12. A Dream from the Past
F or the past three days, Wooju has skipped school and Yunho has been holding himself back from rushing over to the boy’s house unannounced. But bearing with Wooju’s absence is becoming increasingly difficult. Wasn’t two years enough? Perhaps, not. He misses Wooju, clearly.
Yunho’s mind wanders off, again and again.
It isn’t until the end of the week that fate intervenes in the form of Yoon Bora, his previous manager, in a bob cut.
While en route to the nearest Internet cafe after class dismissal, Yunho encounters the face of the woman who helped him rise to stardom. He doesn’t recall any of today’s events happening before, though. If they were friends, Wooju would have introduced them to each other.
Bora finds him anyway.
As if fate is the one chasing after him.
“Young man, has anybody ever told you that you look like an idol?” are the first lines that escape Bora’s lips. “If you don’t mind, can you tell me your name?”
With a straight face, Yunho digs into his pockets and studies the pale woman before him.
“Ri Yunho,” he replies.
“Ri Yunho,” Bora echoes his name with an enthusiastic smile as if his name is perfect for the job she is about to offer him. “My name is Yoon Bora, and I turn ordinary boys like you into stars. Would you like to be one?”
Yunho considers. It seems like no matter how much he avoids it—if something is meant to be, it will find a way. Even if it has to go through a hundred different scenarios. Just like Bora now.
“If not that, how about a cup of coffee with a stranger?” Bora entices. “I promise you won’t regret it.”
I hope so, too.
Yunho winds up following Yoon Bora into a coffee shop.
If she were an unimportant stranger, Yunho would have just walked away. But Bora is Bora. Despite his unbelievable demands as an actor, she never gave up on him. She might have been terrible at controlling the paparazzi, but Bora was the one who stood by his side and took him in even when the world turned its back on him.
While perched across from the older woman, Yunho shifts in his seat and quickly ties his hair into a ponytail.
“So, tell me about yourself,” Bora encourages.
Yunho pauses, placing his large hands on the table. “Honestly, becoming an actor used to be my dream,” he mutters, hesitant as he takes a small sip of his mocha coffee. “I became ?.?.?. almost became one before.”
“Oh? So this isn’t the first time someone recruited you on the street?” Bora chuckles. “Wow. I knew there was something special about you when I first saw you. Looks like I found a gem in you, Ri Yunho.”
Yunho dips his head slightly, smirking. “It wasn’t on the street, no.” He remembers Wooju, and the genuine smile on his face as he introduced the two of them to each other around this time in the past. “I just had connections.”
“Interesting,” Bora comments. “Well, what happened to your dream of becoming an actor? Why aren’t you one yet?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I usually say I have all the time in the world, but I have an urgent matter at home, so I’m gonna be straightforward with you, Yunho,” Bora says, lacing her fingers together. “I want you. I see potential in you, and I think a part of you wants this job to be your friend. So, would you give me the honor of turning you into a star?”
The smug smile on Yunho’s face fades in an instant. His coffee suddenly tastes bitter.
“Isn’t that why you agreed to have coffee with me? To be a star?” Bora asks. “To finally give acting a shot?”
“I don’t know what I want,” Yunho replies with utter reluctance, his fingers gripping the handle of the ceramic mug. “I thought I’d figure it out if I followed you.”
I thought I’d dive right in, but something’s stopping me, and I don’t know what it is. Yet.
“Then think about it more,” Bora suggests. “When did your dream of becoming an actor start? How about reliving that moment and asking yourself once again what you really want? What made you have such a dream?”
“My best friend gave me the idea,” Yunho muses. “I thought it sounded fun.”
Bora leans back, curiosity filling her gaze. “Acting?”
“With him,” Yunho adds, his eyes fixed on his drink. “I wanted us to do something fun together.”
Bora nods as if she understands how he feels, then takes a sip from her own cup, smearing the rim with red lipstick. “So, where is this friend of yours now?”
“Gone.”
“By ‘gone’ , you mean . . .?”
“Just gone.” We’re not friends anymore. “He’s far away.” In the future, maybe. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”
“I see,” Bora says. “Then how about becoming an actor to have something to remember your friend by? I’m sure he’d appreciate that.”
