Chapter Text
Sunggyu knows, from the second that the boy runs towards him, that that isn’t the kid he’d dropped off just a week before. He knows it’s hard to explain, but there’s something that tugs at his heartstrings that tells him that that’s not Hyunwoo, that that’s Hyunsoo instead. He kneels down when the boy runs up to him, and when he tries to pick him up, the boy pushes himself back down to the ground.
“Appa, I’m big now!” He says, and reaches up so he can hold Sunggyu’s hand in his smaller one. “I want to walk next to you, not get carried by you now!”
Sunggyu grins down at the boy and laces their fingers together, but he can’t stop thinking. Because if this boy isn’t Hyunwoo, he must be Hyunsoo, and that makes Sunggyu hold on to his hand just that bit tighter. He doesn’t know how they managed to find each other, or why they decided to switch places, but Sunggyu decides to play along just to see what’s going to happen.
“Okay, Hyunwoo,” Sunggyu agrees. The hand in his feels almost the same, and when he looks down to look at Hyunsoo, he notices that his eyes are just a little bit smaller, that his grin is a little bit wider. “Did you have a lot of fun at camp?”
“Mmhmm!” Hyunsoo nods vigorously, stopping mid-step on the sidewalk to pause and to look up at Sunggyu. He spreads his arms above his head, making an arc in the air. “I learned /this/ much!”
And just that action is so childish, so innocent, that Sunggyu has to bend down to hug Hyunsoo to him and hold him tight.
“Appa?” Hyunsoo asks, even as his arms wind around Sunggyu’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Hyunwoo.” Sunggyu presses a kiss to Hyunsoo’s forehead, and his heart breaks at how identical Hyunsoo’s smile is to Hyunwoo’s. He doesn’t know why they’d decided to switch spots or for how long they were planning on doing this, but he’ll take it for what it is right now. “Appa’s just so happy to see you again.”
If Sunggyu hadn’t noticed Hyunwoo wasn’t Hyunwoo from the start, he thinks that it would’ve been pretty obvious by now; with the way Hyunsoo gawks at the train like he’s never been on one before. He keeps staring at the trains pulling up to the station, sleek and shiny and new, and he points to one and asks, giddy, “Are we going on that one?”
Sunggyu leans forward to ruffle Hyunsoo’s hair. The real Hyunwoo’s used to going on the train, taking the ktx from jeonju to seoul and back again whenever they visit friends or family, but he guesses that Hyunsoo wouldn’t have needed to take public transportation, not with the money woohyun makes from producing. “Yep, we are! Are you excited?”
“Yeah!” Hyunsoo bounces around until he hears the conductor announce their train is boarding, and then he lets out a shrill shriek of delight, grabbing Sunggyu’s hand and dashing toward the train. Sunggyu laughs as he lets himself be pulled forward. He’s missed this, the starry eyes Hyunwoo had the first time he’d gone on the train, too.
For all of his excitement, though, Hyunsoo falls asleep just minutes into the trip. He’d spent a couple of minutes staring outside the windows, pointing out the trees in the distance and the clouds in the sky once they’d gotten far enough away from the sprawling metropolis of seoul. And then he’d yawned, covering his mouth with his hand, and when Sunggyu offered him his lap to put his head on, he’d been more than eager to curl up and to use Sunggyu’s thighs as a pillow.
Now that Hyunsoo’s asleep, though, Sunggyu lets himself remember. He’s honestly shaken by this, by the realization that he’s currently holding a boy he thought he’d given up forever. He’d acted like it was no big deal at the campsite, but the reality is that this is bigger than anything that’s happened to him before. It had been only a combination of his quick thinking and need to figure out what was going on that had kept him from falling to his knees and sobbing his eyes out.
Sunggyu brushes some of Hyunsoo’s hair away from his face, and he notices that Hyunsoo doesn’t have some moles where Hyunwoo does, that Hyunsoo’s hair is just a little bit lighter and softer, that Hyunsoo’s laugh is more relaxed and easy and unrestrained, a lot like what woohyun’s is like. A lot like what woohyun’s was like, he corrects himself. Hyunsoo’s hair is soft underneath his hands when he runs his fingers over Hyunsoo’s head, lightly dancing over his ears and down to his neck. He settles in for the remainder of the trip. They’ll have time to figure this out.