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Leehan remembers the day they’d first met like the back of his hand.
August 27th, the peak of a Seoul summer. Leehan had gotten into a car with his manager at 8 in the morning, just early enough to make it on time to the address they’d been given. It was 8:37 when Leehan was dropped off at a production studio on the 16th floor of a shiny high-rise, the place where the shoot for Leehan’s debut drama would finally commence.
It was a jittery, buzzing place, that 16th-floor studio. Staff were busy and the floor was bustling, and it would be the place where Leehan would spend not all, but most of his days for the six months that would follow. His manager, Sanghyeok, had paraded him around the studio to greet higher-ups and people that Leehan’s agent has probably talked to on the phone, and Leehan didn’t question how Sanghyeok could manage to pick them out of such a fast crowd. Either way, after all of that was done, they’d been shown to a green room by production staff backstage—but it had been in the hallway when Leehan first laid eyes on him: a boy he’d only known about from entertainment articles and word-of-mouth, but would later come to know better than Leehan has probably known anyone, all these years of his life.
“Hello!” Leehan had greeted with a smile, holding a hand out for his co-actor to shake. “I’m Leehan. I look forward to working with you.”
He was being proper, polite. Jiho had always told them to keep it professional when they were working, and Leehan had taken that to mean it would be best to use his stage name when making an impression, especially for his first shot at acting in a drama, and for a role as big as the one he’d managed to land.
So Leehan was a little bit surprised when this other boy—Taesan, who’d be playing the male lead—shook his hand with a small smile, saying, “Hi, Leehan. I’m Han Dongmin.”
Taesan had squeezed his hand then, and Leehan had squeezed back, all his media training suddenly flying out the window in one, fell swoop.
“Oh,” he’d uttered with wide eyes, and Leehan hadn’t known why, back then, it felt like the whole world had simply fallen away around them. “Then I’m Kim Donghyun.”
Back then, Leehan had been 19, and Taesan had been 20, but only for a couple of weeks.
Leehan had learned this when talking to Taesan in the 16th-floor studio’s cramped little green room, like the many other things he would come to learn about that quiet, sharp-eyed, six-foot tall boy. Taesan was an up-and-coming actor from a well-known entertainment company, already the talk of the town before anyone had even seen any of his work. Leehan had thought of it amicably enough; at least the drama would be gaining interest, even if it was mostly because of the ‘handsome rookie actor’ rumored in articles to be part of its cast. Leehan was honored to be able to act alongside him, and he’d expressed that much in the beginning.
Only, it didn’t take that long for Taesan to veer away from that kind of talk with Leehan, boring and surface-level and too professional. They got to talking in between script read-throughs and the first thing that Taesan had asked was where Leehan was from. Busan, Leehan had answered, and Taesan had said, Right, I knew there was a bit of an accent in there. Then Taesan had asked what it was like for Leehan, being an actor at their age. (Leehan still doesn’t know why he’d been surprised that Taesan wasn’t holding their two and a half month difference over his head.) Leehan had begun to answer the question in earnest, and then he was cut off by a knock on the green room door.
Taesan made him promise that they would table the conversation for later, and Leehan supposes that that’s how it had started between them—long talks about everything and nothing, parts of their hearts slowly opened one by one to each other, and never again shut.
Leehan remembers Taesan saying how he’d been thrilled at the opportunity to play the main character in their drama as his breakout role. Leehan had agreed with the sentiment, grateful to still be a part of the main cast even with his comparatively smaller, supporting role. Leehan had asked Taesan if anything had drawn him to the drama, or if it was something that his company had simply picked out for him to do, something good for his career. Their director was well-known and on the rise, too, after all, with two slice of life dramas already under her belt.
“It’s both,” Taesan had said with a shrug. Leehan remembers the exact tone of his voice. “I did like the script when I read it. Don’t you?”
“I do,” Leehan had answered. “I was surprised I even got the role I auditioned for. I don’t know why, but I never imagined I’d be playing someone my age as a debut.”
“Right. I liked that, too, I think,” Taesan had laughed. “We still get to live out the start of our twenties, in a way. Even if it’s on a set.”
