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There’s a kind of silence that comes after breaking something precious. Not loud. Not immediate. Just the kind that lingers in the air like dust after glass has fallen.
That’s what it feels like now.
Ricky still walks like he’s too kind for the world. Still folds his hands in his lap like he’s holding something sacred. Still tilts his head when he listens, as if everyone deserves his full attention—even Hanbin, who is the reason they no longer speak.
Soft. That’s how everyone describes Ricky.
Pretty, too.
As if softness were weakness. As if being beautiful made you safe. But Hanbin knows better. Hanbin knows that fragility is not the same as innocence. That even the most delicate glass can cut deep, if held too tightly. If broken.
And Hanbin—he held too tightly.
It didn’t begin with pain. Not really.
It began in shared practice rooms, in breathless laughter between takes. In the way Ricky looked at him like he saw the world and chose Hanbin anyway. There was no moment. No declaration. Just gravity. Just inevitability.
But love, when unspoken, curdles. Becomes want. Becomes need. Becomes punishment.
And Hanbin—he needed too much.
They never talked about it. Not once. They talked around it, maybe. In silence. In touches. In the way Hanbin pushed Ricky down, again and again, like the only language he knew was weight. Like the only way to say don’t leave was to press his body into the plea.
Ricky never asked him to stop. Never said no.
He whispered okay like a vow. Took everything Hanbin gave. Every bruise. Every bite. Every trembling command. He bled sweetness, even when Hanbin wanted him to cry. Even when Hanbin begged him to fight back. He never did.
Because Ricky loved him.
Because Ricky thought that was enough.
And maybe Hanbin thought so too—until the day Ricky left.
No tears. No drama. Just folded laundry. A text that said thank you for everything. And silence. Wide as the ocean. Sharp as regret.
Sometimes, Hanbin dreams of the way Ricky looked underneath him. Wide-eyed. Trusting. Like he was made for ruin. Like he believed Hanbin was the only one allowed to hurt him.
He wakes up gasping. Guilty. Wanting.
And then he remembers: Ricky is gone.
Because no matter how perfectly their bodies fit—how the bruises bloomed like flowers, how the pain sang like prayer—there was too much they never said. Too much buried under the skin. Too much Hanbin refused to show, even when Ricky offered his whole heart, trembling and open.
Hanbin tried to love him gently. He really did.
But somewhere along the line, loving Ricky became synonymous with needing to inhale him. Needing to feel him bend. Needing to feel something in a world that had demanded Hanbin be quiet, be perfect, be in control.
Ricky made him lose control.
And Hanbin destroyed the one thing he had the most easy by trying to keep it.
There’s a memory that won’t leave him.
Ricky, post-rehearsal. Sweaty. Bare-faced. Sitting on the dorm floor with his knees pulled to his chest, looking up at Hanbin like the world had narrowed to a single breath.
“I’m not fragile,” Ricky had said once. “You don’t have to be afraid of breaking me.”
But Hanbin wasn’t afraid of breaking him.
He was afraid of what would be left in the silence after.
And now he knows.
It’s glass in the mouth. It’s sweetness turned to shards. It’s a love so quiet it vanished without a sound.
And Hanbin—He never learned how to say I love you without a hand on Ricky’s throat. Never learned how to whisper stay without leaving bruises. Never learned that some kinds of softness aren’t meant to be gripped.
Only held. Only kept. Only cherished.
And now, it’s too late.
Ricky is gone.
And Hanbin is still here—clutching at air, bleeding from the hands, wondering why something so beautiful ever let itself be touched by him at all.
Hanbin
사랑 is not supposed to be quiet.
But this one was.
Not a crash, not a sharp word. Just the gentle closing of a door that neither of them could hold open anymore.
Hanbin wakes up still reaching.
He checks his phone without thinking. Not for a message—Ricky isn’t reckless like that. Just for the tiny blue dot that means he’s alive somewhere. Breathing under a different sky. Holding someone else’s hand to keep warm.
And it hurts. Not because Ricky is gone, but because he had to go.
They didn’t fight.
They don’t fight.
Ricky doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t harden. Even in anger, he stays soft. Like a peach in summer. Overripe with feeling.
