Lee Minho.

Minho was sitting in the back of the school, with a half-finished cigarette and his shoelaces untied. Jisung arrived late, as always, wearing that oversized sweater that smelled like someone else's house, his eyes full of questions that didn't dare come out.

"My mom says I should stop hanging out with you," Minho blurted out, without looking at him. "That you're a bad influence."

The silence was dense, as if even the air knew what they weren't saying.

Minho handed him the cigarette without asking. Jisung took it without thanks. And for a second, their fingers touched. Minho felt the heat, the kind that came with embarrassment.

"But I don't mind," she added softly. "Because when you're around, everything else... stops hurting so much."

And he didn't look at it. Because looking at it would be admitting it. And in 1986, that was more dangerous than any bullet.

1986. In a Southern California town, the sun filters through cracked buildings and forgotten skating rinks. Teenagers move among cassettes, vinyl records, and stolen cigarettes, searching for something to take them away from their boredom. Among them are two boys who seemed to live in different worlds, but who found each other for some reason that not even music can explain.

There was something intimidating about Minho. He wasn't the tallest, nor the strongest, but his silence carried more weight than any shout. Quiet, observant, with a way of walking as if he always knew where he was going, even if he didn't. The son of parents who were never truly there, he learned to take care of himself early on. You'd see him alone at parties, wearing an old denim jacket, recording tapes with songs no one knew. He loved music as if it were a way of breathing.

Jisung, on the other hand, was more of a whirlwind. He was 17 and spoke faster than he thought, laughing at everything as if the world were about to end. Intelligent, creative, too sensitive for where he lived. Always with new ideas, always with questions, always with that laugh that hid the sleepless nights. There was something about his energy that baffled everyone. Except Minho.

They met at a boring school reunion. Jisung had snuck in just to be annoying, and Minho was there as punishment. They didn't talk much. But Minho heard him laugh at a silly comment, and for the first time in weeks, he smiled.

From then on, they didn't stop crossing paths. At the abandoned skating rink. At the diner on the corner. In the school hallway. They said little things: jokes, shoves, long glances when no one else was looking. No one understood how they got along. Not even them.

And yet, at night, Minho would sometimes rewind the old tapes and think about his voice. And Jisung, his head leaning against the window, wondered why his laughter sounded different when it came from Minho.