Leehan hadn’t really thought about it like that until then, but he supposed it made enough sense. They were playing university students—something they might never have experienced as 20 year-olds otherwise—and though Leehan might never know if their trips to different shooting locations for MT trip episodes could ever match up to the real thing, they would at least have something to remember.
He hadn’t really known at that time what was in store for the two of them yet, but if he thinks about it in the present, Leehan thinks that maybe—if he’d thought about it hard enough—he would have been able to guess. There was something in the way that Taesan looked at him.
But when Leehan was with Taesan, the world around them always seemed to stop. Leehan didn’t really stop to think so much. With Taesan, Han Dongmin—he didn’t have to.
“Here’s to our youth, Actor Han Taesan,” Leehan had joked back then, holding up the water bottle he’d been given, and bumping it gingerly against Taesan’s, held loosely in his hand.
Now, Leehan is 20, and Taesan is at the very start of 21.
Six months ago they’d finished shooting their debut drama, with its typical good-girl-meets-bad-boy plot—and the thing is, everyone had something to say about how the male lead had more chemistry with his love interest’s brother than with her.
It didn’t bother Leehan, and he didn’t think that it bothered Taesan—but after the last day of their drama’s obligatory promotional period, the two of them had lost touch as if in a blink of an eye. As if nothing had ever happened between them at all.
A lot did happen between them, from the very first day of shooting up to the last. But like most first things in life, Leehan remembers the ones he’d spent with Taesan the best.
They were out of the studio, then, shooting sequences of Taesan and the female lead, Hyeju, out on a date. Leehan had been watching off to the side, a handheld fan pointed at his face to combat the heat, as Taesan had delivered his lines with ease, and all the right expressions on his face to match.
And Leehan continued to watch as the scene played out, building and building until its foregone conclusion—when Taesan leaned forward to kiss their co-actress right on the lips, chaste but still intimate. Their director’s exact words.
Only, what Leehan remembers as he watches is the way that Taesan had kissed the night before—Leehan, can I tell you something? I’m scared, I’ve never kissed a girl before, what if I don’t do it right?—and Leehan had looked at him, eyes sparkling, I’ve never kissed anyone, either. That’s something we’re supposed to have experienced in our youth, isn’t it?
On that night, they’d ended the shoot early, told all the actors and staff to get some good rest for their location shoot the next day. As had been their routine, Taesan and Leehan had left the set together to go out and get dinner at their favorite hole-in-the-wall spot, and after finishing one bottle of soju together they’d gone into Leehan’s apartment to sober up before Taesan’s manager arrived to bring him back home. The alcohol in their blood led to the outpour of Taesan’s feelings, all those insecurities—and then that led to Leehan’s finger under Taesan’s chin, Taesan’s throat bobbing as he swallowed, a quiet question under dim light:
“It isn’t selfish to not want my first kiss to be in front of a bunch of cameras, is it?”
Actually, Leehan doesn’t even remember who’d asked it—but the next thing he knew, he was surging forward to kiss Taesan, Han Dongmin, his hands flying up to hold Taesan’s cheek and Taesan rushing to grip at Leehan’s shoulder, hard and bruising as the air was punched out of his lungs.
They hadn’t done much beyond making out, but Taesan had texted his manager not to come and pick him up that night, anyway, too busy making a home for himself in Leehan’s arms.
Their first kiss was theirs, theirs alone, and no one else’s. And even if Leehan had to watch Taesan kiss a girl the next day, he’d still been the only one who would know how that kiss was not tinged with the same hunger, the same desire that Leehan had tasted and bitten right off of Taesan’s tongue. No one else could ever take that away.
Now, it seems, Taesan has moved on to better things.
It’s Taesan’s 21st birthday. In two weeks’ time, it will have been a year since Leehan had first met him, but it almost doesn’t matter. When the clock had struck 12 earlier today, Leehan had stayed 20, and Taesan—again—had left him behind.
