Again, Love

CHAPTER 1

The university gates cast long shadows across the pavement when Kim Seokjin arrived.

He was early today. He finished his last practice session at the piano lab before noon, spent an hour just pressing keys without really playing, then decided to wait by the entrance instead of the usual bench near the Fine Arts building.

The spring air smelled like cut grass and something sweet he could not name.

Three years of waiting for Kim Taehyung at these gates.

Three years of watching his tall figure emerge from the direction of the art studios, paint sometimes still wet under his fingernails, eyes always finding his first before anyone else.

Today, he checked his phone.

Then checked it again.

4:30 PM passed, then 5 PM.

He was about to call when the message came through.

Tete 🧸💗✨

Come to the sophomore art studio.

Please.

Not babe.

Not Jinnie.

It was just please, which might have been worse than nothing at all.

The Fine Arts building was quiet at this hour.

Most students had cleared out, and the hallway which usually smelled of turpentine and ambition was hollowed out like a lung holding its breath.

Jin’s footsteps echoed as he walked past closed doors, past half-finished sculptures hidden under damp cloths, and past bulletin boards pinned with exhibition flyers and scholarship announcements he usually skimmed without really reading.

The sophomore studio was at the end of the corridor, and the door was cracked open.

He pushed it as gentle as he could.

Inside, the light was golden and slanted. The late afternoon sun was pouring through the tall windows, catching dust motes mid-dance. The canvases leaned against every wall, some turned inward and some facing out like silent faces. Easels stood in clusters like sleeping birds.

And in the middle of it all, Taehyung sat on a wooden stool, facing a blank canvas.

Not painting.

Just staring.

His back was straight, shoulders set in that way he knew meant something was being held together by will alone. His hands rested on his thighs, clean for once: no charcoal, no oil. They were just long fingers curled into loose fists.

Jin’s chest tightened, yet he forced a smile. It was not fake. He was always glad to see Taehyung, even when something seemed wrong.

Especially when something seemed wrong.

He crossed the room slowly, the way you would approach a wounded animal, and stopped just close enough to tilt his head up.

Taehyung looked at him.

Jin rose on his toes and pressed their lips together, soft and familiar. It was w kiss which had been given a thousand times: in this studio, in his cramped dorm room, under cherry blossom trees, and in the back of Taehyung’s old truck with the windows fogged up.

When he pulled back, he looked into Taehyung’s eyes.

The sunset painted them golden hazel, those brown irises lit from within like amber catching fire.

Beautiful.

It was always beautiful.

But something was different.

Taehyung’s gaze was steady in a way which was not calm. It was the steadiness of someone who had already decided something and was now just waiting for the world to react.

Jin’s smile faltered. “What is it?”

Taehyung’s jaw tightened. He looked away --- toward the window, toward the light, anywhere but his face --- and when he spoke, his voice was rough at the edges. “My dean called me in this morning.”

Jin waited.

“I’ve been offered a full scholarship.” Taehyung swallowed. “Rhode Island School of Design. They want me for their painting program. The department here already signed off on it. They are processing the transfer papers now.”

The words landed like stones dropped into still water, ripples spreading outward and making everything waver.

His heart fell.

Not dropped, but fell, like something which had been held aloft for three years suddenly cut loose, tumbling down a dark shaft with no bottom in sight.

But he had always been good with words. He always knew what to say, how to smooth things over, and how to make even the sharp edges feel soft.

He kept his smile.

He always kept his smile.

“What did you decide?”

Taehyung’s face crumpled a little, just enough his brow furrowed and his lips pressed together and his eyes... those beautiful, golden brown eyes... began to fill.

The first tear fell.

Then another.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he sobbed, and his voice cracked on the last word like he had not meant to say it at all, like it had clawed its way out of him against his will.

He reached out and cupped Taehyung’s face, thumbs brushing the tears away before they could fall too far. The skin was warm and familiar. Jin had mapped every inch of this face with his fingertips over three years, and he would know it blind, would know it in the dark, would know it if he lived a hundred more years without seeing it again.

“That’s your dream,” he said in his soft voice.

Taehyung shook his head, dislodging more tears. “You know you are... and will always be... my home.”

The words should have been comforting.

Instead, they landed like a diagnosis.

Jin’s smile turned sad.

“But I’m a home you won’t live in.” He tilted his head, studying the face he loved more than he had ever loved anything. “Because some homes aren’t meant to be lived in.”

