried about you. Then, you start to write your speech. You’re not sure exactly what you want to say still, but losing Tobin has caused you to focus on how life can be so fleeting. It would make for a good speech. Something along the lines of, you only have one life, so have no regrets! Of course, Tobin is just a bunny, but you know now that he still lived his little bunny life to the fullest. 

That’s probably thanks to Soobin. 

How have you missed Soobin this entire time? He’s only a year behind you, and you truly do know everybody at Peotone High. Minnie, of course, was the star of her year. Perhaps all she did was overshadow her younger brother. But now that you’ve gotten to know him, you might actually like Soobin better than Minnie. He’s nowhere near as extroverted, but if something bad ever happened, you know he would be there for you...just as you are for him.

The door opens, and Soobin walks out. You get up from your seat in the lobby and go over to him. You thought he would be crying, but it seems he’s all cried out. Instead, the light is gone from his eyes, and he’s just numb. So you don’t say a word, but you take his hand and lead him back out to his car. 

You open the door and let him sit, then you sit in the driver’s seat and turn the car on. You don’t know what’s next. You didn’t plan this far ahead. “Are you okay?” you end up asking, although you already know the answer.

Soobin is quiet. Then, “I thought I was going to be okay going home after this. I’m not.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere but home.”

You autopilot and drive to Dollar General, since you go there with Beomgyu all the time. “I need to pick up some cereal,” you explain, and you do. For the next hour or so, neither one of you talk much, but you wander the aisles together. You stay away from the pet aisle, and Soobin cries a bit when you walk past it, but he does okay. And before too long, the two of you are at least smiling as you look around. 

You grab a new box of sugar cereal — Beomgyu’s favorite, since he’s out — and your cart starts to fill up with random items. A twelve pack of lemon-lime soda. A box of Oreo cookies. A lawn ornament with a huge butterfly at the top, in a light blue color. A new notebook. A shower curtain with the ocean printed on it. And you pay for everything, with a credit card with somebody else’s name on it, but you don’t think too much about it.

When you get back to the car, you check your phone again, and you have a text from Beomgyu. Flower call me please its urgent. Beomgyu never messes up his punctuation when he’s typing, so you give him a quick ring as you start up the car and Soobin digs out a lemon-lime soda from the pack.

“Where are you?”

“Dollar General. Don’t ask. Where are you?”

“School. I need someone to pick me up, I need to go home. Flower, did you check the news?”

“No? I’ve been busy all morning, I can explain.”

“My —“ Beomgyu’s voice catches, and it’s then that you know something’s really wrong. “My house caught fire last night, flower, my dad’s dead.”

You shoot out of the Dollar General like a bat out of hell. Soobin holds on for dear life, but when you explain your friend’s situation, he completely understands. After all, today has just turned into another adventure after another. 

When you arrive at Peotone High, Beomgyu is sitting out front. He’s not crying, but he looks the same kind of numb as Soobin did when he walked out of the vet’s office earlier today. Beomgyu and his dad have never gotten along, so there is no lost love there. But it’s still his dad, and it’s still his old house, even though none of his belongings are there now.

“You okay?”

“I need Gyro Loco.”

“Cool, hop in,” and he does.

“Whose car is this?”

“Mine,” Soobin says, and the two meet each other. Beomgyu already kind of knew who Soobin was, due to the whole last name thing.

“Yeah, there’s three Chois in our school, you know Yeonjun on the basketball team? He’s the third one.” That’s a lot of Chois for one school in the middle of a cornfield.

It’s just after lunchtime, so thankfully Gyro Loco isn’t that busy. You have Beomgyu call ahead and put in three orders. Gyro Loco serves everything from old school gyros to falafel, so there’s something on the menu for everybody. Then, the three of you head back to school and play musical cars; by the end of it all, Soobin and Beomgyu, as well as both cars, are back at your house. 

“I’ll need to stop by home after dinner to check on the other bunnies,” Soobin says. “I think I’ll be able to go back to school tomorrow, after lunch.” Tobin will be ready for pickup in the morning. And when he does take off for home, he returns with an overnight bag. 

The three of you end up on the couch watching Jeopardy reruns on Netflix, answering questions and avoiding thinking about the real world. You know Beomgyu is all but estranged from his dad, and his house was nothing special. He much prefers living in your spare bedroom and being friends with you. But there’s still something that undoubtedly sucks about the whole situation.

And then there’s Soobin. He’s smiling more than you thought he would be after losing his beloved rabbit. But as he throws himself into yet another round of Jeopardy questions, you can’t help but wonder if your presence truly had something to do with it. With his parents and siblings gone, and all of his friends online, being here in person truly is a good distraction for Soobin.

He crashes on your couch that night, and as you go to bed, you find yourself wondering if he has a long distance significant other. 

Beomgyu must not have showered this morning, because when you wake up, it’s nine AM and he is gone. You dress for the day and throw Soobin’s hoodie back on, then go downstairs. 

Soobin is still on the couch, passed out under at least three blankets. He looks to have slept well, and you assume Beomgyu didn’t wake him out on his way to school. You sit on the edge of the couch and poke him on the shoulder.

“Soobin. Time to wake up.” Then, for good measure, you lean forward and kiss him on the forehead, a gesture fitting for a family member. “Soobin. Soobinnie-bunny-bun-bun.”

He stirs, then laughs. “Did you kiss me?”

“Maybe. Had to get you up one way or another.” 

“Well, it worked.” He sits up, then places his hand on your head. “Little bunny, fluffy bunny making sure I’m okay.” And then he grabs his things and heads upstairs to the bathroom, and you’re left wondering where did this crush come from? 

Does he like you back? Maybe? Is this quick? You literally just met him on Monday. But you do seem to have clicked with him. So you shrug it off the best you can, and you take a moment to prepare for school, throwing your books into a backpack. You make sure your phone still has notes for your speech, because Rue’s going to want it finished by the end of school today. 

The drive back to the vet is quiet. This time, Soobin lets you go into the office with him. The vet keeps it simple and hands him a sealed box made out of wood, with Tobin’s name on it. She also hands him a frame that has a paw print in it; it must be from Tobin. 

Soobin cries a little, but he holds it together this time until he’s outside. Once he’s out the door, he turns to you. “Thank you. I really, really don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He looks down at his hands. “I can’t hug you,” he says, and then he leans forward and gives you a quick kiss on the cheek instead. And you find yourself blushing, but he smiles at you and you smile back at him. Neither one of you makes another move, but there’s something unspoken that passes between the two of you. It’s like you somehow magically know he likes you. 

You stop by his house and drop off the box containing Tobin, then go to school for the first time in a day or two. As expected, none of your teachers seem to care, since you’ve already completed your work. But during lunch, you track down Rue. 

“I’ve got an excellent idea for the speech, but I don’t know if I’ll have it done in —“ you check your phone —“three hours. Is that okay?”

“Oh, I’m not expecting to read it before you go on stage,” Rue says with a smile. “You won’t have to clear it with me or any teachers first. You’re my best friend. I trust you. Come up with the speech and read it. That’s it. Oh, and be there like a half hour early so we know to go over stuff.”

“It starts at six, right?”

“Yep! So be there at 5:30 sharp, in the gym.” Rue then looks you over. “Nice hoodie.”

You go through the rest of your classes; you catch Beomgyu in the hall, but he seems to be doing all right after what happened Wednesday night. “My grandparents are taking care of a funeral, but I’m not going,” he says. “Then they’ll figure out the rest with me next week.” He stays after school for another band practice, and you ask him if you and Soobin can sit in.

Beomgyu plays in a three person band that he calls Waeng, after a mispronunciation of his name from a racist teacher in middle school. He is the lead singer and the guitarist, and a freshman named Kai is the drummer. You’ve met them all before (you went to prom with Beomgyu as friends this past year) but Soobin hasn’t yet. The third member of their band seems to be a nervous guy with long hair, looking Soobin up and down, until Beomgyu steps in and says, “it’s okay, he won’t say a thing.” Then Beomgyu introduces her to Soobin as Shelly; she’s barely out of her shell, and this small group are the only people who know she’s trans.

“Just make sure to call her Shelly, and we’re good,” Beomgyu says to Soobin.

They then play together, and it’s...interesting, is what it is. It’s a cacophony of sounds that don’t mix well together in the school gym, the only place they can practice for the night. They’re too spread out, and the sound echoes everywhere. But there is a certain compositional genius to what’s being played, and that’s solely courtesy of Beomgyu. He really does want to be a songwriter someday, and you hope that he’ll continue to have the focus to really make it happen after you leave. He is just a sophomore, after all.

It makes you pause. “Hey, Soobin?” The two of you are seated across the gym from the band, but together.

Soobin has been watching the band, but he turns toward you. “Yes?”

“So I was thinking…” Soobin is a junior, but seems mature for his age. It’s probably all of the responsibility he’s had to take on, what with being the only person home in his house. “You know how I’m graduating in a couple of weeks?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going to college. Not yet, anyway. So I just...I don’t know why I’m saying this.” And you laugh, just a little bit. “What I mean is that I’m sticking around town. Probably gotta find a job. Think I’ll apply at Gyro Loco, I can bring free food home to Beomgyu.”

Soobin laughs. “He’d like that.”

“He would, wouldn’t he? But my point is that I’ll be around. So if you want to hang out some more…” And Soobin smiles back at you, and he seems to get the hint.

After Waeng is done practicing, you vacate the school. Soobin doesn’t want to go home just yet, so Beomgyu invites him over as long as he pays for Casey’s takeout pizza. You say that sounds good, and you are all set to queue up more Jeopardy until it starts raining and the storm knocks the Internet offline. It always gets like this when it rains; since you live out in the country, you get both your internet and television from satellite dish, so even a little storm can put you out of service for hours.

Soobin goes digging through your old VHS tapes until he finds The Lion King. “It’s not Sleeping Beauty, but it will do,” he says. You realize he’s talking about the last movie you watched together, with Tobin. 

“It will do.” It takes you a minute, but you’re able to hook up your old VCR, and you pop the tape in. It’s a relic from a bygone era. You’re not even sure how your family inherited it. But it starts up, and all of a sudden, Beomgyu’s voice floats over from the kitchen.

“NAAAAAANTS INGONYAAAAAAMA BAGITHI BABA!!!”

You crack up laughing, joining in, and then both Soobin and you are singing the background vocals while Beomgyu sings the main line. He does it perfectly with his baritone voice, even if it’s a good bit out of his range. Then Beomgyu plops down on the chair next to the two of you, hands you both a piece of your favorite pizza, and watches half the movie with you. 

It all goes according to plan until the power goes out suddenly. Another casualty of the storm.

“That’s it, I’m out,” Beomgyu says, heading upstairs for the night. He takes some of the pizza with him, probably off to read a book or conserve what is left of his cell phone’s battery, or possibly both. It leaves you alone, with Soobin, on the couch, in the dark, with nothing to do except eat pizza. 

“Where were we in this plot?” Soobin asks.

“Plot?”

“Yeah, uh, we were just getting done watching Zazu in the bone cage.” Soobin thinks to himself for a moment, then starts singing. “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts, dee-da-lee dee --”

“Here they are a-standing in a row!” you sing along, and the two of you banter out how the rest of the scene goes. Then, you move on, trying to remember what’s next until you settle on the fact that Nala hasn’t shown up yet. In the Lion King movie, the main character, Simba the lion, runs away from home after tragedy happens. He grows up away from his home with no worries at all, trying to forget his past. But when his childhood best friend, Nala, travels to find him, it brings up a whole bunch of memories that they weren’t expecting.

“I can see what’s happening,” Soobin parrots in Nathan Lane’s accent.

“What?” you ask, a grin on your face.

“And they don’t have a clue!”

“Who?”

“They’ll fall in love and here’s the bottom line...our trio’s down to two.”

“Oh.” You both laugh, and then you both start randomly singing Can You Feel The Love Tonight in two separate keys. When you stop laughing, you find yourself looking at Soobin. There’s a huge smile on his face, and he’s smiling at you. 

“What are the rest of the words?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Oh, wait, weren’t we supposed to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight?”

“Oh, yeah.” You start in on the ohi-mbube s while Soobin warbles over top of your accompaniment. This gets more giggles out of both of you. 

“And if he falls in love tonight,” you pick up suddenly, “it can be assumed...his carefree days with us are history, in short, our pal is doooooooooomed.”

“In short, our pal is doooooooooooooooomed,” Soobin joins in at the end. “What are we doing, little bunny?”

“Being bored because we have no TV to watch. So I guess we’re making our own TV. What happens next?”

“Simba sees the reflection of his father in the water and it tells him to go home.” Soobin lowers his voice just like James Earl Jones. “Remember, Simba!”

“And the monkey is crazy.”

“We knew the monkey was crazy.” Soobin looks around. “You know what, I didn’t even notice Beomgyu left.”

“He went upstairs.”

There’s a palpable silence between the two of you, now that you’ve both stopped singing. There’s no more music to fill the air. Just you and Soobin, sitting on the couch, sitting way closer than you first realized. The lights are completely off, but the curtains are drawn away from the windows, so you have still been able to see Soobin’s shadow this entire time.

He hasn’t left you. Not once.

“And then Simba goes home and takes Pride Rock back from the evil Scar,” you whisper. “Long live the king.”

“Long live the king,” Soobin says, his voice soft, and when he leans forward you don’t move. He brushes his lips against yours, quickly, quietly, and then you lean forward and kiss him back. There’s a sudden round of thunder and lightning outside, but you’re not paying attention to anything but Soobin’s lips on yours. You take his shoulders in your hands, lean into the kiss, smile. 

There’s something about this that feels undeniably right.

He pulls back. It’s still raining like crazy outside. “You...wanted that as much as I did.”

“I did.” And you lean forward and kiss him again, and you kiss him and there are no words spoken between the two of you until the power comes back on. When it finally does, Soobin drives home, but not before promising that he will be back for you tomorrow.

Which he will. Because tomorrow is Saturday. 

“Before you get in my car,” Soobin says on Saturday morning, “I need for you to understand that this is a date. Is that okay with you?”

And you nod. “This is a date.”

So your actual first date with Soobin begins. And it begins in a good way, because there is a small bouquet of flowers on the passenger seat! “I’m not sure you would have liked flowers,” Soobin says, “so I went simple. Are white roses okay?”

“They are more than okay.” You know it’s the gesture that counts, and it’s not like Soobin is giving you a dozen red roses and professing his love for you. It’s like whatever is between the two of you is just blossoming into its own beautiful flower. And you lean forward, and this time he’s expecting it, and you give him a quick kiss as a thank you. 

“You still have that speech that’s due for tomorrow?” Soobin asks.

“Yeah, but I think I’ve got most of it done. Do you want to hear it later? It’s just on my phone.”

“Sure.”

“Where are we going? I’ve been everywhere in Peotone.”

“Well, I haven’t. You don’t know that, right? We’ve lived in Peotone for a while, but back when my dad was a farmer we actually lived outside of Bloomington.” That’s more than an hour away from where you live, as the crow flies. “And clearly I get out a lot. So I hear all this talk about a windmill, and I pass it all the time, but I’ve never actually been TO it. I figured since you’ve lived in Peotone all your life, you could tell me about it.”

“Oh, my God. You’re a nerd.”

“Your nerd,” Soobin says, eyes on the road. You can’t believe that he’s making you be a bit of a tour guide on your day off from school, but it’s not the end of the world. And he’s right: you have lived in Peotone your entire life. 

The two of you drive into town and down West Corning Avenue, parking on a side road before crossing the street. Peotone is a small town -- not quite a one stoplight town, but much smaller than the Bloomington that Soobin had originally lived in. The only ‘claim to fame’ it has is the windmill that sits in the middle of town. If you only glance at it, you’d never know it was a windmill; the blades are missing from the front.

“So when they redid the mill,” you explain as you approach the windmill, “they put new sails up. But there was a big storm, and lightning struck one of them. They took them all down soon after that. They’d rather have the mill standing than there be any other issues.” You sit on the front steps of the mill. “It’s closed on Saturdays. We should have come tomorrow, but we have our banquet.”

“So this is the famous windmill,” Soobin says as he sits by you.

“We kind of learn everything about it in school. There’s a festival every year in October, have you been to it?”

“Oh, yeah, many times.”

“Then you probably know some of the story behind the windmill. Someone decided it would be a good idea to build it for the town, back in the 1800’s. There was a guy -- crud, what was his name --”

“Rathje?” Soobin asks, looking at his phone.

“Yeah, can’t remember if it was the father or the son, but he took over it and made it into a big business for Peotone. It worked up until the beginning of the 20th century, then fell apart for eons until local people decided to revitalize it as a landmark.”

“The Internet is saying the windmill didn’t always have sails. Something about it also used steam power.”

“Soobin, you’re getting to know my town better than I do!”

“Is that a bad thing?” You both laugh, and then he leans on your shoulder. Before long, the two of you get hungry, so you pause to take some silly selfies in front of the windmill before you go. Soobin gets one of you waving your arms like sails, positioning the camera in a way that your fingers could legitimately be wings on the windmill. 

Then, you both get back in his car and drive across town. Because you visited the windmill today, Soobin wants to go to the Windmill Family Restaurant. It’s not one of Beomgyu’s usual haunts, but you’ve been before. It’s more of a diner than anything else, and the two of you grab a booth, share a huge plate of fries, and get two heaping plates of greasy diner food. The waitress recognizes Soobin as Minnie’s brother, and they catch up on what Minnie is up to. 

After you finish lunch, you go back up to Soobin’s house. You put the finishing touches on your speech while Soobin feeds the bunnies, then go into the side room with him. Soobin is holding one of the other rabbits, and the others are out of their cages, hopping around the linoleum floor. “Sorry the floor’s hard, but it’s easy to clean this floor than carpet,” he explains, and you know exactly what he means.

One of the rabbits hops up to you and sniffs your leg. “Oh, that’s Mittens, I think she likes you,” Soobin says. She’s a grey bunny with perky ears that stand up on their own, and you reach over and pet her, softly, gently. There’s something calming about this moment, not having to be anywhere, not needing anything, just sitting with Soobin and his rabbits. 

It’s a beautiful peace that you wish could last.

You stay over for a while, not particularly content to let your day end, and Soobin makes you dinner. It’s a simple affair: spaghetti and Texas toast, a very basic meal that nearly any high schooler could make without burning down their house. You sit together at the kitchen table, surrounded by granite countertops and magnets on the refrigerator and a chair with one wobbly leg. It feels very...homey, to be here with Soobin like this.

“You got one more year of your school stuff, right?” you ask.

“Mmhmm.”

“Then what?”

“Kankakee.” About fifteen minutes south of Peotone is a bigger city, Kankakee, that has a community college. Lots of students who graduate from Peotone go there before transitioning into careers. “Agriculture, I think. Though I might go into computer science. I’d love to own my own farm someday. With rabbits, of course, but other livestock. It’s a pipe dream, though, I’m sure my parents would want me to do something else.” You’re both acutely aware that “owning a farm” would have made sense fifty years ago, but in today’s world of agriculture in America, farmers have to manage bigger fields for less profit. Forced to grow corn nonstop for fuel and high fructose corn syrup, there’s not much deviance that can be found. Not to mention all of the legal regulations on how animals must be raised. 

“If you want to make it happen, you can,” you say. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll be one of the first organic farmers in Peotone.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, that’s really expensive.” Soobin finishes his spaghetti. “All right, let’s hear that speech.”

You pull out your phone and scroll through your notes app until you find the speech. “Okay, let me know if it’s bad.”

“Just say it.”

You take a deep breath. “ Welcome, students and parents, to our end of year banquet. Tonight, we celebrate the achievements that we have done over the past year. But we also celebrate those, like myself, who are graduating this year. We are those who have bright futures ahead of ourselves. We are just at the beginning of our lives, our start line. High school is not the end goal, but the very beginning of the journey of life.

This journey can take many twists and turns over the years. There will be those of us who experience hardship all of our lives. Others may luck into a life with no pain or suffering. We may go to college, get married, have kids, find excellent jobs. We may also get divorced or lose our jobs, and some of those events aren’t always in our control. Our lives are fleetingly short, and it’s important to remember that. So while each one of us makes plans for the future, each one of us has dreams, it’s important that we chase those dreams, because you never know what tomorrow will hold. Let us take what has happened in our past and move forward to a brighter tomorrow, together.

“That last part is super cheesy,” Soobin says. “Who says that? A brighter tomorrow, together? Sounds like something out of a commercial.”

“Yeah, well, I think it works.” There’s something weirdly special to you about that last phrase, a brighter tomorrow, together. You don’t know exactly what it is, but you leave the phrase in anyway. “Do you think it’s too short?”

“Nah, I think it’s a good length. All she wants you to do is say it before the awards, right?”

“Yeah. How about, Thank you for this opportunity, and congratulations to all of the recipients, to end?”

“Perfect. Sounds good.” He gets up, takes your plate, and kisses you on the forehead. “Stick around. I’ve got one more surprise for you.”

You help with the dishes, and then Soobin puts the TV back on for a while. You watch a bit mindlessly until Soobin tells you it’s time to go, and when you walk out of the house it’s dark outside. The two of you get in the car, and you drive out west, past the Country Place takeout station that bikers always like, almost to Wilton Center which is a real one-stoplight town. Soobin takes a right into the preserve, then goes all the way to the back.

“This technically isn’t open right now, but nobody seems to care,” he says as he parks the car. The two of you walk a short distance, and the paved road turns to dirt just before the trees part to an empty field, fallow for the year, a huge cutaway clearing that nobody has taken care of for a while. And when you look up, you notice there’s not a cloud in the sky, and all of the stars are shining.

“Wow.”

“I knew it would be good for this tonight.” Soobin pops the trunk and pulls out a blanket. He puts it on the ground, then motions for you to sit beside him. The two of you eventually lay back and look up at the stars, a million pinpricks of light against their own dark blanket, so high above you that you could never dream of touching them.

Tonight the moon came up, it was nearly full

Way down here on earth, I could feel its pull

“Did you plan ahead for this?” you ask Soobin.

“A little. The Internet said it would be a good night for this. I do this all the time, though.” He relaxes. “Sometimes I come out here just to think, or I bring a bunny or two -- they don’t hop that far away, they know I have the good snacks.” And you both laugh.

The weight of gravity, or just the lure of light

Made me want to leave my only home tonight

“It’s beautiful.”

“Have you seen it before?”

“Yeah, but usually from the Gyro Loco parking lot. This is nice.”

Soobin is quiet for a moment, then, “I wanted to share this with you. As kind of a thank you, for being here this week.” There are words unspoken, of course. Losing a beloved family pet is hard, but you’re sure it’s even harder without the rest of the family physically with you. Soobin probably could have hung out with just about anybody this week; he might have even gotten through this loss with his friends online. But there’s something in your heart that tells you that it had to be you, it had to be this week, because in retrospect it feels like an end and a beginning all at once.

I thought a light went out, but now a candle shines

I thought my tears wouldn’t stop, then I dried my eyes

And after all of this, the truth that holds me here

Is that this emptiness is something not to fear

“I like hanging out with you,” you say, wrapping your arms around yourself.

“You haven’t stopped wearing that hoodie.”

“Ehh. It’s nice.” You pull your hands back. “Also, look! Sweater paws!”

“You can have it, if you want.”

“Really? I mean, I don’t need it.”

“I like it. On you.” Soobin pauses. “It looks good on you.”

So I’ll keep wondering how we know where we belong

After all the journeys made, and the journeys yet to come

When I feel like giving up instead of going on

When you hold onto the sleeves of the hoodie, it feels like home. It feels like this is where you’ve always been, even though you haven’t even known Soobin for a week. “Is it okay that we kind of came together like this?” you ask. “Like, we met, and your rabbit died, and now we’re just here like this and --”

Soobin reaches over and takes your hand. “I think so. Is it okay that I want to be here with you, like this? Do you want to be with me?” 

You both glance at each other, then laugh, the tension broken. Soobin struggles to get his words back. “I mean --”

“I think I would like that very much,” you say. “I don’t really know what’s next, but I’d like to figure it out with you. If that’s okay with you.”

“It is.” And Soobin interlaces his fingers with yours.

Yes, I’m just wondering how we know where we belong

Is it in the arc of the moon, leaving shadows on the lawn?

In the path of fireflies, and a single bird at dawn

Singing in between here and gone?

Soobin’s family doesn’t go to church, so you sleep in instead. You like going to church, but you usually only go when you’re invited. Not sure why. That’s just how it’s always been.

You prepare for the banquet and scour your closet for at least thirty minutes before deciding you already know what you’re wearing to the banquet. So you put on your favorite outfit, and you throw Soobin’s hoodie on top. Then, you get ready and jump in the car with Beomgyu; he’s got his guitar in the trunk, and he has to be there early to set up the band equipment.

Peotone High’s awards banquet starts at six PM sharp, and you already know pretty well how it will go. The banquet includes dinner, and everybody sits at long tables, and food is served, usually some turkey or ham dinner with mashed potatoes, and variants for other dietary options. There’s usually some performance to start off with, then a student speech, then the food is distributed. After the food, there’s usually another performance -- this is where Waeng comes in -- and then the awards are given out. Lastly, there’s a speech made by a teacher, and then everybody gets to go home.

“Hey hey,” Rue says when you and Soobin enter through the cafeteria doors. The cafeteria is a holding area for everybody who’s doing something special for the banquet. Rue is back there, in a long blue dress, her hair back up in a bun. More importantly, she’s holding her violin! Peotone doesn’t have a high school orchestra; Rue is the only person in the school who plays violin. Everybody else either clunks along in marching band, or you have Beomgyu’s friends Shelly and Kai in his three piece rock band. But Rue -- Rue is something else. She’s won contests all over the region, and you’re certain when she goes to Bible school she’ll continue to play. 

“I didn’t know you were playing for us tonight!”

Rue smiles, shrugging it off, modest as ever. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise. Is it?”

“It is! I’m excited now.”

“So I will play first, and then you will give your speech. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds perfect.”

“Great but...uh, are you gonna be wearing that hoodie on stage?”

Oh. “I’ll remember to take it off,” you tell Rue, and then you and Soobin go into the gymnasium. All of the tables and chairs are already set up. There are long, white tablecloths on every one of the tables, and there are simple folding chairs with ribbons on them, all lined up in a row. You count the tables -- eight, nine, ten -- and then remember the seats are also for guests and family members. Everybody who’s anybody is coming, from the basketball team that won regionals this year to the mathalon team that can never catch a break. 

“Do you want to sit together?” Soobin asks. 

You nod, immediately. Beomgyu isn’t sitting down -- he’s focused on his band, and these type of events aren’t his kind of thing anyway. Besides, Soobin has no family, and neither do you. So it makes sense for the two of you to sit together. So you pick two random seats and you plop in, Soobin on your left. Soon, the seats start to fill up around you, and you check your phone -- 5:45. Knowing Rue, knowing she’s the president of the student council and the first act on the program tonight, she’ll start promptly at six on the dot.

“Are you up for winning anything?” Soobin asks.

“Nope. Just got my speech to give after Rue is done. What about you?”

“I think I have an award for science. I’m really good at life science, because, well, rabbits. And farming.” Soobin laughs. “Super exciting.”

“Do you wish Tobin would have been here for this?”

“For this? No, he’s a rabbit, he would need to stay home.” And you both laugh, and he puts his arm around you. “Thanks for sitting with me. I’m glad I don’t have to do this alone.”

“Yeah, it would suck.”

“I’d rather be with someone I love, it just makes more sense that way --” Soobin pauses and looks at you with wide eyes just as you look at him. “I --” And you both laugh, again, as if this just seems normal at this point, like you’re long-lost lovers who have been together forever instead of brand new best friends hinting at something new. 

“You can say it. It’s okay.”

“Nah, little bunny, let me wait until later, okay? If I’m gonna say it to you, I want it to be special. I want to mean it with my whole heart.” 

You put your hand in Soobin’s as good old Mr. Johnson steps onto the stage in the gymnasium. The tables are now filled with students, families, and friends, all seated and ready for dinner, all dressed nicely. It reminds you that you should take off Soobin’s hoodie, but you don’t want to yet. 

Mr. Johnson pulls out a small card and clears his throat in front of a podium. “Thank you for coming out tonight to our Peotone High School Awards Banquet. Starting off our evening, playing Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, the Fugue, Rue Pasquale.”

Everybody applauds as Rue goes onto stage. She looks elegant in her dress, and when she puts her violin up, she commands everybody’s attention when she starts to play. You’ve heard her play plenty of times before, but never this piece. It’s a short section of a longer sonata, a lilting piece that goes on and on, two strings, then three, and Rue plays it so elegantly that you almost forget anything else exists. 

You lean your head on Soobin’s shoulder, hand still in his, hoodie wrapped around you. Everything seems so perfect right now, so peaceful. It could be awesome if things would just stay this way, like this moment could last forever. 

Chapter Text

In the middle of America, in a state called Illinois, there lies a small town named Peotone. Even though it is very close to Chicago, one of the biggest cities in the world, one would never be able to tell. Peotone is a picture of Americana, surrounded by cornfields on all sides. The skies are blue, the roads are long and rambling, and every day is peaceful.

It’s here in Peotone where you live, just outside of town, at 10001 West Wilmington Road. It’s a picturesque old farmhouse surrounded by fields that your family hasn’t ever owned, but are still tended to. It’s just far enough away from town that you have to drive to see your friends. When you step outside your front door every morning, you only see a couple of houses in the distance. Everything else is wide open space. 

It’s where you grew up. It’s the only house you’ve ever known.

When you wake up, it’s never to an alarm. These days, it’s always to the sound of the shower starting up in the bathroom. You’ve lived alone for some time, but recently you had a friend of yours move into the spare room. His name is Beomgyu, and he sings in the shower. It’s usually something by his favorite band, BTS, so you’re always awake by the time he’s done, and you’re ready to kick him out to prepare for the school day yourself.

Beomgyu doesn’t pay any rent for staying with you. There’s usually nobody at his house, since he insists his “dad is a mess.” That and he prefers to live with someone, always referencing this one time he almost caught his house on fire. So it’s almost like the two of you are roommates. You know. If you were roommates who fight over the shower in the morning, then go to Dollar General and purchase straight sugar cereal for breakfast and takeout from Gyro Loco every weekend. It’s nice to have a constant friend around, though you’re certainly not tied at the hip. 

The other perk of having Beomgyu as your friend is that he has a car! If you get ready for school before he leaves, he is able to take you. Otherwise, you have to take the bus... like this morning, because you completely forget where your backpack is and spend fifteen minutes looking for it. You find it just in time to run out and catch the bus to school, sitting in the back and preparing yourself for the day.

It’s toward the end of the school year, and as a senior, you’re going to be graduating soon. You won’t have many more of these days left. And you intend to cherish each and every one of them. 

Peotone High School is an easy ride from your house: the bus drives into town, goes past the McDonalds, and turns left at the bank. You jump off the bus, following everybody else towards the school’s front doors, when someone yells, “Watch out!” And before you can move, you feel something slam into the side of your head.

You swear for a second that you see stars, but you’re still standing. Then, you feel someone grab you by the arm. “Oh my God, are you okay?” When you turn, it’s a boy -- a very handsome boy at that, wearing a Peotone varsity jacket and holding a basketball. You’re able to put the pieces together: the basketball was what hit you in the head.

“Uh, I think so?” you say, rubbing your head.

“Good, sorry about that.” He glances at you, awkwardly, then, “Let me know if that’s still hurting later, okay? I gotta go.” And he jogs off, towards a group of guys also in varsity jackets. You can’t really remember who he is -- you think he’s on the basketball team, but you can’t be sure. Besides, he did apologize, and it doesn’t hurt that bad.

So you straighten yourself up and you walk through the front doors. It’s Monday, the start of a new week. You stop at your locker to make sure your head is okay, glancing at it in the small mirror. Everything looks all right, and just before you’re about to close it, you notice there’s an envelope on top of your books. You look at it, and it says your name, but you stuff it into your bag and go quickly to your first stop of the day. Whoever has written you some weird note is gonna have to wait. T here’s one thing you have to do first. 

Every graduating senior has to meet with the school’s guidance counselor, Mr. Johnson, to plan their future after Peotone. Your next to last meeting is this morning with him, instead of your first class. So you go straight to his office, which has no air conditioning and therefore is sweltering hot. Mr. Johnson flips through your file, and you sit on the chair across from his desk. There’s a clock somewhere in this room that is ticking, and it reminds you of a bomb that could explode at any minute.

“So.” Mr. Johnson leans on his hands. “You really don’t have a plan, do you?”

You shake your head. “Nope.” You’ve fed him the runaround for weeks now. To be honest, you’re still waiting for that one thing, for lightning to strike, for the clouds to part and for your destiny to drop into your lap. And it hasn’t happened yet. So you figure you’ll graduate, then hang around Peotone, get a part time job, and wait for it. 

“You really need to be thinking about this,” Mr. Johnson says for the umpteenth time. “What are you going to do with your life? It’s up to you, but you have to take action. You can’t just coast through, or else other people will be in control of your life. If you lose that control, then you’ll never get it back. Stay in control, kiddo.”

Thankfully the meeting ends after that, and you’re dismissed back to the hall. It’s an in-between period, before your second class for the day, so you head to your locker. As you unlock it and open it, hoping for a chance to get to read this letter, you hear someone call down the hall. “Hey hey!”

“Oh, hey, Rue!” Only Rue calls out to you like that. Rue is your best friend; you’ve seriously known each other since third grade, when she shared her apple with you at lunch. Rue’s hardly changed over the years; she’s grown taller, but she still has that same blonde hair pulled back, still wears the same ankle-length dresses. Other students at Peotone might call Rue a prude, but to you, she is perfectly Rue. She also uses her attention to rules and regulations to help the student council as its president; when she graduates in a few weeks, she’ll be heading to Bible school in Missouri. So these are also the last few weeks with Rue before your friendship gets harder to maintain.

“I have a question for you,” she asks, looking a bit nervous. “You know that end of the year banquet happening Sunday night?”

You think back. Ahh, yes, you know about this. It’s a big banquet where all of the students are invited to dinner, and the end of the year awards will be given out. Beomgyu won’t stop talking about it because his band is performing during the presentation. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“So I kind of have a small problem. I was gonna have one of the basketball players, Dayton, give a speech at the beginning. They have a student do a speech every year, usually a senior, something about looking back on their four years, a little mini graduation speech kind of thing. Well, he texted me over the weekend, says he can’t do it.” She clasps her hands together, as if she’s praying. “Can you do it instead? I literally don’t know anybody else who can do it. And, you’re like, the BEST writer at Peotone.”

Rue isn’t wrong on that. You could go either way on the crowd thing, you suppose. But you are a pretty good writer. Your book report on To Kill a Mockingbird that you wrote during your junior year won several end of year awards and was even published in a quarterly education magazine in Chicago. If anybody can write something in a week, it’s you. “Okay. I’ll do it. But don’t expect me to talk perfectly in front of the crowd! I might be reading it from the paper!”

“Oh, that’s fine, that’s fine, thank you!” And then Rue is off to her next class, quickly. She doesn’t have a cell phone, probably never will, so you can’t text her about it. But you can start to think of something to write. A speech for the end of the year banquet, huh? Perhaps you should look up some inspirational graduation speeches online in the library --

“There you are!” You turn, and it’s the same jock boy who had the basketball issue earlier. “I just wanted to check in and make sure you were okay. I’m sorry about that, really, I am. Was just dribbling and the ball got out of control. You sure you’re okay?”

You can’t help but laugh, and now you remember who this is. Who could forget Choi Yeonjun? Especially after this year when he made the winning three-point shot at regionals? He was practically famous there for a two week stint in February. So he’s the one who beaned you in the head with a ball! “Yeah, I’m fine. No concussion, no nothing.”

“That’s good. Hey, let me make it up to you. Can I buy you lunch?”

“Wait, you mean Choi Yeonjun is buying us lunch?” Rue asks. 

Lunch time at Peotone is a simple affair; the lunch room hardly ever has what you want, so you bring your own, and so does Rue. But if Yeonjun is paying for you both now, then who are you to complain?

Apparently this also means that Rue and you are sitting with Yeonjun, and with Yeonjun means at his table. Which means you’re surrounded by loud but well behaved jock boys as you eat. Yeonjun pops all around, always moving, talking to somebody, popular as ever. “This is the whole team! We got Dayton, Demetrius, Beni Parker and Kyle on the end there, then Spowers is next to you, Rue, and Pintel and Benson and Russell on the other side. We always eat together.”

“That’s cool.” You pause. “Your last name’s Choi, right? Are you related to Beomgyu?”

Rue tugs on your sleeve. “Don’t be rude. They’re like Josh Smith and Ashley Smith.”

“Oh, okay.” Josh and Ashley have no relation but the same last name. They joke about it a lot. “There was one more Choi, right?”

“You mean Minnie, she graduated last year.” Rue glares at you. “Eat your food.” And this time, you do.

The rest of the day passes relatively uneventfully. When you get home, you remember that there had been a letter in your locker to start the day. You pull it out of your bag and tentatively open it. It’s a small card, something with a scene from Antarctica on it, and lots of penguins. The handwriting inside is nice and neat, but you don’t know who this is at all.

Hello! I know you probably don’t know who I am, but that’s okay. I’m a freshman and you’re a senior and if I don’t get this off my chest, I’ll live with it until the day I die. I’ve had a major crush on you since I started at Peotone High. Please don’t let this affect anything between us, okay? I’m not expecting anything. I just had to say it. I hope you have a good rest of your school year! Thank you, Kai.

You know this kid -- there’s only one Kai in the school, and it’s Kai Huening, the freshman who plays drums in Beomgyu’s band. It reminds you. You knock on Beomgyu’s door before you sleep. “Hey, Beommie?”

Beomgyu is thankfully dressed when he opens the door. “Yeah?”

“Don’t forget about your band practice tomorrow, okay?”

“I won’t. You’re always reminding me, flower. I got this.” You’re not quite sure when Beomgyu took up calling you flower, but you’re used to it by now.

You don’t tell Beomgyu about the note, but you do put it in your bedside table. You decide not to bring it up with Kai -- he seems pretty set on just telling you about this random crush and leaving it be. Which makes sense. He’s a freshman, you’re a graduating senior, and you really don’t know him other than being Beomgyu’s friend. With that, you sleep and you get a ride to school from Beomgyu in the morning. He blasts some song called I Need U on repeat the entire time, singing along with song lyrics that you can barely understand just from the sheer volume of it all. 

This time, when you walk through the halls, it seems like everybody is saying hi to you. You’ve never prided yourself on being super popular, but now the entire basketball team knows your name. It’s so weird, and it stays on your mind during study hall, even as you’re supposed to be focusing on this speech you’re supposed to write for Rue. Couldn’t Rue at least have given you a prompt? Well, everybody will be there, so it might as well be something inspiring, a look back at lessons learned, that type of thing. The teachers will love it. Maybe you’ll even put it on a resume. 

Mr. Johnson’s words float back to you. What are you going to do with your life? Write inspirational speeches, apparently. 

You sit with Rue in your usual space and have lunch, today brought from home as usual. While you eat with her, you can’t help but look over at Yeonjun and his usual group of buddies. He...actually doesn’t look nearly as engaged today as he did yesterday. His phone is glued to his ear, and while he’s nodding with the others, he’s speaking in what looks to be hushed tones with someone unseen. For a minute, he looks up, and his eyes catch yours. Then, he smiles at you, and you find yourself blushing.

“Who are you smiling at?” Rue asks.

“Nobody of importance,” you say, and you turn back to your regularly scheduled lunchbox. The rest of the day passes normally, and you’re about to go looking for Beomgyu for a ride home when you see Yeonjun again in the lobby. He looks like he’s just hung up with someone on the phone again, and he honestly looks like he’s going to cry.

“You okay?” you ask, kind of randomly.

He turns to you. “Oh. Yeah. I’m okay. I’m…” He sighs, then smiles and looks at his phone. “I just got clearance from Northwestern -- I mean -- let me start over.” He laughs. “You know me, but you don’t like know me, do you?”

You think back to what you know about Yeonjun. Most of it concerns basketball; he took over the point guard position from a graduating senior as a freshman, and he’s led the varsity team for three years now. Other than him being the talk of the halls, you don’t -- oh, wait. You do remember something that happened, back in February, you think. There was a big bake sale for Valentines’ Day, and the funds went to Yeonjun’s family. 

“Nothing other than you being on the basketball team,” you say. “You’re not in my year.”

“You didn’t go to any of the basketball games this past year?”

You shake your head.

“Ahh, so you really don’t know, then.” Yeonjun is quiet, looking out the front doors of the school. “My mom’s in the hospital, up in Chicago. It’s just me and Mom, so it’s been really hard paying for everything, which is why we’ve had to do all those fundraisers.”

“I remember the Valentines’ Day one.”

“Yeah, and all the half-and-half profits, too. That’s how we’ve paid rent this whole time. But Mom’s finally in remission, and, well, she missed all of my games while she’s been doing radiation up there. But the hospital just gave me permission to come and get her tomorrow. She can come to the banquet and see me get my awards.”

“That’s awesome!” So it turns out it was a good thing that he was on the phone all day.

Yeonjun watches as the buses board. “Don’t you need to get going? Or -- do you need a ride? I don’t know where you live.”

“I can take a ride.” You text Beomgyu and let him know, and then you follow Yeonjun to the parking lot. He has a small grey Toyota, showing its age but still quite functional. 

“Where you at?”

“West of town on Wilmington.”

“Ahh, that farmhouse with the big windmill outside?”

“Next door, I think. We’re not that cool.” 

Yeonjun starts the car and backs out, driving with a certain finesse that you wish Beomgyu sometimes had (he pays more attention to the music than the driving). Yeonjun talks over the noise of the engine, without music on, and you soon realize that the ten minute trip home isn’t quite enough to have a conversation with Yeonjun. You’ve managed to talk about his family and yours, but you want to know more.

“Can I grab your number?”

“Sure, though I’ll be in Chicago all day tomorrow,” Yeonjun says, putting your number in his phone. “I’m not grabbing Mom tomorrow, I’m just visiting. The hospital has extended visiting hours on Wednesdays, and I haven’t seen her in three weeks. So I said, screw it, I’m skipping school and going to Chicago to see my mom early.” There’s a huge grin on Yeonjun’s face. “She doesn’t even know I’m getting her on Saturday for the banquet. I can’t wait to tell her.”

The thought of Chicago sounds wistful to you for some reason. You don’t go up there super often, as you don’t have any reason to. But you’ve been to the big city on your share of school field trips and concert events. It makes you smile. “You going up alone?”

“Yeah, it’s not like I have anybody to go with. Unless you want to come with for some reason.” And suddenly, it sounds like the greatest idea in the world. Yeonjun isn’t a total stranger, after all. And you don’t have to really be at school. As a senior, you already know you’re graduating, and at this point the senior classes are fun and games, extended movie sessions, and bonus lessons in preparation for college. 

“Okay,” you say with a smile. “I’ll do it.”

Yeonjun looks back at you, shocked. “Really?”

“Sure, why not?” And you smile back. It might seem odd, but s ometimes all it takes is one conversation to find a new friend.

You wake up on Wednesday to Beomgyu singing in the shower again; it gives you enough time to gather your things and text Yeonjun for him to pick you up. You’re thankfully able to buy enough time to let Beomgyu know you’re not going to school. “You don’t have to cover for me. What are they gonna do, give me detention? I’m graduating.”

“Are you gonna be back in time for rehearsal tonight?”

“Yeah, I think so. Listen, I’ll call you if anything comes up, okay?” And you give him a quick hug around the shoulders, then head out. Yeonjun’s car is already parked out front, and you jump in.

“Any traveling tunes?” Yeonjun asks as he hands you what has to be an archaic book of CDs. You flip through it as he drives toward Peotone and onto the highway, and you finally pick a blank disc with the words Green Day on it. 

“This is older than dirt,” you say as you put the CD into the car’s player.

“It was my dad’s,” Yeonjun explained. “I inherited it from him.” There’s a pause. “He’s gone now, so...I just have the CDs.”

“Oh.”

“I like listening to them, though. It makes me feel closer to him. Never really knew him all that well, so I let Billie Joe Armstrong stand in for him.” Then the opening guitar lick for American Idiot plays, and you allow Jesus of Suburbia to take you away.

Driving anywhere in Peotone is semi-scenic, if only for the countless fields of gold that surround you. In the winter, they are barren; in the spring, they are dug-up dirt being prepared for growing; in the summer, the wheat and corn blows in the wind; and in the fall, the crops are harvested and it all starts over again. The sky is blue, not a single cloud visible for miles, as you drive through Monee and then up through the suburbs. 

Peotone is always closer to Chicago than you remember. You’re so used to small town life that it hardly ever occurs to you that there’s something bigger literally footsteps from you. But Yeonjun looks like he knows this route well. He drives with a confidence that you don’t even have behind the wheel. You don’t drive often, but Yeonjun makes it look so simple.

And you do get to talk to him like you wanted to before. You talk about the music playing, about Yeonjun’s dad, then about your family or what you can remember of them. You discover you both live alone, which might be odd for a couple of high schoolers, but you both make it work. Yeonjun talks about how much he also loves Gyro Loco and then goes into a full discussion about his favorite flavors of instant ramen. He prefers the flavors that are imported from Korea, but “with the American stuff, it’s Maruchan all the way. Beef or chicken, it doesn’t matter.” 

You make a mental note that, if Yeonjun ever comes over for dinner, you need to make some instant ramen. Not that he’ll ever come over to your place. Not in a million years. 

Cornfields turn to suburbs turn to even busier cities and roads as you get closer. Yeonjun drives on the freeway, eyes on the road the whole time, as the city of Chicago slowly appears in the distance. “Been a while since you’ve been here?” Yeonjun asks.

“Yeah.”

“I’m here almost every week. Used to be every day for a while there, until the gifts we got meant Mom could stay.” 

“You drove your mom every day to Chicago for treatment?” you infer.

“Yeah. It was hard.”

“And you’d come back to school and play ball and then go get her again?”

“Yeah. It’s just Mom and me.” And you can’t even begin to wrap your mind around that as Yeonjun merges onto another freeway, slowing down as more and more cars enter the freeway. This early in the morning, thousands upon thousands of commuters are driving into Chicago, taking buses and trains in, trying to get to work on time. And all you can think of is Yeonjun, in this commute, day after day, with his ailing mother in the passenger seat, then passing her off to doctors and nurses before returning home, going to school, playing basketball, then picking her up again. It must have been so much work before he could afford the room for her.

“So she’s doing better now?”

“Yeah, they’re almost done with radiation. Then she’s got some on-site physical therapy that they want her to do. They’re okay with me bringing her home on Saturday, but she has to go back on Monday morning for her next radiation treatment.”

The city is all around you now as Yeonjun merges, slowly, then takes a huge looping exit to the city streets around you. You can’t help but gaze out the window at all of the buildings, only recognizing the Willis Tower before Yeonjun points out a series of old-school campus buildings. “That’s Northwestern, that’s where my mom is.”

“Northwestern like the university?”

“Yeah, they have medical buildings down here instead of up north.” Yeonjun pulls into a parking garage, takes a ticket, and parks. Then, he goes around to the other side of the car and opens the door for you. “I have to be a gentleman, now, don’t I?”

The two of you walk together through a series of hallways before arriving in the lobby. A man in a turban checks you in at a front desk, then takes your temperature and hands both you and Yeonjun a mask. Then, you’re escorted to an elevator, where you ride up and then walk down another long hallway before arriving at a room.

Yeonjun slips his mask on, then pushes the curtain aside as you do the same. The hospital room is big enough that you can stand in one corner and stay generally out of sight, letting Yeonjun have time with his mother. You check your phone and notice that Rue has emailed you, probably to remind you about your speech. You make a note to email her back in a little bit, then stand by the door and listen to Yeonjun. “Yeah, it’s so good to see you, Mom, I just -- hah, it’s so great, I know. Listen, they gave me clearance to take you home on Saturday, you get to come to my banquet!” And you hear what must be his mother’s voice, quiet but excited, and you smile.

You get a chance to meet Yeonjun’s mother, albeit briefly. She’s white, which surprises you until you figure Yeonjun’s father must have been Korean. She is very kind, but frail, and she is on oxygen at the moment. 

“She’ll be on and off the oxygen when she gets home permanently,” Yeonjun says as the two of you head back toward the elevator. “Hopefully soon she’ll be strong enough to fully breathe on her own. I thought she was gonna have to stay here forever.”

“Forever?” you ask as you enter the elevator and the doors close behind you.

“Yeah. First there was surgery, then there was all this chemotherapy, and now there’s the radiation and physical therapy. After that, she’ll be allowed to go home but will be on bed rest for a while, just in case she needs to come back for anything. There’s not really any place in Peotone that can take her, we have to go to Kankakee if there’s a problem, and that has scared me one too many times…” About fifteen minutes south of Peotone is a bigger city, Kankakee, and that’s where the nearest hospital is.

He pauses. “I’m ranting, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, a little bit, but it’s okay. She’s your mother. You’re allowed to be worried.”

He takes a deep breath, and you realize just how nervewracking this is for him. So you put your hand on his shoulder, and he smiles. “Thanks. I needed that. Sometimes I just get so caught up in my own emotions, you know?”

When you get back to the lobby, you follow Yeonjun through the big doors until you realize you’re not headed toward the parking garage. He pulls you to another Northwestern building, this one with a donut and coffee shop on the first floor. “I always come here, pick anything you want, my treat.”