Two months ago, the last episode of their drama had aired, and the cast, along with the entire production staff, had held a farewell party on the rooftop of a fancy hotel. It had been a private gathering, no press to stop them from having a good time, and both Leehan and Taesan could tell that they were eager to get their hands on each other one last time before their joruney with this project came to an official close. That night, Leehan disappeared with Taesan into one of the fancy hotel bathrooms—a nod to their past months’ trysts in prop closets or unused dressing rooms—and kissed him until Taesan was hazy with desire and sunk to his knees to take Leehan into his mouth. It felt good, because with Taesan it always felt good, and the one thing that Leehan doesn’t remember clearly is probably when it started getting so good that he’d been tempted to say I love you, every single time after—and that night was probably when he’d come the closest. When Taesan had stood up and kissed him stupid, moaning into his mouth while Leehan helped him through it with a hand down Taesan’s pants, Leehan had almost told him how he felt as Taesan shook in his arms—but in the end, he’d held his tongue. Almost ended up being no better than nothing at all.
Leehan wonders how he could have been so stupid.
They hadn’t been able to meet up as much after, outside of work. They’d both been taking on new auditions, of course, and Taesan, being from a big company, had been getting offer after offer for all kinds of new roles. Leehan had been getting a fair amount, too—still is, now—but after the rollercoaster ride of his first job as a rookie actor, he’d decided it would be best to take a step back from it all for a moment first, process all that he’d experienced before deciding when and how to move forward. Both Sanghyeok and Jiho had agreed that it might be good for him, too.
And when Taesan had stopped exchanging messages with Leehan as often as he did when they saw each other almost every day, Leehan had taught himself to believe that everything would be fine. That they were both just busy, that they wouldn’t simply cut ties after spending so much time with each other for so long, if at least just in service of all the secrets they already share. Leehan types out invitations into his and Taesan’s messages to stay in touch, but Taesan’s replies began to dwindle. Han Dongmin became more and more scarce as the persona of Han Taesan began to take over—and soon enough Leehan could only experience him in the same way that everyone else did, through TV screens and news articles and their acclaimed ‘masterpiece’ of a drama—where the only person that Taesan’s ever kissing is a girl he doesn’t love, and Leehan is the same as he is now: a mere plot device and—ultimately—alone.
The last nail in the coffin was when Leehan had to find out, like everyone else—through an article that was sent to him by Sungho, another one of Jiho’s clients that had introduced him to their agent—that Taesan’s company had announced that he would be shooting a new drama starting in late summer, another romance plot to showcase his same, amazing performance of his breakout, starring role—
Except this time, Taesan would be starring in it with another man.
On that day, Leehan had stopped texting him completely. Funnily enough, one day of radio silence seemed to be enough to have Taesan desperate to speak to him again, and Leehan’s messages were soon filled with worried questions, Are you okay? Are you mad? Is something wrong?, until questions had morphed into veiled excuses, explanations, We should talk. Let me explain. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.
So, today is Han Dongmin’s 21st birthday. Actor Han Taesan is a bigshot now, and his fans are thrilled that he’s going to be starring in a BL drama with this more famous, more experienced senior actor. He’d celebrated his birthday on a livestream—like most famous people under management as big as his are bound to do—and Leehan wasn’t invited to the afterparty.
(Or, at least, that’s what Leehan tells himself. His phone is sitting face-up on the coffee table, his message thread with Taesan just sitting out in the open, the screen filled only with messages from Taesan for the past months—all of them unanswered, but none of them unread.)
At the bottom of the screen, Leehan has typed out an unsent happy birthday, dongmin-ah. The cursor blinks after the last character, in the same rhythm that it has been since Leehan had typed the words out on August 9th, 11:58 PM, when he remembered why he felt as though there was supposed to be something special about the 10th.
Technically, Leehan knows where Taesan is. It’s typed out in a message from around a few days back: the name and address of the hotel bar that Taesan had rented out, followed by one-sentence nudges that have yet to get Leehan to budge. I would love for you to come, Donghyun. How are you doing? You must still be upset with me, I never meant to hurt you or anything. Donghyun-ah? Donghyun-ah. I don’t know if you’re coming tonight, but could we meet up or something sometime? Sorry, Donghyun-ah, I’ll stop bothering you.
