The summer rains of the nineties always lingered too long in the small town. Raindrops struck the rusted tin roofs, leaving dark blotches that looked like careless strokes of ink on white paper. Streetlights shimmered across puddles, quivering like memories dissolving in water.

That afternoon, Minho leaned on his old moss-green bicycle, the paint chipped, the leather seat cracked with time. He pedaled from one end of town to the other, one hand gripping the handlebar, the other tucked into the pocket of his loose jeans. The air was thick with the scent of wet soil and the faint tang of gasoline from the repair shop nearby. Beneath the brim of his dark cap, his sharp black eyes glimmered, reckless and alive, the sort of youth that left its mark on anyone who happened to glance his way.

Newt, on the other hand, seemed carved from another rhythm. Rarely on crowded streets, he preferred quiet paths shaded with trees, always carrying a few secondhand books tucked under his arm. Tall and slightly stooped, with rain-softened blond hair falling into his eyes, he moved as though he was trying not to disturb the silence. There was a gentleness about his gaze, touched with a kind of melancholy, as if he belonged to a different time altogether.

Two lives, two orbits, unlikely to collide, until a certain rain-drenched evening.

The little cassette shop’s neon sign flickered faintly-Cassette • Vinyl • Tapes-casting an unsteady glow onto the wet pavement. Minho ducked beneath the awning, not to buy but to listen. The shop always played music from old tape decks, voices from the eighties, fragile, imperfect, threaded with static like scratches across memory.

When the door opened, the rain spilled in with Newt. His white shirt was damp and clung to his shoulders, mud splashed across the hem. He shook his hair lightly, then lifted his head. His eyes met Minho’s.

A silence passed between them, filled only with the downpour outside and the wavering voice from the speakers.

“You look like you just swam across a river,” Minho teased, half a grin tugging at his lips.

“At least rivers don’t charge for shelter,” Newt replied, his accent soft, his smile easy.

Minho chuckled. It wasn’t the sort of answer he usually got.

They stood together among the shelves. Newt’s fingers drifted across the cases until they lingered on one with a pale blue cover. He turned it in his hand as though the paper sleeve could reveal something more than just track lists. Minho caught the band’s name, foreign, new, a little obscure.

“You listen to that stuff?” Minho asked.

“Not exactly. Sometimes music just… reminds you of things you thought you’d forgotten.”

The words lingered, strange and true.

For the first time, Minho looked closely at him, not the blur he’d glimpsed before near the bus stop, not just the quiet figure with books under his arm. Here, in the glow of neon and the patter of rain, Minho saw him clearly.

“Name?” he asked.

“Newt.”

“Minho.”

Two syllables each, exchanged in the hush of rain and static. A beginning.

That summer stretched on like a record set to play at the wrong speed-too slow, too long, yet strangely comforting. In the little town, time carried no urgency. People leaned back on their porches, fanning themselves with yesterday’s newspapers, watching shadows creep across wooden fences. The heat was thick, the air humming with cicadas, and the days felt like they could fold into one another without anyone noticing.

In those hours, Newt often drifted to the cassette store on the corner. The place was small, its wooden shelves lined with tapes stacked two or three deep, their spines faded by years of touch. Dust hung in the sunlight slanting through the window, and the faint smell of plastic mixed with the sharper scent of old cardboard sleeves. Newt rarely bought anything. He lingered instead, fingertips grazing the edges of cassette cases, pausing now and then to slip one into the trial player. His expression as he listened- half thoughtful, half absent- made it seem as if he were somewhere far away, though he stood only a few feet from the counter.

That was when Minho noticed him most. At first, it was coincidence, he’d drop by for a new tape, or just to escape the heat pressing down on the streets. But soon, coincidence felt like routine. He caught himself timing his visits for the hour he knew Newt might appear. Something about the boy’s quiet presence drew him in: the slight stoop of his shoulders, the way his blond hair curled damp at the nape from the heat, the look in his pale eyes that was both distant and disarmingly gentle.

One afternoon, the cassette deck crackled badly, distorting the song. Minho laughed, shaking his head.

“This thing’s about ready to die.”

