It started as a look.
Not suspicion—recognition.
Juni noticed it in the studio first, during a break when someone leaned over his shoulder to comment on his draft composition. The classmate's eyes flicked briefly to Juni's phone as it buzzed on the table, then back to his face.
"Your boyfriend?" the classmate asked, voice casual, as if the answer was already known.
Juni didn't flinch. He didn't smile either. He glanced at the screen—Elian—and felt something settle in his chest.
"Just… someone," he said, lightly.
The classmate nodded in a way that didn't believe him and didn't need to challenge him.
"Oh," she said, tone warm with the quiet certainty of people who enjoy knowing. "He texts a lot."
Juni's mouth tightened briefly, not from annoyance, but from the strange vulnerability of being read correctly by strangers.
Later that day, at Elian's campus, the assumption arrived differently—through tone rather than directness. A seminar group reorganized itself around Elian after class, voices overlapping with familiarity that felt too fast.
"We're grabbing lunch," one of them said. "You coming?"
Elian hesitated. "I can't today."
A pause.
"Date?" another student asked, smiling like it was a harmless joke.
Elian didn't answer. He didn't deny it either. He simply said, "Something like that," and stepped away.
When he met Juni that evening, he didn't mention it. Juni didn't bring up the studio comment. The question hovered around them like fog—present, unspoken, thin enough to ignore.
They ate quietly in Elian's apartment, sharing leftovers. Juni's knee brushed Elian's under the table. Elian's hand rested briefly at Juni's lower back when he passed behind him.
Touch that didn't declare.
Closeness that didn't explain.
Later, Juni sat on the couch, sketchbook open but untouched. Elian sat on the floor, working through notes.
"You've been quiet," Elian said after a while.
Juni glanced up. "Just tired."
Elian nodded, accepting the answer. He always did, until Juni was ready to give a real one.
The truth was simpler and more complicated: Juni had started noticing how people looked at them when they were together. How friends began to assume there was a shape around their closeness.
The question they didn't ask felt protective—for now. Ambiguity was space. It was control. It was a way of keeping something precious from becoming public property.
But Juni also knew: space could become avoidance if they stayed there too long.
He watched Elian's profile in the lamplight—calm, focused, steady. The thought arrived gently:
We could be real without being loud.
He didn't say it. Not yet.