“No, I couldn’t,” you say, but Yeonjun seems insistent on not taking no for an answer. So you pick out your favorite drink, and Yeonjun gets a cafe mocha with extra whipped cream on top. The two of you take your drinks to-go and walk outside. There’s something about Chicago that feels immediately normal and familiar, even though you could probably count the times you’ve been here on both of your hands. There’s a fenced-in greenspace to the left of you, and tall buildings all around, part of the medical complex, part of Chicago’s greater spread of metropolitan life. It’s just hot enough outside that you have to question why Yeonjun is drinking a hot coffee drink, but he laughs it off and you play it off as well. 

The two of you walk together along the greenspace. Cars zip past you. Kids run down the street, playing impromptu games of tag while their parents look on. Yeonjun’s lived in Peotone nearly as long as you have; you’ve only been one or two circles separated, what with him being a year behind you and therefore not in many of your classes. You both discover that you took the same biology class your sophomore year! So you’ve always been around each other, acquaintances. You’ve just never had the time to stop and become friends, and apparently now is that time, weeks before your graduation.

“Mr. Johnson is a pain, isn’t he?” Yeonjun asks as you approach the end of the street. “At least he won’t have that problem with me. I know exactly what I want to do. I just can’t afford it.” Then you reach the end of the street, which dead ends into a two-way boulevard. Beyond the boulevard is the wide expanse of Lake Michigan, sky blue waters as far as the eye can see in front of you and to the left. You forget that there’s water so close to where you are; the lake stretches from Illinois and Indiana all the way to Michigan’s upper peninsula, so this is the lower part. 

There’s a landing to the right that reaches out into the water; beyond that is a huge skyscraper and what looks to be a Ferris wheel jutting out against the sky. “We should go there,” Yeonjun says, and he takes your hand, and you suddenly find yourself blushing as he takes you along Lake Shore Drive. “Doesn’t it sound fun?”

“It...it does. Do we have enough time for this?”

“Of course we do! There’s a park or something over there, I just never go over there because I don’t have anybody to take with me.” Yeonjun smiles at you. “And now I do.” And he’s right -- both of you have visited his mom, and she looks good to go for Saturday’s transport, so the rest of the day is technically yours. You don’t even really need to be back in Peotone for Beomgyu’s rehearsal tonight!

The two of you have to take the long way around, but there’s a path under the boulevard that leads to the pier, so you don’t have to worry about traffic on your way. The pier itself looks like a surefire product of the 21st Century in Chicago. There’s a huge glass building, probably used for special events, and a small amusement area past that with some rides and a carousel. The huge observation wheel is just beyond that, and Yeonjun, once again ever the gentleman, buys two tickets. 

As he gets in line just ahead of you, you actually wonder if this is a date. Is it? It feels almost more like a friend date, but if you think about it that way, you don’t seem to mind. There’s something nice about doing this with Yeonjun, and he is very handsome and such a charming guy. If he suddenly decides this is a date, you don’t seem to mind at all, come to think of it. 

The observation wheel cars are huge, big enough for you to easily sit with Yeonjun and have your own space. You relax on one side, with Yeonjun on the other. He’s still wearing his Peotone varsity jacket, even though it’s warm outside. He relaxes, leaning back, folding his hands in his lap and looking at you with a smile. “Thanks for doing this with me. It’s not every day you ride a Ferris wheel with a stranger.”

“I don’t think we’re strangers,” you say, and you both laugh.

“I don’t know,” he says, looking out the window wistfully. “There’s something about this that seems so familiar to me. Like I dreamed it somewhere, or I’m always having deja vu. Like I’ve been here before, but I haven’t, I know I haven’t. I’ve been to Chicago on field trips, and I come here with my mom all the time for her treatment, but...never here, not once. And yet…” He closes his eyes as the car ascends into the air. “When I close my eyes, it brings back all these nostalgic feelings.”

You can’t begin to understand what Yeonjun might be feeling right now. You’re not quite sure why he’s nostalgic for a Ferris wheel that he’s never been on. And then you look out the windows, to your sides and behind you, and you gasp. You’re some two hundred feet up in the air, looking out over the pier, towards the city of Chicago and out over the lake to your right. It really does feel like you could see forever. It’s not nostalgic, but it’s wistful.

“Do you think that maybe the two of us were sitting on this Ferris wheel in a past life?” Yeonjun asks. 

“Not this one,” you joke. “Maybe at one of the World’s Fairs? Those were held here, right?”

“Yeah, they were.” Yeonjun ponders to himself, then checks his phone. “The big one was in 1893. So yeah, we probably met several lifetimes ago, looking out over the lake like this.”

“It sounds incredibly romantic.”

Yeonjun looks at you, tilting his head just so that he has to move his bangs from in front of his forehead. “I am nothing if not romantic, sweetie.” And you both laugh. The longer you sit here with Yeonjun, the more this really does start to feel like a date. Like you’ve known him forever, more than just passing acquaintances in the hallway, more than hi and goodbye. 

“I want to go to college after this,” Yeonjun says. “Northwestern, or something, really, anywhere that will take me. But I want to go for dance.”

“Dance?” You could have sworn he would have said something related to basketball.

“Yeah, I can’t play basketball forever! I took dance growing up in Kankakee for years before Mom got sick. I only really stopped because we didn’t have the money anymore. But when I graduate, I’m gonna take a gap year, get back in shape, and then audition at every school in the Chicago area. And then I’ll find a practical dance job, maybe teaching here in Peotone. I don’t have to be famous. I just want to dance.”

There’s something admirable about that dream that you enjoy hearing about. And so, you continue talking about it until you get off the Ferris wheel. Then, you browse around the pier, eventually stopping for a bite to eat before walking all the way back to the parking garage. As you walk back to the garage, your hand brushes up against Yeonjun’s one too many times to be coincidence, and he suddenly takes it, interweaving his fingers with yours. He lets go for a minute, but eventually, your hands find their way to one another again.

You don’t say a word about it in the car. Neither does Yeonjun. He just focuses on driving home as the sun starts to disappear behind the clouds. At this rate, you’ll get home around dinner time, and you might even be able to catch Beomgyu before he goes to his band practice.

The CD in the player suddenly skips as the car jolts, then makes a weird screeching noise. “Shit,” Yeonjun whispers as he looks up ahead, then pulls over at a convenient rest stop. You’ve just passed through Monee; Peotone is the next big town. But when Yeonjun parks the car at the rest area, you both jump out and discover he’s got a flat tire, right in the front. 

This is the first time you’ve properly seen Yeonjun panicked all day. When you ask him what to do, he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t fix this.” So you do what you know how to do: you call Beomgyu, and he in turn calls for a tow truck to take Yeonjun’s car back to Peotone. You sit with Yeonjun on the curb and hold his hand as the tow service puts the car on the truck, and then Beomgyu arrives in his car to take both of you back to town.

“I can’t get my mom now,” Yeonjun whispers, voice cracking. “I can’t afford a new tire, I -- I can’t.” And you don’t know what to say, but you have him sit with you in Beomgyu’s backseat as your best friend drives you both back to Peotone.

You spend all of Thursday morning in the library, away from your classes, trying to write this speech that Rue wants you to put together. But in reality, you’re far too distracted with a plan that you’re putting together.

You need to borrow the car from Beomgyu. You can drive, you just don’t drive frequently. If you can borrow the car on Saturday morning, then you can take Yeonjun to Chicago, and he can still pick up his mom. Yeonjun’s family can barely afford the room his mother is staying in; trying to fix a flat tire, not to mention paying for the tow truck, is going to take a good bit of money juggling. 

“I can fix it,” Yeonjun had said last night, “but not before the end of the school year.” 

So instead of worrying about Yeonjun’s car, you want to borrow Beomgyu’s. There’s just one problem: he left super early this morning, without singing in the shower, and every time you try to text him he doesn’t answer. He’s usually good about answering right away, even if he’s in class. This is odd.

While you wait for Beomgyu to text you back (or, you know, to show up in the library) you sit at a computer and research graduation speeches. It all comes off the same, some sort of hokey mess about living your life to the fullest and such. It all starts to blur until you see one sample speech that stands out from the crowd: something about not being afraid to make mistakes. 

You think of Yeonjun and his flat tire. If you were standing in front of the podium on Sunday, what would you want to say to Yeonjun to make him feel better about his flat tire? He’ll be there, of course. With his mother. You’re going to make sure of it. 

The door to the library opens. It’s Rue, strangely enough. “Hey hey, I thought I’d find you here.” Her voice is rushed and worried.

You save the not being afraid to make mistakes sample speech to your files and power down the computer. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Beomgyu. Something with his family, he said you didn’t know and --”

There’s something about Rue’s voice that is weird. “Take me to him.” And the hallways are quiet when you walk through to the principal’s office, and Beomgyu is sitting there, in a chair that suddenly seems like it’s too big for him. He’s not crying, but he looks incredibly numb.

“Beomgyu?” you ask.

He looks up. “Hi, flower. Um...I think I need to go home. Can you drive me?”

You nod, and the nurse in the office signs both of you out for the day, and he doesn’t say a word as you take his keys and walk him to his car. He’s finally sitting in the car when he says it. “My house caught fire last night.”

You glare back. “Are you okay?” Beomgyu’s lived with you for...well, as long as you can remember, but it was still his house for a long time. He had shared it with his dad, whom Beomgyu has never been close with or even particularly liked. “What about your dad?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh.” There’s an uneasy pause, then you say the only thing that could make this better. “Gyro Loco?”

“Yes, please.” It’s just after lunchtime, so thankfully Gyro Loco isn’t that busy. You have Beomgyu call ahead and put in your orders. Gyro Loco serves everything from old school gyros to falafel, so there’s something on the menu for everybody. Then, you take Beomgyu home. Beomgyu and his dad have never gotten along, so there is no lost love there. But it’s still his dad, and it’s still his old house, even though none of his belongings are there now.

You know Beomgyu is all but estranged from his dad, and his house was nothing special. He much prefers living in your spare bedroom and being friends with you. But there’s still something that undoubtedly sucks about the whole situation.

“I’ll be okay,” he says, “I just don’t want to be at school right now.” 

“Should I go back?” And then you think of something. “Actually, am I able to borrow the car on Saturday? I need it for a thing.”

“Yeah, sure, you’re fine. I won’t need it yet, I don’t think. As far as I know, my grandparents are handling everything with the house and my dad, so…”

“What else do you need?”

Beomgyu smiles, sad. “Just space, flower.” And he shuts the door to his bedroom, and that is that.

You eat your Gyro Loco at the kitchen table, then make some notes on this it’s okay to make mistakes speech until it’s closer to the end of school time. You try not to think too much about Beomgyu; if he wants his space, he will have it. Then, you grab Beomgyu’s keys and drive to school, making sure to put the right key in the ignition (he’s got two keys on his keyring for some reason, and neither one of you know what the second one goes to). You park in the lot and text Yeonjun. Come out to the lot. I have something for you. 

You get out of the car, realizing Yeonjun won’t recognize Beomgyu’s big boat of a red car, and lean up against it. You scroll through social media until he arrives. “Hey, sweetie, what’s up?”

You hold the keys up. “This is Beomgyu’s car. He’s given me permission to use it on Saturday.”

“Didn’t his dad just die?” Yeonjun asks, not registering what you said.

“Yeah, he’s okay, Yeonjun, I can use the car.” You smile. “On Saturday. To go to Chicago.”

It sinks in for Yeonjun. He looks at the car, then back at you. “Are you -- are you serious right now?” he asks, a smile on his face. It’s the reaction you were hoping for, but you weren’t expecting him to lean forward and wrap you up in a hug. You feel him gasp, and then, “Thank you.”

It’s...warm here. In this hug. You like it, you realize. You like Yeonjun’s hugs.

Yeonjun meets you at Peotone High’s front doors the next day on Friday, first thing in the morning. He rode the bus, and you got a ride with Beomgyu, but he was still waiting for you. “I was trying to think of something I could do to say thank you,” he says, and he produces a small Tupperware container from his backpack. “I hope they’re to your liking.” And when you open the container, you see they’re no-bake cookies, in your favorite flavor.

“You shouldn’t have!”

“Eat one, seriously!” And you take a bite, and it’s just as good as you imagined. They have a nice, soft texture. 

“So this is the reason you’re borrowing the car,” you hear Beomgyu behind you, shoving you a little bit. “Star of the basketball team, huh? Who knew?” 

“Be nice,” you say to Beomgyu, and Beomgyu and Yeonjun acknowledge each others’ existence. They’ve certainly met, and everybody at Peotone knows each other, but they’re in completely different friend groups. They chat about their cars for a second, and if you blink, you suddenly feel like they could have been the best of friends in another world. 

The three of you walk into the building together, and before you separate for class, Yeonjun pokes you on the shoulder. Then, he does something that leaves your head abuzz with wonder: he takes off his varsity jacket and puts it on your shoulders. Everybody at Peotone knows that, if you’re wearing a boy’s jacket, it means you’re exclusive with him. But instead of talking it out, Yeonjun smiles, says, “It looks good on you,” and then runs to class. 

Beomgyu stands there in the hallway with you, shellshocked, mouth open. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get to ask him later, though.” With that, the two of you head to class. 

During study hall, you go to the library and put your thoughts down on virtual paper. When you’re done, your simple speech goes something like this:

Welcome, students and parents, to our end of year banquet. Tonight, we celebrate the achievements that we have done over the past year. But we also celebrate those, like myself, who are graduating this year. We are those who have bright futures ahead of ourselves. We are just at the beginning of our lives, our start line. High school is not the end goal, but the very beginning of the journey of life.

This journey can take many twists and turns over the years. There will be those of us who experience hardship all of our lives. Others may luck into a life with no pain or suffering. We may go to college, get married, have kids, find excellent jobs. We may also get divorced or lose our jobs, and some of those events aren’t always in our control. What is important is that we are not afraid to make mistakes, and that we get back up every time we fall. Even when something happens that we cannot fix, our attitude will shape our reality and ultimately our future. One must always have hope for the smallest of miracles. So let us embrace what we have, not be afraid to make mistakes, and move forward to a brighter tomorrow, together.

That last part is kind of funny — the whole bit about a brighter tomorrow, together. It sounds more like a commercial than a speech. But you came up with it, spur of the moment, and you like it. You read it over twice more, then send a copy to Rue’s email, since she doesn’t have a phone. 

You track her down during lunch. “ So the speech is basically done, and I emailed it to you. I know you’ll need tocheck it tonight when you get home. Is that okay, or were you needing more time?

“Oh, I don’t have to read it before you go on stage,” Rue says with a smile. “You won’t have to clear the content with me or any teachers first. You’re my best friend. I trust you. Just finish writing it, make sure it sounds good on stage, and get here a half hour beforehand just in case.”

“It starts at six, right?”

“Yep! Which means be in the gym by 5:30.” Rue then looks you over. “Nice jacket.”

“Thanks. Yeonjun just randomly gave it to me. Not sure why. It’s not like we’re dating.” Would you date Yeonjun if he asked? You’ve certainly gotten closer over the past couple of days, but is this too fast to suddenly be considered dating? You are graduating in somewhere around three weeks, after all. But then again...he did give you his varsity jacket to wear. And you’ve been feeling everybody looking at you all day, walking down the halls with it on. It’s too warm to be wearing it in May, but there’s something weirdly secure about having it on. It’s like Yeonjun is hugging you all the time.

And it snaps to your mind quickly: you don’t know if you should date Yeonjun, but dang, do you like him.

You end up thinking about Yeonjun all through the rest of your classes. Every time you try to focus, you find yourself daydreaming back to being on the Ferris wheel in Chicago. The weird nostalgic one. You think about how Yeonjun sat opposite of you, looking out the window. You wonder what would happen if you went back with him, if he held your hand longer, if he put his varsity jacket on your shoulders there. Nobody from Peotone would be there, so the meaning might be different, but you would understand.

What would you do if he kissed you?

“Oh, hey, sweetie.” 

You jump; it’s your last class of the day, and you’ve somehow dozed off. Yeonjun, sans varsity jacket, is standing by your desk. “I have a question for you.”

I have one for you, too, you wonder, noticing he called you sweetie again. “Yeah, what’s up?”

And for once, Yeonjun seems a little nervous. “Well, I was wondering if you were busy. The boys are going out to Game On! and Kyle’s girl and Beni’s guy are going with us, so I figured...maybe you could come, too? And we thought we might scrimmage afterward at the park? We’re all getting a ride, and we can take you home afterward, I just...I don’t know, I thought it would be fun.”

You decide to ask. “Is this a date?”

“I -- um -- I was kind of thinking it could be?”

“Then yes.” You stand up, tug Yeonjun’s varsity jacket around your shoulders, and smile at him. “It’s a date.”

A scrimmage is a ‘fun’ game of basketball, nothing serious. Peotone High has them all the time, small events held in the gym where the basketball team walks through new plays. This time around, Yeonjun says from the backseat of Beni’s car, the scrimmage is more informal, one last game with the seniors, a five-on-five game between the younger players and the older players. 

Beni is a sophomore and bigender, which means half the time he’s a guy and half the time he’s a girl. But he was born with a man’s body, and he doesn’t mind playing on the men’s basketball team as long as they understand, and they do. Beni’s guy, Marshall, is joining the game as a tenth player so that there’s an even number of people on the court.

“I know I should have asked if you wanted to play,” Yeonjun asks, but you shake your head.

“I’m good with watching for now. Besides.” You wink at him, across the backseat. “I thought this was a date.”

“Ooooooooh,” Beni and Marshall say from the front, then Beni heckles Yeonjun the best he can while they drive downtown. 

Game On! is a sports bar in ‘downtown’ Peotone that knows the basketball team well…probably too well. The boys take up an entire table near the far wall, and you identify the girl who must be Mira, Kyle’s girl. You sit between her and Marshall and talk between yourselves. Mira’s from Monee, so you haven’t actually met her before; she’s a soft spoken junior who mostly concerns herself with Kyle. Marshall, on the other hand, is six feet and four inches of black man, which…might be an issue if the rest of the basketball team wasn’t white or Asian. But they are, and therefore nobody bats an eyelash. 

You know people can be rude, even in Peotone. It’s not nearly as liberal as Chicago. As long as you stick with your friend groups at school, though, you don’t even notice the haters. 

“Pop for everybody!” Kyle yells, passing out orange soda to each person in the row. Half of the team groans, and half of the team cheers. 

“Who loves orange soda?” Marshall calls out. 

“Kyle loves orange soda!” Kyle yells back, drinking the top of his glass and then hugging it close. “I do, I do, I do-ooh.” Everybody laughs, and you get your own glass of orange soda and you sip it. It’s the organic stuff, no artificial sweeteners or allergens, and it tastes nice and fruity and not too strong. 

“Never took you for an orange soda kind of person,” Yeonjun says, sitting across from you. 

“Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” And you do. You chat with Mira and Marshall and the members of the team, and then one of the younger members makes a toast for the graduating seniors, and you all raise your orange pop glasses high in the sky. 

You catch Yeonjun’s eye as you bring your arm back down, and that’s when Benson - Jay Benson, the oldest guy on the team - finally addresses the elephant in the room. “So where’s your varsity jacket, Yeonjunnieeee?”

“Yeonjunnieeee,” the rest of the club says, heckling Yeonjun. 

And he looks a little embarrassed, but then he sits up straighter. “What about it? I thought it looked good on them.” And then there is more heckling, but thankfully Marshall puts his arm around you and ‘protects’ you from the basketball club’s jeers and jokes. 

After dinner, everybody hops back into their cars to go across town to the park. Beni drives again, so neither you nor Yeonjun are left behind. The park is just outside of downtown, and everybody parks at the main park building and walks over to the only outdoor court. 

You take a seat on the only bench, and Mira sits next to you, as the boys change. You quickly realize this is a “shirts vs skins” game, which means that the only way to know who’s on which team is whether or not they’re wearing a shirt. It’s an easy way for American men to pick teams, but you suddenly realize that you might be staring at Yeonjun without a shirt on pretty quickly here. 

You pick out everybody by team: Dayton and Jay are the seniors, and Yeonjun, Kyle, and Demetrius are all on the same team with them, so they must be older. Beni, Benjamin, and Kadin and Matt Pintel are on the other side, with Marshall joining their team. And then Kyle pulls off his shirt, and Yeonjun is next, and you do your best to avert your eyes. 

When you look over, you notice Mira is doing the same. “I hate this part,” she whispers with a laugh. “Men’s bodies cause us to sin.” And you...don’t quite think that’s it, but there’s something embarrassing about this. But it’s Yeonjun, and he’s just a guy, so you make an effort to pay attention and not be shy.

Benson grabs a ball, and the makeshift game begins. It gets heated, boys running around the court, with two volunteer cheerleaders rooting for the senior team. Yeonjun gets the ball, then dodges a pick and roll to setup from the corner pocket, drilling it for a three pointer. And as he slaps hands with his teammates, you realize you’re not even paying attention to the fact that he doesn’t have a shirt on. 

He looks... nice. Like a shirtless guy. You can tell he regularly works out from how broad his shoulders are, his strong arms, and you find yourself blushing a bit when you take a peek at his stomach. Yeonjun’s not some sculpted model, but he takes care of himself, just like he takes care of his mom. Like he’s taken care of you. It’s still hot out, but you grab the sleeves of Yeonjun’s varsity jacket and pinch them with your fingers. 

It feels good to be loved.

...wait. Does Yeonjun love you?

The game ends with the score in favor of the juniors, and Yeonjun thankfully puts his shirt back on before running over to you. “How was it?"

You laugh. “It was fine. You worked hard.”

He gives you a quick hug and then suddenly a kiss on the forehead. “I’m glad you liked it, sweetie.” And you find yourself wanting to ask if he loves you, if he wants to be with you, but you can’t force the words out. There’s too many people around. Maybe you can ask him on the way into Chicago tomorrow morning. 

Beni drives you home; Beomgyu’s car is in the driveway, and he’s up late watching some Disney movie or something. “Glad you got home, there’s a storm rolling in.” And sure enough, the power goes out later that night. You turn off your phone so it won’t lose charge before tomorrow, then grab a battery backup for your alarm clock and set it for seven in the morning.

When you wake up, you find yourself in Berkot’s Super Foods, standing in the checkout line. “Hey hey,” you hear a familiar voice, and you realize it’s Rue, standing at the checkout.

“What are you doing here?” Rue’s family is very strict on her not working.

“Preparing things.” Rue takes an apple from the conveyor belt and scans it. “The best I can, anyway.” She scans another. “Everything has to be in place. This chaos can’t keep going on like this, or we’ll all fall apart.” As if on cue, there’s a crash behind you, and you turn to see an entire stand of green apples knocked over. In fact...there’s nothing on sale in this store except for apples. 

“I don’t like inconsistencies,” Rue says, randomly, still holding the scanner. “There is only one way out of here. Perhaps you should find it.” So you do, and when you exit Berkot’s, you suddenly realize you’re on a train. It’s above ground, so you figure out you’re in Chicago, and when you look at the subway map, there are blinking lights indicating you’re going in a circle.

You’re on the Chicago Loop.

And then your alarm goes off at seven AM sharp, and you wake up.

Beomgyu is still asleep when you grab the keys to his car and pick up Yeonjun. You sit in silence for the first few minutes of the ride, both too tired to properly function. That and Beomgyu has his music, so there’s no BTS randomly playing...but also, you don’t know how to start this conversation with Yeonjun. You don’t know how you’ve gone from having him as an acquaintance to wearing his varsity jacket in the span of a week, but it’s happened, and naturally, at that. 

Thankfully Yeonjun seems to start the conversation instead. “I have to be honest about something, sweetie.”

“What’s that?” you ask, keeping your eyes on the road. 

“I mean. I gave you my varsity jacket. Isn’t it kind of obvious?” You’re still wearing it, even in the car right now. In fact, you took it home with you last night, nearly by mistake. 

He looks out the window, and he continues. “I mean, it’s weird, that we haven’t even really talked until this week. Like, all I did was hit you with a basketball, and it made me notice you. And then you came up with me to see my mom, and well...that really meant a lot to me.” He laughs. “This week has been kind of crazy, hasn’t it?”

“It has been.”

“And, well, it...would have really sucked without you. Not just the fact that we’re here, in your car -- your friend’s car -- just --” Yeonjun clears his throat. “Okay, so for a second there I thought you and Beomgyu were dating, and I’m glad you’re not. But also, I know you’re graduating and you’re sticking around town and -- aargh. I knew what I was gonna say! Promise!”

You both laugh. Then it’s quiet again. And then he says, “I like you. Like, a lot. I think I liked you before, maybe, I just didn’t realize it. I don’t really date people or am --” he clears his throat -- “interested in people, but I like you, and I know that for a fact, and there, there it is. And I was kind of thinking you liked me, too, but that’s up to you.”

You smile, and then you glance, quickly, over at Yeonjun. He’s looking out the window. “Yeonjunnieeeee,” you say, in the same cadence the guys did last night. 

“Yes, sweetie?”

“You’re already calling me sweetie.”

“Yeah…”

“And I don’t seem to mind.”

“Oh.” 

“I like you, too.”

“...Oh.”

You take your right hand off the steering wheel, putting it near the center console where Beomgyu usually keeps his phone. It takes Yeonjun a moment, but he gets the hint, and he holds your hand all the way into Chicago. The two of you finally talk, about how excited Yeonjun is to take his mom home, but also about where the two of you stand. You’re graduating, of course, but Yeonjun already knows you’re not immediately leaving for college, so the two of you figure you’ll get to know each other better over the summer. Yeonjun already has all these dates planned for you, “so you better be ready.”

He directs you on where to go, driving into Chicago and down the ramp and into the hospital parking garage. You put the car in park when Yeonjun says, “Oh, by the way, you forgot just one thing.”

“What’s that --”

He leans over, tilting your face toward him, and he kisses you, soft, quick, leaning over the console in Beomgyu’s car. Then he leans back and smiles. “There it is.” And then the two of you lock eyes again, Yeonjun’s smile disappears, and he leans forward again. One kiss isn’t enough. And you kiss him back, like you’ve known him forever, like you really did go to the World’s Fair together in a past life, and this feels like riding the Ferris wheel all over again, rising up and up and up with no end in sight. 

“We have to pick up my mom,” Yeonjun whispers against your lips. “We have to be good for my mom. She doesn’t know I have a sweetie yet.” And you let that sit in your stomach, happily, Yeonjun’s sweetie, as you both get out of the car and he leads the way inside. 

Yeonjun’s mother is waiting upstairs when you get there. The auxiliary nurse teaches you both how to use her oxygen tank, then sends an extra home with you. It should be enough for the quick visit. Hospice care will give her more when she returns home full-time. You’re glad you got that kiss with Yeonjun out of the way; now that his mom is around, he’s all about her, all the time. 

“You are such a sweetheart, taking care of this for us,” his mom says to you, and then, “you need to let me know when things happen to the car!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Yeonjun says, and you know he’s trying to do too much all by himself. But it can’t be helped sometimes. 

“Also, sweetie,” Yeonjun’s mom says once you’re in the car, also calling you sweetie, “when we get home my nice son is going to order us some Chinese food takeout, and he is going to order you some as well, and you are invited to stay for lunch.”

“Okay, okay,” Yeonjun says. “I hope you like Chinese food.”

“I will find something to eat, sweetie,” you say, embarrassing him. But both Yeonjun and his mother sit in the backseat of the car, and they talk the entire ride back to Peotone. Yeonjun’s house is small and on the edge of town, a small one-story house that has had the front steps replaced with a ramp. Yeonjun gets out of the car, walking with his mother and taking her oxygen, rolling it into the house with her. You lock the car and follow them in, through the small foyer into the living room where Yeonjun’s mother has already made herself at home in a plush chair.

Yeonjun then returns to you. He takes your hands and kisses you, quickly. “Thank you,” he says, and you can hear all of the sincerity in his voice. It wasn’t much, but you’ve just saved his day.

You don’t usually get the Chinese food with Beomgyu; he much prefers Gyro Loco. But the food is really good, if not a bit greasy. Yout eat all of your rice and follow Yeonjun into his kitchen, where he makes an instant cup of ramen to go with his Chinese food. “This stuff will set your mouth on fire if you’re not careful,” he says, and he lets you taste a very small portion. He’s right. It’s completely nuclear. 

Yeonjun’s mother falls asleep quickly in her chair, and you realize he’s lowered his own volume to compensate for her being home. “Should I get out of here?” you ask, knowing at some point you’ll need to return Beomgyu’s car to him. You’re already going to have to play musical cars tomorrow for the banquet. 

“You can, for now,” Yeonjun says, and he kisses you quick on the cheek. 

“Good, you’re back, I need the car,” Beomgyu says as you get through your own front door. “Waeng’s having a get-together tonight. Last minute practice for tomorrow.”

“Okay.” You don’t seem to mind; you have nothing else to do tonight. So Beomgyu leaves, and you’re alone in the house. You keep yourself busy with some last minute homework in one of your classes, and then you go over your speech one more time. You then get an idea, pulling out your phone and texting Yeonjun. Hey, can I read my speech to you? Make sure it sounds okay?

Sure, he text back, and you record a quick snippet, sending it to him. 

Well? you text him, and you wait. 

It’s short, but I like it. She did spring this on you like the week of, so…

Yeah, I know. You attach an upside-down emoji for maximum effort.

Really, though, I think it’s fine.

Can I be honest about something? You kind of inspired it.

Me? he texts back.

Yeah, how you had all this bad stuff happen to you this week and you still bounced back. You’re still standing. I like that.

There’s a long pause before you receive a text back. I mean. You happened to me, too.

And it’s in that moment that you don’t want to be standing in your kitchen anymore. You want to be back at Yeonjun’s place, listening to his voice, watching how careful he is around his mother, joking about something silly, smiling with his teammates. You’ve seen bits and pieces of it over the years, so maybe that’s why he seems so familiar to you. Maybe that’s how this already feels like love. You’re not entirely sure.

And you realize what’s missing -- you left Yeonjun’s varsity jacket back at his house. So you take the keys, and you secure your shoes, and you leave out the front door. You check your phone: it will take you an hour and change to walk it, but you’ve done worse. There’s been at least one time when you’ve had to walk to school, before Beomgyu moved in and when you missed the bus. Yeonjun lives at 215 West Crawford, so if you leave now, you can probably beat the sunset. Then it really will be bad to be walking outside late at night.

So you start walking, all alone on a two lane road, with corn fields on either side of you and the changing sky overhead. You almost feel like you’re in some movie, where the kids walk on railroad tracks to their destination while the credits roll. Except you feel like your life is just beginning, like you have an idea of what to do now, because you’re walking towards a boy and you know he loves you, he has to love you.

Yesterday, pedaling down 4th Avenue, between the stalls and the bookshops

The sepia tones of a lost afternoon cradled a curio storefront

You don’t text him to say that you’re on your way. You want to surprise him. All he’s done is surprise you since you’ve met him. This time around, you want to be the one to show up on his doorstep. You want another hug, like when you borrowed Beomgyu’s car to take his mom home. You want more than that, but you don’t quite know what. The air is thick with potential as you walk on the side of the road, carrying your backpack tight so that the reflector straps will help you if the sun goes any further down. Wilmington Road is not busy, and cars pass you with no trouble, letting you go forward on your mission.

And inside the air was thick with the past as the dust settled onto his heart

And here for a moment is every place in the world, and ideas are like stars

You do text Beomgyu, so that when he gets home from practice, he’s not surprised to not find you home. And you walk under the interstate, moving quickly because you don’t know when cars will suddenly come around the corner, driving into Peotone. You realize you’re hungry, and you probably should have grabbed something before you left the house. But you’ll let that be a problem for Yeonjun. 

They fall from the sky, they run round your head

They litter your sleep as they beckon

They'd teach you to fly without wires or thread

They promise if only you'd let them

The clouds above your head start to turn pink and orange and yellow as the sun slowly dips behind you, to the west. You’re past the McDonalds now, more than halfway there, and you’re tired but not too much so. You’re too focused on your goal. And when you get a chance, you cross up Rathje to get off of Wilmington Road, like you’re going to school. The houses all sit quiet, as most people are home on a Saturday night in Peotone. Out here, unless you’re getting drunk in a cornfield with some friends, there’s nothing to do on a Saturday night.

For the language of longing never had words

So how did you speak from your heart?

Yet here is a box that swears it has heard that ideas are like stars

The stars are starting to come out now, pinpricks of light here and there against a multicolored blanket, so high above you that you could never dream of touching them. It’s like each one is cheering you on toward your destination. You wonder where you’ve heard that before, that concept of being cheered on by a star. For a minute, you think you have it, and then it slips through your fingers and you’re on Corning heading east, past the old mill that you’ve never properly visited and toward downtown.

And who was that shadow there by the gate?

Who was that there, standing guard?

It was only loneliness, and loneliness waits, and ideas are like stars

You finally see Yeonjun’s house in the distance, an hour and fifteen minutes after starting your crazy trek. You go up the stairs, lean your head on the door, take a deep breath, and go to knock just as Yeonjun opens the door. “What are you doing here?”

“I…” You’re still trying to catch up with the fact that you just walked four miles. “I forgot my varsity jacket.”

“You came all the way back here for that?” Yeonjun looks past you. “Where’s the car?”

“I walked.”

“You --” Yeonjun gapes at you then, truly gapes, eyes as wide as they can go, mouth askew. Then he grabs you and kisses you, mouth full against yours, and for a moment you feel just like those stars above your head, soaring higher and higher. It feels so familiar. Everything feels so familiar.

“You’re crazy,” he says, pulling back and putting his hands on your shoulders. He sighs, then shakes his head. “I love you. I mean -- I love that about you -- “ And you lean forward and kiss him again. Yeonjun didn’t even have to say it, even if it was a mistake. You already know it’s true. 

“Stay the night,” he whispers against your lips. “Don’t walk home again. Just stay here.”

When Yeonjun’s mother sees that you’ve come back, she orders pizza, then passes out in the chair while you and Yeonjun watch a hours-long marathon of game shows. You hold hands a bit, and at one point you lean your head on his shoulder, but he doesn’t motion to kiss you again, not in front of his mother (even if she is asleep).

He tucks her into her own room late at night, then draws up a bed for you on the pull-out. This time, when you sleep, you don’t dream at all. And when you wake up, Yeonjun has put his varsity jacket around you. No funny business, no shenanigans, just a gentleman who doesn’t want you walking four miles back home again. 

This feels like home. Being with Yeonjun feels like home. It’s why you’re here instead of at your house. You didn’t want to be anywhere else, not for a second. 

The next morning, Beomgyu comes by to pick you up, and you go home and prepare for the banquet. You scour your closet for at least thirty minutes before deciding you already know what you’re wearing. So you put on your favorite outfit, and you throw Yeonjun’s varsity jacket on top. Then, you get ready and jump in the car with Beomgyu; he’s got his guitar in the trunk, and he has to be there early to set up the band equipment.

Peotone High’s awards banquet starts at six PM sharp, and you already know pretty well how it will go. The banquet includes dinner, and everybody sits at long tables, and food is served, usually some turkey or ham dinner with mashed potatoes, and variants for other dietary options. There’s usually some performance to start off with, then a student speech, then the food is distributed. After the food, there’s usually another performance -- this is where Waeng, Beomgyu’s band, comes in -- and then the awards are given out. Lastly, there’s a speech made by a teacher, and then everybody gets to go home.

“We’re all set,” Beomgyu says, handing you the keys once everything is unloaded. You thank him and drive across town to get Yeonjun and his mom. He’s waiting in the driveway when you pull up, and he gives you a great big hug.

“None of this would have been possible without you,” he says. Then, you both help his mother into the car. It’s a quick drive, and technically any capable person could walk, but Yeonjun’s mother can no longer make it that far. So the three of you enjoy a short ride in the air conditioning, and then you let them off near the doors and park the car. Then, you head toward the cafeteria. 

“Hey hey,” Rue says when you enter through the cafeteria doors. The cafeteria is a holding area for everybody who’s doing something special for the banquet. Notably, Waeng’s instruments are all along one wall, and the band is talking in a row. Rue is here as well, in a long blue dress, her hair back up in a bun. More importantly, she’s holding her violin! Peotone doesn’t have a high school orchestra; Rue is the only person in the school who plays violin. Everybody else either clunks along in marching band, or you have Beomgyu’s friends Shelly and Kai in Waeng. But Rue -- Rue is something else. She’s won violin contests all over the region, and you’re certain when she goes to Bible school she’ll continue to play. 

“I didn’t know you were playing for us tonight!”

Rue smiles, shrugging it off, modest as ever. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise. Is it?”

“It is! I’m excited now.”

“So I will play first, and then you will give your speech. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds perfect.”

“Great but...uh, are you gonna be wearing that jacket on stage?”

Oh. “I’ll remember to take it off,” you tell Rue, and then you go into the gymnasium. All of the tables and chairs are already set up. There are long, white tablecloths on every one of the tables, and there are simple folding chairs with ribbons on them, all lined up in a row. You count the tables -- eight, nine, ten -- and then remember the seats are also for guests and family members. Everybody who’s anybody is coming, from Yeonjun’s basketball team to the mathalon team that can never catch a break. 

You look around for Yeonjun and his mom, and you see where he’s picked a seat towards the end of a row. “Is it okay that you sit with her when I get up to get my awards?” he asks. There will be this big long awards for the basketball team this year, since they won at regionals, and Yeonjun will probably be on stage for a while.

“Yeah, no problem at all.” You sit on Yeonjun’s left, his mom on his right. Soon, the seats start to fill up around you, and you check your phone -- 5:45. Knowing Rue, knowing she’s the president of the student council and the first act on the program tonight, she’ll start promptly at six on the dot.

“Are you up for winning anything?” Yeonjun asks.

“Nope. Just got my speech to give after Rue is done.” You sneak your hand under the table and hold Yeonjun’s hand. “Oh, and Rue says I’m not allowed to wear your varsity jacket on stage.”

“Well, that’s no fun. I still think it looks great on you.” 

And you wonder if Yeonjun’s ever gonna ask. Or maybe it hasn’t clicked for him yet. Maybe he just assumed you knew already. You can’t fault him for being a bit absent-minded; this week has been crazy with getting his mother back and forth. So you lean over, and you lower your voice, and you ask, “Does that mean you’re my boyfriend?”

He blinks back at you and smiles as good old Mr. Johnson steps onto the stage in the gymnasium. He leans into your ear and whispers, “Yes, is that okay?”

“More than okay,” you say as the gym grows quiet. The tables are now filled with students, families, and friends, all seated and ready for dinner, all dressed nicely. It reminds you that you should take off Yeonjun’s jacket, but you don’t want to yet. 

Mr. Johnson pulls out a small card and clears his throat in front of a podium. “Thank you for coming out tonight to our Peotone High School Awards Banquet. Starting off our evening, playing Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, the Fugue, Rue Pasquale.”

Everybody applauds as Rue goes onto stage. She looks elegant in her dress, and when she puts her violin up, she commands everybody’s attention when she starts to play. You’ve heard her play plenty of times before, but never this piece. It’s a short section of a longer sonata, a lilting piece that goes on and on, two strings, then three, and Rue plays it so elegantly that you almost forget anything else exists. 

You lean your head on Yeonjun’s shoulder, hand still in his, varsity jacket wrapped around you. Everything seems so perfect right now, so peaceful. It could be awesome if things would just stay this way, like this moment could last forever.

Chapter Text

In the middle of America, in a state called Illinois, there lies a small town named Peotone. Even though it is very close to Chicago, one of the biggest cities in the world, one would never be able to tell. Peotone is a picture of Americana, surrounded by cornfields on all sides. The skies are blue, the roads are long and rambling, and every day is peaceful.

It’s here in Peotone where you live, just outside of town, at 10001 West Wilmington Road. It’s a picturesque old farmhouse surrounded by fields that your family hasn’t ever owned, but are still tended to. It’s just far enough away from town that you have to drive to see your friends. When you step outside your front door every morning, you only see a couple of houses in the distance. Everything else is wide open space. 

It’s where you grew up. It’s the only house you’ve ever known.

When you wake up, it’s never to an alarm. These days, it’s always to the sound of the shower starting up in the bathroom. You’ve lived alone for some time, but recently you had a friend of yours move into the spare room. His name is Beomgyu, and he sings in the shower. It’s usually something by his favorite band, BTS, so you’re always awake by the time he’s done, and you’re ready to kick him out to prepare for the school day yourself.

Beomgyu doesn’t pay any rent for staying with you. There’s usually nobody at his house, since he insists his “dad is a mess.” That and he prefers to live with someone, always referencing this one time he almost caught his house on fire. So it’s almost like the two of you are roommates. You know. If you were roommates who fight over the shower in the morning, then go to Dollar General and purchase straight sugar cereal for breakfast and takeout from Gyro Loco every weekend. It’s nice to have a constant friend around, though you’re certainly not tied at the hip. 

The other perk of having Beomgyu as your friend is that he has a car! If you get ready for school before he leaves, he is able to take you. Otherwise, you have to take the bus. This morning, you’re all sorts of prepared, and you grab your bookbag and lunch money, hopping into Beomgyu’s passenger seat. The car is older than dirt; Beomgyu has to plug his phone into a cassette adapter in order to get the music to work. Today’s music: BTS, of course! He turns on a song called Boy in Luv, and he sings along to every lyric as he drives down the road to school.

It’s toward the end of the school year, and as a senior, you’re going to be graduating soon. You won’t have many more of these days left. And you intend to cherish each and every one of them. 

Peotone High School is an easy drive from your house: drive into town, go past the McDonalds, turn left at the bank. The parking lot is already filled with cars when you get there; Beomgyu parks, and the two of you walk in. It’s Monday, the start of a new week. You know you’ve got class, but there’s one thing you have to do first. 

Every graduating senior has to meet with the school’s guidance counselor, Mr. Johnson, to plan their future after Peotone. Your next to last meeting is this morning with him, instead of your first class. So you go straight to his office, which has no air conditioning and therefore is sweltering hot. Mr. Johnson flips through your file, and you sit on the chair across from his desk. There’s a clock somewhere in this room that is ticking, and it reminds you of a bomb that could explode at any minute. 

How many times have you had to sit in here listening to Mr. Johnson talk to you like this? Only two or three, you think, but it feels like indefinitely more than that. 

“So.” Mr. Johnson leans on his hands. “You really don’t have a plan, do you?”

You shake your head. “Nope.” You’ve fed him the runaround for weeks now. To be honest, you’re still waiting for that one thing, for lightning to strike, for the clouds to part and for your destiny to drop into your lap. And it hasn’t happened yet. So you figure you’ll graduate, then hang around Peotone, get a part time job, and wait for it. You’re not quite sure why he hasn’t gotten the message yet.

“You really need to be thinking about this,” Mr. Johnson says for the umpteenth time. “What are you going to do with your life? It’s up to you, but you have to take action. You can’t just coast through, or else other people will be in control of your life. If you lose that control, then you’ll never get it back. Stay in control, kiddo.”

Thankfully the meeting ends after that, and you’re dismissed back to the hall. It’s an in-between period, before your second class for the day, so you head to your locker. As you unlock it and open it, you hear someone call down the hall. “Hey hey!”

“Oh, hey, Rue!” Only Rue calls out to you like that. Rue is your best friend; you’ve seriously known each other since third grade, when she shared her apple with you at lunch. Rue’s hardly changed over the years; she’s grown taller, but she still has that same blonde hair pulled back, still wears the same ankle-length dresses. Other students at Peotone might call Rue a prude, but to you, she is perfectly Rue. She also uses her attention to rules and regulations to help the student council as its president; when she graduates in a few weeks, she’ll be heading to Bible school in Missouri. So these are also the last few weeks with Rue before your friendship gets harder to maintain.

“So I have a favor that needs done,” she asks, looking a bit nervous. “And I thought I would ask you. It involves Sunday night. You’re going, right?”

You think back. Ahh, yes, you know about this. It’s a big banquet where all of the students are invited to dinner, and the end of the year awards will be given out. Beomgyu won’t stop talking about it because his band is performing during the presentation. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“So here’s my problem,” Rue says, and she never asks about anything like this. “Every year, a student gives a speech first thing to open the program, after the first music act. And I was gonna have Dayton from the basketball team do it, but he backed out. Which sucks, because, like, the basketball team won regionals this year, it would have worked perfectly, that sort of thing. Anywho, now I don’t have anybody else to do it, and I was hoping you could. You’re an awesome author, and you don’t mind talking in front of people, and you always come through in a pinch.”

Rue isn’t wrong on that. You could go either way on the crowd thing, you suppose. But you are a pretty good writer. Your book report on To Kill a Mockingbird that you wrote during your junior year won several end of year awards and was even published in a quarterly education magazine in Chicago. If anybody can write something in a week, it’s you. “Okay. I’ll do it. But don’t expect me to talk perfectly in front of the crowd! I might be reading it from the paper!”

“Oh, that’s fine, that’s fine, thank you!” And then Rue is off to her next class, quickly. She doesn’t have a cell phone, probably never will, so you can’t text her about it. But you can start to think of something to write. A speech for the end of the year banquet, huh? Perhaps you should look up some inspirational graduation speeches online in the library. It would be more productive than whatever you’re doing in school. This close to graduation, all of your tests are done, and it’s like you’re showing up at school just to show up. 

You’re ready for your high school career to be done. Although you have no clue what’s going to happen next.

“A speech?” Beomgyu asks at lunch; sometimes he sits with you and sometimes he sits with the band. It depends on how he’s feeling that day.

“Yeah,” Rue says, eating her box lunch. Lunch time at Peotone is a simple affair; the lunch room hardly ever has what you want, so you bring your own. So does Rue; for a while there, her mother packed both of you lunches, until you started to experiment with your own concoctions. You’ve obviously graduated from a paper bag to a vinyl lunch box in your favorite color, but the sentiment still stays the same.

“It’s a no brainer to have you do it,” Rue says, looking straight at you. “Especially since you’re such a good writer.”

“Oh, stop,” you say, brushing it off for what must be the umpteenth time. You’re kind of glad Rue doesn’t have a cell phone, because you know she’d be pestering you all about it if she did. 

Beomgyu drives you home from school, and you whip up some leftovers and pop a squat on the couch, thinking about this speech. Couldn’t Rue at least have given you a prompt? Well, everybody will be there, so it might as well be something inspiring, a look back at lessons learned, that type of thing. The teachers will love it. Maybe you’ll even put it on a resume.

Mr. Johnson’s words float back to you. What are you going to do with your life? Write inspirational speeches, apparently. 

“Working on that speech?” Beomgyu asks as he sits near you on the couch. 

“Yeah. No clue what I’m gonna do.” You sigh and put your phone down. “Probably sit in the library all day tomorrow.”

“That might work. You want me to bring you some Gyro Loco for lunch?”

“Yeah, sure.” 

In another world, you would have never become such random best friends with a sophomore who spends more time playing in a garage band than focusing on his studies. But here you are, with Beomgyu, living in your spare bedroom upstairs and singing in the shower every morning. It really is nice having someone else around...especially since you’ve got this sinking feeling that there are things he hasn’t told you about his previous living situation.

Beomgyu used to live across town, in one of the trailer parks on the edge, with his dad. His mother has never been part of the equation, and his brother had moved out two years ago while Beomgyu was still in middle school. Before his brother had moved out, Beomgyu had been protected from the family’s drama. But without his brother around, Beomgyu was always the first one to run into his dad whenever his dad had a ‘problem.’

That’s all that Beomgyu called them. Problems. He never said more than that, so you don’t know exactly what he means by that word. Whatever it was, it was traumatic enough that he didn’t want to live there anymore.

You had first met Beomgyu during your junior year, when you stayed after school to help Rue with something with the student council. Rue had heard someone practicing guitar in the music room, then gone over and sent him home for the day. But Beomgyu didn’t want to go home, and so the two of you had talked about it, and soon you were helping him stay late without Rue knowing. At least that way, Beomgyu would have less time with his dad, since his dad was not working and was at home all day. 

Some time later, over the summer, you had gotten a call from Beomgyu, and that had been it. You don’t remember exactly how or when he moved in, but there hadn’t been any issues, and Beomgyu’s dad had never shown up at your house. Plus, being in a nice, quiet home meant Beomgyu could focus on his band, and all of his friends chipped in some money so he could buy a car. Both of you benefit from the old red station wagon with two keys that sits in your driveway; you both drive it on the regular, but Beomgyu drives it to school.

“It’s my baby,” he often says. “Just like you’re my flower.” You don’t remember how Beomgyu started calling you flower, either. It just kind of sort of happened. 

All of these thoughts about Beomgyu’s family reminds you. “Did you get that song done?”

“I think I have the final lyric,” he says, and he gets up from the couch, running over to another corner. He grabs an old acoustic guitar that has seen more than its share of drama over the years, and he strums it, tuning a E string before he strums again. “But I can’t figure out the last rhyme.” And his fingers dance across the strings, and he begins to sing.

The day you left home, you got an early start

I watched your car back out in the dark

I opened your door to your room down the hall

I turned on the light and all that I saw

Was a bed and a desk and a couple of tacks

No sign of someone who expects to be back

It must have been one hell of a suitcase you packed

“La, dee-dee-dah, dee-dee-dah,” he sings, going over the familiar melody. “No clue what that last lyric is gonna be.” 