“What if I just want to forget about him?”
“Do you really want to forget about your dream?”
Yunho flicks his gaze toward the older woman. “What?”
“I don’t think your dream was to become a star, dear.”
Then and there, Bora sees through him. She speculates something even Yunho himself has yet to discover.
“Have you ever heard yourself talking about your friend? You talk about him as if he is your dream.” Her lips curve into a small, knowing smile. “That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on you, though. Take your time thinking about it.”
She rises from her seat, then reaches into her purse.
“In the meantime,” Bora continues, handing him a blue card, “here’s my business card. Call me if you ever change your mind. You have potential, Yunho. All you need is a little practice, and you’ll be great. Don’t waste the chance.”
Yunho contemplates his choices on his way to school. With Bora’s business card tucked in his pocket, he is making progress toward his supposed dream. But whether or not his dream is to be an actor or to do something fun with Wooju, Yunho has yet to find the answer.
His mind is a jumbled mess, a puzzle with all the wrong pieces laid out.
He feels like exploding and disintegrating into stardust, but then he catches a familiar brunette hobbling across the street with the rest of the pedestrians.
Jang Jihoon.
For a moment, Jihoon reminds him of Wooju on the night that he almost hit the raven-haired boy with his car.
Yunho curls his hand into a fist. He turns on his heels, tries changing his route, and instantly fails.
I don’t think your dream was to become a star, dear, Bora’s voice reverberates in his head, halting his steps.
An old memory rushes back to him: Wooju’s face, pale and haggard, torn, and frayed, as the headlights beamed at him. Wooju’s dull blue eyes seemingly calling out for help. Yunho remembers the way he held his hand out for him, the way he wanted Wooju to rely solely on him.
What is my dream, then?
Yunho grumbles and curses under his breath before weaving through the crowd and standing in front of Jihoon.
Jihoon looks up at Yunho through his foggy glasses, blinking slowly with his brows furrowed.
Yunho manages to ask, his eyes fixed on Jihoon’s limp leg, “What happened to you?”
“None of your business,” Jihoon replies quickly.
“Whatever.” Yunho lets out a strangled sigh. “Get on my back,” he orders before spinning around and kneeling with one knee on the ground. He can’t leave him alone, just like he couldn’t leave Wooju alone.
“Why?” Jihoon narrows his eyes, pouting skeptically. “So that you can drop me off in the middle of the road, leave me there, and then kill me?”
“You’re already in the middle of the road. Do you want to die?” Yunho hisses. “And what are you, a writer? Why are you making up a novel out of the blue? Just get on my back. I can at least walk you to school, drop you off at the clinic, and tell Mr. Koh to deduct your behavioral points for being such a drama queen, you asshole.”
Jihoon takes a step forward and shouts, “You bastard! Why are you getting mad at me, too, when you’re the one who treated me wrong? I can’t believe this.”
“Just get on before my patience expires,” Yunho says wearily. “Unless you really want to die.”
Jihoon rolls his eyes before wincing and glancing down at his sprained foot. The brunette takes a deep breath in, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I’m heavy.” Reluctantly, he leans down and loops his arms around Yunho’s shoulders.
Without words, Yunho reaches underneath Jihoon’s legs, stands up, and starts walking toward the school, his pace steady yet faster than Jihoon’s limping leg.
Something ignites inside of Yunho. An old feeling, perhaps. Something like guilt or pure nostalgia.
He retrieves a memory from the back of his mind, of carrying Jo Wooju on his back the first time they met. He remembers how, even at that moment, he had wished fate would allow them to have one more chance encounter.
Did I start dreaming the night I met Wooju?
“I didn’t frame my dad, you know.” Jihoon’s boyish voice and chilling breath crawl against his neck, flinging Yunho back to reality.
“I know,” Yunho simply says as he veers away from the crowd and the traffic, rounding the corner to enter a small neighborhood that would lead them to school.
“My dad was an alcoholic,” Jihoon continues as soon as the crowd dwindles. “He used to beat me up every day. He would kick me, punch me, and throw his empty beer bottles at me. I don’t remember when I stopped crying. I just did. Nobody cared, so I asked myself, ‘What’s the use of crying? They won’t hear you. They won’t save you. The world probably blames you, too.’”