Hanbin loved that. Cherished it. Would’ve done anything to protect it.
But there are some things you can’t hold on to, no matter how careful your hands.
So when Ricky said he was leaving—for a new project, a different country, another kind of future—Hanbin only nodded.
He didn’t say don’t go.
Didn’t say I need you.
Just nodded, and folded Ricky’s last clean shirt into his bag.
Because 사랑, the kind Hanbin believes in, isn’t selfish.
Even when it splits you clean in half.
Ricky
In Mandarin, love is 爱. Smooth, like glass on the tongue. It’s a word that wants to be understood.
But in Korean, Ricky has learned, love is quieter. Bound by context. Invisible in action. Rarely named.
He learned that from Hanbin.
Hanbin, who made space without asking. Who read the mood from Ricky’s brow during rehearsals. Who didn’t say I love you, but pressed bruises into Ricky’s skin like devotion, kissed him so reverently it felt like prayer.
In English, Ricky says I miss you too easily.
He’s always been too fluent in longing.
But there is no word—Chinese, Korean, or English—that can capture what it felt like to lie in Hanbin’s arms, skin raw with tenderness, and still know they were running out of time.
It was no one’s fault.
Not his. Not Hanbin’s.
Just contracts. Planes. Countries.
Silence.
They text less now. Polite updates, emojis that feel like ghosts.
And yet, some nights, Ricky still touches the edge of his own throat where Hanbin used to rest his palm. Not possessive. Just grounding. A gesture so gentle it unspooled him completely.
“I liked being yours,” he whispers to the ceiling. English. Because Mandarin is too heavy, and Korean isn’t his mother tongue.
But none of them bring Hanbin back.
Hanbin
He thinks about Ricky’s voice often.
The way it curled around Korean vowels, softened Mandarin syllables, hesitated in English like he was afraid to be misunderstood. But Hanbin always understood.
He doesn’t delete Ricky’s voice memos.
There’s one from their last week together, where Ricky is trying to pronounce a phrase Hanbin had used at a fanmeet. His accent is terrible. He giggles halfway through and gives up entirely after two tries.
Hanbin has listened to it more times than he’ll ever admit.
He wonders if Ricky’s new dorm smells different. If the air is drier. If someone else is learning how to read his moods through the tilt of his shoulders. If someone else brings him three different saccharine drinks when he’s quiet.
Sometimes Hanbin dreams that Ricky comes back.
Says nothing. Just walks in, full black ensemble, curls into Hanbin’s lap like he used to.
But that’s not real.
What’s real is the silence between countries. The time zones. The ache. The half cross earrings Hanbin still keeps tucked beneath his pillow.
Not because it at least smells like Ricky anymore. It doesn’t.
But because Ricky once chose to leave it behind.
Like Hanbin was a place he trusted. A person worth remembering.
Ricky
He doesn’t cry.
Not really.
But there are moments—after long rehearsals, in hotel rooms that all smell the same—where he opens his phone and types Hanbin’s name just to see the letters. Backs out before hitting send.
He still loves him. That hasn’t changed.
He still sees his face in every crowded room. Still thinks of Hanbin when someone offers him food. When he eats something sweet. When someone’s hand brushes his wrist and he flinches—not because it hurts, but because it doesn’t feel like him.
He wonders if Hanbin remembers the bruises.
Not the marks—those fade. But the moments.
The soft gasp. The breath caught between want and surrender.
The way Ricky whispered, You don’t have to be gentle, even when he meant the opposite.
Ricky was always good at giving.
Hanbin was always good at taking care.
But neither of them learned how to stay.
Together, in Memory
There are no goodbyes.
Only echoes.
Only quiet mornings where Hanbin still orders milk tea for two.
Only hotel rooms where Ricky sleeps on the side closest to the wall, like he did with Hanbin.
Only words in languages they both know but never mastered.
Only love.
Not gone.
Just out of reach.
Like a song sung in the bathroom at unholy times of the day that travels across oceans.
Still playing.
Even now.
Even if no one is listening.