Beomgyu’s been working on this song for the past couple of months or so. He’s been doing online therapy for all of the issues with his dad, which is paid for by the school. His therapist told him that he needed to start exploring the emotions he had, and that because he was a musician, he could start by doing so with song. So Beomgyu thought about what he wanted to write, and he decided to start with the pain of being left alone at his house with his father. But he wrote it specifically about his brother, about all the good memories he had with him and then how his brother had to leave because the drama was too much. You’re sure it is a good way for Beomgyu to process it outwardly without revealing anything of what he went through. He’s rather quiet and likes to keep his cards close to him. Other than you and the therapist online, prescribed by the school nurse, nobody at Peotone High knows about Beomgyu’s past.

“You could just leave it like that,” you say. “Not sing anything after that at all.”

“Ehh. It feels kind of empty.” But then Beomgyu grins. “You’re expecting it to have an ending, but then it doesn’t. It’s empty, just like his room was. Okay, I like it.” He plays it through one more time, strumming chords over the very end where he ‘should’ be singing, and he likes it enough to commit to it. 

The rest of the night passes in a blur as you lock up and go to bed. In the morning, you beat Beomgyu to the bathroom, then make yourselves both bowls of sugary cereal. “Oh, and don’t forget,” you tell him, “you’ve got band practice tomorrow night.” You don’t know why that just popped into your mind to remind him. You just do. 

“Thanks for reminding me,” he says to you, and he pats you on the head as he passes by. “Grab your stuff. We can’t be late to class.”

Beomgyu’s actions have you thinking about...something else while you ride to school in his car. He’s completely oblivious to you, rocking out to another BTS song — you think this one is titled “Run.” But over the days and weeks and months that he has spent in your house with you, you can’t help but have just now noticed that Beomgyu is actually kind of charming in his own way. He’s nowhere near as charismatic as, say, the jocks in school. Anybody on the basketball team can easily get a date to wherever they want. Beomgyu isn’t as extroverted as that, but he has his own way of showing confidence. And even though he’s up against all of the trauma he’s been through, working his way through therapy one step at a time, he still gives time for those he cares about, like his bandmates, or you. 

It...would kind of make sense for the two of you to be together. But do you like Beomgyu in that way? You glance over, at his hand on the steering wheel, and you wonder for a second what it would be like to hold his hand. And the feeling isn’t super strong, but you definitely feel something there that wasn’t there before.

You don’t get a lot of sleep Tuesday night, because you’re mostly thinking about your newest revelation. 

The house seems so quiet at night. You’ve been used to it for years, that feeling of living out in the middle of nowhere, the wide open spaces all around, how you can hear the crickets in the summer and wake up to a blanket of snow in the winter. But with having Beomgyu around, the house is certainly louder. It’s usually for obvious reasons, like him singing in the shower every morning, practicing guitar at night, or nearly any other time of the day when he’s got music blasting in his room. It’s either punk rock, or whatever passes for it these days (he went through a Panic! phase a few months back), or BTS. They’re the only K-Pop group that’s popular in the states; you know there are others, but you can’t think of their names off the top of your head. 

But after Beomgyu goes to sleep, if you’re lucky, the only sound you can hear in the house is his snoring. Usually the air conditioning units cover it up, but you kind of wish you could hear it tonight.

This isn’t the start of your feelings for Beomgyu, you’re starting to realize. A couple of weeks ago, the two of you had gone together to Peotone’s prom dance as friends. Beomgyu couldn’t be invited alone, because he is a sophomore, and only junior and senior students can properly go to the dance. But you didn’t have a date, and of course you wanted a date for your senior prom, so you invited Beomgyu. It might have been seen as avant-garde by some, but the school had cleared it, and the two of you had taken pictures together and had a grand old time. Beomgyu’s bandmates had also gone together as dates, so the four of you had basically hung out all night.

There’s one memory in particular that sticks out to you: Beomgyu had been lucky enough for the DJ to play a song by BTS, something called Mic Drop. And of course Beomgyu knew all the lyrics, and he got out on that dance floor and did this funky chicken dance where his arms and his legs were out in different directions and his light brown hair spent most of its time in the air. Most people had just stared cross-eyed at him, but you had thought in that moment, wow, that is just totally Beomgyu. 

And then there was the moment when you two had slow danced together. Beomgyu had led the dance, and while most of it was just spent talking with you, there was one moment where he looked into your eyes and smiled. And that moment is now on repeat in your mind.

At some point, you eventually pass out, because you wake up to Beomgyu serenading you from across the hall in the shower again. It’s a perfect wake up call, and it gives you enough time to grab your things and get ready for school. “Don’t forget you have practice tonight,” you remind Beomgyu for the umpteenth time.

“You’re incorrigible,” he says, and then, “Do you want to come to practice with me?”

Hmm. You’ve never actually been to one of Beomgyu’s practices before. “Are you gonna play the new song?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Then count me in. Is that okay?”

“Yeah. It’ll actually give us a chance to see how the new song sounds before Sunday.”

“You’re gonna play that song on Sunday?” An end of the year banquet is not really the place nor time to sing a song about your brother who left home.

“Ehh, we won’t sing it last. We’re covering this old graduation song by Vitamin C. Shelly’s singing that last.” He rolls his eyes. “As well as she can, anyway. She wants to do it, so we’re doing it.” 

“Whatever works for you,” you say as you arrive at school. You separate from Beomgyu as he goes toward his classes and you go towards the senior hallway. You’re not even quite sure why you’re in class exactly. As a senior, you already know you’re graduating, and at this point the senior classes are fun and games, extended movie sessions, and bonus lessons in preparation for college. You seriously wouldn’t miss anything if you just stayed home instead. But Beomgyu is here, and you’d be bored for hours if you stayed home. So go to class it is.

“Hey hey,” Rue says, catching you after class and before lunch. “Any progress on your speech?”

“I think I’ve got a few ideas.” This is true, but so far, everything you’ve come up with sounds fake. Perhaps you can focus on the speech while Beomgyu’s at band practice tonight. 

You take some time out during your study hall and think about this speech that you have to write. You’ve been to these banquets before, and the one year, the one senior gave a fifteen minute long speech that was great, but long. You think if you keep it simple, that will cover everything. It’s not like you’re giving a speech at graduation proper. 

Maybe you can ask Beomgyu for help, because you’re coming up short, and he’s also playing at the banquet. So you hold off until the end of school, and the two of you leave, with Beomgyu’s guitar in the trunk, heading out to Shelly’s house.

Shelly, like you, lives out in the middle of nowhere. Her parents let her use the garage for the band’s purposes, so it’s a free place to practice...as long as her parents don’t find out she’s actually a girl. With her tall, lanky stature, Shelly is still able to pull off her long-ish hair in a ponytail and have everybody think she’s a guy. She can’t fully come out until she graduates next year. You’re in on the secret, though, and you keep it between the rest of you. 

You see another guy there when you pull up, sitting in the garage, getting a drum kit ready. That’s Kai, a freshman and Beomgyu’s drummer. Beomgyu had had a previous drummer, but he had graduated, and Kai had come in as a superstar freshman with some really good drumming skills. He always seems awkward around you, but hey, he’s a freshman, so you cut him some slack.

“Can we talk?” he asks, out of nowhere, and you shrug. Kai never wants to talk with you. Maybe it’s something about Beomgyu. So you sit on the edge of the garage, out of earshot, as Beomgyu plugs in his guitar and tunes it up.

“You’re graduating, right?” Kai, for some reason, looks nervous. 

“Yeah,” you say, waiting for him to ask you something.

You’re not expecting what comes next from Kai. “Here’s the — look, I promised I would do this, I even told Beomgyu I would do this. I like you. I’ve kind of liked you ever since I started my freshman year.”

You stare back at Kai, kind of in shock. You definitely weren’t expecting this from him. “So you like me?”

“Yeah.” Kai looks at his feet. “But I’m not expecting you to like me back. I just — Beomgyu found out, and he said that you probably didn’t like me, and that’s cool, it really is. But he said if I didn’t tell you, then I’d probably regret it and dwell on it later.” He gives you a smile, even though he’s still shaking. “So this is me, not regretting anything.” 

“Aww, sweetheart.” You feel for Kai, even though you don’t like him. There’s something oddly familiar about this moment. “Can I give you a quick hug? It’s okay. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” Kai hugs you, but not too quickly. “There. I feel better now. Now you can go tell Beomgyu.”

“...tell Beomgyu what? That you told me?”

“Nah, that you like him.” Well. That’s another thing you weren’t expecting from Kai today. 

“I don’t like Beomgyu,” you say, which is honestly the response you would have given if Kai had talked to you about this two days ago. Now it feels like it’s a little different, but you don’t need to tell him that. And who ever said you were gonna talk to Beomgyu about this in the first place? 

Shelly comes out from the house, with her hair tied back and a plain t-shirt and jeans on. She really is in stealth mode, but you all know better. “You watching us tonight?”

“Yeah, Beomgyu wanted another opinion.”

“Cool, cool.” She takes her place behind a bass guitar, Beomgyu grabs his guitar, and Kai sits behind his drums. Then, Kai counts them off, and they begin to play.

It’s...interesting, is what it is. It’s a cacophony of sounds that don’t mix well together in the garage, the only place they can practice. They’re too spread out, and the sound echoes everywhere. But there is a certain compositional genius to what’s being played, and that’s solely courtesy of Beomgyu. He really does want to be a songwriter someday, and you hope that he’ll continue to have the focus to really make it happen after you leave. He is just a sophomore, after all.

He’ll probably need a better name for his band than Waeng, though. Its origins are racist, though Beomgyu definitely reclaimed it the best he could. The teacher at Peotone who originally called him Waeng was fired last year. 

“No, no, no, you have to — the seven, we need the seven there,” Beomgyu yells over his new song, getting frustrated. He tables it soon after that, telling the others to practice, and then they go over some other songs instead. 

“I don’t know,” he says on the way back to the house. “Maybe I just won’t play it. I had it all done and everything.”

You think for a minute. “You wrote the song, right? It’s very personal to you. How about you just play it solo? You on your guitar, and you sing it? Shelly and Kai don’t have to play with you for that song.”

“Hmm.” He thinks about it for a minute, and then, when you’re pulling into your house, “maybe you’re right. Let me think about it.”

The night itself is quiet. You make spaghetti for dinner, sharing it with Beomgyu, and then you sit back on the couch and try to come up with a speech. But there’s still nothing, and eventually Beomgyu sits by you and you watch TV all the way until the eleven o’clock news, and you find the news boring and you’re ready to turn it off when you notice Beomgyu is asleep on the couch next to you. There’s a certain peace about him, so you grab a blanket and put it over him.

Then you go upstairs to your own room and fall asleep. You wake up, suddenly, at four in the morning to a phone call. It’s Rue, for some reason. “Hey, hey! Where are you?”

“At...home?” Why is Rue calling you at four in the morning?

“You gotta get out here — where’s Beomgyu? It’s an emergency!”

You remember that Beomgyu fell asleep on the couch downstairs, so you stay on the phone with Rue and you run down. But he’s not there. “Rue, what’s going on?”

“Beomgyu’s house is on fire! Hurry!”

You run out the front door of your house. Everything blurs for a moment — where is Beomgyu? Why is Rue calling? Is Beomgyu’s house really on fire? — but then, you’re standing in the trailer park where Beomgyu used to live with his dad. And his house really is on fire. There are fire trucks and bystanders around, and Rue is running towards you with a cell phone in her hand. 

You suddenly realize you have no clue where she got that cell phone. Rue’s parents don’t allow her to have a cell phone. But it’s an emergency — maybe she borrowed someone else’s phone to call you.

“Where’s Beomgyu?” she asks, not even bothering to say hi or hey hey.

“He should be at home, why?” Your brain starts to race. He wasn’t on the couch, so he probably went upstairs. Was his car in the driveway? What’s going on here? You think of going back into the house, going to find Beomgyu’s keyring with the two keys on it (you still don’t know what the second one goes to). 

The trailer in front of you seemingly disintegrates into thin air. A firefighter pushes you and Rue back into the crowd of onlookers, and when you get another good look at the trailer, it’s gone. There’s nothing left but a frame and some wires hanging off of it. 

“You’re next of kin?” another firefighter asks you, and you have no clue what he’s talking about until he says, “We found two bodies in the house, neither one of them survived.” And it has your head spinning, because Beomgyu doesn’t live here, he lives with you, he purposefully left so there weren’t any issues until you see his car next to the trailer, and it all clicks for you and Beomgyu was in the house and why was he in the house and you panic, hard —

and you jump nearly a foot in the air as you realize you were dreaming this entire time. 

You realize that you fell asleep on the couch, that Beomgyu’s house is not on fire, and more importantly, he’s still asleep on the couch right beside you. He never went anywhere. And you feel like hugging him, but he’s still asleep, thank God —

He screams, suddenly, then falls off the couch onto the floor below.

You’re too in shock to put the pieces together, but you get on the floor to ensure Beomgyu doesn’t hurt himself. “Hey, ‘Gyu? Wake up, wake up, Beomgyu, it’s a dream.”

Beomgyu shakes for a second and then catches his breath, sitting on the floor, still wrapped up in the blanket. He looks up at you, and then, “Flower?”

“Hey.”

And then Beomgyu starts to cry. 

“Woah, woah, hey,” you say, pulling him into your arms on the floor. You hardly ever see Beomgyu cry. He’s always so good at hiding his emotions. 

“Sorry, I — I just —“ He winces, holding in his words, and then he spills, head on your shoulder. “I just had the worst dream.”

“Tell me about it.” Yours was pretty bad, too, considering that Beomgyu died in a fire.

“I — I was at home, I don’t know why, and my dad was there.” Beomgyu spits out the words faster than they can come out, trying not to sob between the words. “And he was drunk, like usual, and I was in the kitchen, God, I don’t know why I was in the kitchen —“

You’re trying to process everything Beomgyu is saying and it’s not working. There’s so much of this you didn’t know. “Hey, it’s okay, you’re here now.”

“I know, I know.” He hangs onto you, as if to remember that this is physical and this is real and the dream is just that. “I just...for some reason, I feel like I’ve had this dream, over and over, before. Have I told you about it? Where my dad hits me in the head with a broken bottle?”

You stop, cold. “No.”

“I could have sworn I did.” He sits in silence, in your arms, for a minute. Then, “It always ends the same, I think. I’m hit in the head, and I’m unconscious, and I can see myself laying in the kitchen with my head bleeding, and my dad just starts attacking everything. And when he attacks the gas stove, there’s this explosion and then everything catches on fire and —“

“Beomgyu,” you whisper, then pull him closer. “I think I had the same dream.”

“What?” He pushes you away and looks at you in shock. “How?”

“I dreamed I woke up here and Rue came and got me and your house was on fire.” And you laugh. “Now I know it was a dream. Rue had a cell phone. But — I went to your house, it was right there, and it was on fire, and somebody said you were inside.”

“Oh.” Beomgyu sighs. “But I’m here now.”

“Here. With me. In the real world, not at your dad’s house, here, where you’re safe, from bottles and — your dad, apparently.” That’s gonna take some getting used to. You knew Beomgyu’s relationship with his dad was bad. You didn’t know he was being physically abused. 

“Yeah.” He looks at you. “I’m here. With you.”

And this is a horrible time for you to be looking in Beomgyu’s eyes like this. Because both of you have just been through a crazy, traumatic, similar dream — weird, huh? But it’s ended up with him in your arms, looking into your eyes like this.

“We should get to bed,” you say. “Like...upstairs and stuff.”

“We should.” But neither of you move. You’re still catching up with reality. It’s still hard to shake this dream where he died, where the burning house was right in front of your eyes. 

Beomgyu reaches up and rubs on your cheeks with his thumbs. “Just reminding myself you’re real,” he says. “You’re here.” And then he leans forward.

Your noses meet for a second, and you tilt your head to the side, brushing your lips against his. He leans in, pressing in for a second kiss before he pulls ever so slightly back. “Wait. You wanted this, too?” And then you meet in the middle, and his hands move to your cheeks and he is kissing you, and he wants to kiss you, and it feels so right and so familiar to you that you can’t help but kiss him back. 

He pulls away, suddenly, for a second, but you realize it’s because he’s about to let out a huge yawn. And it’s weirdly adorable, him covering his mouth to yawn after kissing you, and you laugh a bit. 

“We should sleep now.”

“I — I agree.” He stands up, then reaches down to help you up. “Can we talk about this in the morning?”

“Sure.” And you kiss him quickly on the cheek. “Morning works. We’ll both be here, both alive, both together.”

“Together.” He smiles. “I like that.”

Beomgyu wakes you up in the morning the old fashioned way: by coming into your bedroom and turning on your light. He gives you time to shower instead of hogging it, and he has your cereal all ready by the time you walk downstairs.

“So I guess we like each other,” he says, almost in a joking way, as Mic Drop plays on his car stereo. 

“We do. I kind of figured it out recently.”

“I’ve liked you for a while, I know.” He doesn’t seem as shy about it as he might have before. There’s something about last night, the shared experience of the dream, the basically waking up in each others’ arms, that feels like it’s already solidified you two as a pair. You were already roommates and practically best friends. But it’s become easy to slip into something more. 

“Well, where do we go from here?” You pause. “Should we keep living together?”

He laughs. “Flower, why would I live anywhere else? I want to live with you. If you’re worried about funny business, don’t. Do you think other people are gonna think it’s weird that we’re living together?”

“I mean. We’re in high school.”

“Then we just continue as we are, and if the adults ask, we’ll tell them we’re not doing that kind of stuff yet. I just kissed you last night. I’m in no hurry. We have all the time in the world. If things seem right, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” And you find yourself blushing, but that’s the good thing about Beomgyu: he’s always been good at communicating the important stuff to you. Not so much about his family life, sure, but when it comes to the two of you and your house, you’re an excellent team. 

“Okay, so I’ll be honest with you if I want that, and we’ll go from there, right?” You’re both eighteen, so you’re both adults, but Beomgyu’s right. You don’t want people getting the wrong idea from the two of you living together. But as you both walk into school, everybody seems to notice that you’re standing so much closer together. And when Beomgyu’s hand brushes against yours and you take it, you feel the butterflies in your stomach, but it feels right. Like this should have been the way it was all along. 

You go to your first class and try to think about your speech. After class, you check your phone and notice Beomgyu has texted you. I’m in the nurse’s office. Please come get me. And you don’t know why Beomgyu would be in the nurse’s office, so you head over.

The principal, of all people, is there when you get inside. Beomgyu is sitting on a cot, and he looks like a mess. What did you miss during one class?! 

“You live with this student, right, so they can take you home?” the principal asks Beomgyu.

“Flower,” Beomgyu says, and he jumps off the cot and across the room, pulling you into his arms. You notice he starts crying. 

“What did I miss?” you ask the principal, Beomgyu leaning on your shoulder. 

The principal sighs. “There’s been a terrible accident last night. Beomgyu’s been living with you because his father is on record with CPS for being abusive. We couldn’t force him to get help with his alcoholism, and last night, he set his house on fire. Trapped himself inside.”

The shared dream from last night comes back in an instant. How? But Beomgyu is reliving it, and you hold onto him anyway as he cries out what’s left of his tears. Then, you get permission to take him home for the day.

Instead of going home, you go to Gyro Loco. While you go inside and get both of your usual orders, Beomgyu calls his grandparents. His dad’s parents are actually awesome people, but they live three states away, and his grandma is in a wheelchair. They could only help from afar as the relationships between their son and his sons disintegrated. Beomgyu’s grandfather will take care of the funeral and anything that his dad might have left behind, which means Beomgyu, now an adult, can continue staying with you. 

“I don’t want to think about it,” he says as you get back in the car. “At least let me get through this week. I want to play with Waeng at the banquet, and I want to focus on my music. This is our last concert of the year. So after that, I’ll be official and I’ll show up at the funeral and —“

“I’ll go with you,” you say, immediately. “You know that, right?”

He nods, but then it actually clicks in his brain and he smiles. “Thank you, flower.” And he leans over and kisses you, quickly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I don’t know if I ever asked. Can I be your boyfriend?”

You nod. “Please.” And he kisses you again, and then you go home together, back to your shared space. Beomgyu almost shoves the wrong key into the ignition again, and he considers taking the busted key off (“what the hell does this key go to anyway?!?”) but he forgets about it and leaves it on. You get in the front door, eat into the Gyro Loco, and then you order pizza, and Beomgyu breaks out his guitar and plays all these songs for you, for the sheer hell of it. Then you turn on Netflix and watch a thousand episodes of Jeopardy, and eventually, it tires Beomgyu out enough where he can sleep. 

“Hey,” he says, knocking on your bedroom door, making sure you’re decent (you are). 

“What’s up?”

“Thanks for being there for me today. I know this wasn’t the best way to spend our first day together, but…”

“It was fine. And we’ve always been together. I get what you mean, though.” You go to your door and kiss him on the cheek. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow, again, too. Sound good?”

“Sounds good. Goodnight, flower.” And with that, he leaves, and you feel that peace inside of your soul. The entire world could fall apart, and as long as you have Beomgyu, you know you’ll be okay. 

You get a fresh start the next morning, waking up to Beomgyu singing in the shower again. You actually let yourself listen for once, and you notice that he’s actually a good singer, even this early in the morning. You don’t know if Beomgyu’s going to continue with his band into the future, but he could definitely do something with music as a career. Maybe he could teach music in Kankakee, the next town over, or something. 

After he drives you to school, you forego class and sit in the library, letting the events from the past twenty four hours settle. It’s made you realize that time is too short, and that it’s important to cherish what you have while you have it...like your relationship with Beomgyu. It’s enough of an idea that you think you can write a speech off of it, and so you write:

Welcome, students and parents, to our end of year banquet. Tonight, we celebrate the achievements that we have accomplished over the past year. But we also celebrate those, like myself, who are graduating this year. We are those who have bright futures ahead of ourselves. We are just at the beginning of our lives, our start line. High school is not the end goal, but the very beginning of the journey of life.

This journey can take many twists and turns over the years. There will be those of us who experience hardship all of our lives. Others may luck into a life with no pain or suffering. We may go to college, get married, have kids, find excellent jobs. We may also get divorced or lose our jobs, and some of those events aren’t always in our control. Our lives are fleetingly short, and it’s important to remember that. But the beauty of life is in that fleeting quality, in the day to day and the ordinary. As you chase your dreams, there are places and people that you might take for granted if you don’t stop and acknowledge them sometimes. So while each one of us makes plans for the future, each one of us has dreams, it’s important that we take time every day to hold what is dear to us close. The future is a mystery, and you never know what tomorrow will hold. Let us take what has happened in our past and move forward to a brighter tomorrow, together.

You pause on that last section. A brighter tomorrow, together. You feel like you’ve heard it somewhere before, but you don’t know where. 

“There you are.” 

You look up and see Beomgyu, standing in the library. “I got the principal to give us the rest of the day off,” he says. “Let’s start this over the way I know how, okay? You’re gonna go on a date with me, right here, right now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. First, though, I need you to actually come with me.” And you get up, pocketing your phone with your speech on it, and you take Beomgyu’s hand. You race out of the library and through the school, running out the front doors, oblivious to everybody else around you. Right now, it’s just you and Beomgyu, free for the weekend. Together. 

You get into the car, and Beomgyu uses the wrong key again, then turns on his cassette stereo before pulling out. He rolls down the windows and blasts some BTS song that sounds like pow pow pow or something. He looks at you at a red light and sticks his tongue out, and now you know he’s just being crazy. 

You’re not sure how you missed Beomgyu this whole time. But you’re not going to let him out of your sight, from here on out. 

You half expect him to drive you to Gyro Loco, which is always where Beomgyu ends up for lunch. Sometimes he’ll eat lunch there the entire day, sneaking off of Peotone High’s campus for some sweet Greek food. But today he drives you down the street to Casey’s, which is half pizza shop, half carry out. Beomgyu grabs an entire row of soda pops and pays for the pizza, and you sit together in the window, eating both of your favorites. He already knows what you like, so there’s not much difference between what you’re doing now and, say, what you would have done a week ago. But you’re now together, in that romantic sense, and this is a date, and Beomgyu’s dad is dead and his house is gone, but that doesn’t matter in a way, because he’s family. 

It reminds you that your speech is done, but you haven’t actually shown it to Rue. So you email her; she’ll be able to get the email in a couple of hours, depending on what she’s doing and whose computer she is on. The speech is done, should I send it to you? 

You get a response faster than you thought possible from Rue. You don’t have to! We don’t have to clear it first, we know you won’t go on stage and make a fool out of yourself. You’re my best friend. I trust you. Just remember to be there a half hour early, so at 5:30. And dress to impress!

You smile; you already know you have to be there at 5:30, because that’s the same time Beomgyu and Waeng have to be there. “You have another rehearsal tomorrow?”

“Yeah, at Shelly’s. We were gonna practice at school today, but I don’t want to be here. I totally want you to come out to her place again, I want to run this me-only version of the song by them. And I’d love for you to hear it.”

You lean on your hands, staring at the man whom you’ve just now realized is probably the love of your life. And sometimes, love happens like that. It’s not always a flash in the dark or a chance meeting, like it happens in the movies. Sometimes it builds, over days and weeks and months, over little coincidences and takeout from Gyro Loco and waking up to them singing in the shower. Sometimes it was always just in front of you, if you dared to look. 

“I assume we’re not going home after this.”

“Oh, heck no,” Beomgyu says, a cheeky grin on his face. “We’re gonna do something I haven’t done in a long time.”

Truth be told, you haven’t gone bowling in years, either. You used to do it all the time as a school activity, or as a fun trip that your family would take, but those memories are long blurred and gone away. The bowling alley in Peotone is too small to even host Peotone’s after-prom; you and your friends had held your after-prom in Kankakee instead, going up in big groups to ensure everybody was safe. 

“I am horrible at bowling,” Beomgyu confesses as you drive into the parking lot. “The last time I bowled, I didn’t get a single pin.”

“No way!”

“Yes, way. It was the most embarrassing thing I think I’ve ever been through.” You pull into the bowling alley, which is super small, an older brick building that looks like it hasn’t been remodeled in decades. But you walk in with Beomgyu, holding his hand, and the place is empty. As it’s the middle of the day, nobody cares that you’re here, and you take over a lane, getting bowling shoes. 

Beomgyu seems relaxed enough until you sit down and start pushing buttons. Before long, the bumpers pop out on your lane, blocking the gutter. “Yah! Did you really do that?”

“Now you can hit pins!” you say, bracing yourself, because you know Beomgyu is going to faux attack you. He does this whenever you take his Gyro Loco orders and hide them. But this time, it’s less fake-hitting and yelling. Instead, he goes in for a hug, kissing your cheeks.

“Take them off! Take them off!”

“At least for the first game! Then you can get some practice in! Come on, ‘Gyu, I want to have fun, not listen to you complain the whole time.”

He pouts, but he relents, and the two of you bowl your game. You’re okay at it, but Beomgyu learns how to use the bumpers to his advantage, knocking down all sorts of pins. When you bowl one straight down the middle and get a strike, he dances and cheers you on, then wraps you up and plants a great big kiss on your cheek. And you think to yourself, this isn’t quite so bad, being loved by Choi Beomgyu. 

He hasn’t said it yet, but you already know it’s true. You’ve been friends long enough that he at least loves you on a base level. Enough to trust you after a crappy dream, and enough to lean on you through all his family troubles. 

For the second game, you take the bumpers off, and Beomgyu still gets a lot of gutter balls, but he has enough of a handle on the game that he does hit some pins. “I’ll get better next time,” he says, shrugging it off. You’ve paid for two games, and it’s now dinner time. And you suddenly realize what might be perfect for your first date with Beomgyu.

“Hey, ‘Gyu? Have you decided what we’re eating yet?”

“I haven’t. I figured we would just go back to the house and find something.”

You smirk. “Wanna go to Olive Garden?”

There is probably nothing less pseudo-American than going to Olive Garden for dinner. Their “endless breadsticks” are legendary, simply because the waiters keep giving them to you. On top of that, their menu choices are not super expensive, which makes it an excellent place to go for families of all tax brackets...not to mention two roommates who are now falling in love with each other, going on their first date. Besides...Beomgyu will never say it, but he has an obsession with the endless breadsticks. You once went to Olive Garden with Waeng, and Beomgyu and Kai got in a fight by using breadsticks as swords, and you almost got yourselves kicked out if not for the fact that your waitress had thankfully had a sense of humor.

“I would love to go to Olive Garden,” Beomgyu says, and then, “but we’re not gonna duel, right?”

“No, please not. If you want to save some breadsticks for later and duel at home, we can.” And Beomgyu pumps his fist in the air. 

Olive Garden isn’t in Peotone -- it’s technically in Kankakee, but right on the northern edge of town, which makes it easy to get to. It’s about a ten minute drive tops, and while driving there, Beomgyu tries to teach you most of the words to Mic Drop. The remix has a lot of English in it, so you learn all the parts where mic drop, mic drop comes in, and also something about seeing a bag. “The bag is filled with trophies,” Beomgyu explains, “so when they’re saying, did you see my bag? they’re asking if you’ve seen all the awards they’ve won.”

“Have BTS won that many awards?”

“Not in America, they haven’t. They win a lot of Billboard end of the year social media awards. But in Korea, they win everything.” Beomgyu never talks about being Korean. For all you know, he’s as American as anybody else in town. And you’ve always wanted to ask him, but asking anything about his family right now is going to be a bad life decision. So you sing along when he repeats the song, and then you get to Olive Garden, and it’s busy for a Friday night but the waiter is able to find you a table within ten minutes or so.

“It’s our first date,” Beomgyu explains with a smile, and you shake your head at him. You sit across from each other near a window, and the waiter starts to bring out breadsticks. Beomgyu eats three before the menus are brought out.

“If you get spaghetti, I will kill you.”

“Flower, I will get whatever I want, and I will enjoy it.”

“We can make spaghetti at home! Get something else or I will order you whatever has the most tomatoes in it.” Beomgyu can tolerate spaghetti as long as it’s simple marinara sauce -- bonus points if there’s meat in it -- but he absolutely abhors tomatoes. In the end he orders some sort of alfredo. 

“So I think I can finally ask you this,” you say as the waiter walks away with your orders. “Why do you call me ‘flower?’ You just...started one day, and I don’t know where this led.”

“Oh.” Beomgyu finishes another breadstick. “I remember. Because you’re alive. Everything else in my life is dead. My mom and dad are dead, and my brother basically doesn’t exist. You’re my family, flower. You’re this thing that’s alive, and I want to remember that. Don’t ask me what kind of flower you are, though, because I won’t know right away. Give me time.”

You continue to make your usual banter as the waiter brings your food, enjoying your time. You offer to pay, and Beomgyu fights you on it for about five minutes until he finally lets you. You get some breadsticks to go and get to the car just as it starts to rain. The trip back to Peotone is uneventful, but you step in the door and within five seconds, there’s a huge thunderclap and the power goes out.

“We don’t need to put the breadsticks in the fridge,” he says as he puts them on the counter. “So now what do we do?”

And you kiss him. You kiss Beomgyu, as he’s standing in the middle of your kitchen, holding the breadsticks, as he’s stood there so many times before. But this time, you want to make it count. You want to make it into a memory, something you’ll remember forever. And he puts the breadsticks down on the kitchen counter and he kisses you back, sweetly, without any proper fear because he knows how to trust you. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t say something before,” he says, laughing. The two of you can barely see each other through the windows; there’s no proper light in the house right now. “I’m so glad I did now. I want to be with you forever, flower. Is that wrong?”

“Probably not in the short term,” you say back. “I like being with you.”

He pauses, then lets go of you and reaches around his neck. You know what’s hanging there; it’s the necklace he always wears, with a pick around it. It’s the first pick he ever owned, and he wears it all the time as a reminder of his identity as an artist. But he unclasps it, and he reaches around your neck and puts it on you.

“Beomgyu, this is yours,” you say.

“And so are you, now,” he says, taking your hands in his. “I want you to have it. If we ever break up, for some reason, I’ll want it back, but as long as you are my flower, I want you to wear it. Okay?”

You nod, feeling tears well up, though you don’t know why. “Okay.”

You wake up to find yourself on a train. 

The train is packed, and you quickly recognize the blue seats as being from Chicago. They’re not from the train that you typically take to get into Chicago, but it’s one of those subway L trains. This must be a dream, then. But you reach up, and Beomgyu’s pick is still around your neck. You had fallen asleep with it on, on purpose. There’s all sorts of people on this train, but you don’t see Beomgyu or anybody else you recognize. So when you get to the next stop, you get off, and then you quickly walk to the next available car. The doors quickly close, and you realize this car is empty, save for one well known person sitting near a map.

“What are you doing here?” you ask Rue, now fully aware that this is a dream. This is the second time you’ve dreamed of her this week. What is it with Rue and dreams? 

“Good morning,” she says to you. Then, “Shouldn’t you be in Chicago right now?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m home with Beomgyu. I finished your speech, and you emailed me back, and we’re just chilling. Oh, we have a rehearsal tonight.” You say most of this entirely lucidly. This is an odd dream, for sure. 

“You’re supposed to be here, though.” Rue reaches next to her and pulls out a shiny red apple, taking a bite out of it. “Wrong line, though. You’re supposed to go north.”

“North for what?” you ask, but the car shakes, and you realize it’s Beomgyu, waking you up from this weird dream. 

“Flower, flower! Power’s back on.”

“Oh.” You clear your eyes, seeing Beomgyu’s happy eyes and his light brown hair all askew. You had both decided last night to sleep in this morning, since you had nowhere to be until much later, and your phones would probably go dead at some point in the middle of the night anyway. But now it’s ten in the morning, and the electric is back on from last night’s storm. And Beomgyu is in your room, wearing a white t-shirt and lounge pants, completely covered but simultaneously kind of adorkable. 

“Thanks for letting me know,” you say, and you grab your pillow, and you throw it at him. It lands square in the middle of his forehead, and what follows is a crazy pillow fight that ends in you kissing for way longer than expected. It only stops when Beomgyu gets a call from Shelly about tonight’s rehearsal. 

Lunch is leftovers; you whip up a batch of spaghetti, which Beomgyu eats by pouring cheese sauce all over it. Then he goes upstairs to practice while you hang out downstairs. You’ve got nowhere in particular to be except here. Contrary to Dream Rue’s insistence, you don’t have to be in Chicago on a Saturday morning. There’s no reason for you to be. Instead, you start to maybe actually consider what you “want to do with your life.” You need a job, that’s for sure. But you want to stay here, in the house, with Beomgyu. If you continue to work, you can fund the house, and maybe when he graduates you can both figure out what to do next. You don’t care where you work, as long as the hours are okay and you don’t have to walk home all of the time. Imagine walking into town like that! It’s at least four miles one way; you don’t think you’d ever make it. You could probably walk to work at McDonalds, but on the hottest of summer days, that would still be out of the question. 

Beomgyu sits on the couch, guitar over his shoulder, swinging it into his lap. He strums a random chord. “Flower, flower, flower, yah, you’re the one I love,” he randomly sings, laughing. “What’cha doing, flower?”

“Thinking about my future. You wanna go to college, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.” 

“So you’ll move away.”

“Flower, I’m not going that far, I don’t want to. Maybe to Kankakee, tops. Then I’ll have all the Olive Garden I want. And I’ll eat Gyro Loco when I come visit on the weekends.”

You propose your idea. “I mean, we could go to school together. Look into it. Maybe move. I don’t know what we would do with the house, but we could both move wherever we wanted, take out loans, who cares? As long as we’re together, we could make it work.”

Beomgyu laughs. “Well, what if I move to Los Angeles after high school to become a rock star?”

“Then I’ll move to Los Angeles with you.”

“Are you saying you’re gonna follow a boy for the rest of your life?”

“Beomgyu.” You touch the pick around your neck. “You are much more than just a boy. Besides, you still have two years of high school left. A lot could change in those two years. I could come to totally hate you. Or I could love you forever. What I’m saying is, if right now I had to make a decision, I would definitely follow you to Los Angeles.”

“It would be a horrible idea.”

“Are you saying that we couldn’t make it? Because we’ve done just fine here in this house.”

“What if I wanted to stay with you in this house forever?” Beomgyu asks, and for a split second, you consider it. But there’s something else egging at the back of your mind. Is it really this easy? So many people go years, decades even, before finding someone special, and some people never find it. And yours has been your roommate this entire time? 

“That sounds incredibly romantic, Beomgyu, but I don’t know how feasible it is in real life.”

“Who cares about real life right now?” And you realize all this fantasy thinking about the future is helping Beomgyu. If he’s not talking with you about this, then he might be devolving into thoughts about his family drama that will start next week. So you continue to talk about the house, all the changes you could make to it, painting some of the rooms and redoing the floors and finally putting in a central air conditioning system. And the more you talk, the more it seems like this might be the kind of life you want.

You still feel like something’s oddly missing. But if something is, then you want to find it with Beomgyu, together.

When you arrive at Shelly’s, she already has the garage open, setting Kai’s drums up. And Kai smiles and waves at you, seemingly over the awkwardness from earlier this week. Looking back, he had seen it long before either one of you had. Now you can go tell Beomgyu that you like him. At least somebody had seen the signs. 

You tuck your new pick necklace into your top so Kai won’t see it, then help Beomgyu set his guitar up. Then, when all three are done, you sit just outside of the open garage, an audience of one for this dress rehearsal. “We’re gonna play three songs,” Beomgyu says. “We’re starting with I Wanna Hold Your Hand, because the principal likes that, and then I’m singing my song, and then I’m playing Graduation. Sound good?”

“Perfect, babe,” you say without thinking, and the others laugh before Kai clicks the first song off. It’s a simple Beatles song, and you know Beomgyu secretly hates playing it, but for a school function, he doesn’t have much of a choice. Thankfully it works well with the limited instruments they have, and he makes it through. 

The whole band sounds great, but at this point, you can’t take your eyes off Beomgyu. He really is having fun jamming with his friends. There’s always a smile on his face, and his light brown hair goes all over the place as he jumps around. And when the song ends, he takes front and center stage, tuning his guitar quickly again before starting to play. He sings now without a microphone, but he’ll have one tomorrow at the banquet. You’ve been waiting to hear this song in its entirety -- you know the tune well enough, but not the entire piece from start to finish. Beomgyu has always said that it tells a story, and you finally get to hear it.

I can recall the sound of the wind as it blew through the trees and the trees would bend

I can recall the smell of the rain on a hot summer night coming through the screen

I'd crawl in your bed when the lightning flashed

And I'd still be there when the storm had passed

Dead to the world, till the morning cast its light all around your room

This is a little different from what Beomgyu usually writes. His songs are often simple and about frivolous things; he has written an ode to Gyro Loco, for example, but refuses to play it in public. Or he has written ‘love’ songs about fake ex-girlfriends and boyfriends. You have to wonder if maybe he was writing, secretly, about you this whole time. 

We lived on a street where the tall elm shade was as green as the grass and as cool as a blade

That you held in your teeth as we lay on our backs

Staring up at the blue and the blue stared back

I used to believe we were just like those trees

We'd grow just as tall and as proud as we pleased

With our feet on the ground and our arms in the breeze under a sheltering sky

It feels like the perfect almost-summer night: warm enough to sit outside comfortably, listening to your now-boyfriend serenade you with his guitar. All of your conversations earlier could be pipe dreams, but you do know one thing for sure: you don’t want this ever to end. You always want to be listening to Beomgyu playing his guitar.

Twirl me about, and twirl me around

Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground

And when I look up at you looking down

Say it was only a dream

He goes straight from the chorus into the next verse. 

A big truck was parked in the drive one day

They wrapped us in paper and moved us away

Your room was no longer next door to mine

And this kid brother thing was old by that time

But, oh, how our dreams went bump in the night

And the voices next door getting into a fight

And the next day, a silence you could cut with a knife and feel like a blade at your throat

Twirl me about, and twirl me around

Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground

And when I look up at you looking down

Say it was only a dream

He strums for a little while, lost in the memories that must have inspired this song. Then he enters the verse that he asked you about.

The day you left home, you got an early start

I watched your car back out in the dark

I opened your door to your room down the hall

I turned on the light and all that I saw

Was a bed and a desk and a couple of tacks

No sign of someone who expects to be back

It must have been one hell of a suitcase you packed

He doesn’t finish the verse, but simply pauses for a bit, then continues strumming, finishing the song. 

Twirl me about, and twirl me around

Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground

And when I look up at you looking down

Say it was only a dream

When he’s done and he’s played the last chord, both Shelly and Kai clap along with you. Then they regroup and play Graduation, which is also a simple song that they all sing different parts of. Halfway through, Beomgyu goofs off with the lyrics, then unplugs his guitar and runs around Shelly in circles. Clearly this Graduation song is too mainstream for him. 

Then the rehearsal is done, the performance ready for tomorrow, and you help Beomgyu pack up his guitar. On the way home, you nearly fall asleep, and Beomgyu parks the car and opens the side door. He takes you by the hand and leads you upstairs to your room, and everything feels all shades of perfect, like you really could do this forever.

“Love you,” he says, casually, kissing you on the temple.

“Love you,” you say, and you smile and close the door.

The next morning, you both sleep in, then eat two bowls of sugar cereal, then you retreat to your room. You prepare for the banquet and scour your closet for at least thirty minutes before deciding you already know what you’re wearing to the banquet. So you put on your favorite outfit, and you make sure Beomgyu’s pick necklace is on top so everybody can see it. Then, you get ready and jump in the car with Beomgyu; he’s got his guitar in the trunk, and he has to be there early to set up the band equipment.

Peotone High’s awards banquet starts at six PM sharp, and you already know pretty well how it will go. The banquet includes dinner, and everybody sits at long tables, and food is served, usually some turkey or ham dinner with mashed potatoes, and variants for other dietary options. There’s usually some performance to start off with, then a student speech, then the food is distributed. After the food, there’s usually another performance -- this is where Waeng comes in -- and then the awards are given out. Lastly, there’s a speech made by a teacher, and then everybody gets to go home.

“Hey hey,” Rue says when you and Beomgyu enter through the cafeteria doors. The cafeteria is a holding area for everybody who’s doing something special for the banquet. Rue is back there, in a long blue dress, her hair back up in a bun. More importantly, she’s holding her violin! Peotone doesn’t have a high school orchestra; Rue is the only person in the school who plays violin. Everybody else either clunks along in marching band, or Beomgyu plays in Waeng and stands out among the crowd. But Rue -- Rue is something else. She’s won contests all over the region, and you’re certain when she goes to Bible school she’ll continue to play. 

“I didn’t know you were playing for us tonight!”

Rue smiles, shrugging it off, modest as ever. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise. Is it?”

“It is! I’m excited now.”

“So I will play first, and then you will give your speech. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds perfect.”

“Great. And nice necklace! Where did you get it?”

Oh. “I’ll tell you later,” you tell Rue, and then you and Beomgyu quickly go into the gymnasium. All of the tables and chairs are already set up. There are long, white tablecloths on every one of the tables, and there are simple folding chairs with ribbons on them, all lined up in a row. You count the tables -- eight, nine, ten -- and then remember the seats are also for guests and family members. Everybody who’s anybody is coming, from the basketball team that won regionals this year to the mathalon team that can never catch a break. 

“I need to go,” Beomgyu says, and you know he’s needed elsewhere. He won’t be sitting next to you; he has to stay with the band in the holding room until they’re needed. 

“Okay. Will they feed you?”

“Pfft! Of course.” He pushes his guitar aside and kisses you on the cheek. “That looks good on you,” he says, motioning to the pick.

You lean forward, taking a chance, and kiss him quickly in front of everybody else. “See you after?”

“See you after.” And with that, he is gone. You pick a random seat and you plop in. Soon, the seats start to fill up around you, and you check your phone -- 5:45. Knowing Rue, knowing she’s the president of the student council and the first act on the program tonight, she’ll start promptly at six on the dot. Sure enough, right at six, good old Mr. Johnson steps onto the stage in the gymnasium. The tables are now filled with students, families, and friends, all seated and ready for dinner, all dressed nicely. 

Mr. Johnson pulls out a small card and clears his throat in front of a podium. “Thank you for coming out tonight to our Peotone High School Awards Banquet. Starting off our evening, playing Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, the Fugue, Rue Pasquale.”

Everybody applauds as Rue goes onto stage. She looks elegant in her dress, and when she puts her violin up, she commands everybody’s attention when she starts to play. You’ve heard her play plenty of times before, but never this piece. It’s a short section of a longer sonata, a lilting piece that goes on and on, two strings, then three, and Rue plays it so elegantly that you almost forget anything else exists. 

As you watch Rue, you can’t help but wish that Beomgyu was here with you watching. You flex your hand, wishing that his fingers were interlaced with yours. It feels...weird. Like something’s going to happen. But it won’t; he’s safe, in the cafeteria. Nothing’s going to happen to Beomgyu. And instead, you reach up and you hold the pick in between your fingers. Beomgyu will always be with you. He said so. And he never goes back on things like that. 

You certainly don’t know if you two will last forever. But it’s not like it will end tonight. You really don’t know where these nerves are from. So you focus on Rue’s playing, on the way she plays each note, and as everything starts to blur together, you rub your fingers across the pick around your neck. Beomgyu will always be with you. He said so. 

You close your eyes. He will always be with you. 

Always.

Always -- 

Chapter Text

In the middle of America, in a state called Illinois, there lies a small town named Peotone. Even though it is very close to Chicago, one of the biggest cities in the world, one would never be able to tell. Peotone is a picture of Americana, surrounded by cornfields on all sides. The skies are blue, the roads are long and rambling, and every day is peaceful.

It’s here in Peotone where you live, just outside of town, at 10001 West Wilmington Road. It’s a picturesque old farmhouse surrounded by fields that your family hasn’t ever owned, but are still tended to. It’s just far enough away from town that you have to drive to see your friends. When you step outside your front door every morning, you only see a couple of houses in the distance. Everything else is wide open space. 

It’s where you grew up. It’s the only house you’ve ever known.

When you wake up, it’s never to an alarm. These days, it’s always to the sound of the shower starting up in the bathroom. You’ve lived alone for some time, but recently you had a friend of yours move into the spare room. His name is Beomgyu, and he sings in the shower. It’s usually something by his favorite band, BTS, so you’re always awake by the time he’s done, and you’re ready to kick him out to prepare for the school day yourself.

Beomgyu doesn’t pay any rent for staying with you. There’s usually nobody at his house, since he insists his “dad is a mess.” That and he prefers to live with someone, always referencing this one time he almost caught his house on fire. So it’s almost like the two of you are roommates. You know. If you were roommates who fight over the shower in the morning, then go to Dollar General and purchase straight sugar cereal for breakfast and takeout from Gyro Loco every weekend. It’s nice to have a constant friend around, though you’re certainly not tied at the hip. 

The other perk of having Beomgyu as your friend is that he has a car! If you get ready for school before he leaves, he is able to take you. Otherwise, you have to take the bus. This morning, you’re all sorts of prepared, and you grab your bookbag and lunch money, hopping into Beomgyu’s passenger seat. The car is older than dirt; Beomgyu has to plug his phone into a cassette adapter in order to get the music to work. Today’s music: BTS, of course! He turns on a song called Save Me, and he sings along to every lyric as he drives down the road to school.

It’s toward the end of the school year, and as a senior, you’re going to be graduating soon. You won’t have many more of these days left. And you intend to cherish each and every one of them. 

Peotone High School is an easy drive from your house: drive into town, go past the McDonalds, turn left at the bank. The parking lot is already filled with cars when you get there; Beomgyu parks, and the two of you walk in. It’s Monday, the start of a new week. You know you’ve got class, but there’s one thing you have to do first. 

Every graduating senior has to meet with the school’s guidance counselor, Mr. Johnson, to plan their future after Peotone. Your next to last meeting is this morning with him, instead of your first class. So you go straight to his office, which has no air conditioning and therefore is sweltering hot. Mr. Johnson flips through your file, and you sit on the chair across from his desk. There’s a clock somewhere in this room that is ticking, and it reminds you of a bomb that could explode at any minute.

“So.” Mr. Johnson leans on his hands. “You really don’t have a plan, do you?”

You shake your head. “Nope.” You’ve fed him the runaround for weeks now. To be honest, you’re still waiting for that one thing, for lightning to strike, for the clouds to part and for your destiny to drop into your lap. And it hasn’t happened yet. So you figure you’ll graduate, then hang around Peotone, get a part time job, and wait for it. 

“You really need to be thinking about this,” Mr. Johnson says for the umpteenth time. “What are you going to do with your life? It’s up to you, but you have to take action. You can’t just coast through, or else other people will be in control of your life. If you lose that control, then you’ll never get it back. Stay in control, kiddo.”

Thankfully the meeting ends after that, and you’re dismissed back to the hall. It’s an in-between period, before your second class for the day, so you head to your locker. As you unlock it and open it, you hear someone call down the hall. “Hey hey!”

“Oh, hey, Rue!” Only Rue calls out to you like that. Rue is your best friend; you’ve seriously known each other since third grade, when she shared her apple with you at lunch. Rue’s hardly changed over the years; she’s grown taller, but she still has that same blonde hair pulled back, still wears the same ankle-length dresses. Other students at Peotone might call Rue a prude, but to you, she is perfectly Rue. She also uses her attention to rules and regulations to help the student council as its president; when she graduates in a few weeks, she’ll be heading to Bible school in Missouri. So these are also the last few weeks with Rue before your friendship gets harder to maintain.

“I have a question for you,” she asks, but you’re not listening. There’s a notebook in your locker, and it’s not yours.