Yunho’s chest tightens at Jihoon’s heart-wrenching admission. How unfair it must have been for the young brunette to feel like the whole world was against him.
“I’m sorry,” Yunho mumbles, guilt-ridden. He’d been judging everyone ever since he got here. He should’ve known everyone has their own story, not just him.
Perhaps Wooju, too.
Yunho’s heart aches even more when he imagines Wooju’s struggles to find a way to live on his own. How lonely and scary it must have been for an eight-year-old to live without a family to love and look after him. Except for the one time Wooju told him about his father’s tragic death, Yunho has no idea what could have happened to the rest of the boy’s family. Wooju was a mystery until now.
“Don’t be sorry.” Jihoon gently tightens his hold around Yunho’s neck. “Someone actually had a heart and saved me. Just when I was losing hope, a kid broke the window and jumped in front of my dad to stop him from stabbing me. That boy saved my life and became my friend... until he disappeared without a word.” He pauses. “I ended up living in an orphanage later on, wondering if we would ever meet again. Luckily, two amazing people adopted me.”
“That’s a relief,” says Yunho. “You did well.”
“I did?”
“For doing so well after being saved, I mean. You didn’t waste the life that boy saved.”
“If I did well,” Jihoon says, “then why does everyone at school hate me? I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t even talk to anyone at school.”
“That’s the problem with society,” chides Yunho. “Some people hate being ignored. The rest are just judgmental.”
“Are you judgmental?” Jihoon leans in.
Another set of memories floods Yunho’s mind—the bruises on Wooju’s body, the bandage wrapped around the hand that saved him, and the scar forming behind it.
Yunho wants to lie to himself and believe that those bruises are from a one-time incident, not one Wooju had been going through for a lifetime, but the truth has become more transparent now. Not all the bruises were fresh.
“Yeah.” Yunho bites his lower lip as he regrets not noticing the black and blue marks covering Wooju’s frail body before. “But I learned my lesson. Thanks to you and some other people, I learned that it’s not right to judge.”
Jihoon pauses for a moment, considering Yunho’s words. “Is that why you don’t trust me?”
Yunho hesitates. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the way you look at me,” says Jihoon. “You probably don’t realize it, but you look at me as though I did something terrible to you.”
Yunho’s lips curl into a half-smile. “You did.”
“What?” Jihoon exclaims, his voice filled with disbelief.
“In another life.” Yunho chuckles softly, and yet his eyes remain serious and somewhat shady. Yunho tries to make his next words sound like a joke, but he definitely means them. “You accused me of cheating on the final exam in front of everyone in class.”
“Whoa, hold on. Who’s making up a novel now?” Jihoon raises an eyebrow, intrigued and yet cautious. “You know what? Fine, I kinda see myself doing that anyway. I mean, just look at you, Yunho. You’re a natural genius. I feel stupid next to you because no matter how much I study, I can never beat you. Maybe you’re right. In another life, I’d probably be petty enough to ruin you.”
Puzzled by the enigma that is Jihoon, Yunho is about to ask him about his future plans, but the moment he lifts his gaze from the ground, he not only finds himself arriving at the school gate but also meets the delicate gaze of a certain blue-eyed boy.
Yunho freezes as the rest of the world ceases to exist.
Why? he wonders. Perhaps it’s because the dream he’d been denying for years is right in front of him.
What’s wrong with me? I feel weak. Why do I feel like leaving everything behind and following you instead? What have you done to me, Jo Wooju?
But Wooju doesn’t give Yunho a chance to say a word or to be the first to run away. He doesn’t even let him see the sadness behind those blue eyes. Instead, Wooju sulks away, like he always does, leaving Yunho bristling.
“Speaking of the transfer student,” Jihoon remarks, his voice delicate as he observes the way Yunho’s full attention lingers toward Wooju. “Do you have feelings for him?”
Jihoon’s words hang in the air, but there is no hint of teasing when he says them, only pure curiosity and perhaps jealousy as he waits for Yunho’s honesty.
But the answer never comes, and Wooju never looks back to witness the longing gaze trailing him from behind.