They only get to room again in the last hotel of their world tour rotation. They both lay there in utter silence, curled in the sheets, Ricky traces Hanbin’s ribs with careful fingers.
“You’re still too thin,” he whispers.
Hanbin shrugs. “You still eat like a child.”
Ricky pokes his side. Hanbin lets him.
Then Ricky says, quietly, “You keep going to my favorite gopchang place.”
Hanbin closes his eyes.
He doesn’t answer.
Just pulls Ricky closer.
Like glass, still precious. Still whole.
They live in different cities.
Sometimes different countries.
Ricky walks runways now, stands in front of cameras in clothes too sharp and expensive for someone who still prefers his own fruit cut like a boy raised in kitchens that said love with juicy strawberries and rarely consumed cuts of meat. His face is everywhere. Seoul. Milan. Shanghai. He’s beautiful in every language, but still softest in silence.
Hanbin teaches at a studios just outside Hongdae. His name’s on all the walls now. Big, flashing—screaming that he is there. Kids call him teacher. Adults call him sir. He corrects their posture, their footwork. But he never scolds. He just says, “Again,” with the same gentleness he once used to hold Ricky’s wrist when things were falling apart.
They see each other when they can.
Once a month, maybe. Twice, if the flights line up and Ricky’s shoots don’t drag past midnight.
It should feel like not enough.
But it never does.
On Sundays, when Ricky’s in town, they try to make breakfast.
Hanbin still can’t cook well.
But he tries.
He burns the meat—again—and Ricky still eats them.
“Delicious,” he says with a straight face.
Hanbin laughs with his chest,hopelessly endeared. “Liar.”
“You’re the liar,” Ricky murmurs, mouth full. “You said you’d learn by last year.”
Hanbin shrugs. “You said you’d stop stealing my perfumes.”
Ricky leans across the counter, licks dipping sauce off Hanbin’s fingers.
“Fair.”
Sometimes, they don’t talk about what happened before.
The months of silence. The missed calls. The way love—real love—was not enough to hold them steady when the world pulled them in opposite directions.
But sometimes, late at night, when Ricky can’t sleep and Hanbin is too tired to pretend he’s not lonely, they do.
They talk.
Softly.
In pieces.
Hanbin speaks in Korean, voice low and slow like prayer.
Ricky listens with the same reverence he once gave their last goodbye.
“I didn’t stop loving you,” Hanbin says once, forehead pressed to Ricky’s shoulder.
Ricky answers in English. Always English, when his heart is breaking open.
“I know. That’s the thing. I always knew.”
Ricky doesn’t ask Hanbin to follow him.
Hanbin doesn’t ask Ricky to stay.
They don’t pretend they can ask such things anymore.
They just exist in the spaces where their lives touch—messy, rare, but enough.
Enough for Ricky to leave his modeling bags on Hanbin’s couch when he’s back in Seoul.
Enough for Hanbin to learn how to make smoothies (avocado-banana-strawberry) —poorly—but with care.
Enough for them to walk the long way home, even when it’s raining, just to have more time beside each other.
One night, Ricky curls into Hanbin’s side after a shoot in Busan and asks, “Do you think this—us—will always be like this?”
Hanbin doesn’t answer right away.
He wraps his arm tighter around Ricky’s waist. Kisses the curve of his spine.
Then, in a voice more steady than it should be, says:
“I hope not.”
Ricky shifts. Looks up.
“What do you mean?”
“I hope one day,” Hanbin whispers, “we don’t have to meet in borrowed time. I hope I can hold you on a Tuesday. Or a Thursday. Or any day you forget how to love yourself. And you let me remind you.”
Ricky blinks.
Soft. Shaken.
He kisses Hanbin like the promise it is.
They stand in the halo of fluorescent light and old floor wax and everything unsaid.
Hanbin lifts a hand—hesitates—then places it gently on Ricky’s arm. He squeezes, just once.
They did it again.
Five months of silence. Not a word. Not a message. Just time, dense and disinterested—spreading like dust over whatever they had been.
And yet, here they were.
“Hi,” Hanbin says in Korean. Low. Careful.
Ricky doesn’t speak. But his eyes flicker. His breath catches, just barely.