You tune Rue out as you pick up the notebook. It’s a small thing, one of those one dollar notebooks that kids buy at the beginning of the school year, with a purple cover and something scrawled on it in now-faded Sharpie. Kang Taehyun, Peotone Mathalon. You know what the mathalon is -- it’s a team of kids who do math questions, and Peotone’s team is never that good -- but you have no clue what these other words are. 

“Hey, Rue? Do you know a Kay-ng…” Your voice trails off over the rest of the...is that a name?

“Oh, Kang Taehyun, he’s a freshman, why?”

“I think his notebook is in my locker.”

“Oh, that’s weird.” Rue looks it over. “You might wanna go give that back to him.” 

“Rue, if he’s a freshman, I have no clue where he is right now. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

Rue thinks for a minute, like she somehow magically knows this freshman’s schedule. “You could try room 123. It’s the mathalon room. At the very least, you can leave it in there for him.” And the bell rings, and Rue has to head to class. “Oh, we need to talk at lunch about something! Don’t let me forget!!”

You shake your head and go to room 123; this late in the year, nobody will care if you’re five minutes late to class. It’s not like you’re missing anything important. When you stick your head in, you see it’s just a normal classroom, and the now-semi-experienced freshmen are running around, goofing off and looking at their cell phones. A Black girl with braids notices you come into the door. “Oh, are you a senior?”

“Yeah, I’m looking for Kang Taehyun?” you say, holding onto the notebook, and one of the freshmen in the back corner stops cold, then whips around toward the door, eyes wide. The first thing that you notice is that, despite the fact that you’ve never met this kid in your entire life, he looks really familiar. The second thing you notice is that he has the biggest eyes you’ve ever seen.

But they dart down to what you’re holding, and he rushes across the room. “Oh my God, where did you find that?” He snatches it from your hands and grips it tight.

—“

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter, thank you, I’m glad I have it back now. Phew.” He goes back to his corner of the room and puts the purple notebook in a backpack, then looks back at the door. “What?”

You...half expected him to be more social. “Oh, nothing, I guess.” And you give him a curt little wave, and you walk off to class. Weird.

Lunch time at Peotone is a simple affair; the lunch room hardly ever has what you want, so you bring your own. So does Rue; for a while there, her mother packed both of you lunches, until you started to experiment with your own concoctions. You’ve obviously graduated from a paper bag to a vinyl lunch box in your favorite color, but the sentiment still stays the same.

“So you know that banquet on Sunday?” Rue says quickly between bites of her lunch. 

You think back. Ahh, yes, you know about this. It’s a big banquet where all of the students are invited to dinner, and the end of the year awards will be given out. Beomgyu won’t stop talking about it because his band is performing during the presentation. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Well, here’s the thing. I was gonna have Dayton give a speech at the beginning, you know, a student speech type of thing. Something done by a graduating senior to inspire everybody, look back on their four years, that sort of thing. Well, he just got back to me today and said he can’t do it! So the only other person I know who can do it is you.” She clasps her hands together, as if she’s praying. “Please? I know it’s only a week, but you’re not that scared of talking in front of crowds!”

You could go either way on the crowd thing, you suppose. But you are a pretty good writer. Your book report on To Kill a Mockingbird that you wrote during your junior year won several end of year awards and was even published in a quarterly education magazine in Chicago. If anybody can write something in a week, it’s you. “Okay. I’ll do it. But don’t expect me to talk perfectly in front of the crowd! I might be reading it from the paper!”

“Oh, that’s fine, that’s fine, thank you!” Rue breathes a sigh of relief, then you both finish your lunches and move on with your lives. 

The next morning, as you’re getting ready for school, a thought crosses your mind. You stick your head into the kitchen. “Hey, ‘Gyu?”

Beomgyu is raiding the fridge for some leftover cold pizza for breakfast. “Yeah?”

“You got band practice tomorrow, right? Don’t forget.” 

“I won’t. You’re always reminding me, flower, I got this.” He throws your now-full lunchbox at you. “Now, if you excuse me, we can’t be late.” And you’re left holding your lunchbox in the kitchen. That felt like a weird conversation to you. Have things always been this odd between you and Beomgyu? Perhaps it’s because it’s the end of the year, and he’s got a performance. 

You shove aside your concerns as you get to school and go to study hall, trying to think of a start for this speech you’re supposed to give at the end of the year banquet. Couldn’t Rue at least have given you a prompt? Well, everybody will be there, so it might as well be something inspiring, a look back at lessons learned, that type of thing. The teachers will love it. Maybe you’ll even put it on a resume. 

Mr. Johnson’s words float back to you. What are you going to do with your life? Write inspirational speeches, apparently. 

The library aid suddenly gets up and shuts the doors to the library; you realize it’s because there’s some sort of verbal altercation going on outside. And you’re not getting anywhere with your speech, so you stick your head outside in time to watch two jocks with varsity jackets on take a kid’s backpack and spill the contents all over the hallway.

You identify the jocks as Demetrius Jones and Benjamin Spowers; they’re on the basketball team, and everybody knows the basketball team at this point. And you identify the poor kid as Kang Taehyun.

“What do you think you’re doing?” you ask, marching up to Benjamin. “That’s not a good look for you, being on the basketball team and all.” 

“Like we’re gonna listen to you,” Benjamin says, rubbing elbows with Demetrius as they walk down the hallway.

“Don’t listen to them,” Taehyun says, grabbing some of his school supplies off of the linoleum floor. “What are they gonna do, comply? They’re the basketball team. They do whatever the heck they want.”

You find the purple notebook splayed out on the floor; you fold it up nice and neat so it’s in its original condition again and hand it to Taehyun. “You like this one.”

He scoffs. “I like them all, but — ugh.” He looks over to where a quarter of his supplies have ended up under the leaky drinking fountain. There’s another notebook under there, blue in color, that is seeping through with water. Taehyun goes over and picks it up. “This was my new one!” He opens it, and half the pages are soaked through, sticking together in a soggy paper mess.

“That sucks. Won’t the teachers do anything?”

“No. They don’t care.” Taehyun grabs another notebook from his backpack, red in color. “I’ll need to transfer all these formulas over so I can memorize them this weekend. Thanks for your help.” And he walks away, again, socially awkward as he was yesterday.

You catch him at lunch sitting all by himself in a corner, blue notebook spread out, writing in the red notebook. He is notably not eating, so you sit down across from him. “Need help?”

“Nope,” he says without even looking up. “Shouldn’t you be helping somebody else right now?”

“...no? It’s lunch.”

“What about that guy you’re always with, crud, what’s his name? Isn’t he your boyfriend?”

“His name is Beomgyu, and no, he’s not my boyfriend. I don’t like him like that.”

“Suuuuuure. What about that basketball team that you’re so buddy buddy with? You talked to Benjamin Spowers earlier like you were his best friend.”

“I did not — I just wanted him to stop!”

“Anywhere else you gotta be? Music practice? Underwater basket weaving?” He finally looks up from his notebooks. “What about 4-H? Do you help with that at all?”

“...no.” You don’t get where he’s going with this.

“Well, find something to do, because I’m busy focused on this, and — crap.” Taehyun’s eyes go behind you, and before you know it, you’re surrounded on both sides by a Black girl and an Asian girl. You recognize the Black girl as the girl with the braids from yesterday. 

“Hi, Taehyunnie!” they both sing at a reasonable volume.

He puts his head in his hands. “Hi, girls.” 

“Omigod, wait, you’re the senior who wrote that paper!” the Asian girl says, sitting on your right. “I’m Park Soojin, I’m, like, your biggest fan. I thought the character analysis you wrote on Atticus Finch was astounding.”

“Uh...thanks?” You never would have expected Antisocial Taehyun to have friends, much less two girls who dress so fantastically that they should be part of the popular group. But turns out they’re both intellectual nerds, like Taehyun, and the other two freshmen on the mathalon team. The Black girl’s name is Ashley, and you realize she’s the Ashley Smith that everybody talks about, comparing her to Josh Smith and saying they’re not related. Of course they’re not related, and it makes so much more sense now.

“Yeah, my parents gave me a white name so my resume doesn’t get immediately tossed out in the future,” Ashley says in a very nonchalant voice. No wonder she’s friends with Taehyun. They both speak in that same dry way. “Taehyunnie, do you need help copying the rest of the formulas down?”

“Sure, I guess,” Taehyun says, and as Ashley sits by Taehyun to help him copy all the formulas from his old, wet book, into his new, dry book, you realize he doesn’t want help from you. It’s something about you. But you don’t know him! 

“Did you find anybody to time us?” Soojin asks as she hands Ashley a sandwich.

“Not yet,” Taehyun grumbles. “We don’t need anybody. We can time ourselves.”

“We always ignore the timer when it goes off,” Ashley pouts. “Someone needs to time us.”

“Time you for what?” you make the mistake of asking, and Taehyun glares daggers at you. 

“Oh, you should time us!” Soojin says. “I bet you’d be great at it. Can you stop by room 123 after school tomorrow? We’re doing a mock run for the mathalon on Saturday. We literally just need someone to tell us when the thirty minute timer goes off.”

“Don’t bother them,” Taehyun says. “I bet they’re busy writing a graduation speech or something.”

“Close,” you say, “but for the banquet, not for graduation. Soojin, what time is the practice? I can do it, but I’ll need a lift home. My best friend’s got band practice later on and I just gotta make sure he gets there on time.”

“It doesn’t last any longer than five,” Soojin says. “And Ashley can drive you home!” Both girls grin as Taehyun puts his head on the table. “We got a timer!”

“Who knew that you would be helping the mathalon team out?” Beomgyu says over Gyro Loco that night. “They don’t do anything interesting. I heard they were good, like, four years ago, but then all the seniors graduated. Now it’s just a bunch of freshmen who are trying to make something of themselves. But they don’t have a coach, and their advisor knows nothing about math.”

“That stinks.” It makes even more sense now why Taehyun has at least three mathalon notebooks. He’s probably the only one holding down the club. It seems to be the three of them — Taehyun, Soojin, and Ashley — and you know next to nothing about the mathalon, so you don’t even know how it runs.

“Oh, and Ashley is gonna give me a ride home from their practice,” you note to Beomgyu. “So don’t worry about me and make sure you go to your rehearsal. How’s that new song coming along?” Beomgyu’s been working on a new song for the past few weeks, but he’s been strumming in his room in private. You hear a melody every once in a while, but it’s usually accompanied by Beomgyu screaming and getting frustrated.

He doesn’t look up from his Gyro Loco. “I don’t think it’s gonna be ready by Sunday. But that’s okay. We’ve got plenty of other songs to play.”

You skip class after lunch the next day and go to the library instead. As a senior, you already know you’re graduating, and at this point the senior classes are fun and games, extended movie sessions, and bonus lessons in preparation for college. You’re not missing anything by trying to work on this speech.

Not totally surprisingly, you run into Ashley. “I have biology now, and we’re watching a movie,” she says. “I’d rather be here.” She’s got her nose in a World Book encyclopedia volume; you haven’t seen one of those things in years. You learned the basics of them in kindergarten, but now you can just find any information you want on the Internet. 

“I’ve wanted to be a part of the mathalon ever since I was in middle school,” she says, able to talk your ear off since someone other than Soojin and Taehyun are listening to her. “I did the spelling bee in elementary, then the science fair, and now I’m doing the mathalon as well as taking AP courses.”

“As a freshman?”

“Yeah. I have to do everything I can to get a full ride scholarship to a school. My parents can’t pay for anything, so it’s all up to me. If I don’t get a full ride, I don’t go to school. And I don’t really care what I end up being, I could be a lawyer or a doctor, just as long as there’s no loans at the end. So I’m here! And, well…” She pouts. “I wish there were more people on the team.”

“Taehyun seems to be running the show, I haven’t even seen your guys’ advisor.”

There’s something about the way you say Taehyun that makes Ashley’s eyes light up. And you realize: yeah, Ashley wants to be on the mathalon to get more credibility for her resume, but she’s also got a massive crush. It might be worth your while to talk to her and get some tea on this antisocial club runner.

“He’s literally everything,” Ashley starts. “Does it all for the club. We’re supposed to fundraise money to go to Kankakee for the events, and he’s always thinking of ideas for us. They’re great, and then nobody pays attention and Soojin’s dad just ends up paying for us anyway. But I think they’re great ideas. You know he was willing to be duct taped to the walls in the lobby? Something about how he was gonna charge people a dollar for a piece of tape, and then he would stand on a chair and people would just progressively put pieces of tape on him, and at the end they pull the chair away and see if he’s hovering in thin air, held up only by the tape?”

You get this image of Kang Taehyun being taped to a wall before you realize this doesn’t match his antisocial manner at all. “He seems really extroverted.”

“Yeah, he’s always talking to people, trying to drum up interest. He got a bunch of people to come out for one of our practices, but since we sit there doing math problems for thirty minutes, most everybody left because they were bored. The only people who stuck around got free pizza, though!”

Yeah. It has to be something with you. Taehyun likes people, likes talking to them, and likes the mathalon, but wants absolutely nothing to do with you. And now that you know that, not only do you want to know why, but you want to see if you can fix that. Taehyun seems like a cool cat. And one person’s opinion doesn’t count for that much, but it’s fun to see him get frustrated about things.

Which reminds you. “So does his face always puff up like that when he’s frustrated?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s such a character! Has the biggest reactions to everything. Spends all his time studying here, but once we get his nose out of his books, he’s always doing some magic trick or something to get our attention.”

Wait, hold up. “Magic tricks?”

“Yeah, it’s a hobby of his. He started it for his kid siblings. You should ask him to do a trick for you later! He’s particularly really good with card tricks.” And you find yourself wondering what you can do to set Ashley up with Taehyun, because she’s really selling him well. If you could only figure out why he’s so aversive to you.

After school, you pack up your backpack and head to room 123. There are two sophomores already there whom you don’t recognize, but when Ashley comes in, she introduces them as Billy and Porter. “They’re our auxiliary members,” she says.

“Yeah, don’t expect us to do anything on Saturday,” Billy says as they get their papers out. 

“We usually skip these,” Porter moans. “But this one’s special because it’s on Saturday, so our parents won’t let us miss it.”

“Here are the practice tests,” Ashley says, passing out some booklets that are stapled in the top left hand corner. “I printed these out off the organization website. There will be similar questions on Saturday that we have to answer. Proctor, you get one, too, just in case.” You realize she’s talking to you as she hands you a packet, then a stopwatch. “We have to use the stopwatch for official time. No cell phones.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know,” Porter says, totally not enthused by this whole thing.

You take the packet and stopwatch from Ashley and take a look at the packet. The point of the mathalon is to promote math in schools; students have to memorize certan mathematical equations and use them to solve problems without using a calculator. It’s more complex than what you’re used to, but some of the problems on the first page do make sense. Then you turn the page, and you’re completely lost. 

“The proctor also gets the answer key,” Ashley says, handing you an envelope, “but we don’t open that until the end.”

“I can read off the answers when we’re done, if you want.”

“That would be awesome!” Ashley says with a stupid wide grin as Soojin and Taehyun walk in. Soojin is carrying a box of donuts, and everybody grabs one, including you. Taehyun is all business; he walks to the other end of the room and puts a stack of notebooks on the desk. Then, he gets a packet from Ashley and turns it over, blank side up, so he can start at the same time everybody else does.

Soon, everybody takes their places, and you count down, starting the stopwatch. In an instant, everybody turns over their packets and starts to work. You can see how spectators could fall asleep during a mathalon; everybody is working hard, but in silence, so there’s not much of a ‘sport’ to see. Billy and Porter are casually working on their questions, but Ashley has laser focus on her sheet. Soojin seems very calm. And Taehyun…

You finally get a good chance to look at him, since he’s working on a mathalon packet and not snapping at you like a rabid squirrel in a tree. His hair has a certain amount of brown color to it, tucked behind his ears. He’s certainly dressed like a ‘nerd,’ with a button up plaid shirt on, tucked neatly into khaki pants with a belt. And he hasn’t worn them in your previous interactions, but he’s got thick glasses on now, staring directly at his paper, paying no attention to anything else.

You consider that it’s kind of cute. You can see what Ashley sees in him.

The thirty minutes passes by, and you call time, and there’s a satisfying moment where everybody puts their pencils down and catches their breath. Soojin’s got a big smile on her face. “You can read the answers to us,” Ashley says, “we go by the honor system here.” And so you read off all of the answers from the answer envelope, pausing if you mispronounce something, and everybody tallies their scores. 

Billy and Porter are obviously out of the question, but the freshmen seem to have their act together. Ashley gets twenty two of the questions right, and Taehyun clocks in at twenty five. Soojin goes above and beyond, getting a whopping twenty eight of the questions correct. “These numbers should be enough to get us to win our first meet,” she says. “We’ve never won, once. We do one every couple of months with the other schools in the area, and we always get beat because Taehyun can’t make the meets.”

“You know it’s more than that,” Taehyun says, not looking up from his paper again. Huh. The superstar of the mathalon team, the sole person holding them together, can’t even go to any of their events?

“Tell your mom to actually do something for once,” Ashley says, then turns to you. “His mom’s a waste of space. He’s got five siblings and he keeps having to babysit them. Nothing wrong with it on a normal day, but he should be allowed to leave on a Saturday afternoon to come do this with us!”

“If the kids don’t start something, I’ll go,” Taehyun says. “You know how it is. Not my fault that Jacob stuck his finger in a socket last time.”

“And the time before that, Lori drank an entire bottle of Benadryl and you had to go to urgent care,” Soojin says, deadpan.

“And the time before that,” Ashley says, “you overslept and your mom ditched out, and you couldn’t leave the kids at home alone.”

“You can totally leave them with Leon now,” Soojin chimes in. “Leon is fourteen, and you’re seventeen, and you got a mathalon to go to.”

“Seventeen?” That’s old for a freshman. 

“Stop all this nonsense,” Taehyun says, suddenly, grabbing his notebooks. “You’re spoiling my whole damn story. Look, my family is messed up, I got held back in school because my mom really is an idiot, but that’s just how it is. I never matter in this equation. Everything I do is always for somebody else.” And he glances right at you before leaving, shutting the door behind him. 

Ashley sighs. “He’s always like this. Says nobody needs to know about his family, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds like he’s got more responsibility than he can take on.” Maybe Taehyun doesn’t have it out for you specifically. Maybe he’s just ridiculously tired all the time, having to care for his brothers and sisters. So you decide to cut him a little slack. Saturday may or may not go according to plan, but at least the team itself seems solid. 

You hope Taehyun knows that all his hard work is paying off, even if he won’t see it on Saturday.

The next morning, you take the bus to school and -- once more -- head to the library to try to figure this darn speech out. You run into Rue on the way. 

“Hey hey,” she says, a smile on her face. “Any progress on your speech?”

“I think I’ve got a few ideas.” This is an obvious lie, but you can’t tell Rue that. 

“Okay. Just let me know if you’re too busy with the mathalon or something. I know how important that is to you.” And with a wink, Rue walks off, and you’re left wondering, how did the mathalon become the focus of your week? But you shrug, and you go into the library, and you sit for what you think is hours at a computer. You start to doze off until the computer auto-logs you out, and you give up. What are you even supposed to write on, anyway?

You take a quick glance around the library, and you see Taehyun in the corner, writing in a notebook. He is very focused, so you get up and go over to him, figuring he’s probably copying more formulas into a new notebook, maybe for one of his fellow mathalon teammates. Except when you approach him, he sees you coming, jumps, and closes the notebook and shoves it into his backpack. You have just enough time to see that it’s the one with the purple cover. 

“What are you doing?” he hisses at you. “Out! Get out of here!”

“What the heck,” you say, once more being shoved aside by this rabid squirrel of a freshman. “I didn’t even say anything! I just thought you might need help!”

“I don’t need any help,” he says, voice rising in volume. “Especially not from you.”

“Ahem.” The librarian is glaring at you. “I need both of you to leave. This is a library.”

Taehyun huffs, but he grabs his backpack and leaves. You follow behind, watching him as he struts across the hallway with his nice khaki pants and blue button down shirt, finally getting to the lobby and going out the front door. He sits on one of the ledges, typically housing flowers during the year but right now housing nothing but mulch. And you exit the front doors, walking toward him.

He hears your footsteps and turns, huffing. “You followed.”

“Of course I did.” The bell rings behind you, signaling it’s time for lunch. “You’re gonna miss lunch.”

“Oh, I don’t eat lunch.” When you glare at Taehyun, he says, “I eat when I want to. Not at lunch, specifically.”

“Mind if I get my lunch and sit out here with you?”

He huffs. “I can’t change your mind, so whatever. Don’t expect me to talk to you, though.” So you go inside, and you get your lunchbox out of your locker, and you find Taehyun still out on his stoop when you get back outside. He’s writing in his notebook again, so you wait until he’s done and then approach him.

“Working on stuff for the mathalon again?” you ask as you unpack your lunch.

He sighs. “Trying to get these formulas just right, I ended up copying one of them in wrong — oh my God, are those pink Starburst?” And something about Taehyun changes instantly. His eyes go wide at the candy wrapper that you just pulled out. 

“Oh, Beomgyu must have put these in my lunch,” you say, looking down. Every time the two of you end up at Dollar General, you return to your house with an entire bag of candy. Beomgyu always throws a random candy bar into your bag, and today it’s one of those rolls of pink-only Starburst. 

“You like the pink ones?” you ask.

“Yes,” Taehyun says, eyeing the entire roll like a kid in a candy store. So you unwrap the top and you take one and give it to him, and he immediately unwraps it and pops it in his mouth. He makes this soft sound, eyes closed, humming along to the taste of it. 

“Okay, okay, you get a free pass,” he says. “Just this time, though. Don’t expect me to still like you, say, next week.”

“I think I can handle that. You’ve still got friends. Ashley and Soojin, right?”

He laughs. “As if I could call them friends! They’re okay, I suppose. If Ashley would stop flirting with me.”

“Oh, so you know she likes you?”

“It’s that obvious. She’s pretty cool as a friend, but I keep telling her I’m not interested. I’m already in love with somebody else.” He looks at you. “Somebody I can never have.”

“Oh.” Someone from another school, probably, or a rival on another mathalon team. Or probably another guy, and his parents aren’t cool with that. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“I mean. We’re already here.” He sighs, then holds out his hand. “Another Starburst?”

“Sure.” You put one in his hand.

“Thanks, jagi.” He pauses for just a moment, then unwraps it and eats it. Jagi. You’ve heard that word somewhere, but you don’t know exactly where. 

“Hey hey!” It’s Rue’s voice, cutting across the front lawn. “There you are! Oh, my goodness. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Her voice is rushed and worried.

“That’s my cue.” Taehyun gets up from his seat and waves at you. “It’s been nice knowing you. Sorry I couldn’t make this last longer.” Then, he runs inside before you can stop him, Rue conveniently in the way. 

You turn to Rue. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Beomgyu. Something with his family, he said you didn’t know and -- I think he tried texting you, have you checked your phone?”

There’s something about Rue’s voice that is weird. “Take me to him.” And the hallways are quiet when you walk inside Peotone High and through to the principal’s office. Beomgyu is sitting there, in a chair that suddenly seems like it’s too big for him. He’s not crying, but he looks incredibly numb.

“Beomgyu?” you ask.

He looks up. “Hi, flower. Um...I think I need to go home. Can you drive me?”

You nod, and the nurse in the office signs both of you out for the day, and he doesn’t say a word as you take his keys and walk him to his car. You rub your finger against the second key, a weird silver one with an x on it that neither you nor Beomgyu have a clue what it goes to, but it’s been on his keyring forever. Sometimes he puts it in the car instead of his car key; you keep telling him to take it off and toss it, but he never does. 

He’s finally sitting in the car when he says it. “My house caught fire last night.”

You glare back. “Are you okay?” Beomgyu’s lived with you for...well, as long as you can remember, but it was still his house for a long time. He had shared it with his dad, whom Beomgyu has never been close with or even particularly liked. “What about your dad?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh.” There’s an uneasy pause, then you say the only thing that could make this better. “Gyro Loco?”

“Yes, please.” It’s just after lunchtime, so thankfully Gyro Loco isn’t that busy. You have Beomgyu call ahead and put in your orders. Gyro Loco serves everything from old school gyros to falafel, so there’s something on the menu for everybody. Then, you take Beomgyu home. Beomgyu and his dad have never gotten along, so there is no lost love there. But it’s still his dad, and it’s still his old house, even though none of his belongings are there now.

You know Beomgyu is all but estranged from his dad, and his house was nothing special. He much prefers living in your spare bedroom and being friends with you. But there’s still something that undoubtedly sucks about the whole situation. 

“I’ll be okay,” he says, “I just don’t want to be at school right now.” 

“Should I go back to school?” 

“Whatever you want to do. I just...need to not be at school right now. As far as I know, my grandparents are handling everything with the house and my dad, so…”

“What else do you need?”

Beomgyu smiles, sad. “Just space, flower.” And he shuts the door to his bedroom, and that is that.

You stay home from school the rest of the day, stopping by Dollar General to pick up some more sugar cereal and other groceries the house needs. When you get to the candy section, you grab at least five rolls of the pink-only Starburst. If this is what gets Taehyun’s attention, maybe you can use that to your advantage.

The next morning, Beomgyu wants to stay home, so you take the bus. You slip the roll of Starburst into your pocket and head to room 123, but Taehyun isn’t there yet. “He texted us and said he missed the bus,” Ashley says. “Something about one of his siblings keeping him up all night.”

This doesn’t surprise you after the conversation you had on Wednesday during the trial. So you go to class, and you continue to think about the speech you’re still supposed to write for Rue. During lunch, you track her down to give her an update.

“I can’t think of anything,” you say. “But I might be able to come up with something over the weekend. I just don’t know if it’s gonna be good enough. What time should I get it to you so you can send it to the school staff for proofreading?”

“Oh, nobody has to read it first,” Rue says with a smile. “You won’t have to clear it with me or any teachers first. You’re my best friend. I trust you. Come up with the speech and read it. That’s it. Oh, and be there like a half hour early so we know to go over stuff.”

“It starts at six, right?”

“Yep! So be there at 5:30 sharp, in the gym.” There’s something...odd about Rue’s trust in you, but you leave it be for now.

Ashley and Soojin are eating in the mathalon room during lunch. There’s still no sign of Taehyun. Ashley is texting him away. “Says Lori was up all night throwing up. Think she caught a stomach bug somewhere, not sure where. But now he’s saying it’ll pass to all of the kids, and that he needs to stay home.”

“I wish for once he would be able to come to one of our meets,” Soojin says, sifting through one of her mathalon notebooks. And you think to yourself, what’s so hard about watching little kids? 

You get an idea.

“Ashley,” you say, “you drive, right?”

“Yeah,” she says. 

“And both you and Soojin are prepared for the mathalon.”

“More than prepared,” Soojin says with a smile. “We got this in the bag! Well...with Taehyun, it’s kind of a plastic bag with some holes in it.”

“We need to convince Taehyun that he needs our help. We need someone to go over to his house and babysit his siblings, and then he needs a night where he can get away from the house, study for tomorrow, and then get a full night of sleep. If we can do that, then maybe you guys can win tomorrow!”

Ashley shakes her head. “He won’t ever agree to that.”

“Then I say we force it on him. We all go over to his house, after school, in your car. Maybe kidnap him, throw him in the trunk or something. Then one of us watches his kids for the night!”

“I can do that,” Soojin says. “My dad is always telling me about the value of a dollar. So if I text him and I say I have a babysitting gig tonight, he won’t care at all, and he’ll come pick me up when I’m done. Even if that means being there all night!”

“But where will Taehyun go?” Ashley asks.

You think about it for a second and you realize you have the answer. “He can crash on the couch at my place. I don’t have any parents to clear stuff with, and I know Beomgyu won’t care.”

You take a second to text Beomgyu about your plans, and of course he texts back in less than a minute. Sure, no problem. I’ll just be upstairs most of the time, I think. So then after school, you meet up with Ashley and Soojin in the lobby. Ashley’s car is an old silver Ford, but it runs. When you all jump in, she starts up her cassette player, and something familiar starts playing.

“Is this BTS?”

“Oh. My God. You know BTS?” Ashley asks. “Okay, you’re officially my best friend. Who’s your bias?”

“Oh, I don’t...I don’t really know them, but my roommate is a big fan of theirs. So I know their music.” And as you travel across town, you learn that both Ashley and Soojin are big ARMY — fans of BTS. Ashley’s bias, or favorite member, is Jimin; Soojin’s is J-Hope. 

“They’re saying BTS’s company needs to come out with a new group,” Ashley says. “Maybe a new boy band! How cool would that be?” And she and Soojin discuss it as you go across the railroad tracks, then to a small trailer park, and you realize you know this place. This is where Beomgyu used to live, before he moved away from his dad. It reminds you that his house just burned down and his dad died, but you can’t help him if he doesn’t want your help.

Taehyun is the same way. Why are you doing this again? But Ashley and Soojin want to win the mathalon, so you might as well try. 

Ashley pulls up in front of a double wide trailer home. Soojin gets out of the car and knocks on the door. A white kid, probably in middle school, answers the door. “Taehyun, you have friends over!” he yells into the house as you and Ashley get out.

“I don’t have friends,” you hear his voice waft over, and all of a sudden, there’s Taehyun. But he looks so different from the put together Taehyun you’re used to seeing at school. His brown hair is a mess, he doesn’t have his glasses on, and he’s wearing blue jeans and a Metallica t-shirt. 

“Oh,” he says, nonchalant. “That’s odd.”

“Is your mom home?” Soojin, ever the pushy one, asks with a smile. And before she can wait for Taehyun to give her an answer, she pushes her way into the small house. Ashley follows, and then you walk in, both of you staying toward the door to keep an eye on Taehyun while Soojin works her magic.

Taehyun’s house is small. There’s stuff everywhere, takeout containers taking up one corner, piles of laundry all along the wall, toys on the floor. There’s a chair and a couch in the living room, and you realize the couch must be Taehyun’s domain in this house from the amount of mathalon notebooks and textbooks stacked near it. There’s a door to the left and two doors on the right, as well as a small kitchen. 

Soojin has found Taehyun’s mother, and they are talking. You can hear her voice wafting over from another room — probably hers — and it doesn’t sound like she’s giving Soojin any trouble. “Yeah, I keep telling him he has to go out and play with his friends! That boy is all responsibility, all the time. I’m so busy with my online business all the time that I can’t watch the kids, and he does such a good job. I would love it if you watched the kids overnight!”

“What,” Taehyun says, eyes wide.

“Grab your books,” you say. “You’re getting out of here.”

“I am going nowhere. Lori is sick, and —“

“And I will be watching her,” Soojin says, followed by Taehyun’s mother, “while you get out of here for the night and study, so you can go to the mathalon meet tomorrow.”

“You have a mathalon meet tomorrow?” Taehyun’s mother asks, mouth open. Clearly she hadn’t been filled in on Taehyun’s extracurriculars. “I didn’t know this! Come on, kids! We’re all going to the mathalon tomorrow!”

“The mathalon is boring,” the middle school kid who opened the door says from the kitchen, where he’s grabbing a two liter of Mountain Dew to drink. He notably forgoes  a cup and drinks it straight from the bottle.

Taehyun looks from you to Soojin to Ashley to his mother. “Mom, Lori’s sick —“

“And you are going with these nice people. Have some friends! Go get wild! We’ll still be here!”

Ashley picks up Taehyun’s backpack, but he quickly grabs it from her. He glares at you. “Was this your idea?”

“Ehh. Only halfway.”

“Good, so I know who to blame. This is preposterous. I’m not leaving with you. I’m staying here, and taking responsibility, and you’re just gonna have to go to the mathalon and lose without me.”

“Oh, I thought it would have to come to this.” Ashley sighs. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but desperate times call for desperate measures.” She steps toward Taehyun. “You’re not going to like this, but I got a bunch of white people as my witness here that this is good for you.”

“Good for —“

Ashley reaches around Taehyun’s mid-section and lifts him with one arm, swooping him up and grabbing him bridal-style. Taehyun struggles to get out of Ashley’s hold, but she is stronger than first glance, and Taehyun is just a stick of a nerd. So Soojin waves goodbye, and you walk back to Ashley’s car, Taehyun fighting Ashley the whole time.

You take her keys and pop the trunk, throwing him in and closing the door before he can fight you. “Let’s drive, now. I don’t want him in there forever, and we’re literally going to the middle of nowhere.” So Ashley takes off like a bat out of hell, arriving at your house off of West Wilmington Road five minutes later, surrounded by cornfields. There’s literally nowhere for Taehyun to escape to, although he’s certainly screaming in the trunk the entire time you drive there.

You arrive, pull in behind Beomgyu’s car, and pop the trunk. Taehyun immediately jumps out, tries to dive for you, then misses and hits the ground. He stands up, then looks around. But instead of asking where are we, he pushes against you. “Take me back, jagi. Right now. You don’t know what you’re doing.” He uses that word again, whatever it means.

“Uh, yes we do,” Ashley says as she gives Taehyun his backpack. “We’re giving you some space so you can study and get some sleep, and then we’ll take you to the mathalon tomorrow.”

“This is my house,” you say. “It’s quiet out here. You’ll get a chance to breathe, and you can sleep on my couch. And I think my roommate might have an extra shirt you can wear —“

“No, no, no, this is all wrong,” Taehyun says, and for some reason, he’s starting to panic. “I shouldn’t be here, you have to take me back. Or I’ll walk —“ He looks down the road. “But with the storm coming in…”

“What storm?” There’s not a cloud in the sky.

Ashley checks her phone as Taehyun starts pacing. “Looks like we might get some pop-up showers. It’s not even properly showing up on the radar yet.”

“No, I’ll wait until the storm passes, and then I’ll walk —“

You reach into your pocket and grab the roll of pink Starburst, and you fling it at Taehyun’s head. It connects, and he flails until he catches it.

“Why is it so bad that we care about you?” you ask him, voice loud but not shrill. “Would it hurt you to let somebody else give a damn for at least a night? All I hear is about how you’re taking care of everybody else, your siblings and your mom and Ashley and Soojin in the mathalon club, and you don’t even eat lunch at the proper time because you’re so focused on being everything and anything for others! So just, I don’t know, take a chill pill for a night or something.” You sigh. “I can’t stop you from walking all the way back to town, but…”

Taehyun gapes at you, for a moment. Then, he stares at you. There’s something in his eyes that you can’t place. “You have no idea what you’re doing. You’re ruining everything.”

“I just thought you needed a friend.” You motion to Ashley. “You’ve got friends, Taehyun. You’ve got people who believe in you, and you ignore them.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not friends. I don’t consider us friends. We don’t know each other at all. Just because you keep giving me pink Starburst doesn’t mean we’re suddenly buddy buddy. You have no clue who I am. You have no clue what I’m capable of doing, what I know —“

“Are you all gonna come inside or are you just gonna stand there?” That’s Beomgyu’s voice, and you turn to see him leaning in the open front door. “I got us pizza.”

Taehyun screams at Beomgyu, like he’s seen a ghost. 

Then, he curses. “Fucking hell! Fine! See if I care! This entire go-around is fucked! I was doing so good, too!” And he stomps right past Beomgyu and enters the house. You follow behind quickly as Taehyun runs up the stairs and goes directly into the bathroom, like he somehow knows exactly where it is even though he’s never been here before, and he slams and locks the door. And then, he screams some more.

Beomgyu turns to you and Ashley. “You’re...welcome to use the shed if you need a restroom, I guess.”

Ashley does stay for dinner (who would ever turn down free pizza?) but leaves shortly afterward. Beomgyu introduces her to the shed outside, which among storage and other things has a hole in the ground that has been used by people of all types in an emergency. It’s not optimal, but your house has never been optimal with only having one bathroom. You have to use the shed, on average, once every two weeks because Beomgyu is using the bathroom in the morning. 

So it’s become normal. Taehyun screaming at you, like he’s sweet but a psycho, is not.

He stays in the bathroom, and you can hear his screaming downstairs while you and Ashley share hot pizza with Beomgyu. Before long, the screaming finally subsides, and Ashley takes off for home. You go upstairs to see if Taehyun’s left the bathroom. He hasn’t, and the door is still locked. You almost leave to go back downstairs and head for the shed when you realize he’s crying, he’s bawling and he’s locked himself in and it’s hysterical, like someone ruined his favorite mathalon notebook, or quite frankly, kind of like someone died. 

So you go to the shed, and then you go back upstairs, and you sit outside the door. You wait until there’s a pause in his sobbing, and you lean against the door. “Taehyun?”

There’s a pause, then, “Jagi? How long have you been out there?”

“Not long.”

He’s quiet again. Then, “You really are stubborn, you know that?” His voice is softer than it’s ever been with you. 

“You keep calling me that word. Jaggy, or something.”

“Jagi. I don’t know -- I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”

“Nah, you’re fine. It’s unique. It’s different. What does it mean?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know. I just look at you, and I think, jagi . So I usually keep it to myself. I don’t tell anybody anything.”

“You seem like you need someone to talk to.”

You hear a sigh. “I need a therapist. But I’m not sure that would quite help.”

“If it helps, you can talk to me. I won’t judge you.”

“Out of everybody, you would judge me the most.”

“Try me.”

There’s a long pause, and then, “Well, it’s Friday. I might as well. I have nothing left to lose. If you hate me, then that’s just how it will be, I guess. Can you go get a flashlight, though? You’re gonna need one for this. Not your cell phone, either.”

You don’t know why he’s talking about that, but you go downstairs to the kitchen, to the emergency supplies, and you pull out a flashlight and make sure the batteries are working. Then, you head back upstairs, but stop cold when you see that Taehyun has finally left the bathroom. He’s standing at the top of the staircase, he is clutching his purple notebook to his Metallica t-shirt, and his face is tear-strained. 

You go up the stairs, feeling horrible for him, hoping you can hug him. But he hugs you first as you get on top, no longer at risk of falling. And he clings to you, trying his best to hold back tears from falling on your shoulder, notebook still clutched in one hand. “You’re allowed to cry,” you whisper to him, and he lets go, not sobbing as he did before but whining ever so slightly, letting his emotions leak out.

“This isn’t fair,” he finally says, straightening up. 

“I don’t know what’s not fair about it, but…”

He takes a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna take this…” And he hands the purple notebook to you. “And you’re gonna go downstairs, and you’re gonna read the whole thing, from start to finish. I’ll be up here, and don’t come get me until you’re done. Okay?”

“Okay.” You’re not sure what’s in the notebook; you figured it was just some math formulas. Whatever it is, this purple notebook is really important to Taehyun. So you go downstairs, and you sit on the couch, and you’re just about to open the notebook when there’s a huge bang of something outside, and the power goes out. Wow. Taehyun wasn’t kidding about the sudden storm coming in. 

...it’s like he knew the power was going to go out. But Taehyun’s not psychic. So you click on the flashlight and open the book. There’s a page glued into the cover, a bit askew and frayed at the edges. It catches your eye first, so you read it first. 

If you’re reading this, don’t stop, says the first line in Taehyun’s handwriting. It’s exactly what he told you to do, too. You’re probably not going to believe any of the words written here because this entire thing is ENTIRELY preposterous and quite frankly not even possible by normal standards. You’re probably not even believing it right now. So take a minute, take a breath, because you’re probably freaking out. You’re...not, but you take a deep breath anyway. And when you’re ready, turn to the next page, and keep reading. Don’t stop reading until you get to the end, because I keep adding pages as this keeps happening (yes this has happened before!)

So that explains why Taehyun was always writing in this particular notebook. But what is this thing that keeps happening? You want to look forward, but the next thing Taehyun has written is But seriously, don’t pause for anything, so you go on. And when you’re done, you’re allowed to cry for a bit. And then PLEASE follow the instructions that I’ve written down for you. If you do that, then this time around should be fine, and you’ll reach a happy ending.

...this time around? Happy ending? Is this in regards to someone both you and Taehyun know? Did he mess something up? You want to ask him, but you keep reading.

It’s important that we reach a happy ending. For Beomgyu, and for jagi, and for everybody at Peotone High School. No pressure, right? You got this, Taehyun. You’ve ALWAYS got this. So turn the page, and let’s begin. It feels like some sort of instruction manual that Taehyun has written to himself, some sort of code of conduct that has absolutely nothing to do with the mathalon...something he’s been defending from just about anybody. Including Ashley and Soojin. And, for some reason, especially including you. But now he’s decided that it’s worth it to share it with you. So you turn the page.

Taehyun’s handwriting is in pencil this time. It is Monday the 6th again.

Again?

You keep reading. There are some notes scribbled on the page. Yesterday -- the 12th, end of year banquet, today is the 6th again. Banquet is still on the 12th? Then more notes. Woke up and it’s May 7th now. I remember last week Lori broke Mom’s vase, and now it’s whole again. 

But then halfway down the page there’s something in all caps, written frantically. THERE’S A SOPHOMORE AND HE DIED IN A FIRE AND I THOUGHT HE DIED LAST WEEK WHAT THE HELL. And in an instant, you know he’s writing about Beomgyu. His house caught fire Wednesday night, his dad died, but there’s no way in hell he would have been home at that time, because he lives with you. Right? Right?! And for a split second, you swear you remember something -- somebody’s house on fire, Rue calling you on a cell phone -- but none of that could have happened, because Rue doesn’t have a cell phone. Is this hell? This isn’t the hell I remember...

You skim to the next page. I think time is repeating itself every week? Sometimes I remember and sometimes I don’t. Maybe I’ll forget again in the future? I seem to be the only one noticing it, but then I forget it again. This book still has the notes from last time. Is this book special?

You hold up the book, shake it a little. No pixie dust falls out or anything like that. It’s just a normal book. So Taehyun is saying that time is...repeating somehow? And then you reopen the book and you catch something written at the bottom, scratched out.

is Beomgyu still alive?

You slam the book shut and sit for a moment in the dark, turning the flashlight off for a second. And you try to sort this out in your head. You’ve heard of time repeating itself before -- it’s usually used in stories for some sort of comedic or dramatic effect. You remember reading a book about a girl who had died, who got to relive her last day over and over again, to see if she would have lived it any differently knowing what would come next. If what Taehyun is writing is correct, then that’s happening here, although it seems to be every week repeating instead. There seem to be notes from several different points in time, and as you click the flashlight back on and dig further through the book, you see that Taehyun is making notes about every time loop as they happen.

He seems to understand that this book will remember, even when he doesn’t. 

A few pages later, there is a huge I DID IT!!! scrawled over the top. It’s Thursday and Beomgyu is still alive! Okay, so his house still caught fire, but I told him to go to a friend’s house instead of going home. This still makes no sense, because Beomgyu’s lived with you for months. Does Beomgyu die every time the world gets reborn? BECAUSE MAN WOULD THAT SUCK. 

Then there’s a new note. there’s this person in the senior class who keeps looking at me? did I talk to them in a past time loop? And then there’s a scrawled note in red pen over it: ok I talked to them they don’t know me. And as you flip onward, you see where there’s more notes about this senior, and how they seem to be attracting the attention of everybody around, and then Taehyun calls this person jagi in the notes and you realize it’s you. 

Taehyun’s been making notes about YOU every time loop?!?

There are notes being scrawled in the margins. Make sure Beomgyu doesn’t go home on Wednesday night so he doesn’t die in the fire has been crossed out, and instead is written, Make sure Beomgyu goes to Waeng practice on Wednesday night so he doesn’t die in the fire. But then there’s a circle around that, and written even lower, is See if you can get jagi to get Beomgyu to go to Waeng practice instead of going home on Wednesday night! They seem to be okay friends if they hang out a bit. If you see this and go into school early on Monday, you can get the two of them to talk, jagi will think it’s SO COOL that Beomgyu plays in a band, and then they’ll go to rehearsal together. 

There are further notes. Jagi got driven to school by Beomgyu this Monday morning! I didn’t prompt that at all!!! That’s different. There’s a smaller note that reads, wow I’m glad I trust my own writing, I really hope I’m not actually mentally ill. There are more notes. Jagi got hit in the head with a basketball today and ended up talking with the guys on the basketball team instead of Beomgyu. I’m gonna have to remind him about Waeng practice. So Taehyun is progressively instructing himself on how to save Beomgyu from a fire that keeps happening, week after week. And...from the looks of it, it appears that, in earlier time loops, Beomgyu didn’t live with you at all. He still lived at home with his dad. But through some sort of manipulation on Taehyun’s part, you became friends with Beomgyu, over and over again, to the point where he just...magically moved in with you, instead of living with his dad.

You realize that it was bugging you all Tuesday that Beomgyu had to get to practice. Maybe this is why. Maybe it’s left over from when he still lived with his dad. Maybe you’re just making sure he’s not going to die. Because you know Beomgyu would have died in that fire. But instead, the loop has changed so much that Beomgyu is automatically safe. 

Is this Taehyun’s doing?

Jagi keeps talking to me this loop, he writes during one page. I need them to leave me alone so I can focus on saving Beomgyu. And then later, I couldn’t save him, but I don’t care. I got to be friends with jagi, and jagi is super cool, and I actually got to talk to someone about this for the first time. And I know I’m gonna forget about it, and jagi will forget about it, but let me be selfish just this once, please.

It all makes sense: the stoic aloofness, the pushing away of everybody around him, how he lost his marbles when Ashley and Soojin had kidnapped him, why he stays at home with his younger siblings. He’s aware this is a time loop, he’s manipulating the world, and he’s using you to accomplish this. But Beomgyu doesn’t die, so it has to be worth something. There are further notes, something about going to a vet clinic for a rabbit, a name you don’t recognize, and then driving up to Chicago and someone getting a flat tire and borrowing Beomgyu’s car. 

Then there’s an entire page that scares you. It’s written in red, scrawled, scratched out. i can’t do this anymore fuck fuck fuck beomgyu went home and he’s not listening to me and jagi isn’t listening to me and i’m done i’m fucking done i want to die i want to die i want to die please let me die i’m dying if i stab myself enough times with this goddamn pen then i will die i deserve to die i am a piece of shit i can’t fix anything goodbye

The book has an empty page or two. Then, in Taehyun’s trustworthy, small handwriting, If you commit suicide, you will just wake up on Monday alive again. So don’t do that again, please. And at this point you’re shaking, Taehyun killed himself from the stress this time loop is bringing? Because he’s trying so hard to fix everything and make it perfect? So Beomgyu doesn’t die, and other people have good lives, before it all just starts over again and he has to fix it all again?

You choke back a sob.

How could somebody care so much, bother so much? 

You flip back to the beginning. It’s important that we reach a happy ending. For Beomgyu, and for jagi, and for everybody at Peotone High School. And because he’s written the word down, you pull out your cell phone. The tower signal is still online, and though you have to preserve your battery, you afford yourself one Google search. 

It depends on the subject, but in Korean, it usually means a loved one. The context is similar to ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling.’ It’s a term often used for someone you’re dating.

“I keep telling her I’m not interested,” Taehyun had said in relation to Ashley. “I’m already in love with somebody else. Somebody I can never have.”

Taehyun is in love with you?

But it makes sense, if he’s had some idea of remembering all these time loops, watching you through time loops, interacting with you...moments that you no longer remember. No wonder he didn’t want you to find out any of this. Taehyun is easily the kind of person who won’t want you to feel bad about something you can’t remember doing, or feel pressure regarding something like this. But from the notes in the notebook, it appears like you’re falling in love with Beomgyu, your roommate, as well as occasionally other people whose names are scattered throughout the book. As the time loops compound, you meet Beomgyu and others, over and over again, and you help them, and you fall a little bit more in love with them, and you forget come the next Monday but your body still keeps the score, makes it easier for you to get along with them the next time.

And Taehyun has been watching, over here, mostly silent, letting you do it, controlling the outcome selflessly while keeping his own feelings hidden.

Most of the notes end here; you flip to the back. There are a few profiles with pictures and notes. Your picture as well as your name are here, as well as the eponymous jagi. Senior. Not very busy. Always gets picked by Rue to write the speech for the banquet. The next profile is of Beomgyu; guitarist of Waeng, has a shitty father, currently living with jagi, make sure he goes to practice! 

And there are two more profiles. The first is one of the juniors on the basketball team. Choi Yeonjun, power forward on the basketball team. Mom in Chicago for cancer treatment. He’ll blow a flat on Wednesday and it’s up to jagi to borrow Beomgyu’s car to help him. We need to get Mom home in time for the banquet! 

The second profile is a picture of a man whom you’ve never seen before, but you suddenly feel like you’ve somehow loved him in a past life. Choi Soobin, junior, Choi Minyoung’s (Minnie) younger brother. His pet rabbit dies on Thursday morning, and if jagi notices, he can finally have a friend to help him out (he has no friends at school, from what I’ve seen). See if you can get jagi to be friends with him!

You don’t even really know who these two people are, even though Taehyun says you’ve met them time and time again before. And you suddenly realize that, even though Beomgyu is safe at your house, neither Soobin nor Yeonjun have been helped this ‘loop.’ Soobin probably still has no friends that Taehyun can see, and Yeonjun is probably sitting at home with a busted tire. It reminds you of what Taehyun was yelling earlier. This entire go-around is fucked! I was doing so good, too!

Instead of helping Soobin or Yeonjun, you’ve been helping Taehyun with the mathalon instead. Which definitely isn’t going according to his plan. And you want to give him a hug. And now that you’ve finished the book, you actually can. 

So you take the notebook with you, and you grab your flashlight, and you walk up the stairs to try and find Taehyun. He’s huddled in a corner outside your room -- that’s probably how he knew the layout to your house already, he’s probably been here in a previous time loop and made notes on it. He’s not crying, but he looks like he might start at any point.

“You read it?” He’s looking away from you.

