Dancing In The Rain (Part 2)

Summary: Kangin was successful, the money, the job, the perks. He find happiness that he hadn't realized was missing from his life when he meets an old friend from college, Sungmin. When Sungmin disappears, what's going to happen to Kangin?

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AN: This is part 2. You can find Part 1 here. And yes. This is the last part.

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Three months later, Kangin went to work and switched his computer on to find an email from his old business management professor at college asking if he would mind being a guest lecturer for a day, the students needed to see a live case study. Essentially, he was supposed to go over there and talk about how he saved the magazine. He wasn’t interested. He had typed out a polite letter of declination when his secretary came in with his coffee and his schedule for the day. By the time she was gone, he had changed his mind. Kangin thought that he really should just ask his secretary for a printed copy of his meeting timings, he couldn’t remember the last time he paid attention to her.

A week later when Kangin drove in through the university gates, he felt an unfamiliar thumping in his head. He tried to tell himself that it was only because he hadn’t been there in a while. He wasn’t quite sure if he believed it.

It wasn’t hard to find the professor’s room. It was in the exact same place it had been a few years ago. After the usual formalities and pleasantries he told Kangin that he would be addressing the senior class and the freshmen, was that okay. Kangin nodded, then called his secretary to free his schedule.

Soon after, the professor led him to the freshmen class. He spent most of the lunch hour wandering around campus, answering questions for eager freshmen, rejecting some of the too eager ones. He ended up with a pocket full of phone numbers but he just tipped them into the waste basket.

He pretended he didn’t know what or who he was looking for. Deep inside, he knew he wanted to see Sungmin but he was ignoring that part of his mind for the time being. One half of his mind wanted to meet Sungmin, and ask him why he had disappeared from his life all of a sudden. The other half was prepared to run away and hide if he saw Sungmin’s face in the crowd. He was usually so rational; he couldn’t explain why he was so illogical and indecisive about this. He wondered why he was so disappointed when the bell rang at the end of lunch and he still hadn’t met Sungmin.

He met the senior class then, and soon it was over. The excuse he had to be hanging around the campus was now invalid. He walked towards the parking lot.

It would have been a scene plagiarized from a cheesy movie if he found Sungmin right then, as he was walking to the parking lot. Kangin thought it would be even cheesier if Sungmin came running up to him as he was driving out through the gates. Cheesy and predictable. Also something he was hoping for.

The next morning the sound of fists pounding on his door woke Kangin from his alcohol induced stupor. He had fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning and he wasn’t quite sure just how much beer he had drunk. He scrambled up from the floor, nearly tripping over empty beer bottles numerous times before reaching the door and pulling it open.

Kangin blinked once, then twice. The beer must have been playing tricks on him. He reached out and touched the face in front of him, whispering the name of the person he could see in a twisted alcohol slurred haze.

“Sungmin…”

Then he promptly passed out.

***

When Kangin woke up it was dark outside. He slowly sat up and tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes. He felt the vestiges of a throbbing headache in the back of his head and stood up very slowly, trying not to aggravate it.

He walked into the living room and turned the soft lights on, expecting to find a mess to clear up. There wasn’t. He didn’t find his beer bottles or filled ashtrays. What he did find was the hallucination from that morning waking up from where he was lying on his couch and walking towards him.

***

About an hour later, Kangin was eating what Sungmin had made, not really tasting it, mainly because of the million questions that were running through his mind. Sungmin noticed him looking, smiled and said, “After you eat, hyung. We’ll talk then.”

There was a knock on the door. Kangin tried to get up but sat back down halfway through because of the renewed pounding in his head. Sungmin stood up, “Hyung, don’t strain yourself. I’ll get the door.”

He heard the door open, then a woman’s voice said, “What are you doing here?” He didn’t hear Sungmin’s reply. Lee Ha Ni walked into the room, Sungmin following her a few steps behind.

Though Kangin had too much of a hangover to look up at her, he could almost imagine her expression when she said, “OH! Youngwoon-oppa! How are you? Oh, don’t eat that. I’ll make you something that’s good for hangovers” and pushed Kangin’s bowl away from him before flitting off into the kitchen. Flitted. Like an insect.

Kangin mumbled, “Crazy fucking bitch” and pulled his bowl back towards him. To Sungmin he added, “Tell her that if she’s going to make eggs I’ll kill her.”

Sungmin chuckled. “Hyung, don’t say that, she’s your girlfriend isn’t she? She just cares about you.”

Kangin thought he had heard wrong until he looked up to find Sungmin’s eyes on him, almost waiting for an answer. “What? Her? My girlfriend? Who told you that?”

Kangin watched Sungmin’s expression change from playful to astounded, then apologetic, “Oh sorry, I didn’t know you guys broke up.”

Now Kangin was sure that he was mirroring that astounded expression Sungmin had on only seconds ago, “We were never dating, Sungmin.”