“You’re thinner,” Hanbin adds. He doesn’t mean it as a complaint.
Ricky tilts his head, English rough at the edges: “So are you.”
Hanbin laughs—dry, a little broken. “Still pretty,” he says.
“You too.”
A beat. Two.
Then Hanbin reaches into his coat pocket and pulls something out: a tiny box. He opens it. Inside, a key. Not to a house. Just to a small studio above a convenience store—the one where he teaches dance now.
“You can come by. Anytime.”
Ricky stares at it.
“You don’t have to stay,” Hanbin adds. “But I wanted you to know the door’s not locked.”
Ricky blinks once. Twice. Then, slowly, he reaches for the key.
His fingers brush Hanbin’s.
He closes the box and slides it into his own coat.
“I don’t know what I need yet,” he says. “I don’t know if I still know how to… be in this.”
“I know,” Hanbin says. “But I do.”
That’s always been the difference. Ricky, all feeling and hesitation. Hanbin, all devotion and action.
Ricky steps closer—barely—but it’s enough.
“I have strawberries,” Hanbin says. “I washed them this time.”
Ricky’s smile is small, tired, but real. “That’s a first.”
Hanbin shrugs. “I’m learning.”
They walk out together. No hand-holding. No promises.
Just steps.
Side by side.
Post-breakup, Ricky attends a fashion event in Paris. A photographer tells him to look heartbroken. He doesn’t have to act. He touches the scar above his knee—one Hanbin bandaged once. He hates how easily his body remembers care.
Hanbin writes a letter he never sends. He talks about language—how Ricky never complained, only asked. How “I miss you” sounds ridiculous in Korean but hollow in English. How Ricky never said “I love you,” but lived it. Hanbin can’t forgive the world for making Ricky fragile. He still dreams of kissing his throat, whispering things in Korean Ricky never understood.
The last time Hanbin touched Ricky, he did it gently—like handling a bruise he’d given himself.
Not because it hurt to touch, but because it hurt to remember that he had once held something that fragile, something that luminous, and let go.
There had never been a war between them. Just weather. Quiet, slow-moving storms. They had fit in a way most people don’t, like glass resting in the curve of a palm—delicate, precise, dangerous. Too exact to survive daily life. Too rare to ever forget.
It wasn’t hate. Not a falling out. Not incompatibility.
It was simply what couldn’t be changed: distance, time zones, responsibilities, careers that devoured the hours between them. Words they didn’t say. Needs they didn’t ask for. Glass doesn’t break from shouting. It breaks from pressure left unnoticed.
Ricky had always needed to be cherished. Not adored, not idolized—just seen. Cared for like something worth returning to. Hanbin, who loved cherishing things, couldn’t find the space to do it right. Not then. Not when everything was slipping from his grip.
He hadn’t meant to let Ricky fall through the cracks.
But he had.
Their beginnings weren’t loud. They didn’t stumble into each other. They drifted.
Two teammates, both quiet in different ways. Ricky, all soft-spoken courtesy and melancholy eyes, spoke with a gentleness that didn’t ask to be heard. Hanbin, more retrospective than silent, observed everything—especially Ricky. The way he stood just a little apart, as if always prepared to leave.
Back then, Matthew used to offer Hanbin cookies in the morning. Store-bought. Flattened from his gym bag. He wasn’t a good cook, not even close. Hanbin never took them in the morning. But at night, when the dorm was quiet and his body ached from dancing, he would take one. With both hands. As if that sweetness was the only softness he could allow.
Later, Ricky would do the same. Offer things in silence. Meals with completely new ingredient pairings. Varieties of flavored drinks. Half-hearted attempts at snack trading. Hanbin always finished every bite, every time. Even when he wasn’t hungry. Especially when he wasn’t.
Ricky never said thank you when Hanbin kissed him. But he always looked grateful. Like he was waiting to be ruined, but still hoping to be held.
Their love was never declared, only practiced. In meals made. In clothes exchanged. In bodies given and taken like offerings. Hanbin held control like a shield. Ricky gave surrender like a gift. And together, they built a language with no vowels. Only touch. Only silence. Only trust.
It should have been enough.
