He felt cold.

She was looking back at him from the arms of a guy he did not know—a guy he had seen around the university a few times before.

For a moment, she looked like a stranger.

There was a highlight he did not recognize below the eyes, eyebrows that were more filled in than he had ever observed, and a lip pinker than a cherry blossom or a flamingo, whichever came to mind first. She was pretty—prettier than he ever recalled seeing her look—but her face was different enough for him to briefly wonder if perhaps he had gotten the right person.

But then she spoke. “Ye Jun.”

And her voice was the same.

She pulled away from the man she was with and in a low voice told him to wait for her at the entrance of the building.

The guy nodded before briefly turning to look at him, meeting his gaze, his eyes narrowed into a glare.

Ye Jun suddenly felt tired.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, and he turned back to look at her.

“I forgot something in one of the classrooms.”

Then silence fell before she sighed loudly.

“Well, don’t you have something to ask me?”

There didn’t seem to be much of a point. He already knew what was going on, had known for a while now. How could he not have known, given the way she had been checking her phone every few minutes during their dates, how she would bail on him without much of an explanation or how he and a few others had seen her around the university with that guy, walking side by side, just a bit too close to be considered just friends.

She scoffed. “I knew you weren’t going to say anything. What kind of man are you to not even react when you catch your girlfriend in the arms of another guy.”

He quietly sighed, bracing himself for what he knew would come next. It was the same conversation he’d had many times before, perhaps not exactly word-for-word, but close enough. Just like with his past relationships, he knew it spelled their end.

“Did you even like me?”

He paused. It was the same question as with the others. A pattern that kept repeating itself.

Did he even like her? Had he ever liked her? Had he liked any of them?

Of course he had liked her. Otherwise, why would he have spent so much time with her? In that year alone he had spent more time with her than he had with Jong In, his childhood friend, something that had never happened before.

Of course he had liked her, liked her still but enough for him to react? To feel that elusive emotion that all of his previous lovers tried to generate within him? That feeling that came with desire, possessiveness, and a touch of suspicion? That feeling?

No. He couldn’t say that she did.

But to be fair, no one did.

That was how he had gotten that name after all. Ice Prince. A stupid moniker, one that made him cringe every time he heard it.

He understood her though. It must have been annoying to talk to another guy, to flirt with him, and to see your lover not even blink. He knew that he should have talked to her, that he should have brought it up when she began talking to that other guy. But he had simply been unable to, knowing that it was his fault, that she wanted some proof of his jealousy as a way to show that he had feelings for her. Perhaps he should have faked it, but faking an emotion he knew nothing about always ended in an even bigger confrontation. And he knew that it would have simply delayed the inevitable anyways.

Throb. His head hurt.

She suddenly let out an exasperated sigh and he looked up, his eyes landing on her now scowling face. “Maybe things would have been different if you had stopped hanging out with that weird childhood friend of yours. I mean, we just started university, but he clings to you as though he has no other friends. Do you know of the rumors that are going around school because of you two? It’s not normal to be that close.”

He stilled. Why? What did Jong In have to do with anything?

“Do you know how embarrassing it was to tell my friends that you couldn’t meet up with us because you had plans with him? That you’d rather be with another guy than with your girlfriend?”

She let out a humorless laugh and her purse swung forward wildly as she pulled out a compact. She peered into its mirror, and she began to adjust her hair.

He stared at her. Had she always been so…

She had never been the type to say such things about another person. So then why was she behaving this way?

“And with a guy like that, too. I don’t care about the stutter, but he’s so weird. He doesn’t talk to anybody but you and that girl you two hang out with. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t even meet our eyes. Why did you ever invite him along if all he ever did was just sit there? Why did he even come? He’s just so weird.”

Stop.

“And what’s with that stupid green jacket he always wears? Has he never looked in a mirror before? It’s so embarrassing.”

“Shut up,” he said softly. The words had come unbidden from his mouth, before they had even formed in his consciousness.

She stilled and turned to look at him, her eyes briefly wide before narrowing into a glare. He wasn’t sure why he had said it, he didn’t want to argue. He had never once raised his voice to her in the ten months they had been dating.

“What?” she said, disbelief clear in her voice.

“Don’t talk about him like that,” he replied, blood pumping violently through his veins. “You don’t even know him.”

She closed the compact with a sharp click, her eyes still fixed on his. She let out a disbelieving laugh. “I guess the rumors were true,” she finally said with a sneer. “That’s fine. It doesn’t matter anymore anyways. You and I are through. I hope you will be happy with him.”

Ye Jun took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. He knew that she was angry and that she was merely lashing out, but that still did nothing to calm his mood as he watched her retreating form, furiously huffing away from him in a manner that he had never seen before.

At that moment he was certain, she was just a stranger to him now.

“Fuck,” he mumbled. He then sighed, pulling out a cigarette before turning around and making his way out of the building. It was well past eight o’clock, and he assumed most of the campus would be empty.