You put the flashlight down and sit by him. “Yeah.”

“It sounds so fucking stupid, doesn’t it.” 

“...it doesn’t sound stupid.” 

“It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s really -- what’s the word? Valiant. You’ve been helping everybody out, every time. Even when you couldn’t remember. And this time around, we helped you out.”

“But it’s so insignificant in the context of things. I’m not dying in a fire or having someone else who’s dying on me --” Taehyun pauses, looking up at you in the dark with big eyes. “You believe what I wrote in the book?”

“You’ve given me no reason not to believe you. And besides, I kind of think you’re right.” You touch yourself on the chest, right over your heart. “I feel it in here. That idea that I love Beomgyu, and I don’t know Soobin or Yeonjun, but something tells me that I’ve probably loved them in a past life. So I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t. I’ve done nothing but fool and manipulate you. And come Sunday, you’ll forget all about it, and I’ll just fool and manipulate you again.”

You change the subject. “You said that you didn’t like Ashley. Is it because you’re in love with me?”

He pauses. “You weren’t -- I wish you hadn’t figured that out.”

“Why not? Because then you’d have to answer for everything you’ve done for me? You’d actually have to talk to me?”

“Because you’ll just slip through my fingers again on Sunday. I can’t -- that’s not fair to you.”

“And me falling in love with Beomgyu over and over again is fair? Taehyunnie, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“My name is Taehyun,” he says, and you reach over and pat him on the head. You finally get out of your head long enough to hear the rain outside, the thunder off in the distance, the rainstorm that Taehyun always knew was coming. If he’s right, you have two more days before you forget everything again. But this time, you know Taehyun has the keys to every memory. 

“Can I be with you?” you ask. “This time? It’s already ruined, Yeonjun isn’t getting his mother, Soobin is all alone, Beomgyu is...well, Beomgyu. But can I just be with you then? Can I just know you?”

“I can’t -- I won’t be that selfish --”

“I want you to be that selfish.” You lean over, taking his hand in yours. “Jagi wants you to be selfish.”

He grits his teeth, then sighs, then takes the notebook properly back from you. “You’re not wrong. This loop is fucked. We can’t save anybody. But I’ll tell you what. If I win the mathalon tomorrow, then I’ll grant you this wish of being with me for the next thirty six hours or so after that. Got it?”

You nod. “Got it.”

You don’t sleep that night.

You feel like you’re stuck in the Matrix, or maybe Act 3 of Doki Doki Literature Club, or maybe you’re even like the girl in the Shelter music video. You’re like Steve Rogers at the end of the first Captain America movie, where he wakes up in the 1940’s but it’s suddenly the 21st century outside. 

Nothing is real. What is reality? Are you sleeping in your actual bed? Is this really your house? What if this is all an alien simulation?

You take a shaky, deep breath, and talk yourself down from the beginnings of insanity. Your world is fine. You still grew up in Peotone, and you’ve lived your entire life here. That has to be real, to you. So your house is real, and Beomgyu is a real person who has lived in Peotone, near you, all this time. You just didn’t meet him until a lot of time loops ago, and progressively, things started to change so he was your roommate. Is that why the time loop exists? If Taehyun works hard, and permanently gets Soobin some friends, and permanently makes sure Yeonjun doesn’t get a flat tire, then will the time loop end? 

And then there’s Taehyun. He’s had a remarkable ability to just...trust himself, all of the writings he’s made within his book. That must be a lot of self confidence. You would say arrogance, but if he were truly arrogant, he’d be wanting to show this knowledge off to you every time loop. But he hides it away, at a great emotional cost to himself. 

You’re obviously not in love with him, but you feel like you love him already. And who knows? Perhaps that’s also a form of affection that has been earned after other weeks of interacting with him, learning the truth, weeks you don’t remember anymore. 

But you’ve got a chance to know him better now. And you might as well take it.

You eventually doze off, just a bit, but it’s not good sleep at all. You think you dream something, but you don’t know what it is, and it disappears before you can really pay attention to it. When you wake up, it’s Saturday, and the mathalon is at 2 PM, and you’ve got enough time to properly put clothes on and make sugar cereal. 

It starts egging on you, though. Taehyun’s notebook stated that you should be in Chicago this morning, because this Choi Yeonjun that you don’t know has a flat tire and therefore can’t go get his mother for the banquet. You don’t even know him, and you’re still guilt-tripping yourself about it. Instead, you pour the rest of the sugar cereal into the bowl and then go into your living room, more out of curiosity than anything.

You had left Taehyun down here last night. He had let you walk away, obviously needing to sort some things out in your mind. But now you don’t see Taehyun anywhere, until you realize he must be under the fluffy white comforter that is on the couch. 

“Taehyun?” You get closer and poke the top of it. “Taehy—“

The comforter moves. There’s a quick flash of brown hair under a corner of fabric. And then, the comforter lands on the ground. It rolls for a bit, and then Taehyun scrambles under the covers. “Jagi?? Are you awake?”

“Yes, why —“

“Get away from me — not because I’m awful or I’ll hurt something, but because I’m naked, damnit!”

Wait, what? And when you turn to your left, you see all of Taehyun’s clothes from yesterday, including his Metallica t-shirts, folded on the chair. He didn’t have any clothes to sleep in! “Oh! Okay!” And you run out of the room. “Let me know when it’s safe to come back in!”

It takes five minutes, but Taehyun throws all his clothes back on, and you’re fine to give him his own bowl of sugar cereal. Not much is said between you, as Beomgyu also comes downstairs to start his day. Ashley will grab you both for the mathalon at Kankakee, so he’s still able to hang out with his bandmates all day.

Still, as you watch him walk by, you consider that you’ve been with him before. You’ve kissed Beomgyu. And you don’t even remember. 

You keep it out of your mind during the short drive down to Kankakee, the much bigger city just to the south of Peotone. As you arrive, there are other schools already setting up. Manteno and Momence and Grant Park and Herscher are all here with their own mathalon teams, and it’s making you nervous. But then a huge SUV pulls up, and you see Soojin get out of the car, dressed in a short white sundress with blue flowers on it. Come to think of it, Ashley’s also wearing her own bodycon dress, orange in color. They’re dressed all fancy and here Taehyun is in his Metallica t-shirt and jeans. But at least he’s here. 

You let them both go ahead and sit with the crowd in the gymnasium. Soojin’s father finds you, and the two of you talk while the others set up. Billy and Porter both show up, but neither one looks prepared to take the stage. Then Taehyun sits between Soojin and Ashley, looking a little out of place but still in it to win it. 

His eyes catch yours, and he smiles, baring all his teeth before he focuses. It’s the first time you’ve seen him smile at you. You realize you’re blushing. 

“Begin,” the proctor says, and then it’s quiet in the gymnasium. Not a single person seems to breathe as the mathalon contestants flip over their sheets and begin. You wonder, for a split second, if Taehyun is cheating because he’s had extra time to memorize the formulas? But no, you think, there are times where he forgets everything, as well. Sometimes he wakes up on Monday remembering that he’s in a time loop, and sometimes he wakes up on Monday thinking everything is normal, and he has to read his trusty purple notebook to catch up. It’s not like he’s a pro at suddenly remembering things.

Besides. On Monday morning, the time loop will take effect again, and nobody will even remember today happened. 

Taehyun doesn’t look up from his paper once the entire time he is working. He’s got such laser-eye focus that you wonder how he does it. Then you realize he’s been wearing glasses to school this entire past week, and he doesn’t have them now. How is he even seeing the paper?! You bite your lip and shelve that thought under your list of things to give Taehyun a hard time about. 

If he’s going to continue to live in this time loop without you, always watching you from afar, then he needs to learn how to love himself a little better. You wish you could do more. But sitting in the crowd is all you can do.

“Time,” the proctor finally says, and everybody puts down their pencils. Ashley passes her paper to Taehyun, who passes theirs to Soojin, who passes them to the proctor, and they all smile at each other. They probably don’t stand a chance against the other schools, who have more time and resources to devote, but at least Taehyun is finally here. 

There’s a short break while the scores are calculated from officials, and then the results are announced. The individual awards are announced first, for whomever managed to get the most questions right in the amount of time given. “First place, from Peotone High School with twenty nine questions, Soojin Park,” the proctor says.

Soojin is all smiles as she goes up to accept a certificate. You figure she’s at least done this part before; the woman was on fire on Wednesday.

“We have tallied the full scores. The third place overall, with a score of 76, is Herscher High School.” There is applause as they get their certificate. “The second place overall, with a score of 77 points, is Manteno High School.” More clapping, and at this point, you figure there’s no way they’ve won. Taehyun probably bombed something, and you’ll have to talk him down for hating on himself for it later.

But then, “First place, with eighty points, is Peotone High School.”

Both Ashley and Soojin scream. Soojin’s dad jumps up and down, and you join him, a cheering section of two as Soojin goes up to accept the first place certificate. Taehyun still looks like he’s in shock, but when he sees the certificate, you swear you see his face break. He’s holding back tears, you’re sure of it. Then all three are jumping and people are getting pictures and the event is properly finished.

Soojin runs to her dad as he gives her a big hug. You walk up to Ashley. “How did…?”

“Because you’re awesome and you got our ace in the hole to actually show up,” Ashley says, slapping Taehyun on the back.

“I got fourth overall,” Taehyun says. “That’s not an ace.”

“But we would have never gotten anywhere if you hadn’t actually been here.” Ashley gives you a big hug now as well. “Thanks, friend. I owe you one.”

“I’ll make sure to note that.” And you pause, an idea starting to form. “Actually, Ashley, I think I already got that favor. Can I borrow your car?”

“Uh, sure, but I’ll need a ride back to Peotone.”

“You can come with me and my dad,” Soojin says. “What do you need the car for?”

You grin, looking over at Taehyun. “Just something Taehyun promised me if you all won.”

Taehyun gulps as Ashley and Soojin whoop and holler, having no clue what you’re up to. And honestly, you don’t fully either. But it’s got to start with making sure you snag some one-on-one time with him, and if you all go back to Peotone, he’ll go home and find a way to ignore you for the rest of the weekend. So stay in Kankakee it is.

“When you’re done, swing by and I’ll drive you home,” Ashley says, handing you her keys. “And please don’t crash it.”

“I won’t.” You turn to Taehyun. “Let’s go have some fun.” And then, you lean into his ear and whisper something, low enough for Ashley and Soojin not to hear, but high enough to turn his face five shades of red. “Boyfriend.”

“They’re going to talk about that all the way back to Peotone,” Taehyun pouts, sitting in Ashley’s passenger seat.

“They’re going to forget about it on Monday, according to you,” you say as you check your GPS. You don’t drive often; Beomgyu prefers to drive, and you don’t technically have a car. But you do still know how to drive. 

“Where are we going?”

“Someplace magical.” And you pull into Walmart. Peotone is too small to have its own Walmart, so you have to either go down to Kankakee or go up toward suburban Chicago to find one. You have absolutely no reason to go on a regular basis, as Beomgyu subsists off of sugar cereal from the Dollar General. But you’re in Kankakee, and you have Taehyun, and you really are forming a plan.

“So here’s what we’re gonna do,” you say, pulling in. “We’re gonna do what you do best. We’re gonna make your siblings happy. How many do you have again?”

“Five,” Taehyun says. “Leon, Andrea, Max, Lori, and Jacob. Most of us have different dads.” It’s a throwaway comment that explains how he looks so different from everybody else in his family.

“Great. And your mom. We’re gonna go into Walmart, and we’re gonna pick out something for each member of your family. Then, we’re gonna drive to your house and give it to them. Just randomly. We don’t have to wrap it, we just have to make it special. Then on Monday, they’ll forget it ever happened, but I’m guessing they don’t get many cool moments like this.”

“They really don’t. How are you gonna pay for all of that?”

You whip out a credit card from your pocket, with your name on it. “I’ve had this forever. Not...quite sure where it goes, really, but if it all resets on Monday, it won’t even matter. We could even steal from Walmart if we wanted.”

“Yeah, but then we’d get caught, and the rest of this loop would suck, and then I’d miss my chance to keep my memories this time around, and it’d probably throw the whole thing off.” Taehyun goes to take off his seatbelt when he realizes you’re not moving. “What?”

“You know how to keep your memories?” All you have heard are the bad things about this whole situation. You haven’t realized that Taehyun has somehow figured out how to keep his memories through every time loop!

“...yes?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s written in the back of the book! You said you read the whole thing!”

“Well, give me the book! I’m not done yet, then!”

He laughs and shakes his head, then pulls out his bag and hands it to you. “I take it with me everywhere. You maybe missed it because you flipped to the profiles first and thought I was done.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.” You flip to the profiles at the end, with you and Beomgyu’s pictures plus Choi Soobin and Choi Yeonjun, and slowly turn pages backward until you get to a new note.

I think I’ve cracked the code, Taehyun writes. Of course he would put it like that. The loop doesn’t start at midnight on Monday! When everybody is at the banquet on Sunday night, this girl named Rue plays a violin piece. I think if you listen to the violin piece, you forget your memories. If you don’t listen and you go somewhere else in the school instead, at some point the time loop still kicks in. But you wake up on Monday the 6th with your memories still! 

“You have to not listen to Rue?” you ask. Does Rue have anything to do with this? No, probably not. Then, you re-read it. Rue’s playing the violin at the banquet? You didn’t even know this. Peotone doesn’t have a high school orchestra; Rue is the only person in the school who plays violin. Everybody else either clunks along in marching band, or you have Beomgyu’s friends Shelly and Kai in his three piece rock band. But Rue -- Rue is something else. She’s won contests all over the region, and you’re certain when she goes to Bible school she’ll continue to play. So you know she’s good, and it doesn’t surprise you that she’ll be playing tomorrow. 

But does it really come down to who listens to Rue play and who doesn’t? Taehyun seems to think so. 

“I’ve done it three times in a row, now,” Taehyun explains. “So I remember this loop, and the last three before that. And I’ll do the same thing tomorrow night, at the banquet, and I’ll continue to remember from now on.”

It reminds you that you still have a speech to write for Rue! You had totally forgotten after the bomb Taehyun had dropped on you last night. “The speech! God, I forgot about the speech.” And you whip your phone out.

“Uh...jagi, I got some bad news for you.”

You look up at Taehyun. “What?”

“If the time loop starts when Rue is playing her violin, you don’t even get to give your speech. You’re probably already at Monday morning, waking up and doing whatever it is you’re doing Monday mornings before you get to school.”

You let yourself absorb that information. Rue has been asking you for weeks — months, probably, if Taehyun is right — to write a speech for the yearly awards banquet. You’ve probably written dozens of speeches. And you never get to make a single one.

“Can you write down to remind me not to worry about the speech?” you say as you pull out your phone and shoot Rue an email. She doesn’t have a cell phone, but she’ll eventually get the email on her family’s old computer. “Now, let’s go into Walmart and spend some money.”

Taehyun grabs a cart as you both walk in, starting to the left of the store where all of the pharmacy products are. Walmart is its own culture at this point: love it or hate it, it is a staple of American life. All sorts of stores borrow their same tactics of selling, as you notice the women’s clothing front and center. Makes you want to buy a scarf for yourself, but then you remember you’re here for Taehyun’s kid siblings. 

You wonder if you should buy Taehyun something, as well. He could probably use it. But you’ll have to do it in secret, because he’ll definitely complain. 

And as you walk, you pay attention to two things. The first is that Taehyun, in Walmart, is like a kid in a candy store. You’re aware that his family doesn’t have a lot of money; that’s why you’re doing this Walmart run. But he points, wide-eyed, at everything he wishes he could have, like...shaving cream? And conditioner for his hair, and a bag of socks, and new shoelaces. You start wondering just how much money you’d have to put on this card in order for Taehyun’s family situation to be better. 

You know. Assuming you know who’s in charge of the card. When you flip it over, it has your name on it, but as far as you know, you’ve never received a bill.

Then there’s the other thing. Taehyun seems to have cracked the code for remembering each time loop. But he hasn’t addressed the elephant in the room: you now know, as well. So at some point, you want to talk to him about it. If Taehyun is going to remember each time loop, for all of eternity, if he’s going to amass memories and make some progress even as time loops around him...shouldn’t you, too? Wouldn’t it make more sense to do that with someone else?

“You said you remember three time loops,” you say as you completely bypass the hunting and fishing section of Walmart and end up in sporting goods. 

“Yeah,” Taehyun says, absentminded, looking at sleeping bags. “This is the fourth loop I’m in.”

“Well...what happened, those first loops?”

“The first loop, you made friends with Choi Soobin, and you helped him out with his rabbit, and I think you guys had a thing for each other when it was all said and done. You were sitting together at the banquet, before Rue played the violin. I saw that before I ducked out. I went into the hallway to make notes on it, and then she played it, and I didn’t hear it, and then I woke up on Monday remembering it all.

“The second loop, you took the bus to school and you got beaned in the head with a basketball, and Choi Yeonjun swept you up in his arms and you all became a thing. You drove up to Chicago and got his mom, and you were wearing his varsity jacket all around school.” Wow. If you were wearing Yeonjun’s varsity jacket, then you really must have been a thing.

“But then you forgot all that, and then the third time loop, I wasn’t sure what you were gonna do, until you showed up on Thursday after Beomgyu’s house caught on fire, and you guys were holding hands in the hallway. So while you didn’t help Soobin or Yeonjun, you were still happy with Beomgyu. And if you’re happy, I consider that a job well done. By that point, I had realized that, if I just go to another part of the school instead of staying in the banquet, then I’ll be good to go for another loop.”

“And now we’re here,” you say. “At the fourth time loop. When I help you with the mathalon.”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. You’re not supposed to help me with anything. I’m supposed to help you. That’s how this works.”

Your thoughts trail off as Taehyun starts comparing brands of tennis balls. What happened to him in his past to make him this much of a doormat? You wonder what Taehyun would be like if he had a supportive at-home life and friends who could do more for him. He would probably be so sure of himself that it might actually come off cocky. That part of his personality definitely shows through sometimes. But if he really could be that confident…

You stop walking and look up. You’re at the end of the aisle, staring at more sports equipment. Foam rollers sit next to hand wraps and boxing gloves. And for some reason, you have this gut instinct that Taehyun would want something like this. “Hey, Taehyun?”

Taehyun is still in Tennis Ball Land, but comes running over. “Yes, jagi?”

“Do you want this?” you ask, pointing straight at the boxing gloves.

Taehyun looks up, and for a second, he smiles. “I — you’re funny. I used to box. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t. I just had this hunch that it had something to do with you.”

“Yeah, I did for a while as a kid, until the good dad left us and we’ve been struggling ever since. Sports are expensive.” Taehyun looks up at the boxing gloves. “How did you...you said it was just intuition.”

“Yeah.” You smile at him, and you wonder just how much else is intuition. Is it really a gut instinct? Or is it repressed memories, telling you that you know this, that you’ve been here before? How many times have you been to Walmart with Taehyun? 

“Taehyun, have we kissed before?”

He gives you a strange look. “I think we have, at some point, but I don’t remember it —“

And you grab his face and you pull him in, kissing him. For a split second, there’s a roughness to it. He is clearly surprised, but thank goodness he doesn’t instantly push you away. And then you feel that same instinct, that gut feeling that says yes, you’ve been here before, at some point you have kissed Taehyun and you have liked it. 

You pull away. “I’ve got this gut feeling, all the time, about certain things. I guess it’s my own way of remembering. It says we’ve kissed before.”

Taehyun is still staring at you, his mouth open a little in surprise. Then, “I...I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah?” You smirk at him. “Do you need to double check to make sure?”

He blushes, then, “I don’t know. I guess so. A good scientist always tests his hypothesis.” And when he doesn’t lean forward, you do, again, kissing him quickly and looking into his eyes until he finally gets the hint, he finally leans forward, and then he’s finally kissing you, pulling you into his arms until he stops cold three seconds later.

“Wait. Why are we kissing in the middle of Walmart?”

You laugh. “I don’t know!”

“I can do better than that!” He shakes his head, then kisses your cheek, for good measure. “Consider it a raincheck, if I’m going to actually be your boyfriend.”

“Does that mean we should go on a date?”

“It does. Sure. I’m down with that. I don’t know what to do, though. Everything in Peotone is boring, because I’ve done it fifteen hundred times before, and even Kankakee sounds lame. But we don’t really have time to go up to Chicago at this point, unless you wanted to say screw it to the banquet tomorrow. Not quite sure what would happen if we went to Chicago instead, actually. I haven’t tested that theory.”

A plan is starting to form in your mind. “Oh, I think I’ve got an idea. Follow me.” And you walk through the aisles of Walmart, and you finish picking out spontaneous gifts for Taehyun’s younger siblings. You grab a race car for Jacob, one of those LOL blindbag dolls for Lori, and an entire slew of Minecraft toys for Max. For Andrea, you get a new messenger bag and a bunch of art supplies. And Leon gets a Nintendo Switch Lite, since Taehyun’s family doesn’t have a TV, and a bunch of standard games such as Mario Kart and Mario Party.

“We’ll all have to look on that small screen,” Taehyun says as you lead the cart through the women’s clothes, “but I think we’ll all be able to play games together — wait, why are we in bras?”

“We have to go through bras to get where we’re going next,” you say, stopping in the middle of the pajama section. “Women always have the cutest pajamas. That’s why we’re stopping here.” You immediately find what you’re looking for: a soft pair of blue pajamas in a traditionally cut style, with a long shirt with long sleeves and pants. 

“You are not buying me women’s pajamas,” Taehyun says as you grab the biggest size and eye-ball measure them against him.

“I’m not,” you grin. “I’m buying two pair. Trust me?” And Taehyun rolls his eyes, but he does, as you throw two pairs of the pajamas into the cart, then head through the candy aisle, picking up all your favorites and at least two rolls of all-pink Starburst. You don’t even look at the total once it’s all rang up. You just separate your bags from the ones going to Taehyun’s house, and then you drive Ashley’s car back to town.

You park in front of Taehyun’s house and knock on the front door, inviting everybody to come outside where there’s more space. Soon, all of Taehyun’s kid siblings are lined up while he ducks inside, presumably to get a fresh change of clothes. He emerges in a new shirt and shorts, and together, you give the kids their gifts. And it’s exactly the reaction you were hoping for. All of the kids are so excited, and there are big smiles on their faces. Leon starts crying when he pulls the Switch Lite out of his Walmart bag. 

“Don’t you need to get Ashley’s car back to her?” Taehyun asks.

“Yeah, but one more thing. You get back in the car.” And Taehyun does, after packing nice clothes for the banquet tomorrow. He’s already inferred that he’s spending the night again at your place. And with a smile and a wave, you leave Taehyun’s house behind, all of the kids laughing and playing with their new toys.

“That really was nice of you to do,” Taehyun says with a smile. It took winning the mathalon and going to Walmart on your dime, but he seems to finally be more comfortable with you. Which is good. He better get used to it.

You get back to Ashley’s, and she drops you off at your house. Beomgyu is out at his friend’s house for the night, doing one more practice before the banquet tomorrow...which you just now realize he will never actually play at because the time loop will get in the way. If you want to do anything, you presume it will need to be done before Sunday at 6 PM, when it starts. 

“The house is ours,” you say, turning on the television and whipping up some spaghetti for dinner. Taehyun helps you, draining the noodles and microwaving some bagged vegetables to serve as a side dish. Then, you both eat in the living room, the television keeping you company. Then, you make Taehyun stay downstairs while you go up to your bedroom and fix up a few things. You also fix yourself up, then throw on the second pair of pajamas that you bought. 

“Put your pajamas on and meet me in my bedroom,” you tell Taehyun from the top of the stairs. 

He gives you a weird look. “...what are you planning, jagi?”

“Nothing scandalous. This is completely chaste and kid-friendly.” 

Taehyun comes upstairs to find your entire bedroom has been transformed. You’ve found the Christmas lights that you knew were stored under your bed, hanging them up like you typically do every Christmas. You also have on the galaxy light that you got for your birthday a few years back, set up so the ceiling looks like a different dimension. Your bed is covered in stuffed animals and pillows, and you’re both wearing matching pajamas.

“It’s a pajama party,” you say with a smile. “You’re not sleeping up here, but I thought you’d just like to hang out. This is our date. It’s probably stupid.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “It’s perfect.” And he sits on your bed with you, beside you, giving you enough room to still be yourself. You just start out talking, first about the book and then about anything but, about school and his family and when he used to box. You open the snacks you bought at Walmart, and the two of you share pink Starburst as you talk about your own life in this house you now share with Beomgyu. You show Taehyun some BTS videos on your phone, and he shows you some videos of another K-Pop group called SHINee in return. 

“In another life, I would be a K-Pop idol, just like them,” he says, and there are stars in his eyes. 

When Beomgyu gets home from his rehearsal, he brings extra leftover pizza with him, and the two of you share it alone in your room. Taehyun has SHINee music playing on his phone, and you gossip about the county fair that will never happen because you’re stuck in this time loop, and what would happen if you formed your own county fair instead. He talks for a minute about going to Walmart every Monday, buying those boxing gloves, and spending an entire week training for some imaginary bout before doing it all again the next week. You tell him you’re never writing a speech for Rue again.

“This is great, jagi,” he tells you, finally leaning back and yawning. “I’m so glad I get to remember all of this.”

It’s a perfect segue. “Who says you have to be the only one to remember it?”

He looks over at you. “What do you mean?”

“I want to remember it, too. I want to go to the banquet tomorrow, but instead of listening to Rue’s violin, I want to do whatever it is you do so that I don’t forget this time with you. And I want to spend next week with you, and the week after that, and the week after that.”

“Jagi, I won’t let you be that selfish.”

“I’m not. I’m going to spend that time helping you do your job. We’ve already got Beomgyu in a safe spot where he’s not dying in a fire every week. Who’s to say that we can’t get Yeonjun to not get a flat tire every week? And who’s to say we can’t find Soobin even more friends to help him through the death of his rabbit? And when it comes to falling in love with them...you’re right. I think a part of me will always love all three of them, every single loop. And if, someday, they’re able to understand that, then that’s great. But we will have to cross that bridge if and when we come to it. I want it to be us first, Taehyun. You and me, against the world. We can buy those boxing gloves every week, and who knows, maybe with each time loop you’ll get stronger —“

He kisses you, then, and for the first time, you sense a hint of desperation in Taehyun. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” he whispers. “If that’s what you want to do, for good, then...I don’t want to stop you. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“Then don’t be,” you say, taking his hand in yours. “I’m doing it for more than just you. But knowing you’ll be going through the same thing I am, I’m ready for it.” And you kiss him again, and he kisses you back, and you suddenly feel this sense of belonging somewhere, like you’ve been looking for it and you’ve found it, here and there, but you’ve finally found a spot to rest, a place to call home. 

When you wake up, you suddenly jump, afraid that Taehyun fell asleep next to you. But he’s curled on a blanket on the floor. And even though the sun is peeking through your window, the Christmas lights and galaxy lamp are still on.

As usual, you prepare for the banquet and scour your closet for at least thirty minutes before deciding you already know what you’re wearing to the banquet. So you put on your favorite outfit, and you jump in the car with Beomgyu and Taehyun. Beomgyu has his guitar in the trunk, and he has to be there early to set up the band equipment. And Taehyun already doesn’t mind being super early. 

Peotone High’s awards banquet starts at six PM sharp, and you already know pretty well how it’s supposed to go. The banquet includes dinner, and everybody sits at long tables, and food is served, usually some turkey or ham dinner with mashed potatoes, and variants for other dietary options. There’s usually some performance to start off with, then a student speech, then the food is distributed. After the food, there’s usually another performance -- this is where Waeng comes in -- and then the awards are given out. Lastly, there’s a speech made by a teacher, and then everybody gets to go home.

But you know better now. According to Taehyun, at six PM sharp, Rue will play her violin, and the time loop will start again. Everybody will probably go unconscious, and those who hear Rue play the violin will forget this last time loop ever happened. Those who don’t hear it will keep their memories. It’s a hypothesis that you have one chance to test. 

“Hey hey,” Rue says when you and Taehyun enter through the cafeteria doors. The cafeteria is a holding area for everybody who’s doing something special for the banquet. Rue is back there, in a long blue dress, her hair back up in a bun, already holding her violin.

You feign surprise. “I didn’t know you were playing for us tonight!”

Rue smiles, shrugging it off, modest as ever. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise. Is it?”

“It is! I’m excited now.”

“I’ll be playing first. It’s not a big deal that you didn’t get the speech done. I wouldn’t worry about it.” Somehow, Rue seems completely unfazed. 

“Sounds good. I’ll see you in there, okay?”

“Okay.” Rue waves, and you and Taehyun leave the cafeteria. 

“Okay,” you whisper to him, “where to now?”

“The library. It should be unlocked.” And it is, thank goodness. All of the lights are off, and Taehyun leads you to a corner where the fiction books are. There are three or four beanbag chairs there, and you both sit in one. 

“Now what?”

“We wait. If I remember correctly — this is the part that gets the fuzziest — we just fall asleep. And then we wake up in our beds Monday morning like it never happened, except we remember that it did.”

“What if it doesn’t work? What if only you remember, and I don’t?”

“Then I’ll continue on as I always have.”

“No, you won’t,” you say, and you grab Taehyun’s notebook from him. You pull out a pen, and you turn to the last page that Taehyun had written in. And then, you begin to write.

Some people remember the first time

Some can't forget the last

Some just select what they want to from the past

“What are you doing?” Taehyun asks, a look of shock on his face.

“Writing down what I want you to remember,” you say, focusing on the words, writing a small letter to him. “That way, if either one of us forgets, we’ll read the book, and then we’ll follow the instructions. Just like you do when you forget.” And you finish, and you hand it back to him. 

He reads it over, and he smiles. It’s a genuine smile, one that tells you that he really does love you, has for a long time. “Thanks, jagi.” He hands the book back to you. “Anything else you want to write in there, go for it.” So, next to the little love letter you wrote to Taehyun, you make notes on how both of you should remember, and if one of you makes it through without the other, to use the book and to follow the instructions again. You make sure to write a good note about trusting your intuition, because that seems to be the only memory you retain if you forget.

It's a song that you danced to in high school

It's a moon you tried to bring down

On a four in the morning drive through the streets of town

“How much more time do we have?” you ask.

Taehyun checks his phone. “Fifteen minutes.”

“What do we do with this time?”

“Anything you want, jagi. Anything you want.”

“Then let me just hold your hand.” You exhale. “I’m scared.” 

“I know. I think it’s normal to be scared. I always get scared.” So he reaches over and holds your hand. “You’re with me. You’re going to be okay.”

“Okay.”

It's a need you never get used to, so fierce and so confused

It's a loss you never get over the first time you lose

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, “for pushing you away most of the week. Tell you what, when we wake up on Monday and we remember who we are, let’s meet up in school, and then I’ll ask you out in front of everyone.”

“Taehyun!” you say with a laugh. That would be so uncharacteristic of him! 

“Well.” He shrugs. “I’ve had to hide most of my life, for weeks and months, forgetting my past in different chunks. I’m sure that’s made me kind of scared of, well, everything. But if you’re here with me, I want to try to be bold again.”

And tonight I am thinking of someone

Seventeen years ago

We rode in his daddy's car down the river road

You lean your head on Taehyun’s shoulder, holding onto his hand, his notebook in your other hand. “I don’t want to go.”

“I know, jagi. But we have to go. That’s how this works. So let’s go together.”

“Okay.” And you feel a tug at the back of your brain, and before long, you find yourself yawning. You know you’re going to fall asleep on Taehyun’s shoulder, but you should wake up soon, and it will be Monday, and Beomgyu will be singing in the shower, and you’ll get to school and Rue will ask you about making a new speech. But then you will find Taehyun, and you’ll be official, one way or another. 

“Promise me you’ll find me on the other side?”

“I promise, jagi. I won’t push you away, ever again. I know better.” And he kisses your forehead, and you feel even more tired now, like you’re ready to fall asleep even though it’s six in the evening. Then, the library lights flicker above your head, then turn out, leaving you and Taehyun in darkness. You check your phone: it is two minutes past six. 

It’s getting late now, take my hand

You just have to whisper, I will understand

“I love you,” you whisper. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah. I love you, too.”

“I’ll say it again when I get there, but thank you for everything you’ve done.” You close your eyes, and the world blurs suddenly before you lose consciousness. 

Come on, come on, it’s getting late now

Come on, come on, take my hand

Come on, come on, you just have to whisper

Come on, come on -- 

Everything seems so perfect right now, so peaceful. It could be awesome if things would just stay this way, like this moment could last forever. But you know they won’t. If just this one thing can stay, then —

Chapter Text

...

...

..

a bang

someone screams

there is a constant beeping noise coming from somewhere

you try to move

...

you fail

“...some of this footage and information may be disturbing…”

you reach for taehyuns hand

but it is nowhere to be found

this isnt the library

where the hell are you??

“...as of right now, 10:06 PM…”

you cant even force your eyes open but you know youre laying down somewhere

did you die?

is this what happens when you dont listen to rue play the violin?

did taehyun die? where. is. taehyun?

“...Lisa Parker is on site currently, Lisa, can you give us an update…”

you crack your eyes.

the walls are white and something smells stale and you have some flimsy blanket on top of you and theres noise coming from somewhere far away and is this a hospital? holy shit youre dead youre dead YOURE DEAD but wait theres a needle in your arm youre not dead PHEW. so how the hell did you get here?

where is taehyun? why arent you at school? you close your eyes. youre pretty sure this is a hospital room. okay. you know that for sure or maybe this is some weird dream did taehyun know this was coming why didnt taehyun say anything where the hell is he why are you in a hospital?

you try to speak

nothing comes out

“...as we continue to get more information, we will let you know. Live on location in Lakeview, Lisa Parker, NBC5.”

thats a tv because it then starts playing a mcdonalds commercial. you recognize the jingle. ba-dah ba ba ba. then theres one for some medication that lists a bunch of side effects and ‘if youre having trouble paying for your medications astrazeneca might be able to help’ or some dumb crap like that. right now the tv is all you can pay attention to and you hear the familiar music of nbc5 start up again but this sounds different than normal

“...Good evening. This is the NBC5 news at 10:00, I’m Stefan Holt, and we are bringing you breaking news tonight out of downtown. If you’re just tuning in, here’s what you need to know. You’re seeing the historic Vic Theater here in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, destroyed by fire. Now, some of this footage and information may be disturbing, so we are warning our sensitive audiences if they want to look away…”

oh yeah the vic theater you went there once for a field trip in elementary school. it caught fire? that doesnt sound good so you listen some more

“...hosting a concert tonight, we are told it was a tour of a new K-Pop band under the same label as worldwide sensation BTS. This drew a sold out house, and the fire started just before the show, at 7:41 PM. Police are suspecting arson after padlocks were discovered on the emergency exits, and signs of arson activity were found backstage…”

that honestly sounds horrible so the fire was started on purpose? why would anybody do such a thing?

“...do not know who started this fire or if they made it out alive. As of right now, 10:12 PM, there are 49 confirmed fatalities and 235 injured. All Chicago area hospitals are overwhelmed right now. Please stay out of the Lakeview area if you can. 49 confirmed fatalities…”

…

how would that many people die in a fire?

oh

right

arson

“...we have received word from the Chicago Police Department that those forty nine fatalities do include the members of the band performing tonight. We have Lisa Parker on site. Lisa?”

“Thank you, Stefan. K-Pop sensation BTS has put Korea on the map all over the world, and parent company Big Hit has had their eye on recreating that success. They created a new band called TOMORROW X TOGETHER, calling it five boys under one dream. Tonight, that dream went up in flames. The historic Vic Theater that was hosting their American showcase was destroyed by fire earlier tonight. None of the boys made it out alive.”

that sounds familiar

where is taehyun? is he here too? did something happen at school?

you rub your fingers together but his arent there to hold yours

theres another commercial on tv now for six flags

you drift off for a moment

you hear a voice somewhere over the tv music 

“Oh, sweetie, did you wake up?”

you try to speak

nothing comes out

“That’s okay. Don’t try to move too much. You’ve been through a lot tonight.”

theres a black nurse with green scrubs on and she looks so nice and her voice is nice. she sits by your bed and takes your hand in hers. it reminds you of taehyun and so you rub your finger against hers. 

“How about this, I ask you a question, and you tap my hand? One tap for yes, two taps for no?”

you tap her finger once maybe she knows where taehyun is maybe she can help you nurses can be trusted black women can be trusted please you just want to know where taehyun is

“Okay, let’s start simple. The ID we found on you said your name was…” she takes a minute but she reads your name out loud “Is that correct? Are you that person?”

one tap

“Okay, good. Do you remember where you were before this?”

you were at school. you were at school and you were hiding from rue because she was going to play her violin and when she plays the violin time repeats and you forget everything. you were hiding with taehyun in the library and you both fell asleep and you didnt hear her play and now youre here and you dont know where taehyun is

so you tap her hand once

“That’s good. Do you remember if anybody was with you?”

yes yes yes taehyun was with me where is taehyun

you tap her hand once

“Okay, good. We’ll have to wait until you can speak again, and then we can bring your mom in, okay?”

what

you dont have a mom

you dont have parents come to think of it why didnt you think of this before nobody ever asked you?

you have a mom???

the nurse leaves no no no come back you wanna know where taehyun is where is taehyun he should be here damnit.

…

you have a mom?

“You’re going to be late, don’t forget the tickets.”

late to what? tickets to what? where did that come from? and you remember your mom standing in the hallway to your house holding up her phone looking pissed as hell because you were going to be late for the train wait what train what train WHAT TRAIN

“...you’re just tuning in, here’s what you need to know. You’re seeing the historic Vic Theater here in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, destroyed by fire…”

that goddamn news broadcast is on who cares if there was a fire

wait

wait

you were on the train to chicago you were going to chicago with your mom you remember that but you dont remember where that was from was it a dream? or was it something else? no you were on the train and you were going to chicago you always go to chicago for anything big chicago is fun but why were you going to chicago this time? why were you going to be late for the train?

what. tickets?

“...this drew a sold out house, and the fire started just before the show, at 7:41 PM. Police are suspecting arson after padlocks were discovered on the emergency exits…”

yes yes we get it emergency exits were locked everybody died it was some band who died choi soobin choi yeonjun --

…

CHOI SOOBIN

CHOI YEONJUN

CHOI BEOMGYU

KANG TAEHYUN

HUENING KAI

TOMORROW X TOGETHER

...where the hell did that come from?

choi soobin choi yeonjun choi beomgyu kang taehyun huening kai tomorrow x together. choi soobin choi yeonjun choi beomgyu kang taehyun huening kai tomorrow x together. choi soobin choi yeonjun choi beomgyu kang taehyun huening kai tomorrow x together. why is that so important why do you know that in that order what does it matter those are just kids you know at school

tomorrow by together. txt. tee-ecks-tee. like a text message?

“They created a new band called TOMORROW X TOGETHER, calling it five boys under one dream. Tonight, that dream went up in flames.”

…

the boys were having a showcase at the vic theater and you were going to chicago to go see them and the theater caught fire and you remember YOU REMEMBER the smell of smoke in the air and how everybody panicked and blocked the exits and your mom was there somewhere because she took you and you were holding a sign you were HOLDING A SIGN 

because tomorrow x together is a band and youve been following them online since they got started in korea and theyre so popular and you couldnt believe you got tickets and there was a fire and theyre dead all of them are dead taehyun is dead but soobin? soobin is dead and yeonjun is dead and beomgyu

beomgyus dream came true hes dead in a fire

how did that happen? was it a dream? did you just dream txt into your high school or something? that must be it. that has to be it. you fell asleep and you dreamed that txt was at your school and taehyun said the world was repeating and you kissed him and you hid away from the world together because he didnt want to forget but hes dead hes dead hes gone it was all a dream and hes dead and soobin with his bunnies is dead and yeonjun with his mom is dead and beomgyu you love beomgyu hes your best friend and it was all a dream

and of course taehyun is right why wouldnt you fall in love with all of them why wouldnt you fall in love with him theyre all so perfect and so talented but you never in a million years thought you would be in a scenario where they would pay attention to you or give you the time of day

youre their fan youre just a fan you have their posters on your walls and you printed off pictures in the library and you bought three copies of their album and you have photocards of yeonjun and hueningkai and none of those things were in your room and your mom is gone but it was all a dream, taehyun is gone, taehyun is dead

“Are you okay in here?”

the black nurse is back but she cant bring taehyun back

and you start hearing the machine next to you beeping like crazy and your head swarms and you start to feel light headed and you cant hear the tv anymore and are you dying? because if you were dead that would be great because you dont want to be woken up from the dream what world is worth living in if your friends arent here what world is worth living in if your boys arent here? so what if you live in a time loop forever all that matters is that they are still alive

when did you start caring about them this much?

you realize you always have. you were their fan. now youre their friend. now sometimes something more. for a split second you see yourself with soobin on the couch and then in yeonjuns car and in walmart with taehyun and still always with beomgyu and even with hueningkai and you love them, you love them all, you want them safe but theyre dead theyre dead theyre gone

there are nurses all around you now and you sense their presence but YOU DONT CARE this is not what you want GET ME OUT OF HERE someones holding you down now and all you can think is i want to go back i want to go back i want to go back I WANT TO GO BACK

I WANT TO GO BACK

I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE DREAM

I WANT TO GO BACK TO WHERE TIME NEVER STOPS AND EVERYTHING REPEATS AND TAEHYUN WINS THE MATHALON AND BEOMGYU GETS TO PLAY WITH HIS BAND AND SOOBIN LOVES HIS BUNNIES AND YEONJUN GETS TO SEE HIS MOM AGAIN AND I DONT WANT A REALITY WHERE THEY ARE ALL DEAD THIS IS NOT MY REALITY!!!!

TAKE ME BACK

TAKE ME BACK

TAKE ME BACK

the heart monitor beeps like crazy

then goes

still.

take me back.

take me back.

i dont want to be here

i dont want to be where i am alive and they are dead

i love them all

please

take me back -- 

Chapter Text

In the middle of America, in a state called Illinois, there lies a small town named Peotone. Even though it is very close to Chicago, one of the biggest cities in the world, one would never be able to tell. Peotone is a picture of Americana, surrounded by cornfields on all sides. The skies are blue, the roads are long and rambling, and every day is peaceful.

It’s here in Peotone where you live -- fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck -- 

You bolt up in bed and catch your breath.

Shit. What just happened?

You look around your room. The walls are still painted your favorite color, but now you remember — there used to be posters on that wall, posters of boy bands that you liked, and pictures of friends from school. The entire pile of stuffed animals that you had had on your bed Saturday night with Taehyun is in a corner. When you look under your bed, you see the Christmas lights all wrapped up.

“Mom?” you call out. Was this whole thing a dream? What is today? You’re at home, so --

There’s a knock on the door, and then Choi Beomgyu sticks his head into your room. “You okay, flower?”

You made it. It hits you like a ton of bricks. You remember.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” you say. “I’m just...looking for my clothes, so can you close the door, please?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m done in the bathroom, by the way.” And he shuts the door, and you try not to scream, because Choi Freaking Beomgyu from that band is — and you pause. 

You remember last week. According to your phone, it’s May 6, 2019. But yesterday was May 12th. You remember helping a Kang Taehyun with his mathalon over the weekend, and his notebook said that everybody was stuck in a time loop, and he figured out how to keep your memories throughout each loop, and it worked, you didn’t listen to Rue play her piece, and you remember everything!

But there was something more, instead of the time loop. You were in a hospital bed, and there was news of a fire in Chicago, at a theater, and there was a band there. And Beomgyu was in the band, and Taehyun was in the band, and — shit — there were two other people in the band and you’re forgetting, whatever that moment was in time that just happened between time loops, you’re forgetting all of it. It might have been a dream, you don’t know, but you need to write this down. 

It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. 

So you whip open your book bag to look for something to write notes down in, and the first thing you see is Kang Taehyun’s purple mathalon notebook. The one with the time loop notes in it.

“Oh!” you yell, pulling it out with a smile. The notebook made it through! And when you open it up, all of Taehyun’s notes are still inside it, and the notes that you made to him are there, too. “Oh, thank the stars.” And you turn to the back, just past where you made your last notes to him, and you start to write. 

I found something else in between the time loops. There’s another world, somewhere, where Beomgyu and Taehyun are in a boy band. Beomgyu and Taehyun and Soobin and Yeonjun and I think there was one more, but I forget his name now. They were a band, and they were performing at the Vic Theater, and there was a fire and everybody died. Concert was at 8 PM on the 12th. They were saying it was arson. Is that real? Or is that a dream? I don’t know, but I have to write it down here.

“Flower?” Beomgyu asks, outside the door. “I’m driving to school. Are you coming with me?”

You need a minute. “No, I’ll take the bus today.” 

“Okay.” You hear him leave, and you sigh before making a couple of notes, gathering what you can from this weird dream before it disappears from you. The side doors were padlocked. Everybody was trapped inside. Smoke and stuff. I remember being in the hospital. I think I died at the end? 

And then, Is this time loop heaven? Are we all dead, and is this how we continue on living? Am I going to live my last week over and over again with these boys? As long as I don’t go back to that awful place where everybody is dead. And for a split second, you think of Beomgyu, and you remember the fire last week, and you think of Taehyun, and you don’t want anything to happen to him.

Taehyun. You have to find him! He remembers, now, too, and you’ve got to head to school so he can confess to you in front of everybody. You would text him, but you’re quite sure your phone doesn’t have his number. You’ll need it fresh for this time loop. So you throw the book into your backpack, you shove some sugar cereal down your throat, and you run out of your house just in time to catch the bus.

Peotone High School is an easy ride from your house: the bus drives into town, goes past the McDonalds, and turns left at the bank. You jump off the bus, following everybody else towards the school’s front doors, when someone yells, “Watch out!” And before you can move, you feel something slam into the side of your head.

You swear for a second that you see stars, but you’re still standing. Then, you feel someone grab you by the arm. “Oh my God, are you okay?” When you turn, it’s a boy -- a very handsome boy at that, wearing a Peotone varsity jacket and holding a basketball. 

Choi Yeonjun. From the band. God, he looks beautiful. 

“Uh, I think so?” you say, rubbing your head.

“Good, sorry about that.” He glances at you, awkwardly, then, “Let me know if that’s still hurting later, okay? I gotta go.” And he jogs off, towards a group of guys also in varsity jackets. That’s right. Choi Yeonjun is on the varsity basketball team here. In fact, all of those boys must be here. Soobin raises bunnies, Yeonjun plays basketball, Beomgyu is in his rock band, and Taehyun is on the mathalon team. They’re all hiding in plain sight. 

If there’s a fifth member to this posse, then he has to be at this school somewhere. But first things first: you have to find Taehyun, you have to fill him in on this weird dream reality what-was-it thing you had, and then you want him to ask you out in front of everybody, skip school, borrow Beomgyu’s car and go back to Walmart and buy those boxing gloves.

Technically, you still have a meeting this morning. Every graduating senior has to meet with the school’s guidance counselor, Mr. Johnson, to plan their future after Peotone. But you’ve about had it up to HERE with him, knowing what you know now, so you decide fuck that and go straight to Taehyun’s first morning class. It’s not hard to find him. His entire morning’s schedule is in his notebook. Plus, he was in class 123 before, and Taehyun is always a man of habit. You’re kind of surprised he hasn’t already found you in the halls, though.

“Oh, Kang Taehyun?” Ashley Smith asks when you get to room 123. She remembers nothing, of course, even though you remember her. “He’s not here today. He texted me, said something about his family needing help.” Oh. That’s odd, and it’s not in the notes.

You remember you don’t have his number, and it’s not like you can go try to find Beomgyu to steal his keys to go to Taehyun’s house. “Do you have his number? He was asking to help with something on Saturday, for the mathalon meet.”

And Ashley cracks up laughing. “Kang Taehyun? Ask for help? I know you’re lying, but sure, here’s his number.” She puts it in your phone, and you thank her and hide in the library as class starts. 

Nobody cares if you’re using your phone in the library, as long as you’re not making noise. So you text Taehyun. Hey, it’s me, why aren’t you at school today? You keep your screen on and wait for a response. Soon, it goes on read, and he types a response. You feel your heart lift. You feel like you’ve missed Taehyun, even though you probably just saw him hours ago, before the time loop kicked in. You want to see him again, as soon as possible.

You remember sitting with him in this very library, the words you said before you fell asleep. I love you. You know that, right? And you know he loves you back. You still can’t believe he was right, after all this time, about the time loop. But it gives you a confidence that you didn’t know you had.

You’re not alone. He’s not alone. Two people know the secret of this world now.

Who is this?

You look at the phone. Taehyun, it’s jagi. I made it across! Do I need to come get you?

I have no clue who you are, Taehyun writes. You have the wrong number. 

He forgot.

Taehyun is at home with his siblings and he’s not at school and he forgot and he doesn’t have his notebook. 

Shit.

How did you remember and he forget?

I’m coming over after school, you text him, and I’ll explain everything then. It’s a setback, but you know from experience that, if Taehyun reads the notebook, he’ll believe his own words, and you’ll be on the same page. But your phone comes up with a notification, saying the message can’t be delivered.

He blocked your number.

You panic.

You run out of the library in a flash, taking Taehyun’s notebook with you, and you barely make it into the bathroom before you throw up the sugar cereal you ate for breakfast. 

You crouch on the ground and try to get your bearings back, breathing heavily, trying not to cry. Is this how Taehyun felt before? All alone, the only one to remember that you’re in a time loop? No wonder he kept to himself as much as he did. But all you want to do is reach out to him, and if you go over to his house now, will he believe you? You don’t want to make things worse this loop.

