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It starts quietly, the way cracks always do.
Hansol doesn’t mean to sound cruel. He never has. His voice is always low, steady, warm; a boy who speaks in sunlight and understatement. But even warmth can burn if it touches the wrong places.
“I wish you’d remember the song you used to sing to me.” Hansol says one night, their backs against the couch, shoulders pressed close. He’s scrolling aimlessly on his phone, a playlist humming in the background. “I always wondered if I could hear it again.”
It’s offhand. A throwaway comment, barely louder than the music, but Jeonghan freezes.
The request doesn’t cut like a knife; it seeps in like poison, slow and bitter, curling in his veins. His throat tightens because he knows Hansol doesn’t mean this life, doesn’t mean some forgotten childhood memory or old pre-debut song. No, Hansol means before.
Before Jeonghan was Jeonghan.
Before this life, this skin, this heart that beats in the present.
Hansol means the other him, the one Jeonghan has never met.
He swallows and forces a smile, though his chest feels brittle, ready to crack.
“Sorry.” He says lightly. “I don’t know the words.”
Hansol looks up, searching his face for something, recognition? Maybe. A flicker of shared memory? When he doesn’t find it, his gaze softens with something worse than disappointment. It’s longing.
That longing haunts Jeonghan.
The first time Jeonghan realized something was wrong was months ago, when Hansol had laughed at the sight of him biting into a green apple.
“You hate those.” Hansol said, like it was obvious.
Jeonghan frowned, juice dripping down his hand. “No, I don’t.”
“You always said they were too sour.”
“Not me.”
Hansol had gone quiet then, eyes clouding in a way that made Jeonghan uneasy. That same look appears over and over, in dozens of little moments: the way Jeonghan ties his shoes differently, the way he skips a certain song on the radio, the way he prefers tea to coffee. Each time, Hansol looks like he’s balancing two people in his head and finding the current version… lacking.
One night, in the cramped apartment kitchen, Seungkwan says it out loud.
“You think if the two of you were standing in front of him, the old you and the current you, do you think he’d choose you as you are now?”
It’s late. The city outside hums with sleepless traffic. Jeonghan stands by the counter, arms crossed, staring at the shadows on the floor.
“No.” His answer is immediate, sharp. He doesn’t even need to think.
Seungkwan flinches. “Jeonghan…”
“He’s only with me to bring back the old me that he longs for.” Jeonghan’s voice doesn’t break, but it trembles on the edge of something. “He doesn’t even know me.”
And Jeonghan knows it’s true, because he isn’t who he was.
Whoever Hansol remembers, that man with a voice full of songs, a garden of memories, hands that held Hansol in another life; Jeonghan doesn’t know him. He can’t compete with him, and every time Hansol slips into the language of before, it feels like Jeonghan is shrinking inside his own skin.
The next morning Hansol brings him breakfast in bed.
It should be sweet. It should make him laugh but the tray smells wrong the second it’s set on his lap. Toast, eggs, strawberries, dusted with powdered sugar and a drizzle of honey.
Jeonghan blinks at it. His stomach knots.
“Hansol.” He says carefully, “I’m allergic to strawberries.”
Hansol looks startled, then stricken.
“What? No, you...” He cuts himself off, realization dawning too late. “Fuck. I’m sorry. Last time…”
“Last time.” Jeonghan repeats flatly.
Hansol’s face crumples. He reaches for the plate, fumbling. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t thinking.”
Jeonghan pushes the tray away before he can finish. His throat burns, but not from the allergy.
It’s not Hansol’s fault, he reminds himself viciously. It isn’t. He didn’t ask to remember another life. He didn’t ask to carry the weight of two timelines.
But it isn’t Jeonghan’s fault either. He didn’t ask to be reborn into a body already burdened by someone else’s ghost.
And yet, somehow, he’s the one who feels like an intruder in his own love story.
Hansol tries. God, he tries.
He holds Jeonghan’s hand. He presses kisses to his temple, whispers soft I love yous that are supposed to belong to the present. But sometimes, in the quiet, Jeonghan can feel the words bending backwards, falling through time.
He wants to scream: Love me here. Love me now. Stop loving a ghost through me.
But he doesn’t. He swallows the scream, smiles when he can, hides in the bathroom when he can’t.
It’s not that he doesn’t love Hansol. He does, more than he expected, more than he thought possible. He loves Hansol in the way rivers love the ocean; helplessly, inevitably.
But what good is his love when Hansol is already in love with someone else? Someone who happens to wear his face.
The night it all breaks, Jeonghan sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor while Hansol hums under his breath at the desk. The tune is unfamiliar, lilting and sweet, until it isn’t.
Jeonghan realizes suddenly that it’s not unfamiliar at all.
It’s the song. The one Hansol asked for. The one Jeonghan doesn’t remember.
Hansol’s eyes flick to him. “It was your favorite. You used to sing it to me.”
“Stop.”
Hansol freezes.
Jeonghan looks up, voice sharp as glass. “Stop saying I used to. Stop telling me what he did. I’m not him.”
The silence that follows is heavy, suffocating.
Hansol’s lips part, then close again. He looks like he wants to argue, to plead. But Jeonghan doesn’t give him the chance.
“I don’t know that song. I don’t know the garden you keep mentioning. I don’t know the vows you swore in another life. I don’t remember, Hansol. And I never will.”
His chest heaves. His hands tremble where they grip the sheets. “You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with a ghost. And I’m so tired of being haunted.”
Hansol doesn’t move. His expression is devastation in slow motion, a collapse of every unspoken hope.
And Jeonghan, heart shattering, can’t tell which hurts worse: knowing Hansol still loves him, or knowing he doesn’t love him at all.