Newt glanced up, lips curving into a small smile. “Maybe. But it still works, doesn’t it? Old things sometimes find their own way to survive.”

The remark was simple, yet it lingered in Minho’s chest longer than it should have. He wondered if Newt was really talking about the machine, or something else entirely. From then on, their exchanges became more frequent. They spoke in fragments, stitched between songs and static: about bands whose names few knew, about tapes rescued from flea-market bins, about sudden summer storms that drenched the town without warning.

Minho teased; Newt smiled softly, fleetingly, enough to slow the room around him.

Then came one of those storms. The sky darkened without warning, and within minutes the streets vanished behind a curtain of rain. Minho, wheeling his rattling bicycle, offered Newt a ride. They sped through the downpour, water spraying from the tires, their clothes plastered against their skin. The sting of the rain on Minho’s face barely mattered when he heard Newt’s laughter ringing behind him, carried on the storm like something brighter than sunlight.

They stopped beneath a narrow awning, dripping, breathless. Newt pushed wet hair from his forehead, his voice low as he spoke.

“You know… sometimes I think, even if nothing special ever happens, living like this already feels enough.”

The streetlight above flickered weakly, washing them in yellow. Minho turned, his dark eyes searching Newt’s, wanting to answer, to confess something that trembled at the edge of words. But he only stayed silent. The rain filled the space between them, a rhythm that said more than speech could.

Days passed like this-slow, unremarkable, yet full of fragments that clung: a look caught between shelves, a half-smile shared, the warble of a worn cassette. And gradually, those fragments shaped themselves into something delicate, something wordless, something theirs alone.

---

By late August, the little town seemed wrapped in a soft shade of gray. Clouds drifted low and heavy, veiling the sun until only a pale glow remained, like gauze laid across the sky. The rain had been falling since morning-gentle, persistent, tapping against rooftops and windows with a rhythm too steady to be sad. It was a sound Minho had grown fond of, because it belonged to all the afternoons he had shared with Newt.

His old bicycle squealed as he braked by the lake. His jeans were soaked, his hair clung damply to his forehead, but the grin on his face was bright the moment he saw Newt waiting. The blond boy stood beneath the rain with nothing more than a thin shirt and a worn fabric cap in his hand. So simple, so ordinary, and yet to Minho, it was a scene worth keeping forever.

“You came,” Newt said, his voice half-swallowed by the rain.

“Even if the whole town flooded, I’d still come,” Minho replied, propping his bike under the tree.

They walked along the muddy path that circled the lake. Their footprints sank deep and blurred quickly, washed away as if the rain wanted no trace of them left behind. From his pocket, Minho pulled out a scratched cassette case and held it out.

“Play this one. It’s nothing famous. But… it reminds me of you.”

Newt paused, his gaze lowering to the little tape as though it carried more weight than plastic could hold. Slowly, he smiled, and nodded.

“I’ll listen. And I’ll remember.”

The tape clicked in place, and music rose-soft guitar chords, a trembling voice, threads of static woven through it. Imperfect, fragile, yet impossibly warm. Rain mingled with melody, the lake stirred with the wind, and it felt as though the world had folded into this single moment, meant only for the two of them.

“Do you ever think,” Minho said suddenly, his voice low, “that the smallest moments could end up being the most important?”

Newt turned, eyes pale and endless beneath wet strands of hair. He answered softly, yet with certainty:

“Yes. But only if you share them with the right person.”

The words struck deeper than Minho had expected. He felt thousands of unsaid things press against his chest, but instead of speaking, he sat on the stone by the water and scrawled a few quick lines onto a scrap of paper. He handed it over, his hand trembling faintly.

“Keep it. Read it whenever you want.”

Newt didn’t open it. He closed his fingers tightly around the note, his gaze gentle and steady. Then, after a long pause, he brushed Minho’s hand lightly-so light, yet enough to send Minho’s heartbeat racing.

“I’ll keep it. And I’ll remember,” Newt said again.

And just like that, the rain became a curtain, drawing the world away until only they remained two boys, a song, a silence, and a promise never spoken. They sat side by side, letting the music and the storm wrap around them. Neither needed to say more. Both already knew: these moments would never be erased.