This loop. Okay. You can do this. You have the notebook. The worst thing that could happen is that you last seven days like this. You repeat things, and maybe you try to help Yeonjun and Soobin out, for good measure. But you have to do it without Taehyun. And then, next Monday, maybe you’ll grab Beomgyu’s car and drive to Taehyun’s house, pick him up, and have him read the notebook before school.

You might be on your own for now. But it won’t be forever. 

“Okay. Okay. You can do this.” And you leave the bathroom, and you stop by the water fountain and take a long swig of water. Then, you stop by your locker, opening it and checking your appearance.

You don’t even get that far, because you notice there’s an envelope on top of your books. You look at it, and it says your name, and there’s nobody else around because they’re all in class, so you open it. It’s a small card, something with a scene from Antarctica on it, and lots of penguins. The handwriting inside is nice and neat, but you don’t know who this is at all.

Hello! I know you probably don’t know who I am, but that’s okay. I’m a freshman and you’re a senior and if I don’t get this off my chest, I’ll live with it until the day I die. I’ve had a major crush on you since I started at Peotone High. Please don’t let this affect anything between us, okay? I’m not expecting anything. I just had to say it. I hope you have a good rest of your school year! Thank you, Kai.

Kai. 

Wait. You do know this person.

That’s him.

That’s his name! The fifth member!

You can’t believe you’ve missed it this far. You can’t believe Taehyun’s missed it this far!! Your friend group has a fifth person, and his name is Kai Huening. But you know him by a slightly different name. And a plan instantly forms in your mind.

You go back to the library and you take up two pages of Taehyun’s notebook, writing out your plan. With Taehyun’s combined info and your new discoveries, it just might be perfect. Then, when the bell rings, you avoid your locker like the plague so that Rue won’t find you and distract you with talk of a speech that you’ll never get to perform anyway. Instead, you make a beeline for the freshmen corridor. Even though Taehyun’s not here, you kind of know who Kai is in this strange time loop reality. He’s a freshman, and he plays the drums in Beomgyu’s band. So you know where he should be, roughly, right now during the school day.

But more importantly than that: you know he may be the missing piece to your time loop mystery.

You think you see him talking to a pair of girls further down the hallway. His hair is a wavy mess, and he’s the tallest person down there. “Hey! Hueningkai!”

He looks up, and you know you know him. You recognize him as Beomgyu’s drummer from his band. But you know you know him from the dream world, where there was a band and they died in a fire at the Vic. There were five members, and he’s the last one. And boy, is he handsome. 

“Oh, hey,” he says, suddenly blushing. The other two girls that he is talking to wave a goodbye, telling him they will see him later, as you take over the conversation. “What’s going on? Did Beomgyu send you?”

You wave the letter, still in its envelope. “I got your letter.”

“Oh!” And now, he definitely looks embarrassed. “I’m sorry, really, I am. I was gonna go get that and —“

“I like you.”

Hueningkai pauses. “Huh?”

You grin. “I accept your confession. Will you go out with me?”

And Hueningkai’s face turns from confusion to shock. His screech can be heard all the way across Peotone High. “Ehhhh?!?”

“Remind me why we’re eating lunch in the library?” Hueningkai asks.

“So we can have one-on-one time without being interrupted,” you say. In reality, you’re trying to avoid Rue, because on every Monday she comes by saying that she’s got a speech for you to write. But you don’t want to think about the speech right now. You want to think about your mission.

You also don’t want to see Yeonjun and the basketball team right now. Taehyun has written in the notebook that, if you get beaned in the head with a basketball, Yeonjun will feel bad and pay for your lunch, kicking off an entire week with him and sometimes culminating in a relationship. You have to find a way to help Yeonjun, but you don’t want him falling for you right now.

Even though you have a feeling you wouldn’t mind.

You know now that you’ve fallen in love with all of them. Choi Soobin. Choi Yeonjun. Choi Beomgyu. Kang Taehyun. This Hueningkai is the only one neither you nor Taehyun have really talked to, and you’re not sure how Taehyun missed it. But that’s okay. Hueningkai is here now. And you’ve accepted his confession.

“This is our first date,” you announce as you both sit in the same beanbag chairs you and Taehyun hid in yesterday. If it could be called yesterday.

“I’ll be honest,” Hueningkai says, hands on his cheeks. “I have no idea why you would accept me! I was just...telling you my emotions. I didn’t know you liked me.”

“Well, I do. Honestly? Probably not nearly as much as you like me. But that’s because I haven’t really gotten to know you yet. So that’s what I’m going to do. School can eat it. It’s the end of the year.” You touch him, lightly, on the nose. “I want to get to know you, Hueningkai.”

“Why do you keep calling me that? My last name, then my first name. Hueningkai.” He blushes again. “I like it, it’s cute, but it’s different.”

You think it’s because it’s what Kai Kamal Huening was called in the band in the dream world. The memories are slipping through your fingers. So you don’t want to forget it. “That’s my nickname for you,” you say. “I’m sorry. Can I keep calling you that, or should I change?”

“You can call me that.” Hueningkai squeals, softly, because he’s in the library. “Ooh, this is so exciting! I get to be somebody’s boyfriend! And that somebody is you!”

So you stay in the library, and you talk for hours. You learn that, in this time loop world, Hueningkai lives with his dad on the same road you do! He lives a bit further from campus, and his house has farmland near it that they don’t own. Hueningkai’s mother and two sisters live abroad. 

Come to think of it... this sounds like the most realistic family scenario in the entire time loop world. You have to wonder who has real families and who doesn’t at this point, because you definitely remember having a mom, but she’s definitely not at your house, and Beomgyu didn’t magically mention her when you called out for her this morning. 

Hueningkai goes on to talk about his middle school days (he is a freshman, after all) and all of the friends he has made already at Peotone High. He doesn’t strike you as one of the popular clique; he expresses the desire to be a cheerleader, but isn’t sure how Peotone’s school board will handle having a male cheerleader on the team. 

Then he mentions that he has a car. “Wait, how?” you ask. Hueningkai’s only a freshman; he should be like fourteen, fifteen tops.

“I’m sixteen,” he says, and you wonder if it has something to do with reality just being weird here. Taehyun was an older freshman, too. Nevertheless, Hueningkai has a car!! That’s going to make your plan so much easier, so you’ve got to seal the deal with him. 

“That’s cool. Do you want to hang out after school, then, too?” You skip your first class after lunch together, then pretend like nothing happened. And after school, you jump into Kai’s big red truck (truck!!!) and you go with him to Tony’s Pizza, where you have dinner together and talk for more hours. He drops you off back at your house late, since it’s on the way to his, and before he leaves, he’s brave enough to give you a kiss on the cheek.

You have a giddy feeling in your stomach when you go to sleep on Monday night. You’ve managed to avoid Rue, you’re dating Hueningkai from the Band Whose Name You Can’t Remember, and he really likes you! And you think you can definitely like him even more than you already do. Maybe you did, in the dream world. You loved all five of them, or you wouldn’t have gone to their concert.

You want to make sure you never go back to that world. And you want to make sure Hueningkai and the others stay in this world, with you. Even if time loops forever. That’s your plan.

So on Tuesday morning, you raid Hueningkai’s first class and pull him out, hanging out in the library again. “I wanna fill you in on something. Something special. A secret.”

“Really?” Hueningkai is all ears. He’s got a certain adorable quality to everything he does, and right now it’s showing through, full force.

“Yeah. It’s the secret of Peotone High School. It’s been passed down from generations, and it was passed on to me. It was passed on to others, too, but they have since graduated. And now, I am choosing to pass it on to you.” You lower your voice. “It’s a super secret club.”

Okay, so this ‘club’ doesn’t exactly exist. But you’ve written in Taehyun’s book that it does now. It’s a great way to get Hueningkai in on this fixing the world action, without spoiling to him that you’re stuck in a time loop.

“A super secret club?”

“Yeah! You wanna know why it’s a secret?”

“Am I allowed to know? It’s supposed to be a secret, right?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m passing it on to you. That’s what it’s called. The Pass It On Club. And the reason it is so secret is because what we do is we help people. Nobody knows that we do it. But if we learn that somebody at Peotone High School needs help, then we help them out. In secret. Do you remember Choi Minyoung, Minnie?”

“No, but her name sounds familiar.”

“She just graduated, and she was part of the Pass It On Club. And now, I’m the only member...except for you.” You take out a pen and you touch Hueningkai’s shoulders with it. “I hereby dub you Trainee of the Pass It On Club.”

“Wow!” Hueningkai squeals, then covers his mouth, remembering he is in the library. “This is so cool! It’s like — it’s like we’re Molang and Piu Piu!”

Excuse me? “Like who?”

He grins. “There’s a show about a bunny and a little chick, Molang and Piu Piu! Do you wanna watch? They have problems all the time, and they go around saving the day, too!” And he whips out a pair of headphones and pulls up some of this Molang show on his phone. 

It’s perfect. The show is for kids, no more than three minutes an episode. But Hueningkai’s not wrong. Every episode, there is a small problem, and when Molang gets stumped, they jump up and say, “I have an idea!” in their little bunny language. Then their friend Piu Piu, who is yellow and so much smaller, helps them out, and they have unconventional solutions to everyday problems. 

“You are the Piu Piu to my Molang,” Hueningkai says, leaning on your shoulder for a second. “And we both save the day!”

“I like that.” You switch your voice so it goes as high pitched as it can, then talk in the bunny language that Molang uses. “Alo, Molang!”

“Alo, Piu Piu!” Hueningkai answers back, and you both giggle until the librarian is standing over you, and she kicks you both out. 

You go to class for the rest of the day, and eventually, Rue runs into you in the hallway. But after she begins her spiel about the speech, you turn her down. And she seems to understand, thank goodness. Then Hueningkai drives you home, and he stays over for a couple of hours. You remind both him and Beomgyu that they have Waeng band practice tomorrow night. You technically don’t need to remind Beomgyu anymore, but it’s probably a good idea to keep mentioning something. Going to practice will no longer save Beomgyu’s life every Wednesday, but his house is still going to burn down and his dad is still going to die, so you don’t want to jinx it.

...you have to wonder. Is there some way to save Beomgyu’s dad? Maybe in a future time loop. One piece of the puzzle at a time. 

But still, this Pass It On Club is a great idea. It means that Hueningkai can help you with Soobin and Yeonjun all week, and Beomgyu can stay according to plan. And now that you know that Taehyun’s sister Lori is going to get sick, you can have Hueningkai help with that, too. You can make it safely through this loop, and then on next Monday, when the world has restarted again, you can pick up Taehyun at his house and explain everything.

It seems too good to be true, but you’re ready and willing to pull this off.

The next day, you meet up with Hueningkai for lunch. You pack enough food for the both of you, and in now-traditional Hueningkai fashion, he is incredibly touched by your actions. Then, you both skip class after lunch and instead head to the nurse’s office. You tell Hueningkai that you’ve got quite the headache, and while the two of you sit and wait for some medication, you notice Choi Soobin is laying down on a cot, red face stained with tears. Hueningkai has enough curiosity to push aside the curtain, and Soobin sits up in shock. 

“Who are you guys?”

“We’re the Pass It On Club,” Hueningkai says, immediately, even though it’s supposed to be a secret. But oh well. He’ll probably forget you even had this conversation. “And we’re here to help you. Why are you crying?”

And you kind of want to die, just a little bit inside. Why, why, Hueningkai? But Soobin surprisingly opens up to Hueningkai, telling the story that you now know well (from Taehyun’s instruction book). And as Soobin talks to Hueningkai, you have to wonder: does Soobin already trust Hueningkai because they were in a band, in another world? If they were in K-Pop, then they probably trained together for years before they started performing in public. When Hueningkai goes to give Soobin a side hug, you wonder just how many times they’ve done that before in whatever dream you all left behind. 

“Every time I try to go to class, I start crying again. And I don’t —“ Soobin’s voice cracks again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” you say, cutting in and taking direction as the technical president of the Pass It On Club. “You drove here, correct, Soobin?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you drive home? There’s no reason for you to be here today.”

“I still have class.” Soobin wipes away more of his tears. “I have a chemistry test in two weeks…”

“The test can wait. Do you know anybody in class who can get you notes?”

He thinks. “Dayton can, I think. Or Jay. They’re both in my class.”

“Okay. Get in your car then, go home, spend some time with Tobin. Did you make an appointment for tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna —“ He whimpers, putting his fist to his mouth, and Hueningkai pulls him in for a much bigger hug.

“I can drive you home, in my truck,” Hueningkai says. 

“And I can drive your car behind you, so you’re not without a car. If you’ve got a vet appointment first thing tomorrow morning, then you should spend today at home. Would you like that?”

Soobin thankfully nods, and when the nurse returns, you clear your departure from school with her. You jump into Soobin’s blue Dodge and follow Hueningkai and Soobin in his big red truck. The both of you stay at his house for a few minutes and meet his bunnies, including Tobin, the old one who is close to passing. And as you’re there, a new plan starts forming in your mind for the day. You weren’t sure as to how you were gonna pull this off, but now you know. 

“I am so sorry!” Hueningkai says as he sits in his truck with you, about to pull out of Soobin’s driveway. “I totally forgot I wasn’t supposed to say anything about the Pass It On Club! Am I fired?”

You laugh, not at him, but at the futility of it all. In theory, it doesn’t even matter that Soobin knows about the Pass It On Club, because he will just forget come Monday anyway. But you have to do damage control here with Hueningkai, or else he won’t help out with the rest of the week.

“Hey, now,” you say, and you pull him into a loose hug. “You did great. You know that, right? Plus, I forgive you. It’s hard to keep secrets like that. But you didn’t keep talking about it, so maybe he’ll forget about it. Next time he brings it up, we’ll just say, I have no clue what you’re talking about. Sound good?”

Hueningkai nods. “I’m sowwy. I really am. Can I make it up to you?”

You drive back through town and out to his house, just past yours on West Wilmington Road. Hueningkai introduces you to his dad, who is also white like most of the other boys’ families are. But you do notice something when you look at Hueningkai, and you do see a bit of family resemblance. So this might actually be his family. 

You don’t know. It’s a weird question to ask. You wish you could talk to Taehyun about it, but all you can do is make notes in his notebook and make sure you keep your memories for next week. 

Hueningkai takes you upstairs to his room, which would sound scandalous if not for the immense amount of stuffed animals in his room. There are plushies everywhere! He gives you a dolphin one to hold while he goes around, telling you each one’s name and where he got it. Typically you wouldn’t really care, but it’s so fascinating to watch him get all wide-eyed when he digs all of his friends out of piles. 

His dad orders you both pizza, and then you head to practice with Hueningkai. It’s out at their third member’s house, and you remind yourself that Shelly is transgender, but nobody else knows because it’s not safe for her to come out. You still write it in the notebook anyway, because you’re quite sure that Future You And Taehyun will be glad that you know this now. And practice goes well, and Beomgyu plays a new song that he’s been working on, and you think it sounds good with just him singing it but the band doesn’t quite catch on. So they shelve the song for now, deciding that it will become one of Beomgyu’s solo songs, but it won’t be performed on Sunday. 

Which you’re fine with. After all, you know there will be no performance on Sunday. Then after practice is done, you get in Hueningkai’s truck with him. “So I thought maybe we could go to Monee? There’s a restaurant there I want to try with you.”

“Right now?”

“Mmhmm. Is that okay?”

“Sure! Anything’s okay, as long as it’s with my Piu Piu!” And you trade seats so that you’re driving, and Hueningkai doesn’t know it yet, but you’re off on your next Pass It On Club adventure.

Gracie’s Lucky Burrito is the kind of place you see in Monee every once in a while, and you’ve always wanted to go in. But Beomgyu had taken a look at the online menu once, saw that there were tomatoes on nearly everything, and hard vetoed it. So you’ve never been able to come to Gracie’s to try their food...but now that you have Hueningkai, you figure he might like it. 

“I’ll admit,” you say to Hueningkai as he sits across from you. “I’ve wanted to go here for a while. But it’s kind of one of those places that you take a date. You don’t really go here by yourself. It’s too romantic for that.”

“I can see that,” Hueningkai says as he looks around. “Is it okay that we’re just here in our normal clothes, though?”

“I think so. You look great.”

Hueningkai looks down at his plain red t-shirt and his shorts. “Aww, I’m just normal.”

“You’re just normal Hueningkai to me. And Molang. Alo, Molang!”

“Alo, Piu Piu!” he answers, and he sings a little song, la-la-la- ing the lyrics as the menus are brought out. You spend way too long looking at the menu before you order the same thing, and you both laugh. You hadn’t planned that at all!

While Hueningkai goes to the bathroom to wash his hands, you think about him for a minute. According to Taehyun’s book, you have never been friends with Hueningkai before, much less fallen in love with him. But there is something inside of you that knows you have before. The bond isn’t nearly as strong as what you immediately feel with Beomgyu, or even how close you immediately felt to both Soobin and Yeonjun, even though you technically haven’t even met them before. And you try not to think about Taehyun; it feels like a tragedy in the making, but you remind yourself that you’re with Hueningkai this loop, and next loop, you’ll fill Taehyun in and decide where to go from there.

You want all five boys to be happy. It finally occurs to you that, at some point, someone might make you pick. You love them all, but in different ways. And once you start remembering them all the time, it might make more sense to pick one of them. If someone had asked you on Sunday, before the world restarted, you would have picked Taehyun. But now that you know the truth — that there’s another world, with these five boys — you don’t want to pick. 

You want to keep all five of them alive.

Even...even if it somehow means you’ll be with none of them. Even if it means you’ll love them all for an eternity of the same week, over and over again, without them loving you back. 

“You look like you’re thinking about something,” Hueningkai says when he gets back.

And you do your best to shake it off. No sense in worrying about the next loop when you’ve got this loop to enjoy. Hueningkai is in front of you, and he is alive, and he is smiling, and you’ve got to get to know him better. “Just thinking about you.”

“Oh, really?” And he smiles in that charming way that you seem to remember from somewhere, and the two of you talk for a couple of hours. The waiter brings you your food, and it’s of the utmost quality, and you both enjoy yourselves. You make sure to stay as long as you can, not just because of your plan...but also because you are really having fun with Hueningkai. 

You’re both all smiles when you leave, and Hueningkai starts the drive back to Peotone. But halfway there, you ‘decide’ you have to use the bathroom, and it’s an emergency. “There’s a rest area!” you say, pointing out the sign that says there is a rest area in a mile. So Hueningkai pulls over, and what do you know, he pulls up right next to a certain silver coupe that has a flat tire. You run inside to use the bathroom, knowing good and well that you don’t have to, and you sit inside for five minutes, see if Hueningkai can work his own magic. And sure enough, by the time you get back outside, Hueningkai is talking to Choi Yeonjun. 

He’s wearing his varsity jacket. 

You have an inkling that you’ve worn that jacket at some point.

“ Alo, Piu Piu!” Hueningkai calls out, with no tact. “You know Yeonjun, right?”

“I think so,” you say, waving. “You’re at our school, aren’t you? Junior, right?” You’re lying out your teeth, but it’s all you can do for now. How many times did Taehyun have to lie to your face before? To everybody else? 

“Yeah,” Yeonjun says, and Hueningkai takes over the rest.

“He’s got a flat tire, Piu Piu, can we drive him back home? We can wait until the tow truck gets here, right?”

“I guess we can,” you say, leaning against Hueningkai’s flatbed. “We’re all headed to the same place, right?”

“All back to Peotone,” Yeonjun says, and from the look on his face, you can tell he’s biting back tears. So you egg him on, hoping Hueningkai’s reaction will be what you need.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think...okay, not really. You know my mom, right?” And Yeonjun launches into the same exact story that Taehyun’s notebook has listed, about how his mother has been so sick with cancer that she missed all of his basketball games this year, including the regional tournament they won. “I was all cleared to pick her up for the banquet on Sunday, but now I have no car.”

“Oh, we can help with that,” Hueningkai chirps in, with no prompting from you.

Yeonjun stares back at Hueningkai in shock. “Really?”

“Yeah, it won’t be a problem at all for me to drive you back up. When do you need a ride?” And you let Hueningkai talk to Yeonjun, figuring out the logistics of their Saturday morning ride. You would go with them, but you’re not sure they’ll be back in time for the mathalon event that afternoon. And if Hueningkai can take care of Yeonjun, and Soobin and Beomgyu don’t need help on Saturday, then you can get Taehyun to the event. Somehow.

The tow truck arrives, and you follow it in Hueningkai’s truck back to Yeonjun’s house in town. But Yeonjun looks a lot more relieved than he did at first, and after confirming a few things with Hueningkai, he gives him a hug. Then, the two of you head back out to West Wilmington Road and your houses. You know that Beomgyu’s house is going to catch fire tonight, and his father will die, but as you pull up, Beomgyu’s car is in your driveway. 

It means he’s home.

“I didn’t tell him about the Pass It On Club this time,” Hueningkai says with a smile. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, you did great.” You give him a side hug. “See you tomorrow.” And with that, you go inside and prepare for a new day.

You don’t get a lot of sleep, because you’re thinking about all five of the boys and how much you love them. Choi Soobin. Choi Yeonjun. Choi Beomgyu. Kang Taehyun. Hueningkai. You just wish you knew the name of the band they were in. Are in. You can’t tell anymore. 

You know that Soobin will be out of school today because of his bunny, Tobin. If Taehyun’s notes are correct, and what he said is correct, then this morning is the vet appointment to put him down. And you don’t know Soobin well enough in this loop to go with him and be his support. But you still have an idea on how to lend a hand. 

“Can I borrow your keys?” you ask Beomgyu while he drives you to school. “I’m gonna go to the store and grab us some stuff.”

“You’re gonna cut class?”

“We’re not doing anything. Besides, if I go now, then we won’t have to worry about it later.” You give Beomgyu your best puppy dog impersonation. “Come on, Beommie.”

“All right, all right,” he says as he parks at school. He hands you his keys, and you swear there’s a blush on his face. You run your fingers over both keys, the real one and the odd one, and then you both go into school. You give it five minutes, then escape school and jump back into Beomgyu’s car, driving to Peotone Animal Hospital. You glance around and, sure enough, Soobin’s car is parked right out front, so you park by it.

Pretty soon, the door opens, and Soobin walks out. You thought he would be crying, but it seems he’s all cried out. Instead, the light is gone from his eyes, and he’s just numb. So you honk your horn, just slightly, and he looks up, but then he waves.

You roll down Beomgyu’s window. “Need a lift?”

He pauses, and then, “Actually, yeah, I don’t know if I can drive right now.”

You open the door and let him sit. “Are you okay?” you end up asking, although you already know the answer.

Soobin is quiet. Then, “Why are you here?”

“We were talking about your rabbit on Tuesday in the office, and I remembered you said your appointment was this morning. Thought I would check in on you.” You’re not sure how much Soobin actually told you, but you hope he’ll forgive you. 

“Yeah. I just... I thought I was going to be okay going home after this. I’m not. I don’t want to go to school, but I don’t want to go home either. Does that make sense?”

“It does, trust me. How about we go to Dollar General? I was gonna go there anyway.”

He gives you a small smile. “Okay. That sounds good.”

You autopilot and drive to Dollar General, since you go there with Beomgyu all the time. “I need to pick up some cereal,” you explain, and you do. For the next hour or so, neither one of you talk much, but you wander the aisles together. You stay away from the pet aisle, and Soobin cries a bit when you walk past it, but he does okay. And before too long, he is at least smiling as you look around. 

You grab a new box of sugar cereal — Beomgyu’s favorite, since he’s out — and your cart starts to fill up with random items. A twelve pack of lemon-lime soda. A box of Oreo cookies. A lawn ornament with a huge butterfly at the top, in a light blue color. A new notebook. A shower curtain with the ocean printed on it. And you pay for everything with your magic credit card. 

When you get back to the car, you check your phone again, and you have a text from Beomgyu. Flower call me please its urgent. You give him a quick ring as you start up the car and Soobin digs out a lemon-lime soda from the pack. You know exactly why he’s texting you, and now, it’s time to help Beomgyu, too. 

“Where are you?” His voice is panicked.

“Dollar General. Don’t ask. Where are you?”

“School. I need my car back. Flower, did you check the news?” You pause when he says that word, when he calls you that name, flower.

“No? I’ve been out and about.”

“My —“ Beomgyu’s voice catches, like it probably always does every Thursday. “My house caught fire last night, flower, my dad’s dead.”

You shoot out of the Dollar General like a bat out of hell. Soobin holds on for dear life, but when you explain your friend’s situation, he completely understands. After all, today has just turned into another adventure after another. 

When you arrive at Peotone High, Beomgyu is sitting out front. He’s not crying, but he looks the same kind of numb as Soobin did when he walked out of the vet’s office earlier today. Beomgyu and his dad have never gotten along, so there is no lost love there. But it’s still his dad, and it’s still his old house, even though none of his belongings are there now.

“You okay?”

“I need Gyro Loco.”

“Cool, hop in,” and he does.

It’s just after lunchtime, so thankfully Gyro Loco isn’t that busy. You have Beomgyu call ahead and put in three orders. Gyro Loco serves everything from old school gyros to falafel, so there’s something on the menu for everybody. Then, the three of you head back to the animal hospital and play musical cars; by the end of it all, Soobin and Beomgyu, as well as both cars, are back at your house. 

Soobin stays over for a while, watching Jeopardy reruns with you and Beomgyu on Netflix, then heads home as Beomgyu goes to bed. It leaves you alone in the kitchen, and you text Hueningkai, trying to keep everything straight. You only have three more days. Soobin should be pretty well taken care of at this point, though you’ll want to text him to ensure you’re still on friendly terms. Kai is taking Yeonjun to Chicago on Saturday morning to pick up his mom. And Beomgyu, while kind of a mess, is safe.

That leaves you wide open to spend your Friday rescuing your Prince Charming. I’ve got some Pass It On Club stuff to do tomorrow, so if you don’t see me at school, that’s why, you text Kai. Then you text Beomgyu, and he confirms he’s staying home tomorrow for mental health reasons, so his car is all yours. 

Perfect.

The first thing you do in the morning is accidentally stick the wrong key in the ignition again, then put it in the right way and drive to Dollar General. You pick up some more sugar cereal and other groceries the house needs. When you get to the candy section, you grab at least five rolls of the pink-only Starburst. 

You slip the roll of Starburst into your pocket and head to school, booking it to room 123, but Taehyun isn’t there yet. “He texted us and said he missed the bus,” Ashley says. “Something about one of his siblings keeping him up all night.”

Ahh, yes. Lori kept him up all night being sick. Everything is going according to plan. Thankfully Ashley doesn’t seem to know that Taehyun has you blocked on his phone. And considering he was an absolute rabid squirrel last loop — when he remembered who you were — you’re gonna need all the help you can get. “He’s always watching over his siblings, right?”

Ashley huffs. “Yeah.”

“Doesn’t that...you know...ever get in the way of your mathalon stuff?” And you let Ashley Smith ramble for twenty minutes about this “stupid” Kang Taehyun whom she has an unknown crush on, his family who can’t function without him, and the like. By the end of it all, Soojin is also in the conversation, and they probably have some sort of weird, tingly feeling of remembering who you are as well, because they trust you already. 

Ashley glances at his phone. “Yeah, he’s out. Says Lori was up all night throwing up. Think she caught a stomach bug somewhere, not sure where. But now he’s saying it’ll pass to all of the kids, and that he needs to stay home.”

“Ashley,” you say, “you drive, right?”

“Yeah,” she says. 

“And both you and Soojin are prepared for the mathalon.”

“More than prepared,” Soojin says with a smile. “We got this in the bag! Well...with Taehyun, it’s kind of a plastic bag with some holes in it.”

“We need to convince Taehyun that he needs our help. We need someone to go over to his house and babysit his siblings, and then he needs a night where he can get away from the house, study for tomorrow, and then get a full night of sleep. If we can do that, then maybe you guys can win tomorrow!”

Ashley shakes her head. “He won’t ever agree to that.”

“Then I say we force it on him. We all go over to his house, after school, in your car. Maybe kidnap him, throw him in the trunk or something. Then one of us watches his kids for the night!”

“I can babysit no problem,” Soojin says. “My dad is always telling me about the value of a dollar. So if I text him and I say I have a babysitting gig tonight, he won’t care at all, and he’ll come pick me up when I’m done. Even if that means being there all night!”

“But where will Taehyun go?” Ashley asks.

You think about it for a second and you realize you have the answer. But if Taehyun doesn’t know who you are, you’re going to need some backup. “He can crash on the couch at my place. I don’t have any parents to clear stuff with, and I know Beomgyu won’t care.” Then, you text Beomgyu about your plans, and he agrees, and then you text Hueningkai with Taehyun’s address. We need your help after school. It won’t look like a Pass It On Club thing, but it will be. I’m in need of a strong man with a particular set of skills.

Hueningkai texts back almost immediately. Sure thing, Piu Piu! Graciboo! And with that, school ends and you’re off in Ashley’s car with Ashley and Soojin, in her old car, driving to go kidnap Taehyun. It feels like just yesterday that you did this before. You just hope you won’t have to do it ever again. 

You all drive across the railroad tracks to Taehyun’s house. Soojin gets out of the car and knocks on the door. A white kid, probably in middle school, answers the door. “Taehyun, you have friends over!” he yells into the house as you and Ashley get out.

“I don’t have friends,” you hear his voice waft over, and all of a sudden, there’s Taehyun. He looks exactly as he did last week, with his hair a mess, no glasses, and his jeans and Metallica t-shirt. 

God. You’ve missed him.

Your eyes meet, and you suddenly find yourself thankful he has no clue who you are. For now. And he’s not going to trust you with this part of the plan, unless — and there’s Hueningkai, barging in onto the scene in his huge red truck, blasting some music that you realize must be BTS. He jumps out of the truck, locking it. “Alo, Piu Piu!”

“Alo, Molang.” You give him a quick hug, then debrief him while Soojin and Ashley talk to Taehyun. “So here’s our mission. See the kid in the Metallica t-shirt? I’ve been tasked with getting him out of his house for a night. He’s got a mathalon event tomorrow, and he needs sleep beforehand, and he’s not going to get it if he stays here.”

“Oh, Kang Taehyun!” Hueningkai says with a smile. “I know him. No problem!”

“That’s the thing, Molang — Hueningkai —“ You laugh for a second. “I — we might have to wrestle him into a car.”

“Oh.” Hueningkai thinks for a second, then smiles. “ Kotetabati!  Wait here, Piu Piu.” And he kisses you on the cheek before he runs over to Ashley, Soojin, and Taehyun. 

What follows is pure chaos. Ashley, Soojin, and Hueningkai all go into Taehyun’s house, forcing their way in. You hear some...choice...words being exchanged, and then, Hueningkai emerges from the house, with Taehyun over his shoulder. All three walk towards Ashley’s car, Taehyun fighting Hueningkai just like he fought Ashley last week. 

Soojin pops the trunk, and Hueningkai throws Taehyun in and closes the door. “Where to?” Ashley asks. 

Hueningkai looks at you. “I don’t know if I can have him over, I’d have to ask my dad…”

“Oh, Beomgyu already knows. He can stay at my place.” You jump into Kai’s truck, and you let Ashley follow you as you all drive over to your place. And thank God, when you all get there, Hueningkai explains to Taehyun who you are, and that he is your boyfriend, and thankfully nothing about this Pass It On Club. 

“There is lots of space here, so you won’t have to worry about a thing,” he says.

Taehyun glares at you, seething. And then, something in his appearance seems to shift a bit. You realize it might be that odd remembering, that nostalgia or deja-vu that both you and Taehyun know is a cue from a past time loop. Or at least Taehyun knew. And with that, he sighs. “You’re all idiots, doing all of this for me. Look. I’m just gonna go in the house, and I’m gonna sleep, and sure, Soojin can watch my kid sister and I can go to the meet tomorrow. I get it. You all care about me. I just don’t want to fight about it anymore.” So he goes inside the house, breezing just past Beomgyu, then pausing and looking at him for a moment.

And you realize. You’ve got three of the boys all together here. Beomgyu and Taehyun and Hueningkai. You bet not this many of them have ever inhabited the same space in this time loop world. They have no idea they were in a band...or that they died in a fire. But you’re not going to tell them. That’s not the purpose of this. Instead, you let Taehyun go, and Beomgyu goes inside, and Ashley drives home, and you’re standing outside your house with Hueningkai still there. And your head feels like it’s spinning in three different directions at once.

Beomgyu. Taehyun. Hueningkai. The band. I love them all. What if I’m doing this all wrong? I just want them to all be happy, but if I keep falling in love with all of them, how am I expected to choose…?

“Alooooo. Piu Piu.” 

The voice reminds you: you’re still standing outside your house, and Hueningkai is still here. It hasn’t been Soobin or Yeonjun or Beomgyu or Taehyun this loop. It’s been Hueningkai. So you run over to him, and you give him a big hug, and you try to fight back tears the best you can. 

“Oh?” He pulls away from you. “Why are you crying?”

“It’s just…” You smile and brush away a tear. “Being part of this club can be stressful sometimes. We do weird things without supposed meaning, but then it all works out in the end. That could have been really violent, but because you were there for me...I’m just really glad you’re here, Hueningkai.”

“There you go again, calling me that.” His eyes meet yours, and you reach up to brush some of the floppy dark brown hair out of his eyes. “I still don’t understand. Why?”

“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”

“I want to know, Piu Piu. I want to know.” And as you look in his eyes again, you feel that tug, and you know: you’ve also kissed Hueningkai before, somewhere, in a past loop. That pull might not be as strong as it is for Beomgyu or Soobin or Yeonjun, or even Taehyun, but it’s still there. And when he doesn’t move, you decide to make the first move. 

You’re already together, and if things go wrong, you can always start again on Monday.

But as you lean forward to kiss Hueningkai, you wonder: now that you know how to remember, is it fair to Hueningkai to forget every week? Is it fair to any of them? But you shove the thought out of your mind, you calm your anxiety as much as you can, and you kiss him. And he kisses you back immediately, as if he’s been waiting for your kiss for a thousand and one time loops, unsure as to what he has once forgot. 

He’s soft, and he’s sweet, and his lips are tinged with some chapstick that tastes of something you can’t put your finger on. It...legitimately kind of feels like kissing Molang. Except you’re more than Piu Piu and Molang now. He’s Hueningkai, and you’re caught in the middle, the only one with the knowledge, the secret of this world.

“I’m sorry,” he says with a giggle. “I just...don’t want to stop kissing you yet.”

“Then don’t,” you say with a smile, and you let him kiss you on your front step, and both of you lose track of time until his dad calls and says he has to come home. You watch him drive off in the distance, knowing he will be handling Yeonjun’s situation while you and Beomgyu make sure Taehyun gets to the mathalon.

You love him, already. Hueningkai. You know it. And next Monday, he won’t even remember your name. But then you consider something you hadn’t before. On Monday, you got to your locker, and there was a love letter from him, and that kicked off all of this. Why is Hueningkai writing you a love letter if he doesn’t know who you are? 

Perhaps it’s left over from the previous time loops. Taehyun has said that experience accumulates in the time loop, so even if you don’t remember, that instinctual pull can keep you on a ‘correct’ path. It’s why Beomgyu now lives with you instead of his dad, keeping him safe from the fire. 

That sounds like another note for the notebook. So you go inside, and you check the clock, and you’ve got around forty five minutes until the power goes out.

You take your backpack inside and you make the necessary additions to Taehyun’s notebook. You finish right before the power goes out, so you close the notebook and run upstairs to take a shower. Beomgyu’s not in the bathroom, and Taehyun is studying for the mathalon on the couch by using his phone’s flashlight, so you’ve got a few minutes to yourself. Plus, your house is heated by gas, not electric, so you still have hot water if you want it. 

It gives you a good long while to ruminate about how this entire situation sucks. You don’t want for Hueningkai to forget on Monday. But you can’t tell if it would be a good idea or not, because Taehyun isn’t here to ask! Well, he is, but he has no clue who you are. The book hasn’t said anything about him trying to tell anybody else before, but you’re guessing that most everybody has ignored Taehyun’s cries for help. After all, you were the first one to make it through the time loop with him. Without him. Whatever. 

But Hueningkai has been such a help this past week. You want Taehyun back, but you want Hueningkai to help, too. And Beomgyu may be at the point where he can learn about the secret of the world, too, and he could probably start remembering. Then you could work together and get Soobin and Yeonjun to remember, too. And then...what would happen? It would be this band that you don’t remember the name of, and you, living the same week over and over again together. You’d have to pick one. Or you could pick none of them. But that also feels like a horrible idea!

You tell yourself to stop thinking that far into the future. Focus on what you can, right now. Taehyun has taken countless loops to get where he is now. It’s up to you to make it through this loop, then get Taehyun back on track, and tell him the truth. Even if you don’t end up with him in the future, he’s still the one who figured out the secret. If you didn’t have his notebook with you, who knows what would happen? 

You finish your shower and head into your room. You make sure your hair is dry, then re-fix your outfit so you are suitable for being in public. Then, you head downstairs for a late night snack. You look by way of cell phone flashlight around your kitchen, grab your favorite chip snack, then sit down at the table to write in Taehyun’s notebook again.

But it’s gone.

It’s no longer in its spot. 

You look in your backpack. It’s not there.

You move your backpack — maybe it got shifted? — then you duck under the table to see if it somehow fell under there. You wave your cell phone around, trying to see. It had to have dropped somewhere, right? Where else would it have gone? You huff and think to yourself for a moment. 

You can’t panic.

Where did you have it last? 

Did you move it?

“Jagi.”

“Not now, I’m trying to deal with something,” you say, and then you pause. 

Cold. 

That voice. That name. 

You crawl out from under the table and turn toward the kitchen door. Kang Taehyun is standing there, flashlight cell phone in hand, his figure illuminated by your own device. He is holding the purple notebook — his purple notebook.

Your mind goes blank.

Taehyun has the notebook.

But he doesn’t look mad. He doesn’t even look confused. And he’s looking at you with some sort of weird, wistful look in his eyes. Like he’s been wishing for you all week like you’ve been wishing for him to be around.

“This is true, right?” He motions to the notebook.

“Did you read it?”

“I read it all. Just like it says to.” His voice is rushed, and suddenly, it shifts, back to the Kang Taehyun you remember, the one who taught you the secret of the world. “Jagi, I — if this is true, then this week must have been very hard for you.”

You bite back a sudden sob. He has no idea. “Yeah. It has.”

“That name, calling you jagi —“ Taehyun’s eyes gloss over. “It feels so familiar. I feel like I know it. I know it. I — I wrote this book, and I can’t remember it, and we were supposed to remember together.”

“We were.”

“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks. “I’m so, so sorry, jagi, I let you down —“

You cross the room in two steps and pull him into your arms. It’s not strictly a romantic hug; you remind yourself that Taehyun is still a friend, and right now, he’s a long lost friend whom you haven’t seen all week, a friend you made a promise with that was somehow broken. You certainly shouldn’t go around kissing him, but considering he seems like he’s about to start crying, he can definitely use a hug.

And cry he does. He wraps his arms around you, still holding onto the notebook, and you let him sob into your shoulder. And God, for the first time all week, you truly feel like you can breathe again. 

“You don’t remember.”

“I don’t. But the book — I know the book is real, I let you down, I —“ He pauses, then pulls back. “Should I be hugging you like this?”

“I don’t care. I missed you.”

He hugs you again. “Jagi. This feels right. It feels like I just hugged you, even though I can’t remember it. Like I woke up from a weird dream, and I hugged you in the dream, and — that’s the deja vu I’m supposed to follow, right?”

It reminds you of your own dream. The reality with the fire, and the band, and where you all die. You have to tell Taehyun. But not right now — he just read the book, so he probably still has questions. “You trust me, right?”

“Yes.” It’s unflinching, a sign that he is probably still in love with you somewhere in his non-remembering brain.

“Then do me a favor. Sit down with me, and let’s go over the book. Beomgyu shouldn’t come back downstairs.” And you both sit at the kitchen table, and you open up Taehyun’s book, and you go through every page, including what you wrote together last week, and the notes you’ve been making this week. Halfway through, the power comes back on, and it lightens your mood. And by the time you get mostly through the book, Taehyun seems back to his relatively normal self, or at least the normal he shared with you for a few short days last week. He’s not all over you, of course, but he’s wide eyed and listening. 

“So who’s this new boy you’re dating?” he asks in surprise. “I see here in the book that you should be sticking to Soobin and Yeonjun and Beomgyu. Why one of Beomgyu’s friends? That’s random.”

“There’s a story behind that,” you say, remembering that Taehyun doesn’t know anything at all about Hueningkai. You wonder just how much to tell Taehyun, and you feel your breath catch. There’s so much all of the boys don’t know. Hueningkai doesn’t know the real reason for the Pass It On Club’s existence. Taehyun doesn’t know about Hueningkai. The others don’t even know the time loop exists, or that they’ve fallen in love with you before. 

And you realize something. Last week, Taehyun was in charge. Taehyun remembered. Taehyun had the upper hand. He made the decisions about what to tell you, how to present that information in a way that wouldn’t scare you. And he also kept his cards close. He never told any of the other boys what he was doing, because he sensed he was alone in this world. And at the time, he was probably right to do so.

Now, the tables have turned. You are in charge. You remember. And you realize that, now, it’s Taehyun helping you, along with Hueningkai. You’ve got Hueningkai on your side. On top of that, you’re aware of the other reality, where nobody lives and everybody dies. You have all of the knowledge now, and it’s up to you to decide what to do with it. 

And the answer suddenly lays out in front of you.

“Did you read about the Pass It On Club? It didn’t exist until this time loop. I’ve been having Hueningkai help me with all the stuff you normally do, running around saving lives and stuff. He’s gonna pick Yeonjun up tomorrow morning and take him to Chicago.”

“No way!” Taehyun gives you a quick hug, and for a literal split second, it looks like he might kiss you. Then, he backs off. He’s back to forcing a little distance between you, since he knows you’re taken this loop. “You are so good at this, jagi.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty cool.” 

“Are you gonna make sure he remembers this loop for the next time?” There it is, the question you couldn’t answer until now. The elephant in the room.

“Actually, that’s the idea I have. I think we should tell them all. Soobin and Beomgyu and Yeonjun and Hueningkai.”

Taehyun’s mouth opens. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll have Hueningkai help out — the band’s got a practice tomorrow night, and we’d need someone to watch Yeonjun’s mom. Maybe we can rope Ashley or Soojin in on that. But we could all crash their practice, maybe make sure it’s held over here or something.” You pause. You haven’t fully thought this through, but now that Taehyun is here with you, maybe he can help. “We don’t even technically need the practice, since they’re not even performing. Not that they know that.”

“Right.” Taehyun tries his best to follow along.

“Not quite sure how we’d get Soobin and Yeonjun to be on board. But if we can get all of us together physically in one spot, I think the two of us could convince them that we’re right. We’re better together, there’s strength in numbers, and I’m thinking that deja vu feeling will really kick in for them. Especially Beomgyu. If Beomgyu can believe, then I think Yeonjun and Soobin will follow. Hueningkai will take the most convincing, but I think if I tell him that it’s the reason for the Pass It On Club, then maybe he’ll be on board.”

It’s a perfect plan. What Taehyun obviously doesn’t know is that, once everybody’s on board, you want to tell them the truth. The real truth. 

“Do you really want to do this?” Taehyun asks. 

“I don’t want them living in the dark anymore. I know what it’s like now, to remember. The more of us who remember, the more of us who can help out during the next time loop. The time loops won’t stop, but we can remember. Even if some of them don’t believe us, we’ll take the ones who believe us to the library when Rue plays her violin. Then, those of us who believe in the secret of this world will work on the others, and someday, we’ll all believe. I want all of us to remember, Taehyun. I need all of us to be one big happy family, a friend group.” You sigh. “I have my reasons.”

Taehyun nods. Then, “Well, that kind of throws a wrench into my plans on making you fall in love with someone different every loop.”

“Why did you do that, anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Taehyun tilts his head, like a puppy. “It’s not written in the book.”

“Well...I think I’d rather be friends with all of you forever, in this time loop, than continue to forget time and time again, and have some of us be alone.” It’s not just that. You feel it just like you feel the deja vu feeling of remembering things you don’t.

You have to reunite this band.

If you do, maybe you’ll really understand what this world is about.

“Okay,” Taehyun says, but you pull him close into a one-armed hug. This hug seems romantic, just a bit, and you whisper into his ear.

“Don’t you ever forget,” you say. “No matter what happens, if we end up together or not, I love you. I really, really love you, Taehyun.” You pull back. “I love all five of you. I’m sure of that, now. So I need your help. Will you help me?”

He nods. “With everything I have, jagi. Tell me what to do.”

You wake up at eight in the morning to a phone call from Hueningkai. “ Alo, Piu Piu!”

“Alo, Molang! Alo, baigo!” you say, knowing that Choi Yeonjun should be in the truck with him.

“We are on our way to Chicago! I wanna come over after I’m back. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I have more club news for you! So please come over so I can fill you in. For now, I leave you to your mission!”

“Okay! I love you, Piu Piu.” This time, when he says that cute little chick name, it’s a bit more serious. You feel just a twinge of pain as you remember your conversation with Taehyun last night, but you vow to love Hueningkai for the next two days and then reassess this entire conflagenflagled mess. 

“I love you too, Molang. Always and forever.” With that, you hang up, and you start the second to last day of this time loop.

Ashley swings by and picks up Taehyun just before his mathalon meet. You wave goodbye to him, knowing that you’ll see him later on. You have his number now, and it’s no longer blocked. So you make a quick list of what you’ll need, and you get yourself some Gyro Loco takeout. Then, you shoot a quick text to Soobin to make sure he’s available later on tonight; he texts back and says he is. Do you have anything planned?

Yeah, I was thinking of throwing a get-together. Sound like fun?

I agree. I need to get out of this house. You feel bad for not seeing Soobin as much this week, but you’re glad you’ve been able to become friends with him. And with Hueningkai making friends with Yeonjun, that means they’re both in the loop. Hah. The loop. Because it’s a time loop. 

You sit on your couch and watch as reality plays out in front of you. Yeonjun texts you when he and his mom get back to town, and you then text Hueningkai asking for him to come over. Then, Taehyun texts with a picture of him and his mathalon certificate; they won again, because he was there. Have Ashley bring you back over here, you text him. 

Hueningkai arrives then, a bit early. So you take advantage of it, of the time you have with him, and you kiss him as soon as he comes in the door. Hueningkai kisses you back, lips against yours, giggling, tasting like candy. 

“Alo, Piu Piu. What’s with the kisses?”

“Just enjoying my time with you. Come with me. I have so much to tell you.” And you sit down with Hueningkai, and you go over your plan. “I checked with Beomgyu, and he said that you’re all set for your performance tomorrow night.” That is a lie. You have had no such conversation with Beomgyu. But you have texted him, and you have a feeling he will just go along with whatever you decide, as he has a history of doing. “So I thought we could have a Pass It On Club cookout here at my house!”

Hueningkai’s eyes light up. “Oooooooh! A cookout at Piu Piu’s house! Graciboo!”

“And I want to invite some friends. Beomgyu, of course. But I want to invite Yeonjun! We need to make sure his mom’s okay, though. And we need to go to the store and get some supplies. Can you go with me?”

“Of course, Piu Piu! Anything for my Piu Piu.” Hueningkai kisses you on the cheek, and you both hop into his big red truck and go to Dollar General. You get everything you’ll need for the cookout, including hot dogs and marshmallows that you can eat. Hueningkai grabs a huge jug of grape juice, and you grab a couple of two-liters of pop to go along with it all. 

You grab a couple of your own favorite snacks and pay for it all with that...magic card with your name on it. Where did this card come from? Why does it automatically pay for everything? You glance at the card, and instead of a VISA or MasterCard logo, there is a green word in small letters that says Sperry. Hmm. Never heard of that card company before. 

But the cashier accepts it, as they always have before, and you go with Hueningkai back to your house. Then, you take the Christmas lights from your pajama party with Taehyun, and you go to the backyard. The emergency shed is out there, as well as a small patio and a yard. Your plot of land extends not too far out before cornfields surround it on every side, so you keep a fence so they don’t invade. Hueningkai helps you hang up the Christmas lights, and you drag out the fire bowl. You’ve done this thousands of times before, but you have to wonder if you’ve done it in the time loop at all.

The whole thing has you questioning reality. Was May 5th real? What about May 4th? How long have you been living May 6th over and over again? You have a feeling you’ll never know the answer.

You hear the back door open, and there is Beomgyu, in a white t-shirt and skinny jeans. Cute, you think for a split second, before you shove the thought aside. Just because you know you’ve dated Beomgyu before doesn’t mean you’re gonna do anything about it now.

“Flower? What are you doing?”

“Throwing a bonfire. Get out here.”

“But -- we have practice --”

“No, we don’t.” You glare at him. “We’re throwing a bonfire. You’re prepared for tomorrow. Seriously, get out here.”

You stare at Beomgyu, hoping the deja-vu will kick in, hoping he will just...follow you, like Taehyun did before. And thank goodness, he does. “Does Shelly know?”

“Yeah, I messaged her.” More lies. “Get out here, get a hot dog! Hueningkai, more wood!”

“Oh, Kai’s here,” Beomgyu says as he steps barefoot into the backyard. Hueningkai hands him a stick, and he sticks a hot dog on it. This is how it starts: with Beomgyu and Hueningkai, the two boys who already knew each other from the band Beomgyu started. Now you just have to wait until the others arrive.