But it wasn’t.
Ricky lives in another country now. Hanbin sees him on his phone sometimes—on a billboard, on a feed, in the space between messages that never get sent. He looks older now, sharper in the jaw but still soft in the eyes. A model. A face people stop for. A name said in boardrooms Hanbin isn’t in.
Hanbin teaches dance still. Eats too little, sleeps less. Still finds himself craving things he shouldn’t—sugar, sleep, forgiveness.
He’s with Hao. His beautiful boy. Full of heat. They fight often. Loud, exhausting, endless arguments that stretch into silence so long it feels like drowning. Sometimes Hanbin wonders if the noise is easier than the quiet Ricky left behind.
Ricky is with Gyuvin. Hanbin meets him more often than not. Gyuvin is always sweet, warm, easy in the way people who’ve never had to fight for love can be. But there’s something in Ricky’s eyes that stays guarded, even in photos. A thin glass wall. The kind you only notice once you’ve walked into it.
They still see each other sometimes.
Industry events. Passerby moments. Just long enough to feel the ache, never long enough to relieve it.
There’s always a pause when they lock eyes. Not dramatic. Not romantic. Just… weighted.
They don’t talk about what happened. They never really did. There’s no confession waiting in the wings. Just a long-held sigh between them, suspended over years.
If either of them had reached harder—if Hanbin had fought for him, if Ricky had asked for more—they might still be together. But that’s the kind of truth that comes too late. A quiet horror you learn to live with.
Hanbin knows now what he had. The comfort of someone who let him be selfish without punishment. Someone who listened with his hands, who made the ugliest parts of him feel loved.
Ricky had loved him first. Fully. Without promise of return.
Hanbin loved him second.
And too late.
When they were together, Ricky always looked at Hanbin like he was sunlight behind glass—beautiful, but never quite within reach.
Now, Hanbin looks at Ricky the same way.
Like something once held.
Once cherished.
Once his.
And no longer.
Back then, Ricky was the first to fall.
Softly, like a petal, not a plunge. No drama. No crescendo. Just the slow, unbearable realization that every part of him was drawn to Hanbin’s quiet, to his discipline, to the way he loved without ever saying so.
Hanbin was older. Wiser. Hungrier.
They would meet in the off-hours. In dance rooms with mirrors that reflected too much skin and not enough truth. Ricky would slip under Hanbin’s hands like silk, pliant, obedient, needy in a way that never felt shameful.
Their bodies spoke better than their mouths.
They never labeled what they were. Maybe they couldn’t. Ricky spoke Mandarin, English. Hanbin—mostly Korean. What word could contain them? It didn’t matter. Not then. They lived inside the spaces between language.
But Ricky loved him. That much was certain.
He never said it.
Not even once.
And now Ricky still dreams of Hanbin’s hands.
Not the sex. Not the dominance. Not even the control.
Just the hands that used to smooth Ricky’s hair without thinking. The palms that knew how to guide, to carry, to hold.
Ricky had been his glass thing. Carefully placed on a shelf neither of them could reach again.
They meet again in a hallway. Not a grand stage or a flashing red carpet, but a hallway with flickering lights and peeling laminate flooring. A studio building somewhere on the outskirts of Seoul. It smells like hairspray and old sweat.
The moment folds in like a whisper.
Hanbin is exiting a dance class, towel around his neck. Ricky’s just finished a shoot. Their steps falter at the same time.
Neither of them says “Hi.”
Not at first.
Ricky looks older. Softer around the edges. His beauty is no longer sharp—it glows now, more lived-in than luminous. His eyes don’t widen anymore; they hold.
Hanbin carries less tension in his shoulders now. He still walks like he’s waiting to be called back. Still stands like he's afraid he’s in someone else’s way.
“You cut your hair,” Ricky says finally.
Hanbin touches the back of his head. “Yeah.”
Ricky’s holding a water bottle. He twists the cap open, closes it again. “Looks good.”
“Thanks.”
A pause stretches between them. Something aching, but no longer bleeding.
“I saw your last campaign,” Hanbin says. “You look... well.”
“I’m doing okay,” Ricky answers.
Another pause.