He began to walk, fumbling to light his cigarette as he did so. It was a cold night, winter already in full swing.

“Damn,” he muttered to himself as he tried to flick his lighter with fingers that were quickly growing numb from the cold. “Why the hell isn’t this working?”

Stepping into the dimly lit university park, he began to walk toward the train station, the unlit cigarette pressed between his lips and his hands tucked into his pockets. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks.

Under the delicate light of a streetlamp that hovered above a park bench, there was a person sitting slightly hunched and reading what looked to be a textbook. Ye Jun recognized him almost immediately.

The cigarette trembled slightly in his mouth, and he removed it from his lips, jamming it into his pocket before calling out that familiar name.

“Jong In.”

The person looked up and for a moment, Ye Jun didn’t want to see him, not after what had just happened. But then his eyes landed on his friend’s round head and he felt a familiar sense of comfort wash over him.

He didn’t have to ask why he was there, he already knew the reason. It was slowly becoming a problem but at that moment he really didn’t care; he was just glad that he was there.

Ye Jun’s pace quickened slightly until he stood in front of his friend.

Jong In looked up, his cheeks and the tip of his nose were pink, an awful, unfashionable beanie covered nearly all of his forehead. His lips were almost purple, and while it wasn’t obvious from a distance, Ye Jun could see that he was shivering slightly.

How long had he been out there?

Ye Jun quickly began to shrug off his coat, prompting Jong In to stand as he placed it over his shoulders.

He internally sighed when Jong In turned to face him. “You heard the rumors, I’m guessing,” he said.

Jong In nodded, placing his textbook back into his bag. “J-Ji Soo told me th-this morning.”

Of course.

“A-Are…are you okay?” Jong In asked after a while as Ye Jun steered them towards the station.

Ye Jun sighed. He wasn’t sure exactly how to explain what he was feeling. He placed his head on Jong In’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. The cold was biting into his back but still he felt comfortable.

“She said the same thing they all say.”

Ye Jun watched as he swallowed, his jaw tightening a bit. “Was s-she also sseeing someone else?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I thought maybe it would go well this time.”

Jong In did not respond and simply patted his head with his hand as they continued to walk.

“Do you think there is something wrong with me?”

“Maybe,” Jong In replied and Ye Jun couldn’t help but smile into his shoulder. Why was it that his stuttering only seemed to stop with his clever responses?

“I wonder if I’ll ever meet that person…” he whispered softly to himself. Then he sighed, instantly regretting having voiced that thought while Jong In was walking right beside him.

He decided to change the topic. “She wore makeup today. It was the first time I saw her like that, probably because we’ve started university. It felt like I was talking to a stranger.”

“Ji Soo said th-that she wore makeup in high…sschool too.”

“Really?” he said, sounding just a little bit surprised.

Jong In sighed. “Maybe if you just noticed, you w-w-wouldn’t be tested so often.”

“So cruel,” he replied, mumbling into the fabric of his own coat.

“Aren’t you c-cold?” Jong In asked.

He was, the wind felt like slashes on his back but Jong In was still slightly shivering.

Ye Jun shook his head and simply held him tighter.

The station came into their line of view, and they quickly made their way towards it.

When the train door opened, they sat down beside each other.

“Can I come to your place tonight?” Ye Jun asked. He didn’t quite feel as bad as he did a moment before, but he didn’t feel quite like parting just yet.

Jong In sighed. “We only live t-two bblocks away from each other.”

“So cruel to someone who was just dumped.” Though perhaps, he thought as he gazed sideways at Jong In’s uncertain expression—perhaps he was the one who was being cruel.

But Jong In responded in a manner similar to how he always did. “I c-can’t b-be nice to you twenty-four sseven.”

Ye Jun laughed, not taking the remark seriously. After all, Jong In had waited for him in the cold.

“Please,” Ye Jun whispered into his ear, not caring about the eyes that watched them.

Jong In flinched but did not pull back, and then he shook his head. “You’re g–going to hog all my p-pillows again.”

“I won’t,” he replied with a smile, but he knew that he would but he also knew that Jong In would not reject him.

Jong In sighed again but Ye Jun could hear the acquiescence in his voice. “F-Fine, but you’re sleeping on the g–ground.”

Ye Jun laid his head against Jong In's shoulder and closed his eyes. “No way, why would I sleep on the ground when you have a perfectly good bed?”

Ye Jun felt him shake his head but upon opening his eyes, he could see a small smile on Jong In’s lips. His own mouth fell into a similar shape as he stared at the profile of his friend’s face. There was a familiar look of contentment there, one he immediately recognized.

A warm feeling spread throughout his chest then. He could still feel the cold at his back, but he no longer cared. All the ill feelings were gone, staved off by this soothing feeling that Jong In always seemed to produce within him.

He leaned further into his friend, securely placing his head on Jong In’s shoulder. Then he closed his eyes once more, feeling the familiar rattling of the train beneath them.

It was comforting.