Leehan had been tempted, honestly. He’s not too deep in the throes of capital-F fame like their drama’s main actors had been, but him showing up to Taesan’s party would have definitely turned heads. Admittedly, sometimes, Leehan goes on SNS just to see if people are still talking about how they’d basically been eye-fucking onscreen in every scene they had together, just so he can still be a little bit smug about the fact that while Taesan may have gotten over them as quickly as he did—everyone in their little bubble definitely has not. And Leehan wonders, if he showed up to Taesan’s party, they’d trigger a resurgence of that whole wave, when the fiery tension between them had bled through enough in their performances to damn well sweep an entire nation. He wonders if everyone else from the cast had shown up, too. He wonders if Taesan had invited Hyeju. Leehan wonders if Taesan had invited his new co-star, and is now hanging off of his arm.
One thing is for sure: Leehan is alone. The apartment is empty because his sister’s at a runway show in Milan for the next week, and beside his lit-up phone is a bottle of unflavored soju, emptied up to about an inch just below the neck. Leehan comprehends for maybe the first time why people say that the stuff’s supposed to be had with beer or juice or yakult or literally anything else, or at least taken in shots if on its own. Definitely not straight from the bottle—but Leehan couldn’t be bothered. He’s not much of a drinker normally, but it’s just a straight-from-the-bottle kind of night. The bitter taste helps the bitter thoughts go down while Leehan wonders if Taesan’s kissed him already—the new co-star. If he would let him touch him in prop closets, or respond with a smirk when he’s invited back to what’s probably a penthouse apartment with the best views of Seoul.
Maybe it’s for the best. They’d experienced a patched-together imitation of their youth under harsh lights and in front of too many cameras, and perhaps Leehan had missed somewhere along the way that after the drama was over, they’d close their chapter along with it. Maybe Leehan has no right to feel betrayed, just a little used; maybe for Taesan, they were simply meant to be a short-lived fling, toeing the border between what’s real and what’s not, and maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway if they did end up crossing that line, because your first love often isn’t meant to be your last. Maybe Taesan loved Leehan back.
Clearly, it still damn well never mattered in the end.
There are ten minutes left of August 10th—and Leehan wonders if he’s hallucinating when he sees his phone out of the corner of his eye, vibrating on the coffee table with an incoming call.
He knows who it is. Of course he does. He’s still a little bit conscious under the spell of nearly the entire bottle of soju, the strange taste of uncut bittersweetness numbing his throat and coating his tongue. Taesan is partying in the bar of some skyscraper, and Leehan wishes he had Dongmin here instead.
Before he picks up the call, Leehan wonders what kind of voice he’s going to hear on the other end. He’s hoping it isn’t a version of Taesan that’s as drunk as Leehan probably is right now, only ten times happier. There’s a voice in his head tempting him to let it ring, keep ringing, see how many it will take for Taesan to give up, and then see if Taesan will call him back.
Ultimately, though, Leehan doesn’t give in to that temptation.
It’s still Taesan. It’s still his birthday. And because it’s still Taesan—Leehan picks up the call.
He doesn’t say anything, waiting with bated breath as he holds the phone up to his ear, listening to the background noise. Music, chatter, ambient sounds.
And then, after a while, “Donghyun-ah.”
And, of course, Leehan has missed him—but it still doesn’t feel like quite enough. Not when Taesan’s voice is a mere reproduction of sound waves through city static, and Leehan is still here, in a too-empty apartment, alone.
“Happy birthday,” is what he answers. Eight minutes left on the clock. “Dongmin-ah.”
It feels strange. Familiar, and yet completely, dauntingly new at the same time. Leehan waits for Taesan’s answer, tries desperately in his mellowed-down haze to hold onto every word.
“Donghyun-ah,” Taesan simply says his name once more, his voice somehow clearer than Leehan was expecting. Fuck. “I miss you.”