Then, quietly: “You?”
Hanbin nods. “Teaching. Mostly. Hao’s in China for a while.”
“Gyuvin’s doing well too,” Ricky offers. “He choreographed for that rookie group.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Another silence. Comfortable. Not enough. Too much.
Ricky leans against the wall.
“Do you still dance late at night?” he asks. The question isn’t really about dance.
“Sometimes.” Hanbin doesn’t smile, but he softens. “Do you still eat anything anyone gives you?”
That earns a real smile. “Only if it’s burnt.”
That shared laugh—their first in years—lands gently in the quiet.
Hanbin speaks again, almost too low. “I think I was too careful with you.”
“I think I needed that,” Ricky says, eyes on the floor. “Even when it hurt.”
They don’t talk about the sex. Or the silence. Or the way Hanbin had held him like something precious, only to let go like it was inevitable.
They don’t talk about the people who came after.
They just stand there, in the same city, in the same hallway, after all the things they didn’t survive.
“I still think about you,” Hanbin says finally, so softly it nearly disappears.
Ricky’s lips part.
He doesn't say me too.
He doesn’t have to.
Instead, he steps forward. Reaches out. Brushes his fingers against Hanbin’s wrist, like checking if the glass still holds.
It does.
But he lets go.
There’s a lightness to it this time.
As if finally—finally—they know how to leave without breaking.
“You’re with Gyuvin now,” he said.
Ricky nodded. “He knows how to name what he wants.”
Hanbin exhaled like it hurt. “And you?”
“I still don’t.”
They laughed—quiet, hollow, almost warm.
"And Hao?" Ricky asked, not out of malice. Just curiosity. Shared history.
“He yells less now,” Hanbin replied. “Or I listen more.”
Ricky tilted his head. “You were always good at listening. Just not to the things that mattered.”
After all it started with silence.
Not the kind that fills rooms or punctuates arguments, but the kind that stretches across time zones. The kind that slips between one flight and the next. Between studio rehearsals, photo shoots, and too many half-written messages left unsent.
Hanbin didn’t notice it at first. Or maybe he did. Maybe he was already accustomed to Ricky’s silence—how it wasn’t absence, but reverence. A way of being present that felt almost holy. Hanbin had always been louder. Always reaching first. Always choosing.
He liked taking care of things. Of people. The fragile ones. The quiet ones. And Ricky—Ricky was the quietest of all.
Not shy. Not delicate in the way people thought. But soft like something finely made. Glass, maybe. Tempered, yes. But still capable of breaking with the wrong kind of pressure.
And Hanbin had loved him the way people love things they think are too soft to stay.
That was his first mistake.
Matthew once joked that Hanbin looked at Ricky like he was trying to translate a book he wasn’t supposed to read. Yujin had said nothing but started standing closer to Ricky in photos.
The first thing Hanbin ever gave him was water. Then heat packs. Then time.
Ricky, in turn, gave him silence. But in that silence: trust.
Cookies were next.
Matthew had offered them during those brutal winter training days, passing them between warm palms and trembling fingers. In the mornings, Ricky also bowed and refused them. Always too polite. Always too formal.
But at night, when they were alone at the dorms, Ricky took them with both hands.
Hanbin watched every time.
And every time, Ricky thanked Matthew too much.
Hanbin wondered how much thanks someone like Ricky thought he had to give just to take up space.
The intimacy came in pieces.
Not in confessions. Not in grand romantic gestures.
In praise for mispronounced words. In long stares across practice rooms. In Ricky memorizing Hanbin’s caffeine order but never drinking coffee himself.
In sex.
It was always Hanbin who reached first. Touched first. Pulled Ricky close and pressed him against a wall like the world might end if they breathed wrong.
It wasn’t just want. It was something rawer. Sadder.
Hanbin was the one who guided, who pressed Ricky down and undid him carefully, as though Ricky would shatter if held too tight—but would still break if not held enough.
And Ricky—he always let him.
Always.
Even when his voice caught in his throat. Even when his eyes flickered with a kind of silent plea that Hanbin didn’t want to name.
They never said what it was.
But it was.
Ricky loved being cherished.