“Oh. She told me you were. And not to come here anymore. That’s why I-”

Sungmin’s voice broke off as Ha Ni came back into the room. Kangin thought he saw a dirty glare directed at Sungmin flash on her face before she switched back to sickly sweet as she sat herself on the arm of Kangin’s couch. Sungmin looked awkward and seemed to be trying to leave. Kangin somehow never wanted to let him out of his sight again. It felt like he’d never come back if he left this time.

“Did you tell Sungmin that we were dating?” Kangin asked Ha Ni quietly. Sungmin’s eyes widened and he whispered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Oh shit’ while Ha Ni reddened visibly and fought to keep an expression of nonchalance.

“Yes and I had my reasons oppa, we’ll talk about that later.”

Sungmin slowly slipped out as their voices rose and leaned his head back against the door and closed his eyes, bracing himself, awaiting the inevitable.

Then she said the words that made Sungmin feel like his whole world had just collapsed beneath him and he held on to the door handle for support as he waited to hear Kangin’s reaction, terrified of the words that were about to come.

“So what?”

Kangin’s voice saying just those two words rang inside Sungmin’s head, the noise resonating in his mind. What was that supposed to mean, disgust or indifference? Or could he dare to imagine that he was defending him from Ha Ni’s words, ‘I only told him that to protect you. That kid is delusional! He thinks he is in love with you!’

The rush of blood to his head prevented him from focusing on much of the rest of the conversation, so he stood there, supporting his wobbly knees up by his hand on the door knob and was thrown quite out of balance when the door flew open and Lee Ha Ni stormed out, giving him a look that could kill.

Kangin came out of the room slowly, and looked relieved (Relieved? Why would he be relieved?) when he saw Sungmin at the door, “Oh I thought you had left me (He wants me to stay?) again (Again? Does it really matter to him when I’m gone?). Come in.”

Sungmin wasn’t sure if he should but just in that short exchange he had been confused by Kangin’s words so many times he had to go in to make sure he knew what was going on.

They sat on the couch and Sungmin was too nervous to make eye contact and so he decided to stare at his hands instead. Kangin decided he ought to break the awkward silence so he cleared his throat. Sungmin looked up at him for a fraction of a second then looked back down as soon as he met Kangin’s eyes.

“Did you hear what she said?”

An almost indiscernible nod.

“Was she making it up?”

Sungmin took a deep breath then shook his head. He looked up and said, “If it creeps you out, I’ll leave.”

Kangin thinks he’ll never forget the expression on Sungmin’s face just before Kangin leaned in and kissed him all of a sudden. Sungmin thinks it is sweet the way Kangin began to pull away from the kiss when Sungmin was too shocked to respond, interpreting it as dislike. Kangin replays the moment over in his head, when Sungmin wrapped his arms around his shoulders, threading his fingers through his hair, pulling him closer as he had begun to pull away.

Sungmin breaks the kiss, leans his forehead on Kangin’s, panting slightly, his lips curling into a small smile when their eyes met.

Kangin can’t help grinning as he leans forward and nibbles on Sungmin’s full, pink lips and loves the sound of Sungmin’s suppressed giggle escaping through the kiss.

That proves to be their breaking point and they both laugh for a good five minutes at the end of which Kangin decides that Sungmin’s laugh has to be the cutest thing in the world.

Then the bowl of food that Lee Ha Ni made gets almost toppled over with all their laughing and shaking and Kangin rewrites his list of Cutest Thing in the World, deciding that it is Sungmin’s get-down-to-business face.

Sungmin makes sure Kangin eats and that all the bowls are washed before kissing Kangin again, tackling Kangin so he falls back onto the couch.

Later that night, they sit together on the very same couch they spent so much time making out on, watching TV, eating popcorn and fighting for the last bottle of beer. Sungmin gets up, offering to go buy some more and Kangin reaches out to pull him back but it is too late.

Five minutes later, Kangin swears silently, switches off the TV and locks the door behind him as he runs after Sungmin.

It is drizzling and Kangin laughs as he is reminded of the day he met Sungmin after a very long time, the drenched guy in the white shirt. He sees Sungmin coming towards him, barely looking at anything around him, trying to get back as fast as he can. Kangin stops right in front of him and Sungmin narrowly avoids collision and says, ‘Sorry’ before trying to duck around him. Kangin holds him firmly and says, “You shouldn’t say sorry when someone bumps into you.”

Sungmin looks up and gives him an impish grin, “I wanted to get back to you.”

They stand that way for a while and then Kangin lets go of him, feeling conscious that they were in the middle of a street. They start to walk back to the apartment together.

“You know what? I think I fell for you when I saw you standing in the rain with your arms wide open.”

Sungmin smiles and slips his hand into Kangin’s, “Maybe because you could see my sexy body through my thin white shirt.”

Kangin looks indignant and Sungmin falls in love with that expression, maybe that’s why he’s a second late to start running away from him. A smile spread across Kangin’s face as he chased him down the street, their finally expressed feelings connecting them with an undeniable bond, the threads of which were running alongside them, dancing in the rain.

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