the theory of relativity | heehoon

twelve.

The train tracks are blanketed by a layer of fresh snow when Heeseung ducks under the construction tapes that surround the entrances in a flimsy barrier-like pattern. His footsteps leave traces, neat hole-punched boot prints in the whiteness. Easy for Sunghoon to follow.

Winters in Seoul would be more bearable, Heeseung thinks, if not for the wind. The night breezes are dry and mercilessly cold, glazing his cheeks with red, tinging the tops of his ears with white as he walks. He's beginning to wish he had the foresight to check the temperature forecasts before he left the house, but it's too late to think of now. The spare jacket over the crook of his elbow is meant for Sunghoon. Heeseung knows he would have left his dorm today without one, as he always does.

The lights in the train station flicker in the distance. The construction workers are already milling around, powering up their machinery, setting up their equipment.

Sunghoon appears as a tiny figure from the edge of Heeseung's vision, ducking under the tapes, following the footprints left in the snow towards the empty train tracks. As he nears, Heeseung can see the slightest dusting of snowflakes in dark hair.

The time is 11:58AM on the 1st of January 2021, and Sunghoon is here.

"You're late." Heeseung's voice is empty of reproof, the words are said to fill the silence and nothing more.

"I had something on." For the briefest moment, as Sunghoon looks up, his expression is a mixture of everything, expectance and curiosity and mild irritation, but as he meets Heeseung's eyes his features seem to soften. "Is there a reason why you called me here?"

Heeseung nods, but his mind is absent.

"Do you think you love me?"

"I don't think I know what love is yet. Maybe one day in the future I will."

"Then, let's date in the future, when you know what love is."

He thinks of a night in the snow a decade ago, and of how easy it really is to lose someone over the years without thinking about it.

Today will be the first day of ten years since their promise, and today Heeseung thinks he finally knows what love really is. It's the excitement that courses through him when they're near, and the loneliness that replaces it when they go away.

It's the way he remembers the smallest things about them, even when there isn't a need to.

It's the way all he wants to hug them close and feel their heartbeat, even when they've hurt him beyond repair.

It's the voice inside his head that tells him to let them go , even when every other cell in his body screams for him to hold on tighter.

"It'll be like we were never here at all. What a sad way for everything to end."

"Not everything lasts forever. Everything has its end, and that's okay. But we will always remember that we were once here."

The truth is that love is always real, but it isn't always eternal. And after all these years, it seems that Sunghoon had never really belonged to him in the first place, only to a moment in time that had him in it.

The silence makes Sunghoon impatient. After fifteen years, it's quite impossible for Heeseung not to see past his neutral expression.

"I think we shouldn't be together anymore, Sunghoon."

Eight words are easy to say. Words in general, Heeseung realises, are very easy to speak. It's the aftermath of them that humans spend the rest of their life picking up after.

"Okay."

The younger boy's eyes are bright in the moonlight, so full of words unsaid that would never be said; pity, gratitude, apology, regret. Love. Heeseung doesn't remember how long it's been since he last saw love in Sunghoon's eyes, but long enough has passed that seeing it hurts like the first time all over again.

This time, he supposes, it'll be the last.

"You can't even bring yourself to say anything else, can you?"

Sunghoon looks taken aback, as if every word from Heeseung is a sudden blade cutting deeper and deeper into him, but even then he doesn't argue.

"I didn't think you'd want me to make this harder for both of us, Heeseung."

Heeseung thinks about the Theory of Relativity. Einstein's thought experiments had once upon a time dictated that the faster objects moved, the slower time would pass for them.

He thinks of two trains on tracks, running side by side, except now he knows one train had always been running faster than the other. Somewhere in the course of their journey together Sunghoon's train had slipped away, and everything that came after was nothing more than an ill-fated waiting game, in the hopes that one day Sunghoon would catch up to him.

Relativity had doomed him in the end, to a journey in which time would always tick slower for him than it would for Sunghoon. Perhaps that was why, as the months passed them by, Sunghoon had moved on from everything, and through all of it Heeseung had been trapped in the past, struggling to pick up the pieces.

"Goodbye, Sunghoon."

He knows what Sunghoon wants to say but can't bring himself to. After all these years, so much about him has changed, but Heeseung will always know what his best friend is thinking. He wishes he doesn't, now, but even in their last moments together the younger boy's thoughts are clear as day.

Thank you for letting me go.

"Goodbye, Heeseung."

Sunghoon hesitates a beat after, as if he's waiting for Heeseung's response, but nothing comes. In the silence that follows, the younger boy turns, backtracking his route through the thickening snow.

In the distance the construction begins the first demolition, and the old train station crumbles over the horizon, brick and glass and metal and cement and a decade of memory beginning its return to the dust it once was.

How appropriate, Heeseung thinks. That everything returns to nothing, on the same day ten years ago when it all came to be.

The time is 12:25AM on the 2nd of January 2021, the day everything ends.

"We couldn't even last a minute?"

"We'll last a thousand minutes, and then a thousand more, and a thousand more!"

Sunghoon hadn't been wrong, after all. They'd lasted a thousand minutes, then a thousand more, and another thousand more, and at some point they'd just run out of thousands to love each other with.

525,600 minutes, to be exact.

525,600 moments in time that had them in it.

Heeseung realises belatedly that the jacket he brought for Sunghoon is still tucked under his arm. For a second he considers running after him to give it to him, but he doesn't.

The perilous waiting game he's been playing and playing is over. There is no point, he sees now, making moves in a game the other person was never playing.

As he leaves that night, he shakes the spare jacket out and puts it on over his own. His heart is empty and the winter blizzard is still unforgivingly cold around him, but the extra layer keeps him warm on his way home, and he knows he'll be okay.