Hanbin loved cherishing.
It should have been enough.
But loving someone wasn’t the same as knowing how to keep them.
And Hanbin... Hanbin thought maybe if he loved gently, Ricky would stay longer. Maybe if he spoke less, Ricky would speak more. Maybe if he gave enough, they’d both feel less hungry.
But Ricky still starved.
Starved for certainty. For presence. For warmth that stayed after the lights dimmed and the stage emptied.
And Hanbin, used to rationing tenderness, kept giving in doses. Still afraid of asking for too much. Still terrified of needing too deeply.
When they ended, it wasn’t an explosion.
It was quieter than that.
Ricky had been packing for another shoot in another city. Hanbin had stood in the doorway, holding an uneaten mandarin.
"Do you want me to wait?" Ricky had asked, eyes down.
And Hanbin, who should have said yes, had said nothing at all.
They didn’t speak for years.
Ricky became a model. Lithe. Elegant. Everywhere.
Hanbin taught dance. Slower now. Measured.
They saw each other in articles. On timelines. In passing.
They saw each other in other people, too.
Hao had a temper that flared like fire in a bottle—he and Hanbin burned bright and brief, always on the verge of combustion. Ricky, now with Gyuvin, found himself lost in a maze of push and pull, kissed deeply one day and left wondering the next.
But it was Hanbin he missed when things were too loud.
And it was Ricky Hanbin dreamed of when the silence became unbearable.
Hanbin once told Matthew that he didn’t believe in soulmates.
Matthew had laughed. “That’s rich coming from someone who peels candy wrappers for people he’s never kissed.”
But Hanbin had kissed Ricky. Again and again and again. And still—he never peeled the wrappers for him. He just held it, quietly, hoping Ricky would take it himself.
He thinks about this one night, long after Hao has slammed a door and not come back.
He remembers how Ricky used to hold grief like glass. Quietly. Carefully. As if naming it would make it cut deeper.
How he never once raised his voice. Not even when Hanbin left without asking him to stay.
Food had always been a language between them. But one spoken with restraint.
Hanbin never let himself eat too much. Ricky always picked at things. But whenever Matthew made some abomination—pancakes scorched black on one side, or tuna with peanut butter—it was Ricky who ate it. Who smiled. Who said, "It’s good," just to make someone feel seen.
Hanbin wonders how much of Ricky’s softness was armor.
And how much of his own care was guilt in disguise.
Ricky had a way of filling a room without noise. Without trying.
Hanbin only realizes now what that meant.
He sees Ricky again in Taipei. A fashion week event. All glass and light.
Ricky walks past the crowd like he’s floating.
Gyuvin is beside him—still affectionate, still mercurial. Fingers on Ricky’s lower back. Whispering something into his ear.
Ricky laughs. Small. Distant.
It doesn’t reach his eyes.
Later that night, when Ricky steps out alone into the corridor for air, Hanbin follows.
There’s a pause.
Then Ricky speaks. English, soft.
“You always find me when I’m almost okay.”
Hanbin swallows hard.
“I never meant to lose you.”
Ricky looks at him. Carefully.
“You didn’t lose me,” he says. “You let go.”
That night, Ricky messages in Korean, awkward and slow.
나 요즘 꿈에 너 나와.
You’ve been in my dreams lately.
Hanbin reads it again and again, fingertips trembling.
Some things don’t need fixing. Only witnessing
Until one day, Hanbin stops texting first.
And Ricky stops replying at all.
He didn’t know it was over until it was.
Until the silence became routine.
Until Ricky’s name stopped lighting up on his screen.
Until he saw a photo of him in some magazine shoot, smiling next to Gyuvin, wearing a scarf Hanbin had left behind. Not worn. Used.
And Hanbin—he didn’t cry. He just stood still, like if he moved, the ache would crack him open.
Ricky had always been careful. With tea. With animals. With people. With Hanbin.
He had called Hanbin kind, once.
Hanbin didn’t feel kind now.
He felt like a man who had been given something too delicate, too luminous, and shattered it without knowing how.
