Late June, start of monsoon season. He can barely see through the water crashing down from the sky, splashing against the stone stairs of the school's entrance and drenching his shoes and pants all the way up to his knees. Kids are running past him to the bus station or the parking lot where a parent with some time to spare is waiting. 

Jungwoo has no such luxury. He considers to wait it out, but at this rate he might has to spend the entire rest of the afternoon and a portion of the night here and he has neither food, nor enough phone battery to keep himself alive and going for more than two hours. The only good thing about all this is that he can finally stop sneezing the moment he steps outside.

He's still considering his options when he hears slow steps approaching, not hurrying like the rest. They come to a halt by his side.

"Jungwoo, right?"

It's Jaewon. Of course it's Jaewon.

Just like Jungwoo prides himself in his skill to pretend he isn't really a part of society but more a ghost that forgot what exactly he is supposed to haunt, he is equally as passionate about making other people forget about his existence. When people remember him, it never does him any good. Detention for repeatedly being late, a neighbor from the ground floor of his apartment building still recognizing him for kicking a football through his window when he was five, the smug glance his cousin throws him whenever she and his aunt come to visit and the adults start talking about his grades like he's some stubborn, poorly performing circus animal.

He has tried to slip out of Jaewon's perception since that day he lost his earphones, but the boy won't let him. They haven't spoken to each other again, but Jungwoo swears he is not just imagining the search for eye contact whenever their ways cross in the hallways. Or how Jaewon always takes a look around in the cafeteria before sitting down, lingering for a heartbeat too long when Jungwoo is actually there to witness it. He finds himself staying up late more and more often as the weeks go by. Getting up late just as much, eating in the cafeteria a lot frequently than before. This doesn't mean anything.

Jaewon doesn't mean anything to him. And Jungwoo shouldn't mean anything to him, either. Yet, he is standing next to him, has picked up his name, is entering his life again on his own volition.

"Mh." Jungwoo makes some sort of affirmative noise. Like officially confirming he got his name right will rip off a band-aid.

"Are you headed for the bus station?"

Jungwoo spots the umbrella in his hand. It's see-through, colorless, and he has one of those himself back at home. He just always forgets to throw it into his bag before he leaves.

"No."

His arm starts to burn at the memory of Jaewon holding him there a month ago. Maybe walking through the rain will help extinguish it.

"Anyone here to pick you up, then?"

"No."

"Do you live close by?" Jaewon keeps asking, voice always soft. He doesn't seem to be able to get impatient with anyone ever.

"Not really."

Jungwoo doesn't know why he's telling him the truth.

"Come on. I'm not letting you get drenched out there." Jaewon smiles and steps aside to open his umbrella. He comes back to hold it over both of them, still under the porch roof. Jungwoo's arm starts itching. Why are you doing this? he wants to ask. What is wrong with you?

He's not quite sure if he's asking this to Jaewon or himself.

"Why are you still here?" he says instead. "What's with Jaehyun and Winnie?" Once he started paying attention, their names were everywhere, taunting him. Winnie has made friends with the entire grade, always hopping from one circle to another and sitting with different people every other time Jungwoo is forced to spend his lunch in the cafeteria, but still most often with the two of them. Jaehyun and Jaewon are teacher's pets, always eager to answer questions in class and the other kids go to them for homework help. They came first and second in the math exam, Jungwoo forgot in which order. Sometimes, he catches Winnie talking to Jaewon about tutoring him and Jungwoo is sort of glad that not all three of them are like this. That would have been even more insufferable.

It's become hard to ignore them. Or maybe Jungwoo just tragically lost his ability to shut out the rest of the world from his senses. In that case — fuck, maybe he should beg his parents for money and invest in proper headphones.

"Winnie's mom drove them," Jaewon explains. "I said no, because I saw you here, contemplating your life choices."

"Okay, first of all, what the fuck is wrong with you." He can't help it. For someone so smart in school, Jaewon is at least kind of socially stupid for sure. There is no way Jaewon thinks they are friends or something after he has helped him out one time.

Jaewon just blinks at him, unamused. "Is it that bad that I don't want you to be dripping wet when you get into the bus?"

"It's bad that you care," Jungwoo snaps. "You're wasting your energy. Save it for your actual friends, not — me. I'm literally just some guy. Stop perceiving me. God."

He has said too much. He has said too much and he knows, because Jaewon starts laughing.

