Song Hyeong-jun is a closeted gay boy in an all-boys high school full of homophobes. He cannot wait to graduate and finally live free from fear of judgment. Kim Tae-young is an excellent student who has everything going for him. When his father move...
Tae-young was sitting in the school's auditorium; in front of him, a pencil and a blank questionnaire about university and career options. The very sight of it had his heart beating fast out of anxiety. It was the middle of the lunch break and the feeling of time running out made his stomach hurt. He had a terrible sensation in his chest, feeling suffocated. To have to deal with this on top of all the things with Hyeong-jun... he could barely hold it together anymore.
Nineteen is not a very large number. But at the same time, it felt unnecessarily important. Tae-young felt an incredible burden on his shoulders. It seemed like he just had to know what he wanted to do for the rest of his life before he turned twenty. As if his life would end if he didn't go to college straight after high school.
Teachers of all subjects would try to persuade him to major in whatever their subject was. The number of times he had heard his English teachers tell him to become an English major or the times his P.E. teachers told him he had the skills to pursue basketball professionally.
Some guy from the team patted Tae-young on the back when he overheard the coach, "Wow, you're so good at everything... it must be nice having so many options! I just ended up handing in the questionnaire saying I'd major in physical education," he chuckled. Tae-young smiled at the friend, but he couldn't respond.
That happened a long time ago, probably just before the summer break. It seemed that everyone around him had handed in the questionnaire. Of course, they had, because the deadline was today. He envied those who knew who they wanted to be. Maybe he just envied the people who knew who they were.
"Who we are"... can you for one second just please stop thinking about him?
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't rid Hyeong-jun from his mind. Memories of the first day they got the questionnaires came back to him. Sitting at the convenience store where Hyeong-jun immediately wrote he wanted to be a photographer. The warm feeling of him caressing Tae-young's arm to show support. To show that he was there for him. The very memory made his eyes water. It seemed that everything had changed now.
The sight of Hyeong-jun ignoring him continued to hurt him. The feeling of having lost him continued to break his heart. Tae-young brought up his hand closer to his face to look at it. The memory of Hyeong-jun holding it made it tingle, which just made Tae-young's heart ache even more. His eyes started hurting from holding back his tears, as he put his hand to his heart, feeling it beat faster.
He looked at the paper in front of him. In hindsight, it might've seemed like a strong reaction, but with everything else happening, he couldn't help but feel like such a failure for not having it filled out. For not even knowing what to fill out. The very sight of it felt like a stab in the heart. A failure without a dream who couldn't even manage to hold onto the people in his life he loved the most.
He frustratedly crumpled up the paper and threw it onto the desk in front of him. At the sight of the paper ball, he felt so pathetic. He couldn't help but let the tears forming in his eyes finally fall. And suddenly, the tears seemed like they wouldn't ever stop.
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