The private room in the back of the restaurant buzzed with soft laughter, chopsticks clinking gently against ceramic bowls. Warm lights glowed above the table like memory—dim, flattering, forgiving.
Yujin was the loudest, predictably. He teased Taerae about the new hairstyle, laughed with Gunwook about an old dance mishap, shouted across the table for Matthew to pass the sauce. Jiwoong stirred the soup. Hao poured drinks. The rhythm of it all was easy—almost.
Hanbin sat between Matthew and Gunwook, mostly quiet, though he smiled when he should. Ricky was across the table, beside Gyuvin, and Hao on his other side.
From a distance, no one would have noticed anything.
But the way Hanbin never let his eyes linger too long, the way Ricky never refilled Hanbin’s glass, the way Gyuvin reached for Ricky’s wrist when laughter got too loud—it was all there, pressed gently between the lines like dried flowers between book pages.
There had been no drama. No explosive fallout. Just the slow erosion of timing, of place. Of two people who used to sleep like mirror images now waking up in different countries.
Matthew was retelling a story—something about pancakes, burnt and uneaten—when Taerae asked: “What’s everyone working on now?”
A round of updates followed.
“Dance classes,” Hanbin said simply.
“Teaching?” Yujin blinked. “Or learning?”
Hanbin smiled, but it was tight. “Both.”
Everyone laughed politely.
“Modeling,” Ricky offered when his turn came. “Mostly campaigns. Still traveling a lot.”
“Do you miss it?” Gunwook asked.
Ricky glanced down. “Sometimes.”
Hanbin didn’t speak. But his hand tightened slightly on his napkin.
Gyuvin answered for him. “He’s too modest. He’s doing really well.”
A pause. Then Jiwoong raised his glass. “To all of us still figuring it out.”
“To soft landings,” Hao added, eyes lingering on no one and everyone.
Glasses clinked.
Later, dessert arrived—half-melted bingsoo, red bean buns still steaming, a tiny, overfrosted cake with a sparkler Taerae insisted on lighting. Everyone was a little tipsy. Not enough to be reckless. Just enough to feel warm.
Ricky excused himself to the bathroom. Hanbin stood moments later.
They didn’t mean to meet in the hallway.
They didn’t speak right away, either.
The hum of laughter behind the sliding door muffled into a dull throb. Ricky stood by the window at the end of the hall, arms folded loosely, cheek tilted toward the glass.
“You okay?” Hanbin asked, voice low.
“I’m good,” Ricky said. “You?”
Hanbin nodded.
Silence stretched.
Ricky turned slightly. The light hit his face just enough to bring out the hollows beneath his eyes. “You look like you’ve been sleeping better.”
“I haven’t,” Hanbin said, before he could lie. “But I’m learning.”
Ricky smiled faintly. “That’s good.”
They stood there, still and apart, the way old habits do when you don’t know if they’re welcome.
“I liked tonight,” Ricky said eventually. “Everyone felt… easy.”
Hanbin looked at him. “Everyone?”
Ricky didn’t answer. Just shrugged. “I should go back in.”
But he didn’t move.
Neither did Hanbin.
“You’re still beautiful,” Hanbin said, almost inaudibly. “That part didn’t change.”
Ricky blinked slowly. “Neither did you.”
Hanbin laughed under his breath. “I think we’re the only ones pretending this is casual.”
“I’m not pretending,” Ricky said softly. “Just... choosing.”
He didn’t clarify what he meant. He didn’t need to.
When they returned to the table, Gyuvin reached out without thinking and brushed something off Ricky’s shoulder. Ricky didn’t flinch. He smiled.
Hanbin sat down beside Hao again.
Someone passed him a plate of tteokbokki. He took it without tasting it.
The night ended gently, the way a long-held breath leaves the lungs. One by one, they filtered out onto the street—into the city noise, into separate cars, into different directions.
Ricky lingered at the corner, waiting for Gyuvin.
Hanbin looked back once.
Ricky was lit by a streetlamp, coat collar upturned, hair falling into his eyes.
They didn’t wave.
They didn’t speak.
But for a second—just long enough to ache—it felt like glass catching light. Like the last time. Like the maybe that always followed the goodbye.
And then they were gone.