There’s a throbbing pain that shoots its way up to Leehan’s temples at those words, and he leans forward into his hand, shuts his eyes tight. He knows he shouldn’t give in to this. Taesan should be having his fun, basking in the kind of life he’s chosen to live. He’d just spent the past twenty-three hours and fifty-three minutes being 21, and yet here he is. Crawling back to what he left at 20.
“You should be having fun at your party, Taesan,” Leehan whispers into the phone, unable to hold back a breathy sigh. “Did most of the cast show up?”
“Huh?” Taesan says, voice small. Leehan almost wants to soothe him, talk him down with gentle words. The way he always used to do, whether it was in prop closets or dressing rooms or a warm bed. The same bed that’s just a room away. “They’re here. Why aren’t you?”
“I had a feeling I wasn’t invited,” Leehan laughs dryly, leaning his warm cheek into the cold palm of his hand. “Or something like that.”
“I texted you.”
“You know what I mean.”
On the other end of the line, he hears a sigh. “Donghyun. Let me explain. I’m sorry.”
“Is your new co-star there, too?” Leehan asks, ignoring the small plea. He told himself he wouldn’t do this—that he’d at least try to mean it a little when he said happy birthday—but the feeling his chest is tight in a way that it never used to be with Taesan, tinged with the kind of ache that doesn’t feel like anything he’s ever felt before. “You two have met already, haven’t you?”
“Jiwoong-hyung’s my co-actor, you know. Everything is purely professional.”
Leehan raises an eyebrow. “‘Jiwoong-hyung’?”
“Donghyun, come on. You know it’s not like that.”
“What’s it like, then?” Leehan massages his brow, exhaling deeply again into the phone. “What was it like with us, then, hm? Was it not like that with us, too?”
“Are you at home?” Taesan ignores Leehan’s spirited inquisition, something frustration escaping with the sigh that comes out of his mouth. “I can’t do this, Donghyun, I need to make things right with us. Can we talk? Please?”
This time, the soft, pleading tone of Taesan’s voice is enough to give Leehan some pause. Some clarity returns to him as he considers the implication of Taesan’s question, and the chain that’s held Leehan’s heart closed since they’d last properly spoken has been breaking down little by little with every second spent longer on the phone. Some clarity returns to Leehan for just one moment—but temptation still gets the better of him, and the part of him that’s still hurting says, “Don’t ditch your own party, Han Taesan.”
“I didn’t want this party, Kim Donghyun,” Taesan scoffs, punching out the syllables of Leehan’s name. It definitely doesn’t do nothing—but what ends up getting through to Leehan’s heart for the first time in so long is Taesan whispering, “You said I’d spend my youth with you. I only made one wish on that birthday candle. Were you watching? I just wanted you to keep that promise. Do that for me. It’s still my birthday. Hear me out at least until before midnight, if that’s what it’s going to take. Can’t you do that for me?”
And Leehan—Leehan finally breaks. Because maybe he’s angry, and maybe he’s hurt—but Taesan is right. It is his birthday. Leehan did make him a promise.
(The promise was to love him, but Dongmin doesn’t know that. Donghyun had wished it silently on his 20th birthday candle in October, when he hadn’t even known Dongmin for that long, and yet somehow already knew that for the rest of life, he’d remember the boy as the great love of his twentieth summer, even after years and years. Whether they’re together or apart.)
“You can take your time, Dongmin,” Donghyun says softly into the phone, tone dripping with the tender affection that bleeds out through the intentions of his words. I will wait, and I will listen. There is no need to beg for what has always belonged to you. “I’ll be waiting, okay? The door code’s still the same.”
Minutes later—Donghyun doesn’t know how many—he hears the familiar sound of the code being punched in to their apartment door.
Zero, eight, two, seven—and as he appears from the hallway’s hazy darkness, Donghyun lays eyes on the face of the boy he could never forget.
“It’s half past twelve,” Donghyun says when he greets him at the entrance of the living room, and then pulls him like a puzzle piece into the safety of his arms. Dongmin’s head hooks comfortably onto Donghyun’s shoulder. The way that Dongmin holds onto him says all that he needs. “Happy birthday anyway, Dongmin-ah. I missed you, too.”