He grabbed his wrists, not hard but just desperate, as if he was water and Taehyung was dying of thirst. “This is all I’ve ever dreamed of, Jinnie.”

“And I won’t stand in your way.” Jin said it simply, without bitterness, because he meant it. He had always meant it. “I won’t be that type of home who will hold you down and not let you grow into your full potential.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” he sobbed again, as if repetition might change something.

As if saying it enough times could rewrite the facts of the world.

Jin’s smile finally cracked, just a little, at the corners.

“That’s the hardest part of leaving home, isn’t it?” He traced his thumb along Taehyung’s cheekbone. “Leaving the place where your love grew.”

“Maybe we can make this work.” Taehyung’s voice pitched higher, urgent now, like a man grabbing for something which was already slipping through his fingers. “Long distance. I will come back for breaks, and you can visit, and we can call every day-”

“You and I both know,” he interrupted gently, “we’re just going to ruin each other in the process of trying to make this love work from across seas.”

Taehyung’s hands tightened on his wrists. “But I don’t want to lose you, babe.”

Jin felt something crack inside his chest... something he had been holding together for three years, maybe longer, something which had grown fragile without him noticing.

“I don’t want to lose you, either.” He stepped closer, until his knees bumped against Taehyung’s stool, until he had to look up to hold Taehyung’s gaze. “But this is how a gardener grows his beautiful flowers.” He placed one hand over his heart, feeling it pound beneath his palm. “He’s going to have to cut off those other buds in order to have more beautiful blooms in full.”

Taehyung pulled him in.

Their foreheads pressed together. Their breath mingled. Taehyung’s tears wet his cheeks now, or maybe his tears wet Taehyung’s. It was impossible to tell anymore, their faces pressed so close together, two people trying to become one thing even as they were being pulled apart.

“I love you so much,” Taehyung whispered.

Jin closed his eyes.

“What a cruel thing to say,” he whispered back, “when you are actually breaking my heart.”

The silence that followed was the loudest thing he had ever heard.

Then Taehyung kissed him.

It was not soft nor gentle. It was the kind of kiss saying everything words could not --- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry --- and Jin kissed back just as desperately, because what else could he do?

What else had he ever done but love this man, even when it hurt, especially when it hurt?

Taehyung’s hands slid into his hair, cradling the back of his head like something precious. He gripped the front of Taehyung’s shirt, twisting the fabric in his fists and anchoring himself to the only thing which had ever made sense.

But eventually... always, always eventually... Jin let go first.

He pulled back just enough to feel Taehyung’s breath on his lips, just enough to see the way his eyes stayed closed, like keeping them shut might stop this moment from ending.

Jin leaned in, his mouth brushing Taehyung’s as he spoke.

“When you get the nerve to call me, and I don’t answer your call three times...” he paused, feeling the words settle between them like stones dropped into deep water. “I want you to remember that I wasn’t the one who locked the door when you left.”

Taehyung’s eyes opened.

In them, he saw everything he would miss.

The intensity.

The devotion.

The way Taehyung looked at him like he was something holy, something worth kneeling for.

Jin lifted his hand one last time and touched Taehyung’s face.

His palm against Taehyung’s jaw.

His fingers tracing the line of Taehyung’s cheekbone.

His thumb pressing gently against the corner of Taehyung’s mouth, where a smile had lived so often, so easily, for three years.

He memorized it.

Every contour. Every shadow. Every small imperfection which made this face not just gorgeous, but Kim Taehyung.

Then he stepped back.

There was something sitting heavy in Jin’s chest --- a secret he had not spoken.

A truth which was too large, too fragile, and too much to lay down on top of everything else that was breaking tonight.

He tucked it deeper, buried it where Taehyung would never see, and he walked away.

The door did not slam.

Jin made sure of that.

He closed it softly, the way you close a book you are not ready to finish, and he walked down the empty hallway with his hands in his pockets and his eyes dry and his heart bleeding quietly into the spaces between his ribs.

Behind him, he did not hear Taehyung follow.

He had not expected to.

Outside, the sun had finished setting.

The sky was the color of bruised plums, and the streetlights were flickering on one by one, casting small circles of light on the darkening pavement.

Jin stopped at the gates where he had waited so many times.

He looked back at the Fine Arts building, and one window was still lit: the sophomore studio, golden and warm, holding the boy Jin loved more than his own life.

Some homes are not meant to be lived in.

He turned away, and in the silence of his own body, something small and new stirred without his permission.

He placed a hand over his stomach without thinking, then he lowered it.

He walked home alone.