The fight doesn’t end when Jeonghan spits out the words. It lingers, echoing, filling every corner of the apartment. Hansol doesn’t reach for him. Doesn’t argue. He just sits there, crushed under the truth Jeonghan finally threw into the air.
For a long time, neither of them speaks.
When Hansol finally does, his voice is thin. “I didn’t mean to.”
Jeonghan cuts him off, sharper than he intends. “You always mean it. Every time. You’re not talking to me, Hansol. You’re talking to him.”
Hansol flinches. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s the only fair thing I’ve said.” Jeonghan stands, pacing because his body feels too tight for his skin. “You don’t even see me. Not the me that’s here, that’s alive right now. You look at me and… it’s like you’re waiting for him to come back.”
His throat tightens. His hands shake. He hates the tears threatening to fall because they feel like proof of weakness, but he can’t stop them.
“I can’t give him to you. I can’t sing the songs he sang, or love the food he loved, or laugh the way he laughed. He’s dead, Hansol. And I’m the one left.”
The silence that follows is unbearable. Jeonghan doesn’t know if Hansol will deny it, or worse, agree.
But Hansol just whispers, “I don’t want him back. I want you.”
Jeonghan laughs bitterly, a sound that doesn’t belong in his mouth. “Then stop chasing a ghost. Stop dragging me through memories that aren’t mine.”
For days, they orbit each other in silence.
Hansol still moves gently around the apartment, still sets mugs of tea on the counter, still leaves his socks balled up in the wrong drawer. But the quiet has teeth now. Jeonghan avoids his gaze. He avoids the couch, avoids the bedroom, avoids the song Hansol hummed.
And yet, when Seungkwan texts are you okay?,
Jeonghan doesn’t know what to say; because he isn’t okay but he isn’t ready to give up either.
It isn’t fair, he tells himself again. It isn’t Hansol’s fault he remembers but it isn’t Jeonghan’s fault he doesn’t. They are both caught in the same cruel trap, one carrying too much of the past, the other none at all.
And still, despite everything, Jeonghan loves him.
That’s the sharpest ache of all.
The apology doesn’t come quickly.
It comes late at night, when the apartment is dark and Jeonghan can’t sleep. He’s lying on the far edge of the bed, staring at the glow of the city outside, when Hansol speaks.
“I was selfish.”
Jeonghan blinks into the dark. His voice is small. “What?”
“I was selfish to keep pulling you into then, when you only have now. I thought… I thought remembering was a gift.” Hansol exhales shakily. “But I see now that I made it a chain.”
Jeonghan’s chest aches. He doesn’t answer.
Hansol goes on anyway, words tumbling.
“Every time I brought up what we were, I thought I was honoring us. Honoring what we had. But I wasn’t honoring you. I was just asking you to be someone you couldn’t be.” His voice breaks. “And I hurt you. I know I did. I hate that I did.”
Jeonghan closes his eyes. The ceiling blurs. He wants to stay angry, it would be easier, cleaner. But Hansol sounds like he’s unraveling.
Finally, Jeonghan whispers, “I don’t want to be compared. I don’t want to be the shadow of someone you loved before. If you can’t love me like this, as I am now, then maybe…” His throat locks around the word maybe. “Maybe we shouldn’t be together.”
The silence is suffocating.
Then Hansol says, quietly, desperately, “I’ll learn. I’ll let him go. I swear to you, Jeonghan, I’ll learn how to love you without looking backward. Just…” His voice breaks. “Please don’t leave me before I get the chance.”
And Jeonghan, weak and foolish and aching, believes him. Or maybe he just wants to.
Forgiveness doesn’t come easily. It’s not a kiss in the rain, not a single night where everything mends.
It’s slower, smaller.
It’s Hansol stopping himself mid-sentence when he almost says you used to.
It’s Jeonghan biting back the instinct to snap, and instead admitting quietly, that isn’t me.
It’s both of them learning where the boundaries are, and fumbling, and trying again.
Some nights are worse than others. Some nights Jeonghan lies awake, wondering if he’s just a consolation prize, the echo of someone brighter. But then Hansol’s arm slips around his waist, warm and solid, and he remembers that echoes can still be real, still be alive.
He extends patience not because Hansol deserves endless grace, but because Jeonghan really does love him. Love isn’t clean. It’s messy, it’s bruised, and it’s exhausting but it’s still love.
And Hansol works at it. Slowly, haltingly, but sincerely.
The shift comes quietly, weeks later.
They’re in the kitchen, Hansol leaning against the counter while Jeonghan makes ramyeon, hair messy, shirt too big, humming tunelessly under his breath.
Hansol watches him for a long time, not speaking. Jeonghan feels the weight of his gaze and finally mutters, “What?”
Hansol’s smile is small, almost shy. “You’re going to drown it in sesame oil again.”
Jeonghan pauses, chopsticks halfway in the pot, and glances at him. There’s no hesitation in Hansol’s voice, no slip toward then. Just easy familiarity, a detail said like it belongs wholly to the present.
When Jeonghan doesn’t respond, Hansol reaches past him, grabbing the little bottle from the counter.
“Here. Don’t pretend you weren’t about to empty half of this in there. You always do.” His tone is teasing, gentle, and this time, it’s about him.
Jeonghan blinks, throat tight. It’s such a small thing, almost nothing at all. But the way Hansol remembers it without flinching, without fumbling, as if it’s the only version of him he’s ever known… it lets something fragile crack open inside him.
He sets the chopsticks down slowly. For the first time in what feels like forever, he lets himself believe Hansol is learning.
And for the first time, it doesn’t hurt to be seen.