It's not mocking, and that fact is absolutely horrifying all by itself. It also sounds like a warm shower washing the tension out of his shoulders and Jungwoo is scared for his life.

"Don't be silly."

Jaewon takes the umbrella into his other hand, the one further away from Jungwoo, grabs him by the sleeve of his school jacket — it's so fucking close to his hand — and tugs him out of the porch, into the rain splattering muffled melodies against the see-through material above their heads and Jungwoo lets him.

He lets him lead them to the station where the first bus has already been here and gone, only a handful of students now squishing themselves under the little roof the station offers. He lets himself be pulled away from them to about where the door of the bus is probably going to come to a halt later and lets Jaewon grin at him under their shared umbrella, face dangerously close, eyes blindingly sparkling.

It gives them way less protection from the rain than the roof would, but Jungwoo's legs are drenched from earlier anyway. And he'd rather be judged from afar as to why he is standing like this with Jaewon when they've spoken literally once since school started than be stared holes into between all the other kids.

The bus eventually arrives. Jaewon hastily closes the umbrella and ushers him in first.

They sit together on a double seat towards the front, Jungwoo on the window side, Jaewon at the corridor.

"Wasn't so bad, was it?"

Jungwoo just scoffs and turns his head to space out. There's nothing much he can see on the window besides raindrops bursting against the glass and blurry lights of passing cars. He pretends he has superhuman vision and can actually observe the wonderful happenings of the world anyway.

In the reflection, he can see Jaewon still smiling at him.

He puts his earphones in and closes his eyes.

Jaewon doesn't try talking to him for the rest of the ride. Jungwoo feels a bit...weird, he guesses, in this unfamiliar silence, but he has already made his choice and it would be strange if he suddenly turned around and said sorry. And how should he even explain? Sorry for being a dick to you when you were nothing but nice to me. Sorry for being an incompetent social being. Sorry for being me, I'll try to fix it? So he doesn't. He keeps his eyes closed and he thinks he even falls asleep at one point. Huh. The kids in the bus are less rowdy today.

A tap on his shoulder startles him out of the haze.

"I'm getting off here. Neverland Apartments," Jaewon mumbles. He talks like a tentative ray of sunlight reaching through the clouds.

"Yeah, okay."

Jungwoo is about to let himself drift back asleep again when he realizes, "Wait. What? That's also my stop. Shit."

"No way! Come on, get up then." Jaewon laughs, surprised and also...delighted? for whatever reason? Maybe Jungwoo's tired brain is still messing with him.

It's become almost natural that Jaewon pulls him up and along, out of the bus, and they're walking through the main street of their apartment district together. Turns out Jaewon lives east of it, in building 102, while Jungwoo is all the way in the west in 119.

"We should go to school together," Jaewon suggests. "Or are you taking the later bus?"

"Yeah, usually. It's a longer way from me to the station." It's a lame excuse that hardly hides that he just cannot get up in time for the other one.

"That's fine. We can ride back home together, though. If that's okay with you?"

Like Jungwoo is the one being bothered by Jaewon's presence.

"Fine." He can't even give him full proper answers that don't sound like he's suffocated and constipated at the same time.

"Okay. Cool." Jaewon smiles. It suits him. His face makes more sense when he looks at Jungwoo like that, or at anyone else, really.

"I'm walking you to your building," he says before Jungwoo can even protest and leads him up the stairs to the western half of the district. Jungwoo finds that he wouldn't even know what to say to stop him. Like with his studies, he does everything thoroughly and with full conviction. Jungwoo feels like he could tell him he lived in a fortress of thorns and Jaewon would still insist on climbing up the walls with him.

It's easy to be friends with Yang Jaewon. It's the first time having a friend is bound to no conditions or anything at all and Jungwoo has no idea what to do with the idea that Jaewon considers him important enough to take a detour for him. The few people he stuck around with before had disappeared as soon as he left the school grounds. He didn't bother contacting them either. Mutual putting up, mutual ignorance of each other's existence where their lives didn't intersect. He's a shadow, slipping in and out of the world. He likes his peace. Solitude is a familiar cave he crawls into with ease.

He doesn't want to be important to Jaewon. Fading into his shadow comes with much less things he has to pretend to be.

But Jaewon waves him goodbye at the entrance door of his building with such a bright voice. And perhaps — Jungwoo swallows hard at the possibility, the mere idea — perhaps he'll accept whatever he sees once Jungwoo steps into the light, no matter how ugly he feels under the sun.