You plug in the Christmas lights just as you hear the doorbell ring; you run up, and it’s Soobin, alone. “Hi,” he says, seemingly a little shy. 

“Thanks for coming over,” you say, pulling him through the house and out to the back porch. “Hey, guys, look who else is here!”

“Oh!” Hueningkai says with a smile. “ Alo, baigo! Hi, friend!” He skips over to Soobin, and within ten seconds, Hueningkai is making Soobin feel at home. You have to wonder if they were somehow brothers in the dream world, because they are glued to the hip already. 

When the doorbell rings again, it’s Yeonjun, but he’s brought his mother, hooked up to her portable oxygen. “There’s a fire out back,” you say, making a face. Yeonjun’s mother can’t be anywhere near the fire; not because she’ll hear something, but she’s a walking fire disaster waiting to happen.

“Oh, I can stay inside here,” Yeonjun’s mother, a nice white lady, says with a smile. “I’ll turn on the TV and make myself at home. Have fun with your cookout!”

“Thanks, Mom,” Yeonjun says. He walks with you to the kitchen, and before he goes out the back door, he gives you a strange look. It’s as if the deja-vu is kicking in. “You know,” he says, randomly, “I think we’ve ridden a Ferris wheel together in a previous life.” He shakes his head. “That sounds so odd, but --”

“Who knows?” You laugh, trying to shrug it off. He’s probably right, but what Ferris wheel would you even have been on? “Got deja vu?”

“Yeah, probably.” He shakes it off, then opens the door and immediately sees Hueningkai. “Yo, Huening!”

“Alo, baigo!” you hear Hueningkai chirp from the backyard again just as you hear one more car outside. You dash to see it’s Ashley’s little silver Ford, and Taehyun gets out. He’s wearing the same Metallica shirt you saw him in yesterday, but a new pair of jeans, and his hair is combed. 

You try not to hold your breath. But looking at him like this, you’re positive of it now. 

You’re in love with all five of them. 

Over the weeks that have repeated, you’ve met all of them, forgotten them, and met them all again and again. You’ve probably gone to Chicago with Yeonjun; maybe that’s where the Ferris wheel is. You’ve definitely gone to the vet with Soobin, and who knows what else? And Beomgyu...you live with Beomgyu. The thousands of visits to Dollar General and Gyro Loco are now etched in every cell of your body. Taehyun may not be as familiar, but he has ran this show for as long as it’s been going on, controlling the strings from afar. You still remember him in so many ways, and you literally remember last week. And Hueningkai is brand new to this puzzle, but you picked him this round, and you do love him already!

You can’t choose.

You refuse to choose.

So this is it. You’re going to spend today and tomorrow loving Hueningkai. And then, you need to find some way to be friends with all of them. You don’t know how you’re going to do it, but if Taehyun has manipulated things for ages and not told you his own feelings, maybe he will have some advice someday. Not now, though. 

“Are you ready?” you ask him.

He nods. “Do you have the notebook?”

“I do. It’s inside. Are you going to start?”

“I figure you would, but then I’ll interject.”

You both walk through the house together, and you grab Taehyun’s purple mathalon notebook -- the keeper of the world’s secret -- from its spot on the kitchen table. Your hand brushes quickly against Taehyun’s, and for a fleeting second, you want to reach out to him. But you don’t. You hold it in.

“Let’s go, jagi,” he says, and the two of you open the door together.

Hueningkai, of course, goes nuts when you get into the backyard with Taehyun. And you afford yourself some affection with him; he is dating you, after all. So you take his hand, and you keep Taehyun’s notebook in the other, and you call everybody around the fire. 

This is the first time you’ve really seen them all together like this. Soobin and Yeonjun and Beomgyu and Taehyun and Hueningkai. You don’t know why it has to be in that order, but it does.

“I’m glad I got everybody together for this,” you explain. “I’ve been kind of busy all week, and it’s good to see so many smiling faces.” It sounds corporate, but it’s true. You’ve wanted to see them. All of them.

“Okay, so, flower --” Beomgyu eats half a marshmallow -- “why did you make us miss practice for this?”

You turn to Hueningkai. “I’m gonna tell them. Do you want to help me?”

Hueningkai gasps. “Really? Why?”

“Well? I was thinking...they could all be potential members. What do you think? Soobin already knows.”

Thankfully Hueningkai jumps up and down like -- well, a cute bunny cartoon. So the two of you take the stage and tell the other four about the Pass It On Club, or as much of what they know it to be. You stand around the makeshift bonfire, Christmas lights surrounding you, as you talk about the club’s faux history, how it’s been passed down secretly at Peotone High, and how you and Hueningkai have been helping out all week. And Hueningkai jumps all around and talks so excitedly with his hands that the others can’t help but smile. Beomgyu does first, then Yeonjun and Soobin, and you can soon tell that they believe Hueningkai about this faux club. 

“And so,” Hueningkai says with a final smile, “Piu Piu and I want you to be a part of the club!”

“See,” Yeonjun says in his laid-back tone, “I wasn’t sure what to expect from all of this. But being a part of a club that pays it forward sounds like a no-brainer. I mean, if it weren’t for this club, I wouldn’t have gotten my mother here on time for tomorrow’s banquet. But I’m just curious how you all managed to keep it a secret this long!”

“Me, too,” Soobin says. “Minnie never said anything about this club to me before.”

“We’ve all benefited all week from it,” Taehyun says, moving the conversation forward. “I don’t see why not. What do we need to do to join this club?”

Hueningkai looks to you. “Well?”

You think for a moment. “It already seems like you’re part of it. So let me do what I did for Hueningkai.” You go back into the house and find a pen, an old one with a pink puff of feathers at the end. You run outside and touch each of the other boys on the shoulders with the pen; Beomgyu first, then Yeonjun and Soobin, and Taehyun last on purpose. “I hereby christen you trial members of the Pass It On Club.”

“Cool,” Yeonjun says with a grin. “Are there membership cards?”

“Not really, but if we have time, I’m sure we can make some.” You clap your hands. “All right, Pass It On Club members. Now, there are six of us. Are you ready for your biggest mission yet?”

“I don’t see why not,” Beomgyu says. “This whole thing sounds kind of ridiculous, but if you’re in it, flower, then I’m in.”

“What’s our mission?” Soobin asks.

You look to Taehyun. “Your turn.”

He nods, then takes his notebook back from you. “Your mission, if you will accept it, is to ignore most of what jagi here has said about the Pass It On Club. Because it is total and utter bullshit.” He holds up his notebook. “This book proves it.” And he begins to unravel the story of the club, talking about the reality of the situation and what the book contains. He opens the pages to show off different sections to the others, being careful not to step too close to the fire. 

Yeonjun and Soobin and Beomgyu are all watching intently, but Hueningkai keeps looking back to you. So you hold his hand, and you motion to Taehyun and his notebook.

When Beomgyu has a question about the nature of the time loops, Hueningkai turns to you. “There was no Pass It On Club? You lied to me?”

You look at the ground. You suddenly hate this. You hate that you lied to Hueningkai. “I wanted your help with the time loops.”

“You knew all along? And --”

“You still wrote a love letter to me,” you rush, whispering so you don’t alert the other boys. “And I still wanted to answer it.” You look up at him, knowing even more now that the way you feel will never change. “I have fallen for you, Hueningkai, over the course of this past week. Nothing will change that. No time loops ever will.”

“But why are you --”

You take his hand in yours and kiss it, hoping that sweet, gentle Hueningkai will stop being fearful and trust you. “Hueningkai. Please. Trust me.”

He’s silent for a moment, but he doesn’t say a word, and he looks toward Taehyun, going back to listening to his story. You hope you haven’t made Hueningkai super mad at you. That’s not going to help things in the future.

“...so I nearly had it figured out, and then jagi…” Taehyun looks over to you. “Jagi accidentally messed things up, and I told them about the secret of the world. Together, we tested my hypothesis about the library and not listening to Rue’s violin, to see if we could both retain our memories of the previous loop. According to the book, jagi remembered, while I didn’t.”

“And I retained the book,” you say, taking the notebook back from Taehyun. “What I’m thinking is that the book has to be in your possession in order to remember. Which is why I did, and Taehyun didn’t. With this information, I needed to make this week the best week I could. I needed to change lives.” You look over at Hueningkai. “And then I got a love letter, and I fell in love over the course of the week with a sweet freshman who loves helping people.”

If Hueningkai had shown any hesitancy before, it is gone now. He skips toward you and wraps his arms around you. “I love you too, Piu Piu!”

“So how many times has the world looped like this?” Yeonjun asks Taehyun. As you figured, he is the one who’s asking the most questions. Soobin is just hanging back, listening to everything that is being said. Beomgyu looks the most confused out of the three. 

Taehyun pouts. “I think I’ve written down...fourteen or fifteen times? But I know it’s been more than that.”

You pass around the book. “I trust you guys enough to look at this now. You’re part of the Pass It On Club. If you throw that in the fire, then none of us will remember the time loops, ever again.”

Hueningkai gets the book first, flipping through it. “This really is real!” he squeals. “I believe you, Piu Piu.” He passes the book to Beomgyu and immediately hugs you again. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you at first. I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

“So will you stay with me forever? Can we both remember and continue our relationship?”

You laugh, nervous. Taehyun hasn’t said anything about the nature of his romantic manipulations yet. “I mean…”

“Dude.” Beomgyu is holding the book wide open. “This looks like something out of a visual novel. What is this, Clannad?”

“What’s that?” Yeonjun asks.

“I know what that is,” Soobin says. “Clannad is one of those video games that tells a story, and you have to talk to all the girls and get all the facts before you can solve the mystery.”

“Yeah, and they’re all romanceable.” Beomgyu looks away from the book and glares absolute daggers at Taehyun. “You’ve got all this info in here on me and Yeonjun and Soobin! Were you making us fall in love with flower?!”

Taehyun blinks in surprise. Then, “Well, I wasn’t actually planning on any of you finding out.”

Soobin runs over and looks at the book. “We’re all romanceable heroines?”

“It was my way of getting jagi to help you with your problems. Sometimes, during a loop, Beomgyu would be saved, and sometimes Yeonjun’s mom would come down from Chicago, and sometimes Soobin wouldn’t be left alone after Tobin passed away. I could only make one happen at a time at first, and, well…” He is noticeably blushing now, even though the sun is going down and the light is fading from the sky. “Jagi is very easy to fall in love with.”

“Wait!!” Hueningkai squeals. “We’re ALL in love with Piu Piu?!? Because of what you did?”

Taehyun sighs, then nods. “You’re not all in love right now. Just you, Hueningkai. You’re with...Piu Piu. But on Monday, all of that usually resets.”

“So the little bunny who helped me with my problems is in a different relationship every time the world loops,” Soobin says. 

Yeonjun whistles. “I’m gonna file that under Dumb Things Freshmen Should Never Do for $1000, Alex.”

“Yeah, me too,” you say. “That’s part of why I’m holding this meeting, and I told Taehyun that, too. I want all of us to remember from now on. I want all of us to work on our own problems as the loops go on, and maybe we can build some sort of life here. I don’t care if that means we all fall asleep with our hands tied to the notebook or something like that, but I want to make it happen. I started off this week alone, and it’s only because of Hueningkai that I didn’t feel so alone, that I was able to make progress. I want to make that progress with all of you.”

The five boys are silent for a moment. Then, Beomgyu speaks up. “So wait. You want all five of us to date you?”

Ehh? “That’s not what I said,” you say with a laugh. “And that would be kind of impossible --”

“No, it makes sense,” Yeonjun says, shrugging, as nonchalant as he is about everything except why would he be so chill about this? “We all fell in love with you, and if we’re all gonna keep remembering each time loop, then you’d either have to pick one of us, which sounds dumb, or we’ll all just love you anyway.”

Hueningkai looks from Yeonjun back to you. “How could Piu Piu love all five of us? How could Piu Piu have five boyfriends?”

“Yeah, even I think that’s a little crazy,” Taehyun says, but Beomgyu walks around the fire pit, past Hueningkai, then over to you.

“I know it’s true,” he says, taking your shoulder, and then he leans forward.

Hueningkai yelps, loud, as he tries to stop him, but Beomgyu does not kiss you. Instead, he simply leans his forehead on yours. You’ve been friends forever. That much you do remember. But when he’s this close to you, your body, which has kept the score all this time, seems to remember. It pulls you to him, to the countless one-week relationships that you have made with Beomgyu over the time loops. 

“I feel it,” Beomgyu whispers. “Do you feel it, flower?”

You nod, trying to hold back tears. Being with each and every one of these boys feels like home. 

“I think we should,” Beomgyu says, letting go of you and looking back at the other boys. “The world loops. We revisit the same week, over and over again. From what flower is saying, my band never gets to play on Sunday. We may never get out of here. So we need to make this life count, the way we know how. So, yeah. I say we all move in together and start dating flower.”

Soobin drops his marshmallow into the fire in shock. Hueningkai squeals again. You’re starting to wonder if it’s a character trait. 

“This is nuts,” Taehyun says.

“Can I check, too?” Yeonjun asks, more to Hueningkai than you.

Hueningkai huffs. “Do not kiss Piu Piu!”

“I’m not,” Yeonjun says, and he walks around the fire and does the same thing Beomgyu did. And when Yeonjun’s forehead touches yours, you feel a spark of electricity, and you see a mere fragment of a memory -- Yeonjun, sitting apart from you, looking out a window to his left. And you know. 

“The Ferris wheel,” you both whisper as he pulls away, and he laughs.

“You saw it, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, this is weird.” Yeonjun jumps up and down, shakes his arms. “I’ve got the heebie-jeebies for sure. But yeah. I’m in. So, Gyu, we all moving in this house?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” you say. “Taehyun’s notebook says that, if we do the same thing loop after loop, eventually reality will remember. It’s how Beomgyu moved away from his dad’s house. So on Monday, if we all remember, at first we’ll wake up in our own beds. On Mondays, we can spend our time moving stuff back into my house. And eventually, you’ll all just live here.” You look back at Hueningkai. “You, too.”

Hueningkai nods.

“But that doesn’t mean I need to date all of you,” you say. “I...I wasn’t sure how I was gonna choose. I dated Taehyun last week, and I’m with Hueningkai this week, and it all just seems like too much.”

“We’re not saying you have to,” Soobin says, becoming a bigger part of the conversation now. “Little bunny, you’ve helped so much for all this time, even if we can’t remember. I can’t think of a single reason why we wouldn’t fall in love with you. I know I would, now, if given the chance.”

“What do they call that, like, a harem?” Taehyun wonders out loud.

“Like those old anime where the guy gets all the girls,” Yeonjun says.

“So we all want to be with flower, right?” Beomgyu says, looking at the others. 

Yeonjun and Soobin nod.

“Not if jagi doesn’t want it,” Taehyun says. “Besides, don’t I technically still need to pay retribution for messing everything up?”

“You introduced me to my sweetheart, Taehyun,” Yeonjun says. “So no. You can make up for it later by paying for Gyro Loco or something.”

“Man, now I want Gyro Loco,” Beomgyu says, and suddenly the five boys are laughing again and harassing each other.  

“How many times have we been to Gyro Loco?”

“Probably too many. I lost count a long time ago.”

“Well, let’s take Piu Piu to Gyro Loco in the future, too!”

“You know, we each call them something different. I still don’t know why I call them flower.”

You smile, crossing your arms, still holding Taehyun’s book in your hands. It’s fun to watch them interact like this. And then you remember the part of the secret that you’re still keeping, the hidden dream world. “Are you all done fighting over me?”

“We’re done,” Taehyun says. “Guys, I propose something. Either all of us date jagi in the future, or none of us do. Thoughts?”

What.

“That’s not what I said,” you say, but the boys keep talking.

“Ehh? I know Piu Piu less than most of you!”

“That just means your Piu Piu will have to get to know you better, Hueningkai!”

“How will we make sure it’s fair?”

“Communication, probably. As in, the one thing Stupid Freshman Kang Taehyun hasn’t had this entire time.”

“Hey! I am not stupid! I won the mathalon today, thank you very much!”

“We can, like, make a calendar on the fridge or something. We’re all gonna be living together, so I think that’s best.”

“Soobin, that’s a good idea. We’ll all have to really get to know each other better.”

“Isn’t it funny, but I feel like I’ve known you for a long time? Though we just met?”

“I know, right?”

“We’re already friends because we have flower in common.”

“We’re a big happy family! All of the Molangs love their Piu Piu!”

“Hueningkai, only you would put it that way. Wait, why does bunny call you that?”

“Okay, look,” you say, shaking your head with a smile. You put the five boys in your backyard hoping to have a conversation with them, but all you’re getting is chaos. “Who wants to date me?”

All five hands shoot up.

“And you’re okay with sharing?”

Hueningkai hesitates for just a split second, then puts his hand up with the other four. “I want more time at first,” he demands. “I need to catch up.”

The others laugh.

“I think that’s fair,” you say, and you suddenly feel a weight in your heart be lifted that you didn’t even know was there. You didn’t want to choose between the five of them, so you figured you’d choose nobody. You didn’t even know everybody was an option.

“Okay, here’s how this will work,” you say. “From now until the banquet tomorrow, I’m still with Hueningkai. Molang, you can stay over tonight, and we can chat until the sun comes up and make up for some of that lost time.”

“Make up all you want,” Yeonjun snickers, and Taehyun throws a stick at him.

“Yeah, you mean make out,” Beomgyu says. 

“I hate you all,” Taehyun mutters.

“And if we all remember come Monday morning, we’ll all move in here, and we’ll start this experiment,” you say. “We’ll take it slow at first. I don’t actually remember being in a relationship with Yeonjun or Soobin or Beomgyu, but I’ve been friends with Beomgyu forever, so I think that will be easier. Perhaps we can schedule some dates so I can get to know each one of you better.”

“We could spend the first week doing that,” Taehyun says as he retrieves the pink feather pen and writes that in his notebook.

“Then we can try things out for...three or four weeks? And if we totally hate it, then perhaps we can make some further decisions. Does that sound fair?”

The other boys nod, agreeing to this trial-by-fire relationship reverse harem that they’ve made up. “One more thing,” Soobin says. “We talk about everything. No secrets. Got it?” More nods.

“Good.” You take a deep breath. “If there are no secrets, then I have one more.”

“Aw, man,” Hueningkai says. “More hidden stuff?”

“This one is kind of important, but I don’t think anybody else has been through this yet. And I think I know why.” You sigh, collect your thoughts. “I think I know why we’re stuck in this time loop. I think we’re all dead.” And you tell the boys of the weird dream you had, where after you hid from Rue in the library with Taehyun, but before the world reset, you found yourself in a hospital. The news had talked about a pop band of five boys who died in a fire, and then, you had died, too. There had been a concert, and the venue had caught on fire, and somebody had killed all of you. 

“I think that’s why we’re here,” you say. “I don’t know why we’re at my school, or in my hometown. But if we stop the loop, then we go back to a world where we’re all dead, and I don’t want that. I would rather date all five of you for eternity, and live out the same week for the rest of our lives here with you.”

“You know, normally I’d say you’re crazy,” Taehyun says; this is also news to him, though you had drafted a few notes in his notebook. “But after the week I’ve just had, nothing is crazy anymore. And it kind of makes logical sense. We wouldn’t remember if something like that happened, because we’d be dead.”

“A time loop, separate from the real world, where we can live forever.” Yeonjun grins. “I love it!”

“But also, what’s this about being in a pop band with all of you?” Beomgyu says. “Who do we think we are? BTS?”

“ Ssak da bultaewora, bow wow wow!” Soobin yells, doing some odd dance.

Beomgyu’s eyes go wide. “You know BTS?”

“Yeah, okay, so we were the next BTS, I suppose,” Yeonjun says with a laugh. “At least my dance skills would have come in handy!”

Taehyun looks over at you. “You don’t remember our band name?”

“Nope. But I know I was a fan. That’s why I call Hueningkai Hueningkai. That was his name in the band. The rest of you were just known by your names.” You pause. “Choi Soobin, Choi Yeonjun, Choi Beomgyu, Kang Taehyun, Hueningkai...there’s something more there, but I can’t say it. It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“Maybe you’ll get it someday, flower,” Beomgyu says. “For now, we just have to look forward to tomorrow. Together.”

And your breath catches. “That’s it! It was -- something like that, what did I say --” You wrinkle your nose, and then you remember. “I think the phrase pops up in my head a bunch. A brighter tomorrow, together. I think that has something to do with you guys.”

“ABTT,” Yeonjun says, out loud. 

“Like if we were BTS, but ABTT,” Beomgyu notes. 

“We’re a butt?” Hueningkai says, and the rest of the guys laugh. 

“Can we just enjoy the rest of the night together?” Soobin says. “Let’s all sit and be happy, this family of six. And then tomorrow, we stay home from the banquet, and we remember together!” And there are cheers and whoops from the small group, and Yeonjun grabs more marshmallows and burns his fingers, and Taehyun sits by you and writes notes in his notebook. Hueningkai sits on your other side, taking your hand in his, letting himself be with you. 

You don’t know how they’re gonna all pull it off. All five of them dating you. All five of them loving you. But it isn’t the craziest thing that could happen in this world. And you’re willing to let them try. You just have to get through tomorrow...together.

When you wake up, you’ve never been more sure of what day it is, and where you are, and who you’re with. You’re in your house, at 10001 West Wilmington Road, in Peotone. Choi Beomgyu is in the bedroom across the hall from you, and Hueningkai is downstairs on the couch. They are part of a band that you keep calling Tomorrow, Together, even though that sounds like the silliest name. And you’re going to be protecting them from here on out. 

You look up at your ceiling and smile. You remember that you left the Christmas lights outside from last night, but it’ll be okay if you don’t retrieve them. They’ll just end up back under the bed tomorrow morning, and it’s not set to rain today. For now, you need to make sure all of the boys end up at your house and not at the end of the year banquet. You’ll do anything to make sure all five boys are as far away as possible from Rue’s violin. Then, you’ll probably have to tie the notebook somehow to all of you; you find yourself thanking the stars that Taehyun’s notebook is spiral bound --

You pause, quietly, as you hear the doorbell ring. Who would be here so early on a Sunday morning? Maybe it’s one of the boys! So you make sure you’re decent, and then you run downstairs, through the living room where Hueningkai is still sleeping, and over to the front door. But when you open the door, it’s Rue standing there. Shouldn’t she be in church? Rue always spends her Sunday mornings volunteering at her church, from six in the morning all the way to three in the afternoon, sometimes later. 

“Hey hey!” she says, a chipper look on her face as she invites herself in.

“Hi,” you say, lowering your voice. “Uh, there’s someone asleep on the couch.”

“Oh!” Rue lowers her voice. “Sorry about that. I just had to see you, and I tried calling, but you didn’t pick up.”

“Okay. Sit.” You technically have two living rooms; one just seamlessly flows into the room the TV is in. You’re sure once upon a time it was used as a parlor, where women of marrying age could meet with suitors without going upstairs, or the man of the house could sit and read his paper away from the radio and where the children played. Now it just has a bunch of extra furniture; looking around it now, you think it might be a good bedroom for Yeonjun. He would like sleeping this close to the front door, so he could protect the whole house. 

Rue sits on a small loveseat, shoved in a corner. She has a couple of paper grocery bags with her; one of them looks particularly heavy. “Oh, my parents brought you food. Should you put it in the kitchen? I don’t want to disturb whoever is sleeping in there.”

“Okay.” You take both bags and take them quickly through the living room, past Hueningkai, through the dining room and into the kitchen. Come to think of it, the dining room isn’t being used now, but if there’s six boys living here, you’re bound to use it more often. You can imagine the six of you enjoying Gyro Loco all together.

You put the bags on the small table in the kitchen now, where you always eat with Beomgyu. You check inside; there’s some bread, as well as two huge watermelons, a bag of apples, and some cold cuts. You laugh. Rue’s parents really do think of everything. Rue still makes you lunches sometimes, but she hasn’t for a while since Beomgyu has been around. Perhaps this is just one of her ways of reasserting her friendship. 

That’s right. Rue has been your best friend for years. She doesn’t know about the Tomorrow, Together band, and she doesn’t even know that it’s her violin solo that restarts the world. She’s just your best friend. Maybe, once you get all of the boys safe, you can let her know what’s going on. But for now, you have to keep them safe. Rue would have never gone to a boy band concert, so if the dream world is real, then she’s still alive in it. 

The boys come first. The last thing you want is to ever go back to that world. If it exists. 

“Thank you, Rue,” you say, going back into the other room and sitting by her. “Thank your parents, too! They’re always dropping off stuff.”

“Oh, you’ll see them at the banquet,” Rue says. “You can thank them then.” Aw, shoot. You still technically need to let Rue know you’re not going. 

“Actually, Rue,” you say, “I’m not going to the banquet tonight.”

Something in Rue’s face changes. She looks shocked, which is odd. But then she covers it back up again, like it never happened. “Oh, really? I thought you were up for some awards, and isn’t Beomgyu’s band playing?”

“I mean…” Rue doesn’t know that Beomgyu and Kai aren’t showing up. Shelly doesn’t know anything, but in a matter of hours, none of that will matter. “To be honest, I just don’t think it’s that important.” 

Now Rue looks hurt. And you suddenly remember that, as president of the student council, she’s technically in charge of the banquet. You just dissed her event. “Oh. I see how it is.” 

“No -- I mean --”

“Just no big deal, huh. Not that important. It’s okay. I’m not hurt.” And you grit your teeth, and you want to say something, but before you can Rue gets up to leave. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Try one of those apples for me. Mom says they’re really good.” She doesn’t even look at you as she walks out the front door.

Huh. You sigh. It’s “no big deal,” Rue won’t even remember this come later, but you’ll have to start letting her down earlier in the week so she doesn’t have her hopes up. Maybe you can make up something that you can go to on Sunday instead, so you’re already booked. Maybe Taehyun’s notebook will have some hints. 

You walk back into the kitchen, and you dig into one of the paper bags and pull out an apple. You sit at the table, open Taehyun’s notebook, and take a bite out of it.

“You’re up early this morning.”

“Yeah, I thought I would write --” and you dont recognize that voice and you look up to see your mom standing in your kitchen

what.

what?!?

wait a minute its your mom what is she doing here you have a mom what

come to think of it, you look around the kitchen. things seem...clearer. the paper bags rue gave you are gone. when you glance out the back window the christmas lights are gone. and your mom is standing in the kitchen in her robe staring you down like youre an alien but is she the alien

you remember her, clear as day now. your mother. she lives in this house with you. not beomgyu. not --

“I gotta go,” you say, “upstairs, I forgot a thing,” and you almost leave the apple before you realize it is here and taehyuns notebook is here taehyuns notebook!!! is here!!! so you grab it and your pen and before your mom can stop you you run upstairs to your room

you stop in front of beomgyus room for a second, and then you open it, but its storage theres nothing in there theres no beomgyu and now you know. now you know for real. this is the other world. the world where everybody -- and you stop for a moment, thinking to yourself as much as you can

you have the notebook you can take notes so you go in your room and oh. the posters. there is a small one with lots of loose leaf papers around it, pictures printed off from the internet at the school library. choi soobin choi yeonjun choi beomgyu kang taehyun hueningkai tomorrow by together. thats it. you whip open taehyuns notebook and write that down.

youre here. but...youre not in the hospital? how did you get here? you were just eating an apple in the kitchen and suddenly youre back. you pause. then you run downstairs and grab the apple again and take it upstairs and you bite into it.

Reality shifts. The room grows darker. The posters on the wall disappear.

You take another bite.

things go back to normal and the room is brighter and the posters are on the wall and rue has somehow given you time dimension hopping apples, who are you, doctor who? what is this apple made out of, space dust? it just tastes like a normal apple. you look it over, nope nothing to see here just an apple but you make notes about it, can the other boys get back and forth too with the apples? or is it just you? so the notebook makes you remember when rue plays her violin, and the apples from rue make you go back and forth through worlds. does rue know about any of this? you still dont know how she could be a part of this

you check your phone. the time is still the same, ten fifteen in the morning, may twelfth. and you realize that if youre in this world then later on today you will get on a train to chicago and you will go see the boys in concert and there will be a fire and everybody will die and youll end up in the hospital where youll be forced to hear the news

but wait. are the boys here? no theyre not. you open your phone. it looks a little different but its still your phone and you have it marked on your calendar, the concert starts at eight pm, and you have no way of knowing if they are there or not

you miss them

theyre not here beomgyu doesnt live across the hall from you where is beomgyu and you realize youre panicking so you grab taehyuns notebook and you put your phone in your pocket and you eat a bite of the apple

You watch as reality flickers, like you’re overlaying an Instagram filter on top of it. The posters disappear. And you fall to the ground, dropping Taehyun’s notebook and the apple.

“Piu Piu!” you hear someone yell, and you feel Hueningkai’s arms come around you. And you grab onto him, still dizzy from the beginning panic, feel his jacket between your fingers, lean your head on his shoulder just to remind yourself that this is real, he is real, he is here. 

You feel tears spring to your eyes.

Hueningkai.

He’s here.

A river starts with a drop of rain, somewhere in this world

Light years shape this arc of sky and sand, a precious pearl

And you will light a stranger’s life by letting yours unfurl

“You --” He takes your face in his hands. “You’re back, you --” And he kisses you, quickly, before pulling you into his arms again. “Oh, my God, I missed you so much. Piu Piu. Please, never leave me again.”

“What happened?” You pull back just enough to look at Hueningkai, but not to leave his arms. “Did I leave and go somewhere?”

“You -- I can’t believe I’m about to say this.” Hueningkai looks so worried, like the care is shining in his brown eyes. You can see more tears starting to form. “I was waking up, and I heard you talking to Rue in the living room. And you went into the kitchen, so I followed you. And I saw you sit down, and you just -- disappeared. Into thin air. Like Harry Potter or something. And I panicked, and I looked all over the house, and I couldn’t find you, but I thought I heard something up here so I came in your room and --”

“It’s okay,” you say, hugging Hueningkai close again. “I’m back. I’m back, Hueningkai. I’m not gonna leave again, okay? Not now, not ever.”

You can say that you’ll never matter, lose or win

The world won’t care, and it’s hard to bear such a lonely wind

But you can change a stranger’s life by letting yours begin

“Promise?”

“Promise. I -- I went back, to the other world. You remember how I said last night that there was another world? Where you were in a boy band? I went back there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Was I in the band?”

“Hueningkai.” You smile. “Your face was on my wall, on a poster.”

He squeals. “It’s real! I really am in a boy band!” And he giggles, softly. “I’m in a band, with Soobin and Yeonjun and Taehyun, and my friend Beomgyu.”

You get an idea. “You try,” you say, handing Hueningkai the apple.

He looks at it. “What would I do with this?”

“I think that’s how I traveled back and forth. I ate a bite of the apple. Pick a side I didn’t eat, and try it.”

“But --”

“If you go to the other world, all you have to do is take another bite to get back. I don’t know why that’s how it works. I just know it does.”

“Okay.” Hueningkai holds onto your hand. “I don’t -- but I can come back here, right here, to my Piu Piu. I trust you.” And he takes a bite of the apple. But nothing happens. Hueningkai doesn’t magically poof away. He stays in your arms.

“Hueningkai.” You reach up to his face, take the apple from the hands, brush your nose against his. “I’m still here.”

“I was really scared there for a minute. I’m kind of glad it didn’t work.”

“Me, too. I’m right here, Kai. Promise.”

He takes your hands. “Be here for me. Be here for all of us, but I need you, especially, right now. Is it okay that I’m selfish?”

“Of course.”

Every night the TV shows one more bad day’s news

A world away from what I know and what I do

But I could save a stranger’s life, if I had a clue

You sit up, pulling out Taehyun’s notebook, and you review the notes that you had made before. Hueningkai does not leave your side. “TOMORROW X TOGETHER,” you tell Hueningkai, while it’s still fresh in your mind. “Does that sound familiar?”

His eyes widen. “It does! But I don’t know what from.”

“It’s your band name. TOMORROW X TOGETHER. TXT for short, I guess. I don’t think you’re all actually from Peotone.” You laugh. “But it...it was…” You check your phone again, trying to make sense of it all, stuck in a brain fog that you can’t shake. “Ten twenty-two, or so, in the other world. It was the exact same time as it is now. Which means the concert hasn’t happened yet there.”

“Uh, Piu Piu? What are you talking about?”

You talk it out, trying to make sense of it all. “Hueningkai, I don’t think we’re just stuck in a time loop. There’s two time loops, on top of each other. They progress at the exact same time, and they reset at the exact same time. We’re alive in Peotone in one, and everybody dies in the other. And I’m the only one who can go back and forth between them.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know why.” And you pause. “But I think I might know who has the answers. Change of plans. We’re going to the banquet.”

“Wait -- why?” Hueningkai shrieks.

“Because there’s someone there that I have to talk to. Someone who might have the answers we’ve been looking for all along. I have to ask her something. And if I’m right...then maybe we’ll finally know why this world keeps repeating.”

And on and on it goes, attention must be paid

Before it seems we’re one soul short and a second late

On and on it flies, across the stratosphere

At the speed of love, if you stop and feel it, you will hear

“I trust you.” Hueningkai takes your hands. “Do you need me to text the others?”

“I will, too. But I could use your help. One last task for the members of the Pass It On Club. What do you say, Molang?”

He kisses you on the forehead, then leans in for one last kiss. “I say it sounds good, Piu Piu. But after all this, we’re still gonna remember, right?”

You sigh. “I’m gonna try my hardest.”

You throw Rue’s apples in the fridge, just in case you need them later so they’re fresh. Then, you text the masses. Taehyun thinks it’s a horrible idea, but Yeonjun agrees that his mother should at least make it to the banquet. Soobin isn’t sure what to think, but Hueningkai easily sways him. And then Taehyun texts back and says his entire family now knows he’s getting a mathalon award, so now he has to go because they’re dragging him.

As long as we are all holding onto the notebook and not listening to Rue’s violin at six, he texts, I think we will be fine. Capiche?

10-4, you message back, and then you wake up Beomgyu and tell him as much as you can. You all agree to meet at Gyro Loco for one last meal together before the new loop, minus Yeonjun and Taehyun, and over falafel and gyros, you explain your new apple ability to the other boys. “I don’t know where you guys are in the other world,” you whisper, making sure the workers can’t hear you, “but that other world might be the reason we’re stuck here.”

“If you can figure it out, flower, we’re behind you,” Beomgyu says.

“Gyu, none of you are forgetting ever again. I’m gonna make sure of that.”

“But if we forget again,” Soobin says, “as long as someone has the notebook, we’ll all remember again, right?”

“That’s true!” Hueningkai says with a smile. The rest of the dinner is spent quickly together, the four of you, and then Beomgyu picks up Yeonjun and his mother, and you all travel to Peotone High School for a banquet that you will never participate in.

On and on it goes, sparks upon the wind

Like a July 4th, a crown of stars and a good time grin

On and on it flies, on a new bird’s wing

In a beating heart, the moon that rose, and the gift of spring

Taehyun is thankfully already there when you get there, waiting outside the front door. You’re reminded of when you sat out here, eating pink Starburst together, getting to know each other. And now you’re so close to having all the answers. 

You give him a quick one-sided hug. “Hey.”

“Hi, jagi. What’s your plan?”

Beomgyu comes up behind you, waving his car keys. “I’ve got a plan. Flower, take these. Just in case.”

“O...kay.” You take Beomgyu’s two keys, but he holds up a third one that he produces out of nowhere. 

“We’re hiding in the music room. All five of us. While you go to find the answers.”

You all walk through the school to the music room, and Beomgyu and Soobin fill Yeonjun and Taehyun in on what you’ve discovered. “I don’t know why that world exists,” you say, “but I have a crazy idea. I want the five of you to stay out of it, though. I don’t want anything weird happening. When I leave, I want all five of you to hang onto the book together. That way, if things go wrong, you’ll all wake up on Monday still and know my name, and you can find me and convince me together.”

“This doesn’t sound good,” Yeonjun says with a worried look on his face.

“Relax,” Soobin says. He looks nervous as well, but he’s doing his best to trust the situation. “We have to trust the little bunny. Bunny knows what they’re doing.”

The music room at Peotone High has tall ceilings and acoustic panels. The room is a big, open area, and chairs are stacked in corners, usually used for band practice. Instrument lockers line the walls. There is a piano in one corner; Hueningkai runs over to it, playing a couple of notes on it. The others follow, naturally taking a spot around it. 

It makes you wonder: did they ever do this as TOMORROW X TOGETHER? Probably, in practice, dozens of millions of times. “You should all sing something. Do you know one of Beomgyu’s songs?”

“I know all his songs,” Hueningkai says behind the piano, “but I can’t play them on the piano. Any requests?”

“Free Bird,” Beomgyu mutters, and the others laugh.

Hueningkai’s fingers trace the piano keys until he finds a note. Then, he starts singing, suddenly, partially in English and partially in a language you realize must be Korean. 

I can see, when you’re no longer by my side

He lingers on the last note, so Beomgyu sings another line, out of nowhere.

I feel you, when your voice fades out and dies

Their eyes meet, and they find the lyrics together.

Because I believe in you, I’m not afraid

Then, they sing together, the words suddenly coming to them as they go. Soobin joins in by the next line, and Yeonjun hums along with the melody before he begins to sing as well. 

I can touch, when you’re not in front of my eyes

I reach, knowing that you’re shining in the skies

In my memories, I am dancing

And I long to find a way to where you are, like long ago

Taehyun’s voice is quieter, but he finally joins in.

Can I be the nap to guide you

Through my dreams so I’ll remind you

You are mine, no matter how long we’ll be apart

In the evening when the sun sets,

In the night sky when you’re shining in the dark

You remain here in my heart

The room is silent, their spontaneous song done. Hueningkai breaks the silence with a chuckle, normal for him. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Taehyun says. “We just...all knew the words.”

“Maybe it was from before,” you say. “Maybe it was a song you all sang as a band, in the other world. Try to sing it again.” So Hueningkai does, trying to remember all of the words, and Taehyun sits at the piano to help him, and while they are figuring out that mystery, you slowly exit the room and walk down the hallway. You’ve got your own mystery to solve. The apples are in Hueningkai’s truck, if you need them, but hopefully you won’t.

This isn’t a time loop. Not fully. 

It’s an alternate dimension. A utopia.

You know that Peotone High’s awards banquet starts at six PM sharp, and it’s only just five PM now. But if what you think is correct, the other person you need is here early, as well. She doesn’t have a reason not to be. So you walk toward the cafeteria doors and open them. Strangely enough, the room is mostly empty. The cafeteria is a holding area for everybody who’s doing something special for the banquet. 

But nobody is here -- except, in the middle of the room, holding her violin, is Rue. 

“Hey hey,” she says with a small smile. “I was expecting you.”

“You were?”

“Of course I was. I figured you’d come here first. It’s a much better idea than what you had before. Did you like the apples my parents gave you?”

It all but confirms what you thought before: not only are the apples Rue gave you weird, but she knew about it. “What about your violin, Rue? How’s that fugue coming along? You gonna play that for us tonight?”

Rue’s eyes change. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“What do you know about this, Rue? I know you know something. The apples are magic. This world’s repeating. You play the violin, and things repeat. But there’s also another world, and I can’t tell what’s real or what’s not.”

“How much did that silly boy tell you?” Rue asks.

“You mean Taehyun? Enough. You tell me the rest.”

And Rue shakes her head. “I can’t. I’m forbidden from telling you, you see. That’s how this game works. I am in charge of the game, but I can’t tell you how to win.”

Oh, so this is a game now? Tears spring to your eyes. “Do you think it’s a game to us? To -- my boys, my best friends, is it a game to them? Putting Taehyun through all of that? How many times have we looped, Rue? How many times have we been here? How many times have I fallen in love?”

“More than you know.” Rue looks away. “More than Taehyun knows.”

She puts her violin down on the desk in front of her, standing an entire cafeteria away from you. “But as I just told you, I cannot reveal any of that information to you. What you must do is figure out why you’re here, and what you can do to make things different. I’m just the one playing the fugue that holds everything together. That’s all.”

You slowly realize that Rue might not be the best friend you think she is. You could have sworn that you spent your entire lives together, that she lived in the nearest house down the street, that she was technically your neighbor. You think of all the sleepovers and play dates that your parents had once organized. Was all of that fake? What is real? 

“You’re not my best friend.”

“I’m not.” That confirms it. Rue is a stranger. She might be exclusive to this world. She might not even exist in the other one.

“Who are you, then?”

“I am forbidden from telling you that information as well.”

You don’t know how to get an answer out of her until you realize she just told you. “You just said. You’re the one playing the fugue that holds everything together.”

“I am. And at 6 PM, I will play the fugue again. What will happen when I do?”

“The world will loop again. Most everybody will forget what happened, unless you have the notebook.”

“That is correct. You’ve learned well.”

“Ugh, this is so frustrating! Why can’t you just tell me stuff?”

“Because it is my job to guide you, not to think for you.”

You pout at Rue. “What do you know?” you ask again, not expecting an easy answer. 

“More than you do, but I still can’t tell you. If I tell you, the fabric holding this reality together will crumble, and you’ll never get back to the real world.”

The real world… “The real world, where you’re not my best friend, and -- and where the boys are in a band, right?”

“Yes.”

“I was right, then. There are two worlds, this one where everybody is at school, and the other world where the boys are in a band and I go to see them in concert. Both worlds are looping on top of each other. And at the end of every loop, you play the fugue in this world, and we all die in the other one.”

“Correct.” Rue gives you a smile. “I’m so glad you’ve figured that out. Now, answer me this one question: what time is it?”

“5:14 PM, according to my phone.”

“And what time does the show start?”

“6 PM, when you play your fugue.”

“No.” Rue doesn’t budge. “What. Time. Does. The. Show. Start.”

And you wonder what she means until you know exactly what she means. “Eight PM. In Chicago, Rue, we’re not in Chicago.”

“Think about it. If you were in the other world right now, what would you be doing?”

“I’d probably be on the train into Chicago, going to their show.”

“So if you take a bite out of another apple, and you go back to the other world, in theory you’ll arrive in Chicago just before the show. If you don’t waste your time, you might have time to undo what happens.” Rue’s given you the answer that you thought was true. You could eat into an apple right now, go back, try to save things. You’re not sure how you could stop an entire theater fire, but it beats everybody dying.

“Even if the Vic still catches fire,” you wonder out loud, “if I can get all of us outside before it burns to the ground…”

“Then you will all survive. And we won’t need this loop anymore…”

“This loop…” 

“Was made to keep you safe.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This much I can tell you, now that you’ve figured it out. This reality, this world where you go to school with these five boys you love -- this is not the real reality. The real one is where they are in a band, and you go to see them in concert, and everybody dies in a fire. But that’s not a very happy reality, is it?”

“It’s not,” you say. “That’s why we’re in this reality instead. Because they’re allowed to be alive.”

“And this fake reality will repeat, over and over again, until the real reality is fixed. Do you understand?”

You nod. A plan is starting to form. “So if I eat an apple, I can go back and fix things. But...the boys can’t eat an apple to go back.”

“That is correct.”

“They only have the notebook. And that only does them good here!” You sigh. “How do I get them back?”

“You and everybody else in this world will return to the true reality if you destroy the time loop,” Rue explains. “That is the only way they can go back.”

You think for a moment until something clicks. “Everybody else?”

“Don’t tell me it’s taken you this long to comprehend that the boys don’t live with their real families? Everybody here was at the concert.” 

“Yeonjun’s mom was? Ashley and Soojin? All of Taehyun’s siblings?”

“Everybody you have met in this world dies in the fire. Except for me.”

“And what are you, like, an angel or something?”

Rue giggles. “That’s not the first time I’ve been called that. But no.”

You think for a moment. “If we all go back, nobody will remember. But if the boys are holding onto the notebook…”

“There may be some adjustment issues at first. It happens every time you transfer dimensions. But eventually, they will remember.”

“Let me go back then. I’ll be right back.” You run out of the cafeteria and back to the music room. If the boys can keep their memories, maybe they can alert the staff as to what’s happening. Maybe they can stop whomever it is, and they can have a safe concert! But...they would still remember this time, with you. Maybe you’ll just be a special fan.

You’re fine with that. If it means they get to stay alive. 

“Guys,” you yell, running into the music room, “I’ve got it.”

“Really?” Soobin asks, the first to turn from the piano. Hueningkai is still sitting in front of it.

“Yeah. I think we’re supposed to go back to the other world. We need to go back early, so we can stop the fire from happening, and then we can continue living our lives away from this time loop.”

“What do you mean, flower?” Beomgyu asks. 

“We can return to reality. And I know how. Don’t ask, you just have to trust me.” And you pause. “But there might be one condition. I know I’ll be able to remember everything that’s happened, but I don’t know how to get you guys to remember for certain. I think I know what might work, though. Taehyun, where’s your notebook?”

“It’s right here, sweetie, ” Yeonjun says, motioning to the top of the piano, where your backpack is.

You pull the notebook out of your backpack. “I need for all five of you to be holding onto this notebook. I’m going to leave the room, and I need you to all stay here and hold onto it. When I leave, I’m gonna go find a way to get us all back to reality, but I probably...won’t come back here for you.” You take a deep breath. You’re trying not to cry. “Hopefully we’ll all get back to where we need to be, and we’ll all remember. And this notebook should go with you. So even if the worst happens and you all forget who I am, you can read the notebook and remember everything we’ve been through. Just like we did this time around. I just -- I don’t know if we can ever come back here. This might be the end.”

“If this is the end, then I’m glad we’re ending it with you,” Soobin says, and he wraps you up in a big hug. You feel the other boys join the hug, Hueningkai getting up from the piano, and you let yourself bask in it for a moment. You’ve all been through so much...more than any of you could ever remember. Then, you pull yourself out of the hug, and you take the notebook and hold it in the middle of the air. One by one, the boys grab onto it, until all five are securely holding onto the notebook. 

“I will find you,” you say as you feel your voice crack. “I swear to it. I promise.”

“We know, jagi.” Taehyun smiles. “We love you. Go.”

And you turn tail, before your heart makes you stay, and you run away from them, away from the ones you love, into the light and reality and the possibility of making this okay. You pray to whatever God might be out there that they don’t let go of the notebook, no matter what happens. And you pray that you’ll be able to see them again...even if you never meet them face to face.

You run back into the cafeteria. “Okay, Rue. I’m ready. How do I destroy this reality? I can’t just magically eat an apple, right? That keeps things intact here.”

“You’re correct.” Rue picks up her violin. “There is only one way out of here. Perhaps you should find it.”

“I don’t -- I don’t know how,” you suddenly confess. “I know how to get back with the apples. I know about the notebook. But I don’t know how to destroy an entire time loop.”

“What a shame. And I had so much faith in you.” Rue puts her violin to her chin. “Perhaps we should just get started then.”

You panic.

Not the fugue. Anything but the fugue.

And then you realize. The fugue is what’s holding everything together.

Rue gets two notes into her fugue before you rush across the cafeteria. You shove her just right, then take the violin into your hands. You grab it around the neck, and you smash it against the nearest cafeteria table.

The cafeteria goes quiet.

The silence is eerie. 

You stare at the broken violin in your hands. What have you done?

“Well done,” Rue says behind you. You turn and catch one last glimpse of her, and she is smiling . “You have one chance to rewrite your reality. Good luck, guardian.”

Chapter Text

with a jolt, you awake on the train

you know youre on the train from how youre sitting, you feel the ground below you moving, the telltale signs of the carriage shaking along the tracks, the whistle of the train and the announcement that suddenly permeates the air, ivanhoe, this is ivanhoe, next stop is riverdale

you stir

choi soobin choi yeonjun choi beomgyu kang taehyun hueningkai tomorrow by together. good you still remember it hasnt left your brain yet you -- they were in peotone. right? uh oh. you whip out your phone and start posting notes in it because taehyun should still have the notebook and you try not to panic

they were with you in peotone and they were in the music room singing and they were singing nap of a star, you know that now but why were they there? there were two worlds and youre here now in the real world but the fake world is fading away

they lived with me and beomgyu lived in my house, you type, and beomgyu drove moms car and yeonjun had a mom who was sick and they all had different families. and it looped for many times, many weeks, and taehyun remembered and then hueningkai helped me make this all right. and rue. who is rue? then you remember what you have to do, i have to save them from the fire, it takes place before the show, that much i remember, padlocks on the side doors, arson

“Oh, you’re awake.”

you turn and see your mother she looks like she always has like nothing has changed and you suddenly get curious about something, mom can i see your keys? and she hands them to you like theres no big deal about it and theres the big key that beomgyu always used to start the car but there are lots of other house keys work keys stuff like that and there it is the second key on beomgyus ring that silver key with the x on it that he never knew what it went to

what does this key go to? and your mom shrugs, “I forgot a long time ago, you can take it off if you want to.” so you take it off and slip it in your pocket so you dont forget that the world was real that beomgyu was real and lived with you and the others lived there too 

you check the time and its 5:25 and you havent been out that long and youre going to the vic theater to go see tomorrow x together in concert theyre doing a special debut showcase hitting up cities across america and bts is in chicago too! theyre performing and your friends ashley and soojin are going to both shows theyre already in chicago bts is the first day and txt is the second and they have your poster

you remember it says welcome to chicago txt but theyve been here all along and you realize ashley and soojin were in the other world too do they remember? probably not because you are pretty sure there was a notebook that...taehyun had? and if you played your cards right the boys used the notebook to remember everything so maybe when you get to the vic theyll know everything they need to know and will have stopped the fire from ever happening

it takes a half hour to get to downtown chicago and you look out the window the whole time and it reminds you of something what does it remind you of? maybe you were up here taking the train with one of the txt boys you remind yourself that there were so many time loops that you dont remember and then the train goes under a huge building and when it emerges on the other side there is chicago, all around you everywhere and you feel your heart nearly trying to escape from your chest

this is it

this is it this was what rue was talking about you have to rescue them but how? so you scroll through social media but you cant find any hints, nobody is talking about suddenly setting the vic on fire, not even vaguely, what if its someone who doesnt speak english what if theyre korean? ugh that doesnt help you and your social feed now

you roll into millennium station at 6:02 PM and then you try not to make a mad dash towards the L your mom is taking her sweet time and just walking and meanwhile you want to explode, why isnt she walking faster she doesnt know the severity of the situation youre in but its not like you can just tell her because then shell think youre crazy and for all you know the boys have already alerted the authorities

you really hope the boys remember everything

you finally make your way to the L and the train is so packed that you cannot find seats so all you can do is hold onto the railing and pray that you get there in time but of course every stop takes forever and of course theres a problem with the train ahead of you and of course your mom is just not fazed by any of this and you tell yourself that this will be over soon and the boys will be rescued and on their merry way

wow

that is gonna suck when they go back to korea and leave you here in illinois all by yourself

I'm a town in Illinois, I'm a detour on a ride

For a pop can and pink Starburst, I'm a blur from the driver's side

I'm the last gas for an hour on 57 late at night

I am Circle K and Casey’s, I am dust you leave behind

thank god the L finally arrives in belmont and you nearly jump off the train but then you get a text message and its ashley saying she is waiting for you outside the theater and you text her back saying youre ready but with it being this late now its 6:40 and youve still got time the show does not start until eight but why are all these people here?!? why is there a long line to get in already? you have seated tickets for the balcony because ashley ordered your tickets ahead of time but how are you gonna get in much less find the boys like this?

oh right how are you gonna find the boys if security has them behind closed doors

you try not to panic. they probably already know whats happening. this is probably gonna be fine. and then you realize there is at least one thing you can check. so you stand in line with ashley and your mom and it takes about twenty minutes or so but you finally get through the line and show your tickets and an usher shows you to your seat. they have some of the balcony roped off for official staff members to tape and take pictures for later use and you figure itll end up in a new series on vlive or youtube or something but now. now you need to put this plan into place. 

so you do what anybody else would do. you tell your mother you have to go to the bathroom.

I am pumpkins in October, and corn from a roadside stall

I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl

I'm the pines behind the graveyard,

And the cool beneath their shade,

Where the boys have left their beer cans

I am weeds between the graves.

and you go alone but this time you go all the way down the stairs and you make sure to take your ticket stub with you and you exit the theater and you turn to the right first because the line to get inside the vic goes out to the left and you follow the building until there is an alleyway to your right and you go down it theres nobody down this alley and you know theres no back alley to the vic because the train station is there, you have to exit out the left or right sides in an emergency

there are two sets of big black doors here and they both are padlocked with heavy chains and locks

whoever is going to set the vic on fire is here and they are already doing their work

you run toward the chains, pulling on them with your hands, but they are so thick that not even a normal lock cutter could get through why would someone do something like this why would someone do something like this and you do the only thing you can think of to do, you bang on the doors hoping someone on the other side will hear you and you scream like your life depends on it because this is the only way out in the case of an emergency and do they have any clue an emergency is going to happen?!?!?!?

and you suddenly feel someone try to push on the doors on the other side but nothing gives way and you hear yelling from inside and you back off, and a minute or so later a pair of men who are probably maintenance workers for the vic come through the alley

“What are you doing?”

i dont know you say i got lost and im trying to get back in but these are locked did i miss the concert? you make it up on the fly but it works perfectly because these men look like they just want to help you now

“Oh, you’re going through the wrong door, you have to go around and to the left and get back in line.”

thank you, you say, oh, should those doors be locked like that?

“Absolutely not. Not sure who did that, but we need to fix that ASAP or else this building won’t be up to fire code. Thanks for pointing that out.”

My buses slog through snow to pick up schoolbound children

My sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them

I am a town.

you nod and you run back hopefully it wont be too late hopefully you can still at least get into the concert but now you cant just be secure knowing that the doors will be fixed now you know the arsonist is in here somewhere

you have to find the boys

you wait in the line for way too long again just to get back into the building and its so crowded that you cant move around much. the ushers are looking around hoping to get everybody in their seats as soon as possible so the show can begin promptly at eight and thats in forty minutes when does the fire start do you have enough time? where is the backstage area? you wish you had looked up the vic online first but you clearly did not have time for this you just need to find the boys 

you are trying not to panic and it is not working

“Excuse me?” the voice is of one of the ushers “Do you have your ticket ready?” and you try to look just past him theres a hallway back there and with him standing right here and others in the hallway it looks restricted what if the boys are back there do they have their cell phones do you even remember their numbers are they even the same you remember them being local illinois numbers before great you cant even reach out to them by text! you should have thought this through more but youre doing what you can you unlocked the doors

i do you say but i… and your voice trails off as you try to grab a thought 

“Well, this area is restricted, so —“

no, you say, trying to find your voice, at least for this usher. ive got something that i have to do i think we need to get everybody out of here something doesnt seem right the doors were locked outside and i just something doesnt feel right

the usher gives you a strange look 

“I think you need to sit down, how about I escort you to your seat —“

and then your eardrums erupt.

your vision goes white and you feel the floor get pulled out from underneath you and your entire body is vibrating what the hell but then you hit the floor and you realize there was an explosion the fire the fire has begun and everybody is inside are the front doors locked you dont know but 

the boys

you have to find the boys

I am a church beside the highway

Where the ditches never drain

I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name

I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age;

I am not your destination

I am clinging to my ways

I am a town.

you rush past the usher who is on the floor and you run past the security guards and the workers who must be from big hit and there is panic and at least three people knock into you and you start to feel dizzy and you notice there is smoke everywhere and its not super thick yet but you need to get out of here but first you need to find someone who knows where the boys are you need to know the boys are safe before you get safe

you run down the hallway as everybody runs in the opposite direction

you do your best to cover your face so you wont breathe in the smoke

where are they where are they i need to know where are they

then you hear screaming and banging from a bit further down so you turn the corner and you see three more grown men dressed in all black trying to pull the pins out of a doors hinges with their bare hands and you stand for a moment before you come back to and ask whats going on

“Get out of here!” they yell, “get away! There’s a fire!” and you swear you hear more yelling behind the door and it clicks when you see the sign saying its the green room

the boys theyre behind the door 

wait, you say, do you need help?

“It’s locked, you have to get out, now.”

“You can’t help with this, kid,” and another man pushes you away but your head spins some more and youre not sure if its because of the situation or the smoke

the boys are behind the door but the door is locked or jammed and they cant get it open and at this rate the fire will take over and everybody will still die

dont you have a key? you yell

“That would be great,” the third man yells with sarcasm in his voice, “we only have one and it’s gone.” your mind whirls with possibility and you stop thinking straight and in the mess the words you force out next are

what does it look like?

“It’s silver with an X on it, what do you care? Get out of here!”

I'm a town in Illinois, I am billboards in the fields

I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels

I am Amtrak, Walmart, Dollar General, and lights on Friday nights

I still ask for you to come here when I know you’re never mine

I am a town

your hands shake but you pull the key out of your pocket, beomgyus key, the key that you didnt know what it went to, and you dont know why its here but you have it now and you run forward and you insert the key into the lock and you turn hard

and as you turn the knob you feel a searing pain from the heat and you fall to the ground, another explosion probably, and your vision is fuzzy and you cant get back on your feet and this is how it ends, where is rue why cant you get another chance just one more chance you need your boys you need them to survive where are they 

soobin with his bunnies and yeonjun playing basketball and protecting his mom, and beomgyu and kai in the band and taehyun in the mathalon and it all makes so much more sense in this moment but theres so much more that you suddenly remember, a funeral for a boy whose name you barely knew at the moment but now you understand to be beomgyu and memorials held at peotone high school, and yeonjun taking you on countless dates to chicago over and over again and soobin being your friend and then friends turning into something more and taehyun crying over the mathalon at your house and then suddenly he was dead as well they found him at his house after he committed suicide and hueningkai, hueningkai loved you has always loved you and there were times when he asked you out and you accepted and there were others when you ignored him and he has definitely loved you before and you have more history than you thought and every week rue asked you to write the speech and you accepted and youve written dozens of speeches

you remember every loop

and the boys arent here to remember but they are behind the door and hopefully they can get out now that the door is open and thats good maybe thats all that matters and you can stay here and die in the fire and let them go and the world spins around you and it feels like youre falling and you fall against something soft if this is what it means to die then youre kind of okay with this

then the world shakes

I am a town

I am a town

Northbound.

something trips on your legs until you realize its not tripping something has grabbed them and for a second you wonder if youre being pulled somewhere but youre not youre being carried and one of the men probably has you finally and is getting you to safety and you do your best to breathe but all you can smell is smoke

the world erupts in a fury of sirens and sensory overload but the air is finally cleaner and there are hands, hands all over you, screaming names you know, sweetie and flower and bunny and you try to grab onto them but you cant move your arms so they come around you, and you lose count as to how many people grab onto you, sobbing and crying and the mix of languages and your boys are okay you all got out of the fire

and as you feel the fog pull you under, you feel someones hand brush up against yours and take it, interlacing their fingers with yours

you dont know which boy it is but you know youre not alone and thats all that matters as you feel yourself descend into sleep it reminds you of when you fell asleep with taehyun in the library sitting in the beanbag chairs

youre not alone

you can sleep now

and so you sleep.

goodbye, world.

“The boys met again, and the star woke up. And the boys felt it: Now, the magic happens.”

You open your eyes.

And oh, the room is so, so bright. You raise your hand to try and see, and you barely make out the line of a window to the left. Someone is sitting in front of the window, reading from a book. It looks like just a regular classroom, except it’s not from your school.

The lady puts down the book and looks at you. She seems so much older now, but you can tell it’s still her. That same blonde hair, up in a bun. Those same kind blue eyes.

“Hey, hey.”

“Rue.” The room has dimmed a bit, but it’s still bright. It’s low enough to see, and you get up from your seat and you run over to Rue’s teacher desk. She stands up, and you give her a hug. You feel like you should be feeling something more right now, but you don’t know what.

“You made it.”

“I did, I --” Your brain catches up with you. “I remember! Everything!”

“Of course you do.”

“I -- you knew I would? From the very beginning?”

“Of course I did. Well, I mean, I was hoping. There were a couple of moments there where I was unsure.” Now you fully understand that, while you still have no clue who Rue actually is, she’s not your best friend. But she was your best friend in the time loop world. So that has to count for something.

“Are you allowed to tell me who you are now?”

“No. Not fully. I hope that’s okay.” Rue gives you a sad smile. “There are some secrets that must stay secrets. I have to protect myself, after all.”

“Where are we?”

“Somewhere secret. It’s…kind of like my homebase, I guess, but not really. You get to come here if you win. And you won. You saved the day.” And it all hits you: the boys are alive. You destroyed the time loop and fixed reality. They’re going to be okay. 

“So what really happened?” you ask. Maybe now that the world is saved, you can know everything.

“If you want to know, the rules still stand. You must figure it out for yourself, and I will confirm if you are right. But as far as you know: you got out of the time loop world by destroying my violin, which was the artifact holding it together. Then, you went back to the real world, and you unlocked the door to the green room. The boys escaped the fire just fine.”

“The green room key. It was on Beomgyu’s car keys the whole time! Did you do that?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“And your violin was important to all of this. Why? I want to know everything. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“More secrets I cannot say. But I came here on purpose. To help you.”

Your eyes widen. “Why me?”

Rue pulls out an apple, but she does not eat it. You don’t make a motion to eat it, either -- you know what those things can do now, and you’re not sure you’ll ever eat an apple (or hear a fugue) the same way again.

“You know that, on May 12, 2019, there was a fire at the Vic Theater,” she says in a voice that is soft, but firm. She speaks with authority, like a teacher. “In the original timeline, most everybody inside perished because of one person. This story I can tell. She was a fan from Korea, a word I cannot pronounce, a crazy deranged fan of Bangtan Sonyeondan, actually. She did not want any other bands under the same company as BTS. And so, she went to BTS’s Chicago concert, and the next day destroyed the Vic Theater. No other men but seven. And that meant the five boys in TOMORROW X TOGETHER must die. So she killed them, and a lot of other people in the process.”

A sasaeng. “But in the new timeline?”

“You came back and saved the day. Because of your hard work, the emergency doors were unlocked, as well as the front doors. The only person who perished in the fire was the Korean woman who started it. There are injuries, of course, but you saved dozens of lives that night.”

You smile. “My boys. They’re safe.”

“They remember, by the way.”

“Oh? They do?”

“Of course. I thought I might warn you, before you get back to reality. You’re gonna have some stuff to clean up, that’s for sure. But I think I’ve got a couple of issues sorted out. I don’t think they’ll blame you for the fire, though some might still have their questions. I made sure it was clear who committed the arson. I don’t want you to return to reality and immediately be arrested. You’ve worked this hard. You deserve a good rest.”

“How do you do all of this?” you ask. Rue seems like she has the capability to manipulate reality directly. Not only is she saying that you won’t be blamed for the fire, but she seems to be the one responsible for getting you the green room key.

“Lots of practice and lots of coffee. I prefer hot chocolate, though. I try to keep my mind-altering substances to a minimum. I jump dimensions for a living. That’s an adventure enough for me.”

It should surprise you, this easy admission. “You jump dimensions for a living. So you’re like Doctor Who?”

“That’s what my boss would say. More of the wibbly wobbly, less of the timey wimey. Though I suppose we got a little timey wimey here this time around.”

“That’s so cool.”

“And you’ve got that ability, too, if you want it. Let me fill you in on what I can, before this ends.” Rue gives you the apple. “From now on, whenever you bite into an apple, time will freeze until you bite into it again. You obviously can’t change dimensions. The time loop world is permanently gone. Everybody is back to reality, and they’re safe, all your friends and the boys’ families. But if you ever need to pause time for a little while, you’ve earned that ability. Guardians of worlds usually get some sort of residual, and this is yours.”

“Residual?”

“Not only are you able to stop time now, but you remember everything that happened. So do the boys, thanks to the one boy’s notebook. You remember every single loop, but you are the only ones who do. What you do with that information is up to you, but if you publicize it, you’ll be hearing from my boss.” Rue laughs. “Or you won’t hear from her at all. She might just show up and erase your memory!”

You don’t want your memory erased. That doesn’t sound like any fun. “Okay, okay. But how am I going to talk to the boys? The company’s probably got them on lockdown now. And what if they got hurt?”

“You’ll see all of that when you get back to reality.” For a moment, Rue seems kind of sad. “I won’t be going back with you. I have to return to where I came from. To...the TARDIS, if you can put it that way. Think of me as a Time Lord, who noticed that the boys died in a fire and decided to come help. And a Time Lord always needs a companion. I mentioned before that I can’t directly save the world. It’s up to someone from that world to save it. That someone is you. You still have the power to fix the chaos, to solve the inconsistencies that pop up every once in a while. And there will be others, like you. Who knows? Maybe you’ll meet some of them in the future.”

“Will I ever ride in the TARDIS again?” you ask.

“If you’re lucky,” Rue says, “we’ll never meet again. But that is by design.”

You look down at the apple. You’re almost ready to return to reality. If this is even real. It seems more like a dream, or being stuck in limbo, than anything else. “I’m not dead.”

“Nope. Not dead.”

“One last question. Why me? Did you pick me to save the world, and to save the boys?”

“Of course I did.” Rue gives you a sincere smile. “Because you loved them, sincerely and fully, and it is that love that drove every one of your actions forward. And it always will. You’re more than a fan. You’re the star that shines on them, just like the story says.”

You hold the apple in both hands, satisfied with her answer. “Goodbye, Rue. I don’t know what else to say, this is kind of bittersweet…”

“Then think of it this way, Pond. If you ever need me again, I’ll be there. Maybe not playing the fugue this time. Maybe I’ll treat you to some interdimensional dubstep.”

“That would be fun. And we’ll drink hot chocolate. And --”

“Oh, stop with it all and just eat the apple already. I’m getting sentimental.”

You nod and take a bite out of the apple. You feel reality tilt, just a little bit. The edges of your vision blur, just as they did when Rue restarted the world every time. You wish that she could come back with you; she did so much to help.

But then you think of your boys, and --

“...hosting a concert tonight, we are told it was a tour of a new K-Pop band under the same label as worldwide sensation BTS. This drew a sold out house, and the fire started just before the show, at 7:41 PM. Police are suspecting arson after padlocks were discovered on the emergency exits, and signs of arson activity were found backstage…”

Wait.

Oh, hell no.

You know this. You know where you are. You’re where the walls are white and you smell something stale and aw shit, you’re in the hospital. But Rue said you’re not dead, so you stay quiet and listen to the television.

“As of yet, we do not know who started this fire or if they made it out alive, but as of right now, 10:12 PM, everybody else is safe and accounted for, or in stable condition at Chicago area hospitals. Please stay out of the Lakeview area if you can.”

The Vic still caught fire. It still burned down. Everything was destroyed. But everybody made it out alive! Well, everybody except one. You say a prayer to Rue that the soul of the Korean fan who started the fire will rest, wherever it goes. Then, you open your eyes.

The hospital looks similar to before, but brighter. The nice black nurse from before is back! She’s taking care of a couple of things as you wake up, and she talks to you, fills you in on what happened even though you already kind of know. First of all, it’s Monday the 13th, and you might just cry when she says that. You finally made it out of the time loop! And she doesn’t know why you’re crying, but she assumes you’re overwhelmed, so she lets you get it all out of your system.

There are lots of people from the Vic in the hospital, and you don’t know why you’re really here until you properly try to inhale and you feel like death. Being in the Vic as long as you were means that you inhaled way too much smoke. The nurse informs you that they’ve had blood tests done, and they check out okay, but now that you’re awake you will need a few x-rays to ensure you don’t have bad lung damage. You also notice you are on oxygen, like you were the last time you were here. Hooray.

Your mom then comes in! She’s okay; she was looking for you when the explosion happened and so she got out the front door right away. This isn’t to say she hasn’t been worried sick, but the hospital staff has been there for her as well. Donations are flooding in from Chicago area residents to help the families affected, and your mom has a hotel room downtown that you’ll also have to stay at for a week or two after you’re discharged. If you have any further lung issues, Peotone has no emergency room, so they want you to stay in the city. 

It probably means you’ll miss your high school graduation. But at the moment, you’re kind of okay with that. 

You finally get a decent (hospital) meal, and you learn that Ashley and Soojin are here as well; they are both awake, and Soojin was discharged earlier today. Ashley can’t come downstairs, but you’re able to call her room and tell her you’re doing fine. You remember both Ashleys and both Soojins -- the ones from before the time loop, who were your friends and fellow TXT fans; and the ones who were on the mathalon team with Taehyun for dozens of time loops. They just...don’t remember the latter. But in Rue’s absence, you’re glad you’ve made friends with the freshmen and that you have someone to talk to.

“They’re calling you a hero on TV,” Ashley says over the phone. “I think they had their questions at first. But the maintenance guys said on TV that you noticed the doors were padlocked!”

“I did.”

“Wow. That’s just...wow. You really saved everybody’s lives.” It doesn’t really feel like you’re a hero. It would probably feel more like it if you could see that your boys are okay. But you’re pretty certain that they’re on a plane back to Korea by now.

“Do you know if the boys made it out okay? The TXT boys.”

“Oh, yeah, that was all over Twitter! They’re all okay. I don’t think they’ve left Chicago yet, though. You shouldn’t open your Twitter just yet, someone needs to clear your notifs.” Ahh, that’s right. You have social media. You just didn’t use it when you were in the time loop! You didn’t need to!

You spend the rest of the day trying to get back to normal, mentally. You go in for a couple of x-rays, and then you sleep soundly through the night. On Tuesday morning, you’re allowed to get out of your bed and take walks around the floor, as long as you take your oxygen with you. You’ll have it in the hotel room while you stay here, and once you’re okay, you’ll be cleared to stop dragging it around. But for now, it’s kind of nice, because it’s still really hard to breathe, especially when you’re walking. And everybody waves at you and says hi when you walk by, and you quickly learn it’s because everybody knows you as the concertgoer who saved lives at the Vic Theater. Are you going to live with this title for the rest of your life? Well, the boys are alive, so you’re kind of okay with it. 

You take a nap just after lunchtime, and then you meet with the doctors. Your x-rays are fine enough that you can leave the hospital tomorrow, but you’ll have to stay in Chicago. Your mom has been in touch with your school; turns out the banquet did happen, minus Rue and her fugue, and your awards are being kept in the school office. Then, the nurse says you have another visitor, someone whom everybody else has to leave for. “They’re somebody really important, so please make sure to be on your best behavior. They’re coming to thank you for your acts of valor, regarding the fire.”

“Okay,” you say, your throat still sore but finally able to talk semi-okay now. You’re expecting maybe a Chicago firefighter, or a police chief, to come in. Maybe it’s one of the people who were in the boys’ families; maybe one of them somehow remembered something. But the man who walks in is tall, suddenly unknown and yet you know him in the same instant. Who is he? Why does he look so familiar?

It’s not until he asks everybody else to leave and talks to some security guards outside the door in Korean that you realize exactly who this is.

Kim Namjoon.

RM from BTS.

What is he doing here?

“Well,” he says in English. “I would have wanted to bring the entire band with me, but they thought that was too much of a security risk. And I tend to get sent when it comes to speaking English, so…I hope you’ll forgive me for this intrusion.” He puts his hands together, quickly, in a praying motion. “You are the one they spoke of on the news, correct?”

“…I guess?”

“I heard that you saw the locked doors, and you told somebody. But I also heard that you somehow had the key to the green room.”

“I did.” You have no clue where the key is now, but you’re okay with that.

Namjoon’s facial expression changes, and he first gives you a full ninety-degree bow, and then gets on the floor. You try to sit up, not sure what he’s doing until you realize he’s showing full respect to you.

“I am indebted to you,” he says. “I have no clue how you did it, but — our hoobaenim, you saved them, thank you, I cannot thank you enough.”

You feel tears spring to your face. And you try to find the words to say, but they disappear before you can bring them to life. So you cry, alone, until Namjoon gets up off the floor and sits across from you, drying his own tears. 

“We are all thankful,” he says, composing himself again. “We have been protected within our company. We never thought that something like this would happen. We knew they were here, wanted to support them and their dreams. But…we weren’t anywhere near the fire when it happened. We were powerless. When we heard what had happened, we felt like…” He makes a motion toward his chest. “Like our hearts had been ripped out. They’re our brothers, in the company. So from my brothers, from Yoongi and Seokjin and Taehyung and Jungkook and Hoseok and Jimin, and from me. We are all thankful. Everybody in my company is thankful. And there are fans, from all around the world, young ones who do not have to meet tragedy because of this accident.”

You nod. 

“But enough about me,” Namjoon says. “I still wanted to come introduce myself, and to meet you, face to face. I’m sure you’ve been through a lot in the past couple of days.”

He has no idea. “I have.”

Namjoon gives you an odd look. Then, “You don’t…know the boys from somewhere else, do you? Did you ever live in China with Hueningkai? Or did you meet Yeonjun while he was in L.A.?”

You shake your head. What is he getting at?

“Here’s the odd thing about all of this,” Namjoon says as he shakes his head with a smile. “The boys in TOMORROW X TOGETHER — my hoobaenim, the boys you saved in the fire — they are refusing to leave Chicago without you.”

What? “That makes no sense,” you say, just as you realize it makes all the sense in the world. They remember you. And now that they’re okay, the company is trying to get them to go back to Korea, like nothing happened. And they’re refusing.

“I don’t understand what’s so special about you,” Namjoon says. “But all five of them are being very stubborn. Almost out of character. Soobin, their leader, has even been saying that they will quit the company and terminate their contracts because of the stress they’re under. They’ve stated they want you to come with them, no exceptions.”

“Back to Korea?” You’re in shock. It reminds you of that dumb question Mr. Johnson always asked you: what are you going to do with your life?

“Maybe you can talk to them and try to convince them of otherwise,” Namjoon says. “But I also wanted to meet you to see if you could be of any help to us, back in Korea. Normally there are strict protocols for our employees at Big Hit Entertainment. But you don’t seem like a crazy fan, not at all. You seem like a normal person who has a weird connection with these boys.” He wrinkles his mouth just so. “There’s something you all aren’t telling us. Something… weird. Odd. Out of this world. You can’t just show up with the key to the green room and fix everything. So you’re either a psycho, which I now can verify you’re not, or you’re their guardian angel. Literally.”

You have no clue how much you can tell Namjoon. So you don’t say a word.

He laughs. “Am I even remotely close? Okay, let’s put it this way. You rescuing the boys was a miracle. Did you get help from God or something like that?”

Rue, you think, and you wonder if the expression on your face gives it away. So you simply nod. “I cannot say anything.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I figured it was something oddly supernatural.” Namjoon gives you another, much smaller bow. “Please thank the powers that be, for they have helped you. Do the boys know they were saved by magic, or by God?”

“They know.” More like a mathalon notebook and a Bach fugue in G minor, but close enough. 

“Okay. You don’t have to tell me anything. Especially if it will somehow undo the miracle that has happened here.”

“They knew me before,” you say. “Let’s…just say that we had a lot of time to get to know each other. Magically. Some time in the past. And when it came to this concert, I wanted to come and support them, and when the fire happened, I think it’s that magical connection that helped me save them.”

“I’ll take that as the story for now,” Namjoon says. “You would think, as someone who doesn’t believe in God, that I would also refuse to believe in miracles. But there could be science behind this. What if it’s not magic at all, but something regarding time travel, or an alternate dimension? String theory exists for a reason, after all. The idea of multiple universes, all on top of one another, isn’t so farfetched. We just don’t quite have the science to fully prove it yet. For all we know, there are multitudes of other universes out there, worlds where our hoobaenim still died in the fire, worlds where BTS and TXT don’t exist at all.” 

He is so close, and he has no clue how right he is, and you’re wondering if Rue sent Namjoon to help you somehow.

“What matters is that you saved them in this world,” Namjoon says. “And however that happened, I’m not going to judge. I will just call it a miracle and leave it at that. Meanwhile, I’m willing to talk to my boss and see what we can do. I want to keep the lines of communication open. Let’s see if we can get the others back to Korea for now, and then we’ll see if we can find a place for you at Big Hit. After all, we don’t want them quitting the company this soon. This is traumatic for them, too. And if your support is what they need, then I want you to be there, to always provide it for them.”

You nod. You’re glad you don’t have to fully explain yourself, but this feels like a miracle on its own. Namjoon wants you to travel to Korea and work for Big Hit, so you can always be near TOMORROW X TOGETHER? “It…sounds fantastic. You’re right. I want to support them, always. Like I have before, like I always will.”

“Always,” Namjoon says, and you smile. That word rings true, as it has for the past weeks that you’ve been trapped, as it does now. Now, more than ever, you want to see them. 

“When will I see them?”

“If you are being discharged tomorrow, we are renting space nearby in a hotel, and you can meet with them in one of the conference rooms there. I will make sure the guards stay outside so you can talk about whatever…weird space miracle stuff you need to.”

“Thank you, Namjoon. Thank you.” If you didn’t love BTS before, you’re certain you love them now. 

You’re discharged the morning of May 15th, and your mom is there to help you take your oxygen tank to the hotel room. It’s on the first floor literally down the street a block from where the hospital is. Your window looks out over the nearby road, and just beyond that, you can see Lake Michigan. When you check the map, you see that the Navy Pier with the Ferris wheel is nearby! You won’t be able to go on it with your oxygen, but once you’re off of it, maybe you can ride it before you head back to Peotone. 

The hospital gets you extra tanks to last you until your next appointment on Friday; they also instruct you to take breaks from the oxygen when you are stationary, and to have it in when you’re on the move in case you get winded. The Big Hit crew — BTS, TXT, and all of the employees — are staying at the Lowes just down the street, so the hospital provides you a ride to ensure your oxygen is transported safely. 

The Lowes is sleek and modern in its design; you and your mother are escorted down a hallway to a board room. There are security guards who check your ID, and your mother stays behind, letting you go ahead. A Big Hit employee escorts you further down the hall and around a corner, where Kim Namjoon is waiting. 

“They wanted to make it special,” he says with a laugh. “So you go in first, and make yourself at home.”

You go into the meeting room. It’s quiet, with one long table and a bunch of chairs around it. You decide to sit close to the front, parking your oxygen tank there and sitting down. You take the cannula out and turn the oxygen off. Hopefully the boys don’t literally knock the breath out of you when they come in! 

But now that you’re actually sitting here, you’re nervous. This will be the first time you’ve seen them since you left them in the Peotone High music room, around the piano, hanging onto the notebook. From the sound of things, it doesn’t seem like any of them were hospitalized, which is good. But will they remember everything? What if they only remember the one loop? What if you have this all wrong somehow?

The door opens.

You look up. It’s only one of the boys, but you’d recognize that dyed hair and sincere smile anywhere. It’s the same smile that lived with you for so many weeks.

“Flower.”

“Beomgyu,” you whisper, and you feel yourself start to cry.

Beomgyu shuts the door behind him and runs to your chair. He pulls you up out of your chair and into his arms, wrapping you up tight. And you do feel a little dizzy, but you can’t tell if that’s because of the lack of oxygen or if it’s because Choi Beomgyu, your Choi Beomgyu is hugging you again. 

“I missed you so much, flower,” he says, voice cracking. “Flower. My flower.” He pulls away from you and kisses you on the forehead. “Are you okay?”

“I am, I — how much did they tell you? How much do you know?” You suddenly pause to take in a long, shaky breath. “I need to sit down.”

“Sit, flower.” You sit, and Beomgyu sits near you. He reaches around his neck, and you suddenly realize he’s wearing all the same clothes he wore that last day you were in the time loop. He pulls off the ever-familiar pick necklace and puts it in your hands. “I don’t want to put it on right now and choke you,” he says, “but I —“

“I love you, too,” you say. “We all made it, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. Did Namjoon- hyung meet with you?”

“Yeah, he did, he talked to me about —“ You pause. “Beomgyu, are you speaking English?”

He laughs. “Yeah! We were all okay in English before, but now we’re really really fluent. Taehyunnie thinks it’s because we spent so long in that little town with you. Man, now I want some Gyro Loco.”

“Oh, my God, me too.” You both laugh. “So Namjoon said that you guys want me to go to Korea with you?”

“There’s someone who can talk about that better than I can,” Beomgyu says. “We planned all this out. I just wanted a moment to be with you. And they all said I should go first, because we spent the most time together. But we remember everything, flower. And you’re right. We want you with us. We don’t want to be apart from you, not now, or not in the future.”

The door opens again, and you see the sly grin of Choi Yeonjun poke through. “Are you two having fun without me?”

“Come pull flower up,” Beomgyu says, “flower can’t really stand on their own.”

“Yes, I can,” you say, pouting, but you only really manage to stand up from the chair with Beomgyu’s help. You nearly trip, but you fall nicely into Yeonjun’s arms, and he wraps you up, squishing you tightly.

“My sweetie.”

“Yeonjunnie.” You laugh, then you lean forward, almost ready to kiss him, but he stops you. “Hey!”

“No kisses,” Yeonjun says. “I mean, I will kiss you eventually. But we all agreed there’s someone else who gets the first kiss from sweetie. Did Beomgyu tell you we all still wanna date you?”

“I was going to save that for you,” Beomgyu says.

“You all want to date me? In Korea? But, uh, isn’t that practically death for idols?”

“Okay, so here’s how I figure this happens,” Yeonjun says, and you now notice he’s wearing his Peotone High varsity jacket. But the Peotone High words have all been removed, and it just looks like a fashion item now. In place of the Blue Devils logo is a chenille apple, white on blue. “You come back, you work for Big Hit, we’re busy, but we get to see each other sometimes, BTS goes to bat for us, and the tabloids will be so busy talking about which one of us you might be dating that they won’t even consider you’re dating all five of us.”

“We want you to stay in the dorms,” Beomgyu says. “Obviously on your own floor! But then when we’re home, you can come visit us.”

“If they say no, we’ll say no back,” Yeonjun says. “Those are the rules.”

“This has to be crazy,” you say. 

“Well, they don’t know what we’ve been through.” Yeonjun keeps you in his one-sided hug. “You are ours, and we will only continue onward if our star is there with us.”

“It really is like that song you guys put out,” you say. “The one you sang in the music room. Once upon a time, there were five boys and a star. I guess I’m that star.”

“All of our fans are that star,” Beomgyu reminds you. “But you represent all of our fans, now. You’re like, the biggest fan of all.”

“You’re the one who gets to be with us,” Yeonjun says as the door opens again. “Oh, who could it be now?”

“It’s Soobin!” Choi Soobin says as he enters the room, shutting the door behind him. “There’s my bunny!” He smiles and doesn’t move from the entrance, suddenly starting to cry. 

“Aw, Soobinnie.” Yeonjun helps you walk across the room without your oxygen, taking your hand and passing you off to Soobin. You easily collapse into Soobin’s arms, but pause once your head hits his chest. “Did one of you carry me out of the Vic?”

“Soobin did,” Beomgyu says from his chair.

You look up at Soobin. “You did? I don’t remember any of that.”

“I did.” Soobin pulls you back into his arms. “The door was unlocked finally, and we rushed out, and we saw you on the floor, and Yeonjun said for me or Hyuka to grab you. So I did, and we followed the others out. We were all trying to wake you up, but you were unconscious when we got outside.” He briefly kisses you on the forehead, as Yeonjun did. “We were all so worried about you, bunny. But we’re never going to be apart again.”

“I mean. They’ll probably take you back, first. But I want to go to Korea with you all. I never had a plan for my life before, and if my destiny is to be your biggest fan, then I’m okay with that.”

“I’m so glad you’re okay.” Soobin sways with you in his arms. “I’m so glad, bunny. I love you, so, so, so much.”

You snuggle close to Soobin as you have so many times before. “You’re wearing your hoodie, too! But it doesn’t say Peotone on it anymore. It’s the same blue color.”

“Yeah, we thought that was weird. But we like it. Is it okay if I keep wearing it?”

“Of course. Keep it close, both you and Yeonjun.” You turn back to Beomgyu. “Do you want your necklace back?”

Beomgyu shakes his head. “It’s yours, flower.”

“Maybe you can bring him a new one for when you arrive in Korea,” Yeonjun says. “Find him something cool here in Chicago.”

“Yaah!” Beomgyu hides his face behind his hands. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to!”

“Maybe I’ll get some beads and I’ll make it say Gyro Loco or something,” you say, and you all laugh. Then, there’s a knock at the door. Soobin leads you just away from the door as you say, “Come in.” If they’re all really coming in, one by one, then either Taehyun or Hueningkai are next.

The door opens, and Hueningkai sticks his head around the corner. “Alo, Piu Piu!”

“Alo, Molang!” 

He rushes to you and pulls you away from Soobin and up into a bridal-style hold, spinning you around in circles. “My Piu Piu! You’re here! You’re here!”

“I’m here, Hueningkai,” you say. “Now and forever. Always.”

“You’re really gonna come back with us?” he asks, sitting you down on the ground again.

“Hopefully soon. I’m sure they have a lot to figure out.”

“They have to figure it out soon,” Yeonjun says. “I am not gonna have our first comeback without you.”

“Same,” Soobin says. 

You think for a moment. “Beomgyu had the pick necklace, Soobin had his hoodie, and Yeonjun had his varsity jacket. And I’m assuming Taehyun still has his notebook?”

“It’s how we got here,” Yeonjun says.

“And we can all remember everything now!” Hueningkai smiles at you. “Piu Piu, are we all in the Pass It On Club now?”

“I guess so! Does that mean we can fix more things for TXT fans?” You pause. “Didn’t you guys have a fandom name?”

“We did, but there were issues with it,” Soobin says, and he looks sad for a minute. It seems to be something that they don’t want to talk about.

“Well, maybe we can think of a new name for one together,” you say. “I’m going to be your star, and I’m going to always be with you. Even when there are clouds, even when the night is super dark, or the sun is shining so you can’t see me. Even if I’m here in Illinois, and you’re across the world in Korea. One way or another, I will always find my way back to you.”

“Always,” Beomgyu says. “I like that.”

“So how do you intend to keep this alwaysness going after we leave?” Yeonjun asks with a smile.

You laugh. “I kind of like that. I don’t think it’s proper English, but I think it describes all of us perfectly. Alwaysness.”

“Alwaysness,” Hueningkai says. And then you realize there’s one person left missing from your group. And nobody else has kissed you yet.

“You made him go last, didn’t you?” you ask Soobin, emphasizing the one missing.

Soobin shrugs, looking away. “You are the one who saved us, bunny. But he’s the one who figured out the secret of the world first. He’s a bit more special.”

“Not more special,” you say. “Each one of you is unique and different. Just as I couldn’t choose between you all in the time loop world, I can’t here. I love each one of you, uniquely and differently, and all the same. I don’t think I could ever pick between the five of you. And if all five of you want me to go to Korea with you, then I say that’s my happily ever after.”

The door opens behind you.

You turn.

Kang Taehyun is standing in the door. He is wearing his Metallica t-shirt. His glasses are on. And he is carrying his ever familiar purple mathalon notebook.

“Jagi.”

The room goes quiet. And you realize Soobin’s just a little right. If it weren’t for Taehyun, you’d all still be stuck in the time loop. You’d be okay, but you wouldn’t be moving forward, together, like this.

“We made it.”

“We did, jagi.”

You let go of Hueningkai and reach for Taehyun’s shoulders. “Is this better than the sporting goods aisle at Walmart?”

“So much better.” And you let him wrap his arms around you, and he takes your breath away as he kisses you, briefly, quickly, the first kiss in the real world from one of your boys. He still holds onto the notebook like it’s a lifeline, but you don’t mind at all. It’s proof that this happened, all of this is real. 

You smile against his lips as you pull back. “Can I call you jagi, too?”

“Of course,” Taehyun says, and then he lurches forward, suddenly. But it’s just because Hueningkai now has his arms wrapped around Taehyun. And one by one, the other boys crowd around you and everybody ends up in one big group hug, laughing and crying just a bit. Reunited, and it feels so good.

Choi Soobin. Choi Yeonjun. Choi Beomgyu. Kang Taehyun. Hueningkai. And you.

TOMORROW X TOGETHER. Forever.

I’m looking with immigrant’s eyes upon some promised land

And dreaming with my heart outstretched, as if it were my hand

It takes the entire summer to get your work visa cleared. But it finally is, and your ticket is booked straight out of O’Hare. You’ll go through customs when you arrive in Seoul, and then a Big Hit employee will be there to pick you up and take you straight to their headquarters, where your new life will begin.

It’s been a long three months or so. You were able to go back home, to Peotone, just in time to walk across the stage and graduate. When you did, just before you took your diploma from Mr. Johnson, you decided to test Rue’s gift. You took an apple out of your pocket, and you took a bite, and sure enough, reality froze. You stepped on stage, looked out among the crowd, and saw your friends. And after reliving the same week for months on end, you let yourself really soak up the moment that mattered. 

You hung out with Ashley and Soojin all summer long. The two girls are the only ones in town who know you’re going to Korea; the excitement among everybody else has thankfully faded, and the Vic and your rescue are no longer in the news. Soojin and her family helped you get more thoroughly introduced to Korean culture, and they even give you a hanbok that you feel is appropriate for you. You make sure to pack it before you go to Seoul; the Chuseok thanksgiving holidays will be next month, and you want to surprise the boys.

And I’ll hit the Cross-Bronx just in time to beat the rush hour lock

I have no clue what time it is on this world’s broken clock

You’ve been talking with them over an encrypted online chat. It’s the only way you can talk with them, but it’s gotten you through. There is only one chat, and there are moments where the others leave so you can talk to one boy, one on one. You also look up how to properly have a polyamorous relationship online; this one seems pretty simple, since the five boys love you and you love the five boys, but you want to ensure nobody is left out. This means spending time with each of them, and sometimes ‘double dating’ in the chat room as well. Soobin agrees that the same schedule should be kept once you arrive in Korea; as long as there is communication between everybody, then it should work just fine. 

And in those moments where they have a comeback and you can’t see any of them, you’ll be kept busy with company affairs. You’re officially being hired as a junior translator; you’ll be working with other translators to help translate TXT’s videos into English. As you get better at Korean, other lines of employment will open up to you, and you can technically do whatever you want to do. There are only a few rules: you cannot work in anything that directly helps the boys, such as coordinating their outfits or doing their makeup. There must always be one line of separation, to ensure things stay proper and to throw off any suspicion. But the other employees also know that you are their special friend (they just don’t know how special), so they have been instructed to only be helpful to you and to help you reach your potential in the company. 

I’m a stranger here, no one you would know

I’m from somewhere else — well, isn’t everybody, though?

And now, you’re ready. You’re all packed, your mom took you to the airport, and all that’s left between you and the boys is one single flight. You send them a quick message — Okay, on the plane now. See you soon. Love you all. — and then put your phone on airplane mode. You have some Korean dramas downloaded to watch during the flight, so you’ll stay busy. But you can’t stop this beating of your heart. You’ll get to see them all again, soon. And what will happen when you get to Korea? Only you will know that. 

The plane taxis away from the gate and onto the tarmac. You’re seated near one of the windows on the left of the massive plane; there are all sorts of people on this plane, going to Korea. Each one has a story, and it finally feels like the next chapter of yours is starting. You wish that you could thank Rue, just one more time, but you’ll just have to thank her by living your life to the fullest from here on out. 

You reach around your neck and find Beomgyu’s pick necklace. You rub your thumb against it. This story may be done, but for you, it may continue as you wish. What adventures will you have in Korea with the boys of TOMORROW X TOGETHER? That is a story that only you can tell. And as each chapter fades into another, as the Dream Chapter ends and new chapters begin, you make a vow, here and now, to stay with your boys, no matter what, in an unending state of alwaysness. For they are yours, and you are theirs, and Rue might have had magic in her violin, but now the magic happens. 

I don’t know where I’ll be when the sun comes up

‘Til then, sweet dreams, goodnight, America

The plane accelerates, taking off, then soars to the left, climbing higher and higher. When you look out the window, you see Chicago below, the Willis Tower, Lake Michigan, and you think you can even see the pier below. Goodbye, Illinois. Goodbye, Peotone, and the countless memories you’ve made there. From now, all of the memories you make are yours and yours alone. 

And as the plane climbs even higher, disappearing through the clouds, you feel as light as a feather. There are some days when the time loop world feels like a distant dream, like it happened to someone else. But your life with TOMORROW X TOGETHER is not just some old-fashioned American dream. 

It’s your reality.

Goodbye, America.

Hello, TOMORROW X TOGETHER.

I am your star.

Chapter Text

Rue faded into the fold of reality, appearing in an office building, somewhere unknown. The hallways were white, sterile, and very empty. Rue’s blue dress and yellow haired bun stood out like a sore thumb. 

But she walked down the hallway, raising her cell phone to a door, unlocking it. “Agent de la Pasquale, reporting for duty,” she said, knowing that Sarah would be behind the door, at her desk -- but she wasn’t.

“What are you doing here?” she asked with a laugh as Raz Hagopian lounged in the desk chair, feet up on top of the desk, hands behind his head, grinning like an idiot. The rest of the office was untouched, meticulously clean, the way Sarah liked it. 

“Figured someone might wanna welcome you back.”

“It’s a good welcome.” Rue went around the desk and gave Raz a quick hug. Then, she sat in the chair opposite the desk. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

“I won’t.” Raz was typically Rue’s partner. They would always go out on missions together, but after a badly failed mission, they were separated and given different jobs to do. It was how Rue had suddenly found herself in Peotone, Illinois, despite never living there in her previous life.

“Where is Sarah? And why do you have your shoes on her desk, oh, you nasty man!”

“My shoes are clean.” This was why Raz and Rue made such an excellent team: Raz made sure Rue tried to be laid back sometimes, while Rue kept Raz up to code and made sure he followed all the regulations that were needed. “And Sarah’s on vacation.”

Rue stared back at Raz in shock. “Sarah doesn’t go on vacation.” The literal life and death of entire universes depended on Sarah, their boss, and she was on vacation?

“Oh, she’s still got work she’s doing. I’m here to take down your report from the time loop you were working on. Heck, I don’t even know anything about time loops. I wanna know everything.”

Rue sat across from Raz as he pulled out a cell phone and started recording her voice. At this point, she was all business. She had to be. This was her job.

“Time loops happen when events occur out of time in reality. The plan of destiny, per se, is altered in such a way that reality starts to distort. We’re usually talking mass casualty events that aren’t destined to happen. I got sent to a Chicago, and the event in question was a theater fire.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. There was a boy band performing at the theater, and everybody behind the scenes was killed, including the band. Not all of the patrons got out. It was bad. What’s worse is that someone deliberately locked the exit doors. It’s like someone wanted them all to die.”

“That’s...legitimately horrible.”

“So the timeline freaked out. Those five boys weren’t supposed to die. They were supposed to go on and have an amazing career, change lives. Because they died, reality couldn’t go on without them. And when reality can’t continue, it backtracks and starts repeating time, to try and see if it will get a different result. At first, the loop is small, a few minutes at most, and it repeats several times to see if people will make different choices, if the fire is stopped, the boys survive. If they do, the loop ends, and reality continues the way it’s supposed to."

“I’m guessing the boys still died,” Raz said. 

“Yes. They died every time the loop played out. And as time goes further and further back, trying to fix things, it starts corrupting the space around it. So you end up with an alternate dimension on top of reality. Everything that was broken in reality transfers to the alternate dimension, and it kind of just floats around in circles, repeating itself for no reason.” Rue grinned. “This is why we get sent to help with time loops, Raz. We help entire universes split apart and join together. We’re masters of string theory. We can handle a little time loop. We just can’t do it alone.”

“Oh, so you needed a guardian still?”

“Yes. We can’t do anything. Someone residing in the time loop has to do all the hard work, and it’s our job to help them.”

“How did you pull that off?”

“So here’s what happened, Raz. I went to the alternate dimension, stayed in the time loop for a few days, watched events unfold, watched these boys be fine in the alternate dimension only to die in reality over and over again. As I watched them die, I started noticing one person in the crowd more than normal. It was a new fan of theirs, just a kid in high school, but someone I could tell really loved them and was their fan. So I picked this kid to be our guardian! I just logged them in the system like normal, and all of a sudden, the alternate dimension shifted to match our guardian’s reality. Instead of being a blank slate, everybody was suddenly living in a small town in Illinois, going to this person’s high school and living in peace.”

“So they were living in a utopia forever?”

“Yeah. I monitored the alternate dimension, this utopia of Peotone, and then when things got too close to returning to normal I started the time loop. Everybody’s memories would reset, and we’d go back to Monday like nothing happened. I actually used Agent Xiao’s tech to restart it.”

“Oh, really? How’s that?”

“You remember how I played violin in a past life? I played a little violin solo for them. That’s the beauty of a fugue.”

Raz smiled. “You’re good at this.”

“You have to be.” Rue sighed. “I need some Saint Arbucks, Raz. Time loops are exhausting. The same thing, week after week, for years on end? I’m glad I’m immortal.”

“Is it standard rules, where the guardian has to fix the time loop, and you’re not allowed to help?”

“Mostly. I got lucky. One of the boy band members started figuring things out and making notes. I wrote special permission into his school supplies, so even if his memory was wiped, he would read the book and remember again. He also figured out that, if you managed not to hear the fugue, you wouldn’t restart the loop with everybody else and you’d end up back in reality. That’s how you fix a time loop, Raz. You have to exit the alternate dimension, go back to reality, and fix what destiny wants you to fix. In this example, our guardian had to make sure the boy band members didn’t die in that fire. And that’s what our guardian did. They figured out what was going on, and they exited reality just in time to get to the theater and fix things.” She sticks her tongue out. “I…might have cheated, just a teeny bit, but I don’t think Sarah will care. I’ll log that once I write my reports.”

“Wow.” Raz gaped at Rue. “That’s amazing, but... babam , this makes my head hurt. So everything’s safe now?”

“Yep! The boys are alive, reality is fixed, and now they’re going on tour or whatever they’re doing. I don’t think they’re gonna let our guardian get away from them though -- they remember everything now, all six of them.” Rue huffed. “I don’t know exactly how that happened, but we’ll have to live with it. I’ll have Agent Gonzalez or somebody keep half an eye on them. But I also think they’re all closer because of it and consider it their own little secret. If I remember correctly, I think they’re all dating or something now.”

“That’s good. What does the guardian think about all of this?”

And Rue stopped to think. She remembered all of the time loops, how she watched her chosen guardian get closer to the boys, forget it all again in a time loop, but get stronger and closer with each time they met. She remembered the days skipped from school, the vet visits, the drives to Chicago, the fires escaped and the mathalons won and the banquets that were prepared for. And she remembered the last bonfire the guardian had made with the boys, celebrating their existence, praying to find a way to stay together with them forever, a world where they would no longer forget each other. 

And the guardian had succeeded. It might not have been in the way they had thought, but it was a happily ever after, for sure. 

Rue nodded, and then turned, toward the reader -- toward you. “Perhaps we should ask them?”